I feel like the crazies ranting about "white erasure" are making it harder to criticize these race-reboots on the grounds they should be criticized for: laziness. Mediocre products where the selling point is, "we swapped races, give us points," remain mediocre and are unbelievably lazy compared to what we should see... which is new and interesting things with diversity baked in.

Unfortunately the hysterical racists are so loud and pervasive that this is yet another issue we see broken down in a Manichean battle to cover for a total lack of new ideas.

I just let it be "lazy" as you say as the rest of tons of other stuff is lazy and don't bother to think to much about it. I'd rather focus on stuff I actually like.

That's a good default, I think people who spend all of their time obsessing about what they hate are really missing out.

It's extremely hard to take any middle of the road position now. Extremists on either side just won't allow it.

It's like calling a song lazy because it uses the same chords as another song. Gender/race-bent remakes are still entirely original works with new scripts and new shots. Even if they were to keep the script the same and make a shot-for-shot remake with new actors and a new crew, that's still 99% new work that's being done. I'd watch a shot-for-shot remake of something like Star Wars with a gender-swapped cast, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Ideas are worth very little, it's the execution that matters.

I'll go on the record of being in favor of species-swapping Ewoks and Gungans, with Rancors and Gamorreans respectively.

Its lazy on the plane of 'what kind of show should we hire some one else to make'.

Good shout on bringing it up though

> Gender/race-bent remakes are still entirely original works with new scripts and new shots.

That's not what the word "original" means.

Sequels, adaptations, remakes, reboots, etc. are not "entirely original" because they're using existing stories or characters.

Whether you like those works or not, it's flat out _false_ to call them "entirely original".

Rather than arguing with him about racism I tried explaining the commercial logic behind the decision, pointing out that advertisers would like to reach black consumers and if the original show was popular with a black audience then recycling the successful formula was a safer commercial decision than trying to build a new brand, but he kept going on about his heritage being stolen. I guess this means all the Fred Savage statues will have to come down.

I don't watch television much except for a little bit of news and local weather, but it seems to me there's always about the same number of family-centered sitcoms and dramas set in the present, about one's parents generation (nostalgia aimed at 30 something starting a family) and grandparents or older ancestors (mythmaking, culture reproduction). Sitcoms are like the McRib of television; they generally don't age well but since they come and go as the cast ages out it's easy to get teary-eyed at how great they used to be.

I admire your attempt to reason with the unreasonable!

A lot of people end up as neo-nazis or similar because they're anxiety-ridden losers who take refuge in cosmic narratives. Aggressive and violent ones need punching, but lot of them are confused and need a way to vent to a non-judgmental person. Moralistic approaches tend not to be very effective ime - horse, water etc..

I agree with you, but I've never had the patience to make that work in practice.

Ohhh, it's a new version of The Wonder Years... I had never seen the original show, but I was vaguely aware of it, and it was playing in the gym the other day and I saw the main characters being black and I felt like I was deep in the Mandela Effect or something.