Don’t worry baby, we’ll be just fine. I know your daddy left us, but we can make it — the two of us — together.
We’re better off without him, baby. He’s a real piece of shit. He left me — he left us — before you were born, and you are the best thing that ever happened to me.
We’ve got my mom and dad — your Grammy and Pop Pop — and all of my good friends. They’re here for us. They’ll be around to help out if we need it.
I promise you, sweetie, I’ve got you. You have nothing to fear. We’re in this together and we’re going to be great.
Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: Kelly Sikkema @ Unsplash.
When our daughter was in elementary school, her favorite female performer was Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac. Whenever she came on stage, our daughter said that Stevie seemed to glimmer all over, displaying a certain effervescence in her billowy outfits.
She faithfully followed Stevie Nicks’ career, and then, when I scored tickets for my daughter and her best friend to see Stevie and Fleetwood Mac perform live at an indoor venue in our city, I was a real hero in my daughter’s eyes.
For a few days, anyway.
Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (elementary), My Vivid Blog (glimmer), Ragtag Daily Prompt (effervescence), E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (billowy), Word of the Day Challenge (faithfully), and The Daily Spur (indoor).
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken, American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar
Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.
By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.
What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.
This week’s provocative question stems from some articles I’ve recently read about two new adaptations, one of The Lord of the Rings and the other of The Little Mermaid, which seem to be prompting deep outrage and indignation among fans who are arguing that the projects’ increased diversity has weakened their faithfulness to the original stories.
Amazon Prime’s new The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power series first drew widespread anger from some fans because it casts black and Asian actors as characters across the spectrum of fictional Middle Earth races. Their chief complaint was that the decision to include non-white characters had ruined the authenticity of Tolkien’s world.
When Disney released the first trailer for its live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, featuring Halle Bailey as Ariel (above), thousands of YouTube users went nuts, leaving more than 2 million dislikes and countless derogatory comments on the trailer, and creating memes ridiculing the film for casting Bailey and mocking all of its supporters.
But wait. Hobbits, elves, orcs, and mermaids aren’t real, so should it matter what race they are? Is casting non-white actors in movies made from books or stories where the characters were presumed to be white disrespectful to the source material? Or is this backlash transparently racist.
So, with that as the background, here’s today’s provocative question for you.
Does diversity casting in TV shows or movies, where fictional characters who were presumed to be white in the source material are portrayed by non-white actors, concern or bother you? Why do you feel that way?
If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.
This, That, and the Other 