Are white people being replaced in Movies ? - Yes! and here is why this is a good thing !

_{Image creator Dylan Bonner}

So there is this outrage over the new live action Ariel being black the same outrage flared up when MJ in the new Spiderman was cast a girl of colour. I will admit my first knee jerk reaction when i saw the new castings was but She is a red head …

Humans hate change we grow up with something it gives us a sense of security. Winnie the pooh likes honey, Milk is good for you and Ariel is white and has red hair - this is how things should be for all eternity says our inner child because we grew up believing it. The thing is part of growing up is learning new things, expanding our horizons beyond our childhood indoctrination and realising that tradition is not always right; in fact it is often dead wrong.

Look at dairy for example despite the corporate indoctrination and government subsidisation -science clearly tells us milk is really bad for you and your bones after the age of 5 . Pooh still likes honey and that is most likely not going to change but the Ariel thing is a sign of progress not an attack against white people.

Progress how? We’ll think about it despite the fact that white people only constitute a minimal percentage of the world population whites have dominated our movies and stories. Think about it again, in our childhood how many black or brown superheroes do you remember? I can name 5 - Storm , john proudstar, Jubilee and psylock (who was originally white but bodysnached an asian girl) - marvel and for DC-cyborg now I know there were a few more but fact is that they were not very prominent in the stories and even with these only Storm was ever really an A-lister . NOw Marvel and DC were semi progressive, think about Disney how many main characters of colour have we had ? And in the classic movies how many people of colour period? Now think about TV shows how many shows had black leads ? And of these shows and when it came to shows geared for white audiences how many characters were of colour? If we are honest most were placed on the sidelines - the black friend , the first person to get killed in a horror movie we all know the clichés and while it seemed normal then because we were raised to see it as normal, is this the kind of world civilised people want to live in ? If we have to replace white protagonists in our stories it is only because we have been omitting them or reducing them to servants and sidekicks throughout our history . Nothing puts a better spotlight on how bad white people behaved for centuries than our popular stories and entertainment. It is time to clean house!

Yes it would have probably gone over better with audiences had Hollywood just created new stories instead of retrofitting old ones, because as i said before humans hate change. The truth is when we are emotionally attached to characters we want them to stay the same in an ever changing world. it makes us feel safe but living in a static universe has never been good for human development. We need change to evolve and become better. Now we know Hollywood is lazy and pretty much void of original material these days, and getting original content from them is like wishing for unicorns - but there is an upside to this. changing things we love engages us emotionally and needed change will only manifest if we are emotionally involved. Who better to teach us to be better and grow than our childhood heroes.

Personally i want to live in the world of Star Trek where race and planet of origin mean little to noting , where poverty is abolished and everyone can be free (well Trek isn’t all perfect in that regard but you get the idea). The way to get there is to go out of our comfort zone it is pretty damn well time that everyone is represented in our stories and that our heroes come in all shapes , sizes and genders . So hello black Ariel nice to meet you you are going to make so many black little girls like my granddaughter happy because they will see themselves in you. I am sorry you are getting such a rough reception but take courage you are a much needed harbinger of change in a world of people like Donald trump and Theresa May and the rest of the racist, speciesist hate brigade. It is time that this ridiculous white centric culture dies. No I don’t want us to be demonised and purged out of society as so many right wing crazies go on about - I want a world where we don’t even give a second though about race or country of origin . We are all from the same planet we are all originated from the same genetic mother it is time we grow up. Our planet is dying we have so much more important thing to do …

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_{(Image credit Dave Renike and a portrait of the fair jubilee made by myself turned into this here universal truth meme)}

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_{art courtesy of @PegasusPhysics}

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_{this little girl was made for me by @barbara-orenya}