Yesterday, I wrote about the recent controversy of casting a very gross black woman as Juliet in a new British production of the (currently) most popular William Shakespeare play. She is cast alongside that gay kid from Spider-Man. Having a handsome white boy next to this objectively unattractive black girl has led to a backlash on the internet.

The media is focusing on how mean it is that people are saying they don’t like this, and how it is hurting the feelings of the girl. I noted that no one is specifically trying to hurt this girl’s feelings. What the media is doing is bypassing the entire discussion around using black casting in white productions, particularly focusing on race-mixing, in order to attack white people as a group.

In 2022, a Twitter account called “Dr. Thala Siren” (this appears to be a pseudonym) coined the term “fan-baiting” to explain this phenomenon of movie studios casting blacks and women in traditionally white male roles in order to cover-up for bad writing and force critics to claim their productions are better than they actually are.

The essay the tweeter wrote relates a lot to what I wrote yesterday, and is worth sharing.

“Fan-baiting” is a form of marketing used by producers, film studios, and actors, with the intent of exciting artificial controversy, garnering publicity, and explaining away the negative reviews of a new and often highly anticipated production.

Fan-baiting emerged as a marketing strategy in 2016/17, after fans of beloved franchises such as Ghostbusters and Star Wars objected to what they saw as poor writing choices, sloppy scripts, and cheap alterations to plot lines and characters for the sake of shock value.

Along side these critics, there was a small group of bigoted but vociferous commentators who objected to the inclusion of black and female actors in roles traditionally held by white male actors. Some of these individuals began publicly harassing actors.

Bigots have always attacked diversity on screen, but in a highly polarized political climate, instances of harassment on garnered disproportionately massive media coverage, which provided production studios with both free publicity and a new defence against actual critics.

Studios seized the opportunity to discredit criticism of poor writing & acting, insinuating that these, too, were motivated by bigotry. What used to be accepted as standard critiques were increasingly dismissed as part of the ignorant commentary of a “toxic fandom.”

Soon, it became standard practice before release to issue announcements specifying diverse casting choices, coupled with pre-emptive declarations of solidarity with the cast whom they now counted on to receive disparaging and harassing comments.

Actors who are women and/or BIPOC became props & shields for craven corporate laziness and opportunism. The studios save money both by avoiding expensive veteran writers as well as by offloading publicity to news outlets and social media covering the artificial controversy.

“Fan-baiting” works. It brings in a new sympathetic audience whose endorsement is more about taking a public stance against prejudice than any real interest in the art. “Fan-baiting” also permits studios to cultivate public skepticism over the legitimacy of poor reviews.

“Fan-baiting” also compels reviewers to temper their criticism, for fear of becoming associated with the “toxic fandom” and losing their professional credibly, resulting in telling discrepancies between critic and audience review scores.

The true nature of “fan-baiting” is never so clear as when a script is well-crafted and audience reviews are accordingly positive, exposing the announcements, declarations of solidarity, & grooming of skepticism for what they really are: cynical corporate marketing tactics.

Put another way, media corporations have found a way to monetize the racism that they set their actors up to receive.

Amazon knows exactly what it’s doing. One of the first images released was of Disa. On cue, a couple bigots said the predictable, allowing a giddy Amazon to release its pre-prepared scripted statement denouncing the “pushback”. It’s the new business model.

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/amazon-lord-of-the-rings-tv-series-team-responds-pushback-diverse-cast

Fan-baiting isn’t “black people getting cast”. Rather, it’s corporations banking on black people getting harassed to inflate publicity. Hence, diversity casting is in part motivated by the hope that the corporation can maximize harassment and, consequently, $$$.

Racism and sexism are the main issues. A secondary issue – one that is being overlooked – is corporate monetization of bigotry. Even while a studio purports to be “challenging bigotry” it is also counting on bigots being bigoted, and doing its best to direct them to the actors.

Solution: Media corporations should (a) hire experienced writers and give them the time required to write great characterization and plots for these actors, (unlike Amazon and Disney) and (b) accept critique rather than suggest all critique is motivated by bigotry.

As evidenced by the success and great reviews of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” in comparison to Amazon’s Rings of Power, both of which feature a diverse cast, the problem is the quality of writing, not the complexions of the actors.

For those of you who like this thread on #fanbaiting, know that it is an example of structural racism: the individuals involved may not be personally racist, but the profit motive of the corporations who employ them orients them to make decisions that harm racialized peoples.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of that, but I agree in general.

This essay is primarily about films and shows such as Captain Marvel and Amazon’s Rings of Power that were very bad and yet deflected all criticism by claiming anyone who doesn’t say they are good is a hater. What the Romeo & Juliet production is doing is slightly different, but along the same lines: they are creating a situation where “good people” are morally obligated to go see this production to show solidarity against the evil Nazis who do not think that gorilla bitch is attractive.

Further, while I agree that this is a financial strategy used by Disney and the streaming services to prop-up bad writing, there is also definitely an agenda to attack and degrade white people. It just so happens that this agenda is also exploitable by people who want to rush through poorly written productions and then demand good reviews under threat of accusing critics of being haters.

It is also true that most of us (even me, to some extent) will ignore a certain amount of diversity casting if the production is otherwise solid. I’m hearing good things about the new Fallout show that was released yesterday. I plan to watch it and write a review. A lot of right-wingers liked Dune, despite the diversity. I think Dune was boring as all hell, regardless.

What I have previously argued is that creative people tend to be intellectually honest, much more so than the average person, and it is therefore hard to get creatives to work on these diversity propaganda projects, as they are so intellectually dishonest by their very nature.

Frankly, there is really no reason that a diverse production can’t be of good quality. After watching the first episode, I thought that the feminist version of True Detective was going to be good. It turned out it was horrible, but the problem was definitely bad writing.

See: After True Detective Season 4, The Hunt for the Great Woke Whale Continues

The whole society is intellectually bankrupt, which is why nothing is good. This is not necessarily a direct result of diversity. It is simply that this forced diversity agenda is a parallel result of intellectual bankruptcy.

Having black characters is not a problem in itself. Black people exist and they buy movie tickets. However, we all seem to understand the difference between “oh, they put these black character in so black people could relate to the movie” and “they put these black characters in as an attack on white people.”

This Romeo & Juliet casting is obviously the latter, and it is very obvious that this was done to hype up a play that otherwise, no one ever even would have heard about.

The former looks like this:

The blacks are having a breakdown because people are angry that the most primitive gorilla bitch was cast as Juliette in a much-hyped version of Shakespeare’s (currently) most famous play.

The Guardian:

More than 800 predominantly Black female and non-binary actors have signed an open letter in solidarity with Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who has been targeted with online racial abuse after the announcement of her casting in a new production of Romeo & Juliet.

Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and Marianne Jean-Baptiste are among the 883 signatories of the letter, alongside actors Lolly Adefope, Freema Agyeman, Wunmi Mosaku, and Tamara Lawrance.

It reads: “Too many times, Black performers – particularly Black actresses – are left to face the storm of online abuse after committing the crime of getting a job on their own.”

It comes after a statement by the Jamie Lloyd theatre company condemning the “barrage of deplorable racial abuse” that has been directed at Amewudah-Rivers and saying further harassment would be reported.

The abuse, the company – run by the director Jamie Lloyd – said, followed the announcement of the show’s cast including Amewudah-Rivers as Juliet and Tom Holland as Romeo.

Wednesday’s letter, which was organised by Enola Holmes actor Susan Wokoma and the writer Somalia Nonyé Seaton, stated: “When news of Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ casting in Jamie Lloyd’s production of Romeo and Juliet was announced so many people celebrated and welcomed this news. Many of us took to social media to shower our baby sis with love and congratulations – a huge deal for someone so young in their career. A huge rising talent.

“But then what followed was a too familiar horror that many of us visible Black dark skinned performers have experienced. The racist and misogynistic abuse directed at such a sweet soul has been too much to bear. For a casting announcement of a play to ignite such twisted ugly abuse is truly embarrassing for those so empty and barren in their own lives that they must meddle in hateful abuse.”

…

The signatories welcomed the theatre company’s statement and said they hoped it would “extend to committed emotional support for Francesca on her journey with the production”.

They added: “Too many times theatre companies, broadcasters, producers and streamers have failed to offer any help or support when their Black artists face racist or misogynistic abuse. Reporting is too often left on the shoulders of the abused, who are also then expected to promote said show.

“We want to send a clear message to Francesca and all Black women performers who face this kind of abuse – we see you. We see the art you manage to produce with not only the pressures that your white colleagues face but with the added traumatic hurdle of misogynoir. We are so excited to watch you shine.”

I am not totally unsympathetic to this bitch on a basic, personal level. She’s just trying to get money like any person does, and is being derided in a mean way as a primitive simian. It’s human enough to feel pity for her.

But these people who wrote this letter, unbeknownst to them, hit the nail on the head when they said that the theater company failed to offer any support for her. Obviously, the theater company knew that this bitch would be attacked, relentlessly, over this casting, and they believed – rightly so – that this wave of attacks would create large hype around their production. Everyone understands the current climate. Everyone understands that white people are being replaced with blacks, and that white people are rightfully angry about this. So they offer this job to some black bitch, who is fairly enough just trying to get money (like anyone is), so they can play off of the attacks she receives.

There are some issues that people have with blacks taking over white productions and claiming them for themselves. However, I think in general, no one really cares if the blacks want to do their own Shakespeare production. What really upset people about this is that the guy playing Romeo is white – that obvious homosexual boy from Spider-Man.

It’s only natural and obvious that people are going to think this is disgusting and offensive.

This is to say: the theater company that cast her alongside this white man did so with the intent of putting her in a position to be viciously attacked by people from the internet. Again, they knew that this was a very easy way to create massive hype around their production. If they had cast a white woman as Juliette – and frankly, if they had cast a black Romeo alongside this black Juliette – they would not have gotten any of this hype.

The point is: whites feel, rightly, that they are being attacked by this production. It has nothing to do with wanting to hurt the feelings of the poor black bitch who is just trying to make money (like anyone is). But the producers knew that there would be outrage, because they knew that this was an attack on whites. They also knew that the media would hype up this outrage, and claim it is pure evil, and make it so people who buy tickets to this show feel they are very moral.

That is to say: the attacks on the black bitch, and the media response, are all just part of a viral marketing campaign designed to hype up this production, which would otherwise not matter to anyone.

Obviously, there are Jews who want to attack white people with this sort of thing. But we now have a consistent dynamic where these bizarre race-swapping productions – very often involving the ugliest blacks imaginable mixing with attractive white people – create outrage, and the media always frames it the same way, and this allows for producers trying to make money to exploit this dynamic for hype.

No one attacking this production is doing so in order to hurt this ape woman’s feelings. In general, most people do not do things for the purpose of hurting someone’s feelings. The people attacking this production are doing so because they feel they are under attack. But the media will always reduce it to someone’s feelings, because that appeals to women who are the primary drivers of outrage over white men being outraged.

This thing about people’s feelings is used constantly in the media to distract from the real issues involved in any story. The Jeffrey Epstein saga was the biggest spy scandal in the last century, but instead of talking about the fact that the Jewish Mossad was running a massive blackmail ring in America, we instead heard about how the hookers involved were very sad victims of some kind of unspecific abuse. All of the important aspects of the story were buried by media hype over hookers having their feelings hurt.

Just so, there is a very real issue that is raised by the replacement of white people in their own media, and the use of race-swapping in media to attack and degrade whites as a whole. There is a lot to talk about here. But none of it gets talked about because it is very easy for the media to cover all of that discussion up with talk about how a black girl’s feelings are hurt.

I’m sure a lot of people don’t care about this girl’s feelings. Personally, though I have no intention to hurt her feelings, I don’t actually care. However, at the same time, no one is explicitly trying to hurt her feelings. That would be ridiculous. People are outraged over the fact that this is obviously an attack on white people, and white people logically feel that an attack on white people is an attack on them personally, their families, their culture, their history, their identity.

It is very ridiculous, the way the media is able to reduce everything to childish stories about people having hurt feelings. It completely prevents discussion of any serious issue.