Retro SciFi Film of the Week…
Her (2013)
This one's about an ambiguously gay man who interacts with an AI through his mobile device. This is a really boring movie – practically the whole thing is just this guy talking to the AI in his mobile device. It's supposed to be set in the future but there aren't many sci-fi techie devices and the cars look like they were made 10 years before this movie was made.
This film has essentially an all white cast. There's only one very minor bit part at the very beginning of the film played by a black actor, Lisa Renee Pitts. This technique of literally marginalizing black actors in movies, placing them at the very beginning or very end of the film has been used by pro-racist Hollywood for a very long time, at least since the 1980s.
There’s one Chinese character who is the girlfriend of the character played by Chris Pratt. That character, a minor supporting role, is played by Laura Kai Chen.
Because of the racial bias in the composition of the cast, I'm not recommending this film at all. Also it's just a boring movie. I’m including it here in the Film of the Week series because AI is a popular topic right now.
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@Pat I appreciated the movie, did not find it racist myself. I have other critiques to the movie, such as not being able to create a realistic place where people live: the society they depict clearly would not work that way.
I don't believe the main point of the movie is really AI but more a reflection on relationships: the AI part isn't really explored all that much after all. Guy falls in love with AI, alright cool; other people get to know about it: mildly shocked but it's alright.
I frankly don't understand the racial bias you go on about. The cast is composed of mostly white people, that's alright by me as long as the movie is nice. I do not think that implies the director is racist nor that the movie transmits racist messages.
Hollywood is pro-racist in their films generally.
See this thread for a discussion about it.
Also, regarding Spike Jones specifically, how many of his feature-length films have black people on screen as main characters? How long are they on screen for? Just count how many white actors on screen vs black characters on screen in his feature-length films.
I'm sure you'll see a bias.
@Pat Frankly, I don't know who Spike Jones is, I guess the director of the movie. I'm not sure I saw any other of his movies.
I'm not going to count how many white and black people are there in the movie.
Surely there can be a bias, which I guess would mean that black people are underrepresented when compared to their share in the population in the country where the movie was directed or when compared to other movies produced in the same country.
Does the bias by itself direct a racist message? I do not think so: the absence of black people in a movie does not convey a racist message on its own.
Is that bias present because the director is racist? Perhaps, or maybe not; plenty explanations could be valid for that.
I'm not saying this wasn't the case, but I don't think it's fair to tell people not to watch the movies because it is racist and saying it is racist because there are few minority characters.
If a company refused to hire black people, I think you'd say that was racist and that it conveyed a racist message.
Hollywood will not change unless we refuse to support that racism by not watching the films that are racially biased.
