Comment on Snow White, Disney, Rachel Zegler and a toxic debate that's not going away
Ilandar@lemm.ee 3 weeks agoBut the BBC calling her comments “controversial”? That’s problematic at least. She opposed genocide and illegal occupation and opposed an authoritarian strongman gaining power. That is not a controversial comment in a liberal democracy and the founding values of the western democracy. That BBC article is garbage.
They are objectively controversial positions, though. It doesn’t matter how much you agree with them, others clearly do not and it has led to heated public debate. That is literally the definition of controversial:
The so-called “liberal democracy” in which she lives is currently being run by the “authoritarian strongman” whose mission is seemingly to disrupt and dismantle many of those “founding values”. So again, reality is quite different to how you are presenting it. Calling the article garbage because it stated basic facts instead of ascribing to your fantasy land interpretation of current events is very silly.
LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I’d bet you could find actual historic precedence for this. Imagine a german actress making her voice heard in the weimarer republic about the rising power of the NAZI party. Back then, people didn’t know where hate speech would lead. But now we know.
Hate speech must be opposed (see Paradox of Tolerance). If you accept it you help the fascists. There is no valid opinion except opposing it, so it is not controversial. There was no discussion that can be called a discussion. It’s just an attack by fascists.
At least on those two points. It is absolutely VITAL that we call out news media that are supposedly neutral like the BBC. If they accept fascist talking point as a valid opinion in discussion, we have already lost.
Ilandar@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Again - this is netural reporting. The “fascists” won the election with a majority in Zegler’s country. The first step towards dealing with this societal problem is accepting that is not just some tiny fringe movement that will disappear if you close your eyes hard enough.
LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
So if some actor complains about something deplorable, and then there is a huge manufactured fake backlash, is it always ok to write “The actor created controversy by…”?
Lets make your argument more absurd and say there is a hypothetical problem with boots stomping on faces. All day and night these people would randomly pick certain people and start to stomp on their faces. Hypothetically it’s recently been legalized by Trump via executive order.
Is complaining about that creating controversy? Is there any line of deplorable, morally unacceptable behavior that would shift the framing from “creating controversy by complaining” to “spoke out and became a victim of a manufactured outrage by fascists”?
My problem is with the framing and how we’re accepting fascism as legitimate, while hiding the backlash is fake, immoral and baseless. This is the opposite of accepting reality and fighting back. It’s accepting fascism as something that we must respect and tolerate.
Ilandar@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
It is objectively controversial. People were offended by the things Zegler said - the film was being relentlessly mocked online years before its release. The backlash to the film isn’t just about it being Disney live action remake slop and you haven’t been paying attention at all if you think this is the case.