The other day a friend of mine showed me the newest South Park special, Joining the Panderverse, which takes on the internet trolls who complain about diverse casting and the studios that are accused of pandering with their diverse casting (specifically Disney for this special). I didn't watch the full special, because we went to see a movie (the Zone of Interest, which is... quite a watch), but I've had it percolating in my mind since then.
I went looking for some reviews and recaps, and the best one I found was this one from Den of Geek. Unlike the subreddit that was my first stop, the Den of Geek piece nailed that the special's primary target is not the diverse casting but the people who are butthurt by it. It also suggests that Trey Parker and Matt Stone's natural posture of "both sides suck" is a little too pat.
The fact is, there's not that much recasting of roles for "diversity". Certainly nobody's recast Tony Stark or Steve Rogers as a "diverse woman", and the cases where you have a non-white version of a character are still taken from the comics. One is Miles Morales as Spider Man, which the South Park special calls out as being a cool concept, and the other is Sam Wilson as Captain America. Of course, a lot of supposed fans got mad about those characters in the comics too.
It's fair to say that these people get mad about all of this stuff, even when it's legit to the comics or whatever source material. Brie Larsen is a particular target of alt right fans, despite the Carol Danvers version of Captain Marvel/Ms Marvel having been a character in Marvel comics for about 40 years (and the Monica Rambeau version has been around almost as long). So when you dare to recast Ariel from the Little Mermaid as a black woman, look out.
Are there points where the diverse casting goes far? I suppose it depends on how granular you want to get. There are moments in some shows and movies that feel like box-ticking rather than legitimate explorations of story: Halo coming out as non-binary in season 4 of Young Justice could have been an interesting story, but it's used just as a way to show everyone being okay with it.
And they should be okay with it! But I feel like the idea of a dead girl's body being reanimated by a genderless alien and the resulting entity trying to make their way in the world deserves more exploration than just, "Great! You're learning who you are! Next."
Similarly, the reveal of Enfys Nest at the end of Solo: A Star Wars Story lands with a bit of a clunk (to me, at least). It's not so much that she's revealed to be a young woman of color, but rather that it comes out of nowhere - we haven't seen Erin Kellyman in the film up to this point, so I was left with the sense of confusion at the reveal. The intent was to show that the future of the Rebellion would be led by people other than white guys, which is fair enough, apart from the fact that the main heroes of the original movies are, of course, white guys. But it might have been more powerful if we'd seen her without the mask earlier in the movie, before identifying her as the dread pirate Enfys Nest.
But I've now had to unfollow so many Twitter accounts for harping on "girl power = bad" in the context of Marvel and Star Wars. It's lame - the characters are being played by the same types of people who have always played them, and the fact that some of the latest movies are dumb is just because of poor scripting and the hubris that overtakes all successful studios. I dislike The Last Jedi, not because it's too "woke", but because the story makes little sense, since they decided to have different directors work on each movie of the sequel trilogy, meaning Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams then spent each subsequent film canceling out what the other had done. That's not a diversity problem, that's stupidity problem.
That said, I also appreciate that Johnson was trying to do something different with Star Wars, even if I think that factors beyond his control made the movie not live up to expectations.
Anyway, I'd love to see this freakout about diverse casting die a death, but that's a long way off: the latest controversy riling nerds is that an announcement of Anya Taylor-Joy being cast as a herald of Galactus is being taken as proof that they're going to cast her as a female Silver Surfer. Never mind that the actual announcement doesn't say who - there will always be people sowing this kind of mischief, either because they're legitimately dumb or because they're actively looking to stir shit up.
Maybe that South Park special should have focused more on people stirring up assholes like Cartman, rather than jokes about the Panderstone? Whatever - I despair either way, but if Taylor-Joy does play Norrin Radd, I'll probably still be there at the theater to see her do it.
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