Walt Disney Co on Friday said that remarks by activist investor Nelson Peltz criticizing the company for making movies dominated by female and Black actors is evidence that he shouldn’t be on Disney’s board.

Peltz, whose fight to join Disney as a director has become one of the year’s most bitter and closely watched board battles, in an interview with the Financial Times said Disney’s films have become too focused on delivering a message, and not enough on quality storytelling. He specifically took issue with “The Marvels” and “Black Panther.”

“Why do I have to have a Marvel that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that?" Peltz said in the interview, published on Friday. "Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?”

Asked about Peltz’s remarks, a Disney spokesperson responded: “This is exactly why Nelson Peltz shouldn’t be anywhere near a creatively driven company.”

  • zzzzzzyx@lemmy.world
    722·
    8 months ago

    Ok I am about to argue that having an all black cast in Africa is in fact racist.

    So I did a very quick look through the 20 “black” actors that appear when you search “black panther cast” in Google. I selected every one with a character name.

    Out of 20 exactly 2 are actually from Africa. And they are both from south Africa, notably not anywhere near the central African region of the mythical Wakanda.

    So as an example; not only did they get say 90% of their actors to play, say, new Zealanders from Europe but just as a kick in the balls they got the rest from Australia.

    As if being a COLOUR would be some great gesture as opposed to a linguistic and cultural identity.

    That’s without even touching the numerous examples where marvel has done the opposite and just plain got away with it because it is a piece of European cultural heritage they are using for profit like in the cases of Little mermaid and snow white.

    For the love of God just make good movies. People will watch watch whatever tripe Disney puts out that has a large enough marketing budget. But dear God have they put out some “successful” pieces of trash in the last few years. Largely being shit because of the forced diversity.

    That’s not even addressing the problem of Black panther not really having anything black in it aside from the name. If they had any real balls they would make a Luke cage movie and actually address the issues instead of putting the word black in stuff and printing money cos it has “marvel”, “disney” and “black” in the same sentence.

    Disney is without a doubt very agenda driven lately. Their “represetation” agenda is useless bullshittery at the least and actively harmful to the cultures it tries to represent at worst.