Meg 455: Fear the Future

[Jim_Campbell]

This move however, comes a cross purely as virtue-signalling for the sake of it.

"Virtue signalling" now, is it? Your original 'argument' (such as it was) doesn't hold water, but rather than engaging with people (not just me) who seem bemused by your strength of feeling on this, you choose to throw around this horrid term from the culture wars. Would you like to go for the double and get "woke" in there, too?

A fictional character has turned out to be fractionally less white than you believed him to be up until a few weeks ago — if that bothers you enough to get into arguments about it on the internet then, honestly, you might want to ask yourself why.

[IndigoPrime]

So Dredd's possible great-grandmother, effectively a new character, turns out to be black. Which makes Fargo, in a future that's likely to be more, rather than less, multicultural, at least 1/4 black and Dredd 1/8 black. That... doesn't make the strip crumble for me, but whatever.

Reading the above, I quite like it as a nod to the original intent behind Dredd's design. Again, it'd be nice if there was more of this in Dredd, and especially in unnamed background characters. So we don't get sole female judge – always a Psi. Or token named black character, while everyone else is coloured white, in a future USA megacity.

Also, I'm enjoying the fact that's she's a kick-ass kind of character.

[Funt Solo]

NiemandGPT probably just made a mistake.

Do people who are against virtue-signaling never say please or thankyou? Do they not hold doors open for people? Not say "bless you" when someone sneezes? Refuse to join in singing Happy Birthday? Openly tell people that the gift they just received has left them disappointed and bemused? Ignore a request to pass the salt?

Or is it only virtue-signaling when it involves something that goes against their ingrained ideas of racial purity? We should ask Ralph Fiennes - a very talented actor who says that we should have artistic freedom - even at the cost of offending people ... but not a black Bond. Because that idea offends him. Humans: very good at self-delusion and absolute masters of hypocrisy (from one sentence to the next).

[Richard]

Credo, I'm not sure what you think that photo proves...

[Funt Solo]

Credo, I'm not sure what you think that photo proves...

As you might imagine, my point is glaringly obvious to me. Can you be more specific about what you mean?

[Mike Carroll]

So Dredd's possible great-grandmother, effectively a new character, turns out to be black. Which makes Fargo [...] at least 1/4 black and Dredd 1/8 black.

Not quite right. Clones only have one parent, so if Fargo's 1/4 African American, and Dredd's been cloned from Fargo's cells, that makes Dredd 1/4 African American.

In my opinion that's a good thing: Judges should be representative of all the people.

[Jim_Campbell]

Not quite right. Clones only have one parent, so if Fargo's 1/4 African American, and Dredd's been cloned from Fargo's cells, that makes Dredd 1/4 African American.

Which makes an assumption about Eartha Fargo's lineage — just as some people of mixed heritage can look about as white as can be, just because Eartha looks black doesn't mean there aren't other ethnicities in her own gene pool... so all we can say with confidence is that Dredd is at most 1/4 African American.

[Mike Carroll]

Not quite right. Clones only have one parent, so if Fargo's 1/4 African American, and Dredd's been cloned from Fargo's cells, that makes Dredd 1/4 African American.

Which makes an assumption about Eartha Fargo's lineage — just as some people of mixed heritage can look about as white as can be, just because Eartha looks black doesn't mean there aren't other ethnicities in her own gene pool... so all we can say with confidence is that Dredd is at most 1/4 African American.

I assume nothing! I didn't mention Eartha at all. My observation breaks down like this:
if a has attribute x
and b is an exact copy of a
then b must also have attribute x

As Isaac Einstein himself would have put it: so there, Mr Smarty-pants!

[nxylas]

NiemandGPT probably just made a mistake.

I mentioned the Ezquerra quote in a reply to one of his tweets this morning and he replied back:

Yes, that's exactly why I chose to go down this road with this character. It was there from the very beginning of Dredd's inception. Carlos also tended to colour Dredd with a Mediterranean skin tone, so it was no great leap to think Dredd might have mixed race lineage.

[IndigoPrime]

Ack. Good points on my horribly flawed numbers. Regardless, the basic point stands, as do the photos and references people have posted. I mean, Martin Gore is about as white-presenting as you can imagine...

[Funt Solo]

NiemandGPT probably just made a mistake.

I mentioned the Ezquerra quote in a reply to one of his tweets this morning and he replied back:

Yes, that's exactly why I chose to go down this road with this character. It was there from the very beginning of Dredd's inception. Carlos also tended to colour Dredd with a Mediterranean skin tone, so it was no great leap to think Dredd might have mixed race lineage.

AIs can be very convincing these days.

[Richard]

Credo, I'm not sure what you think that photo proves...

As you might imagine, my point is glaringly obvious to me. Can you be more specific about what you mean?

The fact that a black person can have a white grandparent doesn't mean that a person with a black grandparent will necessarily look white.

(Although it may not matter now as Jim C has addressed this point since then.)

[Funt Solo]

Credo, I'm not sure what you think that photo proves...

As you might imagine, my point is glaringly obvious to me. Can you be more specific about what you mean?

The fact that a black person can have a white grandparent doesn't mean that a person with a black grandparent will necessarily look white.

(Although it may not matter now as Jim C has addressed this point since then.)

When I posted the image, I'd noticed that many folk had made the point (not surprising, given the nature of the conversation) that a black ancestor could exist for a white person . I wanted to also point out that a white ancestor could exist for a black person.

It's easy to get fixated on particular ideas and I wanted to broaden the horizons a little.

---

It has occurred to me that The Sherman Kid might just be trolling, given his chosen username. In the Dredd story, he's a brat who threatens to set off nukes if he doesn't get his way.

[The Sherman Kid]

It has occurred to me that The Sherman Kid might just be trolling, given his chosen username. In the Dredd story, he's a brat who threatens to set off nukes if he doesn't get his way.

Now that was funny.  made me laugh.

No not trolling. Virtue-signalling is not holding the door open or passing the salt -its doing something with no point to it, except to erhem virtue signal. That is annoying. I thought my opening post was pretty clear why I found it annoying. The same way the docu-series Cleopatra has made her black -that is virtue signalling, and they had a lot of critics. Is it possible she was black, sure. But all evidence we have, and there is a lot,  says no.

Fiennes is right it would be wrong to make James Bond black (unless he had assumed the name, like a title) as the character is established as white. Same goes for a character like Shaft, it would be laughable if he was made white.

As for the stupid, meaningless term 'woke', that's to disparage what is 99% of the time, simple common sense. A put down of inclusion and diversity.


Now.....where are my launch codes...

[Funt Solo]

Modern Bond movies are set in whatever year they're made. So, in No Time to Die (2021), Bond is played by Daniel Craig, who would have been about 53 or so at the time. But, Bond was born around 1920, which would make him [checks notes] about 101 years old during the events of No Time to Die.

So, it's fine that a 53 year old play a fictional super-spy centenarian with magic gadgets - but it would stretch credulity beyond reason that he be played by a black person?

Why?

(Don't worry - it's rhetorical.)