Awesome Thought Experiment That Show How Racist This Film Is

And here I came away thinking, what an amazing job the Thai people did of rescuing their foreign guests. It was presumably a Thai doctor who saved Naomi Watts's life, and it was the locals who made it possible for the family to be reunited.

Look, this is a movie about one family. There are hardly any speaking parts at all for anybody else. Only very small ones. I actually thought the movie worked better by concentrating on the family and putting everybody else in the background.

As for Spanish vs English, I'm assuming the producers wanted to have as many people as possible see the movie, and that would only be possible with big stars like Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor. But at least the crew, pretty much all of them, are Hispanic.

For Pete's sake! I have never seen people so racially fixated as Americans. No offense."Ewan and Naomi look sooo pale and white" Boo Hoo. The subject has been discussed ad nauseaum in these boards.

This article is ridiculous. This is not a film about the tsunami itself, it's a film about this particular family that experienced the tsunami. That may seem like splitting hairs, but it's a large distinction.

Comparing this to 9/11 is very disingenuous. These people were at a resort that catered to wealthy, non-Thai (mostly white) tourists. One can presume that there was a much, much higher concentration of white people in that particular area than in an average area of Thailand. So it would follow that a diproportionately high amount of people that this family came across during their experience would have been white. If they were say camping in a rural area of the country where everybody would have been locals and therefore Thai, then your argument would be valid.

The World Trade Center, however, was filled mostly with everyday New Yorkers that worked there daily. The majority of those people would also be white. There would be NO REASON for everybody at the towers to be Thai. Therefore, your hypothetical film would be looked at askance if it only had Thai people in it, since it would make no sense.

Within the parameters of this story, it would have made no sense to suddenly start exploring what happened to the legions of Thai people who were decimated by this tragedy. That would have been too jarring of a narrative shift, and would have been ripped apart on these boards.

The film was about the family, front and center. Everybody else, white, Thai, what have you, was pushed to the background. If this film was purportedly a story about the tsunami itself, and only focused on white people, then you would have a perfectly valid argument, but that's not the case here. Stop trying to find racism where none exists.

Make me like you, you stupid Diet Coke!

Maybe, but it’s worth noting that the real family is Spanish, a swarthy bunch who look nothing like the milk pale, fair-haired McGregor and Watts.

As has been pointed out, this is a ridiculous and offensive comparison. You could absolutely have a movie that focused on a Thai family during 9/11, but Thai people weren't the majority of the people in the World Trade Centers. Not even close--it was a group of New Yorkers of all races. If you made a movie and fictionalized the races of those trapped in 9/11, it would just be wrong.

This movie takes place at a Thai resort. Half the people who died in Thailand were tourists. This film focuses on one family at one resort, but the destruction and injustice that was done to thousands of others less fortunate is very palpable in the movie, particularly with the ending. Besides that, many, many of the real-life accounts from the people at that resort and elsewhere were quick to discuss how the Thai people, in spite of their homes and loved ones being washed away, were quick to jump to the aid of the tourists. There can certainly be an interesting discussion there about the prevelance of "white supremacy" and how that has influenced even those nations in which Caucasian is not the dominant race, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen in real life and that the movie is racist for depicting it as the real Maria Belon experienced it.

I remember reading this article when it first came out and thinking it was one of the laziest movie reviews I'd ever read.

That 'thought experiment' is so Ameri-centric as to be the equivalent of racist by its sole concern for Americans.

Fatima had a fetish for a wiggle in her scoot

I would not, at all, think that a film about a specific Thai family during 9/11 would be at all weird.

I read that thought experiment and found it very disingenuous. It's not a fair comparison at all.

The film showed loads of Thai people. Yes, most of them didn't speak, probably because...the main characters couldn't speak Thai! And people who spoke different languages probably didn't communicate by speaking but in other ways!

Lots of nationalities were represented as both victims and rescuers. Which is indeed how it was in certain areas with large tourist resorts.

Comparing high density tourist areas to something like WTC is silly. Also, I'm not sure what would be wrong with making a film about Thai people in WTC if they were actually there - which they would be. But the rescuing would have taken place in English because that's what the firefighters spoke. If they subtitled in in Thai what's the problem? All nations make movies focussing on their own. A lot of 9/11 footage was filmed by French people who happened to be there at the time and they did a lot of interviews in French about it, I think they even spoke in French on the tape but I can't remember.

I also don't get the "swarthy" reference. Okay so the family has dark hair. The real Spanish boy Lucas has blue eyes in the IMDb picture! Ironically, Tom Holland has brown eyes, even though his hair is lighter. It's so silly to make these comparisons.