I remember some years ago about a situation regarding a movie. I forget the exact details, but it was something like a Filipino movie about an American disaster, like 9/11. The movie was based on a historically inaccurate story of a Filipino man or family involved in the circumstances, when in reality there had been none. I don't know whether or not the Filipino person was a replacement for a white person's real story.
But as someone much closer to the original circumstances, my perspective is not that I or my community's history has been replaced or been removed due to "racism." It is rather very touching that this foreign community felt close enough and impacted enough by the story to envision themselves inside it, taking part in it. To me, it was an expression of closeness and understanding, not appropriation or racism.
Plus it seems strange to me that in a story where people walk on water and talk to burning bushes and kill gays, that the most offensive or historically inaccurate thing is that some people have envisioned the main character as being similar to them.
I agree! And then they proceeded to spread that image throughout the world (commonly via imperial colonialism) as "god looks like me, not you". That closely aligns with the concept of systemic racism.
> Plus it seems strange to me that ...the most offensive or historically inaccurate thing is...
"Most" is a strawman. We don't need to start assigning gold/silver/bronze medals to badness in order to recognize that it's bad and work to change it.
You skipped the meat of my comment, which is about closeness and understanding.
You mean the ones where he's shown as west-european white? I suppose we could bother thinking about why he looks like that in those portrayals when he definitely wouldn't have in real life.