Lack of representation = systemic racism: Footloose is Exhibit A

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take your point OP. But I don’t think footloose is the best example — a film about an insular backwards conservative town afraid of change and modernity—integrating that group would have been difficult for the narrative.

But talk about any of the John Hughes movies, or Fast Times’s, or Bill and Teds, or clerks (I guess that’s 90s).

IMO, the worst offender is actually Friends.

I thought the show was good, but, c'mon.. young people in NYC, and no gay people or minorities? That is until Ross dated two different nonwhite women. I think I read that he thought it was also ridiculous that a show about young people in NYC had zero non white people.

I also read a long time ago that when there were a couple of Asian guest cast, they had to deal with racism.

Friends started in the 90s. Seinfeld was just as bad, actually.

Fun fact. Our neighbor was on an episode of Cheers. He's Black. He was as part of some sort of military escort. He was active duty Air Force - can't remember the episode. Not an actor though.

Cheers seems to be a big offender as well. I was watching a bunch of highlights on youtube because of the Frasier remake, and the only people of color were the cigar-store Indian and a few extras who pass out of frame. There is so much diversity of personality/social class/education in the show, but scarce minorities.

I think that this was done consciously/strategically, under the theory that any diversity that exceeds the levels actually existing in friend groups would ring false and diminish the comedy and hurt ratings. Also I think it played to white people’s (maybe all people’s?) subconscious desire to surround themselves only with people they’re totally comfortable with.

I lived in Boston around the corner from “Cheers” and that was representative of the clientele you’d see at that time … I also went to high school in Boston suburb and we had one black student my senior year.

[Anonymous]

It was 1984 OP, not 2024.

I'm from the south and was alive in the 1980s; we went to Kansas to visit relatives and I asked people where all the black people went.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Have you seen the movie? It's not about the Americans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There were black people in Kansas in the 80s.

Regardless: go back and watch movies from the 1980s, and you’ll notice a total lack of any diversity. The lack of *any* representation—even a token amount—is glaring.

But I think that you’ll notice that the really, really strong shows were trying to have some diversity, so people knew about the concept.

Star Trek always had diverse casts.

Columbo usually had people of color in crowd scenes, at least, and maybe the producers thought of Italians as being diverse.

The Mary Tyler Moore show had Gordy the weatherman.

So, it was pretty bad for a 1980s or 1990s production to have an all-white cast.

Star Trek was fiction.

Columbo was set in LA.

Mary Tyler Moore show was set in Minneapolis.

So saying that "really, really strong shows" had representation isn't correct. Just like with Footloose, you need to understand your surroundings.

[Anonymous]

My high school of 1000 people had 2 black students, 3 Asian students and 1 Hispanic student (if you count someone Jewish whose family fled the holocaust via Argentina).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take your point OP. But I don’t think footloose is the best example — a film about an insular backwards conservative town afraid of change and modernity—integrating that group would have been difficult for the narrative.

But talk about any of the John Hughes movies, or Fast Times’s, or Bill and Teds, or clerks (I guess that’s 90s).

IMO, the worst offender is actually Friends.

I thought the show was good, but, c'mon.. young people in NYC, and no gay people or minorities? That is until Ross dated two different nonwhite women. I think I read that he thought it was also ridiculous that a show about young people in NYC had zero non white people.

I also read a long time ago that when there were a couple of Asian guest cast, they had to deal with racism.

Friends started in the 90s. Seinfeld was just as bad, actually.

Really?

Main character is Jewish. His best friend (George) is half jewish/half catholic.

Recurring characters:

Jackie Childs - AA
Larry the Cook - AA
Mickey Abbott - Little Person
Babu Bhatt - Pakistani
Soup Nazi - Iranian (I think)

And the list goes on.

There's also episodes that address race head on, like when Jerry dates a Native American women, or when Elaine thinks she's dating a black man and he thinks he's dating a hispanic women

"So what, we're just a couple of white people?"

It actually did a great job of reflecting the diversity of the city, but also acknowledging the reality that people mostly stick to their tribe for their more personal connections.

You're wrong about Seinfeld

Does anyone remember Donna Changstein - the Jewish girl from Long Island who adopted Chinese speech mannerisms and would imply she was Chinese over the phone only for everyone to be disappointed when they actually met her?
When George's mom met her, she exclaimed "You're not Chinese!" after Donna spouted some Confucian wisdom to her over the phone.
This ethnicity fishing episode was way before the Kardashians.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Because there were some black soldiers in WW2 means they need to be overrepresented in WW2 films? Puhlease. 99% of the casualties in WW2 were either white or Asian. It was DUNKIRK for cryin’ out loud. If you want to make a super niche story about black soldiers during WW2 go ahead, but the war was overwhelmingly fought by whites and Asians, and they by far and away had the most deaths. It’s would just be extra weird and out of place to add in a lot of black characters into a story like Dunkirk.

Yeah but the movie Dunkirk left out the Asians as well. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58466527.amp

The Indian unit was 300 men out of over 300,000 evacuated, and they worked on the supplies, not front-line fighting. There would be no reason to feature them in the movie. You people are absurd.

Why are we still uselessly reminiscing a war fought by imperialists and colonizers in the first place?

Imagine being extraordinarily ignorant to the entire other half of WW2 in the Pacific, IndoChina, and the rest of the far East. Holy Toledo.

The war in the Pacific was fought primarily by two neo-imperial powers - the US and Japan. When the US won is it any coincidence the British, French, and Dutch were given back their colonial lands? The US even supplied these ashbin European countries with tons of arms to try to violently suppress the independence struggles.

Imagine being so extraordinarily ignorant that you didn’t know this. Holy Cow.

DP ever heard of China?
Military KIA 3-4,000,000
Civilians death 20,000,000

Still doesn’t refute anything. The Chinese (and Koreans and Filipinos among others) demanded reparations from Japan for their brutal occupations of their countries and the US refused to allow it, shielding the Japanese from full accountability. Thank you for reminding me of it.

Chinese here -
It's hard to argue for reparations when your team couldn't fight the battle and needed considerable help from outside.
The Chinese don't mutter about lack of reparations. Both the Chinese and Taiwanese openly talk to this day about how shameful it was that a small country like Japan bested a big country like China for so many years. It started way before WWII.
Japan's presence in China was less a source of resentment, more a source of national shame.

[Anonymous]

My favorite scene is when Kevin Bacon's shoelace is trapped, and he can't get off the tractor; leaving everyone to believe he is a badass.

He couldn't get his Foot Loose!

Oh, sorry-thought we were talking about Footloose.

[Anonymous]

Ren's move was from Beaumont, Illinois to Chicago, Illinois.

[Anonymous]

That movie was so bad. They should have been locked at home 24/7, forget the no dancing, considering what danger these idiots were to themselves playing chicken the way they did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What percentage of rural Kansas was Black in 1984?

6%

But does it matter?

Movies are made for a national and ultimately global audience.

America was 12% black in 1984.

And they opted to only have white kids in the big dance scene. Probably 100 kids, and all are white. They feature dancers, including a blue eyed blonde hair guy doing MJ-esque breakdancing moves, and it didn’t occur to anyone on the set to add any diversity?

As an 11 year old at the time. I noticed it.

This just shows how little people know of the US beyond their immediate environment. 12% of the population has never meant 12% spread evenly everywhere.

[Anonymous]

wasn't it filmed in Utah?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take your point OP. But I don’t think footloose is the best example — a film about an insular backwards conservative town afraid of change and modernity—integrating that group would have been difficult for the narrative.

But talk about any of the John Hughes movies, or Fast Times’s, or Bill and Teds, or clerks (I guess that’s 90s).

IMO, the worst offender is actually Friends.

I thought the show was good, but, c'mon.. young people in NYC, and no gay people or minorities? That is until Ross dated two different nonwhite women. I think I read that he thought it was also ridiculous that a show about young people in NYC had zero non white people.

I also read a long time ago that when there were a couple of Asian guest cast, they had to deal with racism.

Friends started in the 90s. Seinfeld was just as bad, actually.

Really?

Main character is Jewish. His best friend (George) is half jewish/half catholic.

Recurring characters:

Jackie Childs - AA
Larry the Cook - AA
Mickey Abbott - Little Person
Babu Bhatt - Pakistani
Soup Nazi - Iranian (I think)

And the list goes on.

There's also episodes that address race head on, like when Jerry dates a Native American women, or when Elaine thinks she's dating a black man and he thinks he's dating a hispanic women

"So what, we're just a couple of white people?"

It actually did a great job of reflecting the diversity of the city, but also acknowledging the reality that people mostly stick to their tribe for their more personal connections.

You're wrong about Seinfeld

Does anyone remember Donna Changstein - the Jewish girl from Long Island who adopted Chinese speech mannerisms and would imply she was Chinese over the phone only for everyone to be disappointed when they actually met her?
When George's mom met her, she exclaimed "You're not Chinese!" after Donna spouted some Confucian wisdom to her over the phone.
This ethnicity fishing episode was way before the Kardashians.

Lol. That's a great episode.

In fact, the more you think about Seinfeld, the better it is from a 'representation' perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take your point OP. But I don’t think footloose is the best example — a film about an insular backwards conservative town afraid of change and modernity—integrating that group would have been difficult for the narrative.

But talk about any of the John Hughes movies, or Fast Times’s, or Bill and Teds, or clerks (I guess that’s 90s).

IMO, the worst offender is actually Friends.

I thought the show was good, but, c'mon.. young people in NYC, and no gay people or minorities? That is until Ross dated two different nonwhite women. I think I read that he thought it was also ridiculous that a show about young people in NYC had zero non white people.

I also read a long time ago that when there were a couple of Asian guest cast, they had to deal with racism.

Friends started in the 90s. Seinfeld was just as bad, actually.

Really?

Main character is Jewish. His best friend (George) is half jewish/half catholic.

Recurring characters:

Jackie Childs - AA
Larry the Cook - AA
Mickey Abbott - Little Person
Babu Bhatt - Pakistani
Soup Nazi - Iranian (I think)

And the list goes on.

There's also episodes that address race head on, like when Jerry dates a Native American women, or when Elaine thinks she's dating a black man and he thinks he's dating a hispanic women

"So what, we're just a couple of white people?"

It actually did a great job of reflecting the diversity of the city, but also acknowledging the reality that people mostly stick to their tribe for their more personal connections.

You're wrong about Seinfeld

Does anyone remember Donna Changstein - the Jewish girl from Long Island who adopted Chinese speech mannerisms and would imply she was Chinese over the phone only for everyone to be disappointed when they actually met her?
When George's mom met her, she exclaimed "You're not Chinese!" after Donna spouted some Confucian wisdom to her over the phone.
This ethnicity fishing episode was way before the Kardashians.

Seinfeld was actually brilliant in how they tackled race relations, friendships, etc. George playing the role of the fool in the Yankees organization and Danny Tartabul having to endure George's mediocre neurosis was hilarious (and so true to real life)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go watch the last scene where they dance at the prom and imagine what the director and choreographer must have been thinking when the white guys were trying to breakdance. It’s a featured scene. This was the height of the breakdancing craze. Only racism could have prompted an all-white cast for the big dance scene featuring breakdancing.

There was a black cowboy in “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. “