I went on social media, saw that a discussion has been raging for two days as to whether Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights is black, and realized that I will never be truly American.
This fixation on race is incomprehensible to me. Even my child tells me that “Grace is darker than Josette, and Tina is blacker than they both”, and I honestly don’t get it.
In SA, the first anti-apartheid protesters were white WW2 vets opposed to their Nazi ideology. Something conveniently forgotten by white and black nationists.
https://samilhistory.com/2023/08/19/the-steel-commando/
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I’m weeping.
Who is going to watch that movie, is the only question I have. Even if you are planning to watch it as a comedy, it’s got to get boring pretty fast.
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Nyong’o is a very beautiful woman, but it’s a girlish, almost asexual sort of beauty, doll face and long lithe limbs kind of way. Not the beauty that would launch a thousand ships, that’s for sure.
I could kind of get having a black Helen btw. She’s supposed to be a not-quite-human sort of beauty, after all – very different from the people around her, her mortal sister etcetera. Greek lyrical poetry had her as blonde and blue-eyed, but ebony skin would work too I think. Far from the worst sin against the original text I’ve seen.
-stille
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My biggest issue is, why do we have to inflict the racial obsessions of today’s Americans into the entirety of human history and culture? This is a relatively small percentage of world population that is turning its hangups into everybody’s problem.
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I mean, you’re going to do it whether we like it or not, and we on the other side are free to watch non-American movies if we prefer. I don’t really understand why you’d owe us movies that cater to our obsessions rather than yours tbh.
-stille
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I’ve seen people from all countries and continents eagerly debating this very US-inspired bit of lunacy like it sincerely matters to them. I saw Ukrainians debate it online in the short window of time when they actually have electricity. I also saw them debate for two weeks whether it’s racist to kill black soldiers Russians recruit for their war effort.
This is really not about movies which I don’t even watch.
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Race theory originates in Europe and is central to colonialism.
https://www.dw.com/en/scientific-racisms-roots-in-colonization/a-67624247
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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