Francislholland

I guess people expect very different things from films. I haven't much cared for the James Bond franchise over the last decades, but I would be curious to see what Samuel L. Jackson could do in the role. I think that after about four decades of white male James Bonds, the possibilities are pretty much stale and played out, without changing something.

Part of what makes Hollywood so deathly boring to me is that they keep doing remakes of films from the apartheid era when it was explicitly stated that Blacks (and women) could not play certain roles.

And let's be quite honest. When they get five white males, it's because they write at the top of the casting call, "five white males needed." It has nothing to do with trying out various different looks and coincidentally selecting five white males, because they were "the best white males for the job."

Each person's reviews reflect what he desires in a movie and expects from a movie. I personally prefer movies that reflect the diversity of American and I refuse to spend money on movies that don't reflect the diversity of America.

If Hollywood wants my money, they'll find some way to communicate to me that a movie has interesting characters from various groups, for example, by putting those diverse people in the movie poster. If they don't do that then I and a lot of people like me will assume that the movie is a segregated apartheid movie and we will not go to that movie. If Hollywood wants us to see they movie, then they will find ways to communicate that the movie is for us to see.

Joker and Unabomber,

I can't write much about this movie because I would never actually watch it. You see, when I see a movie poster that doesn't have anyone who isn't white, that turns me off to the movie. It says to me that the people who made the movie and the people marketing it believe that white men are inherently so much more interesting than other people that it is not even necessary, useful or desirable to include anyone who isn't a white man.

Certainly, there will be some white women in this movie; there are halves of two white women in the movie poster, which shows the esteem in which the publicists hold white men: 50% esteem.

Movie posters are very important because they tell us what and whom we can expect to see in a movie. If a movie poster has only white people, then I assume that the movie must be a segregated apartheid movie and I don't contribute to that buy buying the movie. I wouldn't even download it and watch it for free.

These Hollywood publicists don't seem to understand that an all-white poster is a multi-faceted insult to people who do not have white skin. It is an insult because it smacks of apartheid. It promises not to include anything of our experience, and not even someone else's experience subject to our perception, and so it is inherently disinteresting to us. And it is also evidence of employment discrimination; people with skin that is not white are deprived of jobs by a Hollywood that insists on making movies that ONLY include white people. So, all-white movies are offensive to others in many important ways.

Black people go to the movies more often than whites, studies show, so Hollywood could make more money by including an well-known Black actor in the poster. But, Hollywood apparently values apartheid even more than it values money.

White people are ripped off also by discriminatory and segregated apartheid movies. Counter to what Hollywood would have us believe, many white people actually believe that Black actors and Black experiences are very interesting. That's why Oprah Winfrey is the highest grossing personality in Hollywood . If white people didn't value Black perceptions and presentations then Barack Obama wouldn't and couldn't be president of the United States. But, most Hollywood movies today are just as segregated as the lunch counters of the American South during Jim Crow.

I certainly hope one day Hollywood will wake up and realize that segregated lunch counters are less profitable than lunch counters where everyone can participate, just as segregated movies are less profitable than movies where everyone participates. That's not rocket science, but sometimes the most simple observations are invisible to those who are blinded by fallacious and anachronistic concepts of "race."

Unabomber, I think you're right. People have been obsessed with this "race" thing ever since they invented the word to embody all of their color-aroused antagonistic attitudes associated with skin color. Once the concept was invented, it became like an open source code to which everyone with a color-aroused feeling, a color-aroused thought and/or a color-aroused behavior could add something. Like apps for Android, over the last 400 years many people and institutions have conceived of reasons to add to this open source code and many of them have developed killer applications that have dominated the human mind. They have created a virtual world that seems so real that it has become virtually impossible for us to remember and recognize that this virtual world is entirely of "our" (humans') own creation.

Every time any of us uses the word "race," we contribute something to the open source code of "race."

"Race" is actually the furthest thing there is from science. Skin color, like any other color, such as a paint chip from our house, can be measured scientifically and can even be designated with reference to numbers in the Internet Color Chart -- the one that HTML coders use to make colors appear in web pages. Skin color is knowable. The only way that most of us can change the reality of a skin color is by mating with someone of a different skin color.

However, any one of us can contribute to the open source code of "race," and to perceptions about what "race is," just by sharing and promoting ideas about it, e.g. on the Internet. "Race" is and "race" becomes whatever most people, or people most in power, believe it to be, subject to how it is used. In that sense, concepts of "race" are the furthest thing there is from a science, because "race" exists only in our minds. People who study "race" are not studying the natural world; they are studying human emotions and beliefs and the behaviors that result from these emotions and beliefs.

Like Pokemon characters, the content of "race" is ever-changing and is as variable as the human imagination.

Thank you, Unabomber, in most respects.

You say that "race does exist until all skin colors are the same." You also say that you know that "race" exists because your own skin is white.

But, how does the fact that skin color exists prove that "race" exists? It seems to me that your proof of the existence of skin color only proves the existence of skin color.

If I say that I know the Easter bunny exists because I have owned a bunny and I have seen many bunnies, then you might rightfully respond that the existence of bunnies does not prove the existence of Easter bunnies. That's true.

Likewise, the existence of women not prove the existence of mermaids or Mary Poppins.

The existence of skin color does not prove the existence of "race" anymore than the existence of tall people proves the existence of a "tall race." The existence of short people does not prove the existence of a short "race," and the existence of brown people does not prove the existence of a brown "race."

Sorry to repeat myself, but evidence of the existence of white skin simply proves the existence of white skin.

I never said the movie was "racist." "Race" doesn't even exist, as the US Department of Energy's Human Genome Project has proved.

"Race" is actually the most discussed scientific concept that has no basis whatsoever in science. And since "race" has been proved not to exist, therefore we have to accept the necessity of giving up the word "racist," since "racism" can only exist if "race," itself did.

Now, were the people who made the movie aroused in favor of white male actors and against other skin colors when they were choosing the actors? If you look at virtually all of the comedies that you find when looking for "comedies of 2012" and "comedies of 2011," a stunning number of them simply don't have a single person who is not white in the publicity poster.

I wouldn't ban movies such as this. But, I think that those who produced it ought to be liable for employment discrimination if it can be shown (e.g. by the fact of having an all-white cast in a country that is 35% beige and brown) that they engaged in discrimination on the basis of skin color when selecting the cast.

The solution is not to ban the movie. The solution is to toughen laws against color-based discrimination and apartheid while absolutely refusing to see movies that have all-white casts.

An all white high school? NO, thanks!