Can You Satirise/Target White Privilege If You Erase White People?

That person is disinfo. This is their new tactic, I suppose, putting out long passages pretending to be thoughtful when it's just another version of "this is woke because it has minorities in it."

For example, take this part:

Isn't this another example of progressives, like myself, shooting themselves in the foot by favouring cosmetic diversity in casting, over the more important aim, which is lampooning and satirising particular forms of white privilege and power?

I know that film very well, and I'd say that the Heathers embodied white privilege and I have read many think pieces and commentaries that have made the exact same inferences as me.

It's precisely why the 2018 'anti-woke' TV remake of the original film died on its ass. It tried to make genderqueer, lesbian/bi POC and progressive leftists/so-called 'Social Justice Warriors' the powerful 'privileged' bullies. Like I say, it didn't work.

I find it funny that you're attacking me for being 'anti-woke' when I'm the one making a direct association between those pernicious caste systems and white privilege. It's MUCH harder to get to the top of any caste system, at least any that exists in North America and Europe, if you're a POC.

I recently saw a thread on The Craft page questioning 'whether racism existed in 1990s high schools?' *sigh* It's comical that you all think of yourself as 'woke' when in fact you're all denying the existence of structural racism and its pervasiveness within all institutions, including the classical American high school. Let me guess, you're all centrist Democrats, or as Chris Rock once brilliantly put it, in reference to Hollywood, 'sorority racists' (i.e. white 'progressive' racists, who don't actually recognise that they're racists and that they are at the top of an innately racist social structure, because to do so would seriously damage one's sense of self as a righteous and moral 'liberal' AKA a white saviour).

And yes, I'm not saying that the original film was specifically about white privilege. I get that it was about cliques and bullying, but coming from Europe, where race is nowhere near as big an issue as it is in the US (which is NOT to say it isn't an issue, but that we aren't nations built off the foundation of cotton-picking slaves and the forced removal of Indigenous Americans), white people are still at the top of the social pyramid, school included (in fact, school is the worst, because at that stage, *all* you've got is your identity, including your race and family money, to assert your power, whereas, older people have had years to assert themselves via hard work and college qualifications). So, I find it *very* difficult to believe that racial hierarchies don't exist in the average US high school, and it was clearly no mistake that the *original* film cast three white, WASPy even (I don't know for certain if all three Heathers were WASPs...

How is acknowledging white privilege and the racial and socioeconomic dynamics that make up society, 'racist'?

The difference between your anti-racism and my anti-racism, is that yours is very surface and shallow, whereas my is based on deeper, broader analysis.

I have the same problems with casting white people in ethnic roles, straight actors in gay roles, cis actors in trans roles, and gentile actors in Jewish roles, as I do with casting POC in roles defined by white privilege: authenticity. Yes, representation is important too, which is why it's arguably far worse when a white person is cast in a Black role, but authenticity applies to *ALL* parts. I wouldn't cast a Black person as a Nazi, for instance (unless it was in the context of a Hamilton type show, which is intentionally expressionistic, rather than aiming for authentic representation; in fact, the subversive casting of Hamilton, in which POC are cast as historical rich white aristocrats and Founding Fathers, is partly the entire point). I'm not sure how my insistence on authenticity and exploring those racial dynamics, rather than ignoring and smothering them, is 'racist'.

Personally, I'm tired of seeing POC, as well as Jewish actors, cast as representatives of privilege, because it plays to toxic narratives which actually empower white supremacists and bigots who (erroneously) believe that 'minorities have too much power', rather than acknowledging that minorities are still at a systemic disadvantage.

Sorry if that's too complex for you, but that's the unfortunate thing about politics. As much as I detest the political right, it's also clear to me that not everyone on the political left is sophisticated, nuanced and thoughtful enough to understand those of us on the left who actually think a bit more deeply about things. Sorry, but I can't be dealing with shallow, mindless leftists any more than I can deal with right-wingers; intellectual leftists are more interesting to me.

He's disinfo.

Look at how much he keeps dropping the same talking points on a movie that has NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT. How many times does it have to be explained that nothing that he says applies to this movie? At all? Yet he will keep coming back to disseminate talking points.

This is the game they play. This is how they roll.

No matter what you or I or anyone else familiar with this movie say or do, he's going to double down.

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Look, I appreciate that Heathers wasn't *specifically* about white privilege, but I do think a certain socioeconomic privilege as well as the innate social shield of being born white and conventionally good-looking (and this applies as much to the two thuggish jocks in the film as it does for the trio of titular Heathers), largely inform the way these particular characters were able to dominate and control the high school. Unless a school has a largely diverse/Black enrolment, it's unlikely that POC would possess so much power, particularly circa 1988/89. Wealth + whiteness breeds a certain entitlement and thus cruelty.

Male privilege is also touched upon, because although the Heathers are presented as the apex of the social hierarchy, there are certain contexts (including one date-rape and a visit to a college fraternity where the co-eds display a certain male entitlement) where even the ordinarily super-privileged and powerful members of Westerburg High's reigning clique are abused or subjugated on account of their sex.

I'm not going to get into a political debate with you about 'sjw woketards' but I will say that although this film is gloriously cynical and far from politically-correct, it's also clearly taking potshots at the people with the most social power. It's just a shame that we all have to be so earnest and po-faced about speaking truth to power these days (although I guess that's because satire and humour didn't really achieve much in the end, which might explain why once-funny progressive satirists like Stephen Colbert and John Oliver stopped telling jokes and gave up the pretence of hiding their sermons, most of which I fundamentally agree with, behind the easier-to-swallow pill provided by humour).