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Commentor Redshift reports:
The eclipse is way-cool here in the DC area. With a wisp of cloud, an orange-red otherworldly moon and glittering stars, it looks like a vision of outer space from a 50s Technicolor SF movie.
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Saw a meteor a few minutes after totality, too!
Here north of Boston, the sky has been a uniform stretch of pale grey-blue, like a bowl of skim milk gone bad. If a solstice/eclipse conjunction of such rariety portends Great Changes Under Heaven, we’re going to have to find out about them by proxy.
On the other hand, perhaps it just foretells a continued spate of Idiots Behaving Like… Idiots:
A US white supremacist group has called for a boycott of the Kenneth Branagh-directed superhero movie Thor on the grounds that a black actor has been cast in the role of a Norse god.
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The Council of Conservative Citizens is upset that London-born Idris Elba, star of The Wire and BBC detective series Luther as well as a number of Hollywood films, is to play deity Heimdall in the Marvel Studios feature. The group, which opposes inter-racial marriage and gay rights, has set up a website, boycott-thor.com to set out its opposition to what it sees as an example of leftwing social engineering.
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“It [is] well known that Marvel is a company that advocates for leftwing ideologies and causes,” the site reads. “Marvel frontman Stan ‘Lee’ Lieber boasts of being a major financier of leftwing political candidates. Marvel has viciously attacked the Tea Party movement, conservatives and European heritage.
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“Now they have taken it one further, casting a black man as a Norse deity in their new movie Thor. Marvel has now inserted social engineering into European mythology.”…
Joseph Nobles
Obama broke the moon, y’all.
I’ve got to go to bed. I think this story says that a bunch of Christians are sick to death about how a Norse god is portrayed in a movie. That’s just batshit crazy. Jesus is up in heaven, saying, “Yo, over here! Poor people need help!” Goodnight.
jon
I thought the whole point of mythology was social engineering. Some of the hammer-on-the-necklace Asatru doofuses at the prison will find this very troubling, but I’m of the mindset that allows for Cate Blanchett to be Bob Dylan and for Keanu Reeves to fly. Actually, I think Keanu Reeves flying is funnier than the filmmakers intended, but I’m not going to demand changes as a result.
John - A Motley Moose
It’s a freakin’ movie. These people are way too serious about everything. I’m part Norwegian and find this casting kind of strange, but also think it’s great since it gets these nuts to focus on something so irrelevant. On the other hand, Elba is a really good actor, so there’s that.
hamletta
Dudes, Steve Landesberg died. That sucks.
MikeJ
I thought somebody was going to go for Nick Drake for the video.
JoyceH
Man, if we’re going to talk about ethnically inaccurate god depictions, maybe we should start with a thousand or more years of white European Jesus…
patrick II
I am waiting for them to announce a boycott of the John Wayne movie “The Searchers” in which a white guy named Henry Brandon played Chief Cicatrice, and Beulah Archuletta played Wild Goose Flying in the Night Sky (Look).
Can’t have The Duke be seen in a movie without total ethnic authenticity.
JoyceH
@patrick II:
You’re talking about the same John Wayne who played GENGHIS KHAN, right?
patrick II
@JoyceH:
Yeah, but it was the Duke, so it was ok.
patrick II
@JoyceH:
…and if you loved the Duke as Genghis Kahn, you’ll love Mickey Rourke as Genghis Kahn.
All of these are ok though, cause its white guys playing other races.
rob!
Maybe if they had cast Hayley Barbour as Volstagg all this could have been avoided…
morzer
@rob!:
I suspect the Gubinator is signed up to play the Fenris Wolf.
cschack
Being of Norwegian stock, I admit some bias and that I’d probably think it slightly weird casting if they were making a movie about norse gods set in pre-Christian Scandinavia, but since this is a movie set in contemporary times based on a comic book for kids, who gives a shit?
Of course, you could also point out that the Norse pantheon is most likely based on mithraism, which means that Thor and his homies are, you know, Persian immigrants. Excelsior!
stuckinred
@cschack: My grandmother, Ingeborg, had a nasty saying about Swede’s that fit this thread.
morzer
@cschack:
Except that:
a) The Norse pantheon has nothing to do with Mithraism
b) Mithraism really has very little to do with Persia (Cumont’s old view that Mithras=Mithra/Mitra has been pretty thoroughly debunked)
c) Even if you could connect the two, the average American would still have no idea what you meant.
Just sayin’.
hamletta
Oh, my! I’m a third-generation Irish Lutheran.
In my parish, the sons of the Norsemen assert their manliness by not showing up for choir practice.
Sorry.
Lysana
The real kicker is that Thor et alia in Marvel’s world are not the gods of the Norse so much as aliens who the Norse decided were gods and the aliens didn’t disabuse them of this. Furthermore, in the sagas, Thor is a redhead and Loki sure as fuck isn’t a skinny brunet, being the son of Odin and a Fire Giant and all.
@cschack:
And this is the biggest crock of shit I have seen about the Norse gods since I bothered to look at the white supremacy garbage Asatru gets foisted on it.
Just saying.To expand on the prior debunking, Persian mythology has jack-all to do with the Indo-European tribes and their mythologies. And Mithras hasn’t a lot to do with either himself. How a mystery cult could have birthed the Norse pantheon boggles the imagination.cschack
@morzer: Dang, really? I didn’t know that, though I admit I haven’t read about this stuff in a good while. Shame, though. I thought I made a pretty good funnee there…
hamletta
@patrick II: That story is powerful in any male-dominated culture, which means all of them.
He has to kill her because she’s tainted. But he can’t do it.
In the end he’s shut out of decent society. The door closes on him.
Oh, John Ford had so much to say.
Come back in late June and we’ll discuss our fathers and “How Green Was My Valley.”
cschack
@Lysana: See my response to morzer. I stand corrected.
Admin: could you delete my initial comment? Attempted humor fail on my part…
Michael
@patrick II:
And don’t forget – his accent in “The Quiet Man” as the first generation son of an Ireland-born woman would definitely have been the flat midwest Kansas tone that he had. So believable…
Skepticat
@JoyceH: BINGO! (As an atheist, I suppose it would be dumb for me to say “amen.”)
DBrown
Lysana
Uh, hate to break it to you but Persians ARE an Indo-European people as well (check the language.) So, if you are tracing more modern mythos as far back as Indo-European people, than they have everything to do with Persians. Of course, Norse mythos is NOT Indo-European in origin and little if any myth could be trace that far back.
gravie
That’s fine. Let them waste their energy on this kind of trivial stuff. Maybe it will keep a few of them away from the bigger issues.
JD Rhoades
Beautiful guitar piece. Unfortunately, I spent the first thirty seconds of it trying to track down where all that talking in the background was coming from, finally discovering that an ad for that goddamn “Country Strong” movie was blathering away at the same time.
gizzi
@rob………. thanks, I needed a new keyboard anyhoo !
Keith
Where were these guys when Aasif Mandvi was cast as the leader of the fire army in Last Airbender?
Comrade Javamanphil
@JoyceH: Exactly. Let’s offer a trade: you get a white Heimdall, we get a much darker shade of pale Jesus. I’m sure they’ll go for this. Tea Partiers are all about logic and compromise after all.
ploeg
God damn it, before long they’ll put a black man in the lead role of Othello. When will it end?
JGabriel
After years and years of exactitude and faithfulness to the original sources in their retelling of the Norse legends, I am astounded that Marvel would risk their integrity in this manner!
What will they do next? Turn the Norse gods into aliens from another planet?
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Ken Pidcock
I’m trying to imagine what it would feel like to find that outrageous. Pretty dull-witted, I think.
JGabriel
@ploeg:
Even worse, (lowers voice to a whisper) they’ll let women act.
.
JGabriel
“Inserted”?
What is it with these guys and their fear of (or longing for?) penetration?
.
jon
@Lysana: I happen to like Asatru. When I see those guys at the prison gathering for their services that involve yelling lots of things while wearing no shirt, drinking communally from a big horn, and then proceeding to discuss
white people yard politicsthe importance of honor and brotherhood, I can’t help but happily hum one of my favorite songs…It’s sad, but most of them are too young to remember that.
4tehlulz
Needs more antisemitism.
dmsilev
@jon: One of the all-time classics, to be sure. And, (spoiler alert) one of the very very few times when Elmer managed to kill the wabbit.
dms
Jay C
@4tehlulz:
What? The gratuitous jibe at Stan “Leiber” wasn’t enough?
gnomedad
From the article:
As I like to say to my wife when she nitpicks a “high-concept” movie: “But other than that, it’s pretty realistic!”
Gozer
As always, the dudes from Penny Arcade have an interesting take: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/12/20/
Alien-Radio
@Jay C:
I was just about to point that out. No-one apart from comics nerds (i.e. people like me) knows who Stanley Lieber is, everyone Knows who Stan Lee is. Pointing out Lee’s little-used-except-in-biography surname doesn’t clarify who you’re talking about it’s just loudly yelling “THAT JEW”
incidentally Larry Lieber, Stan’s brother drew the spiderman newspaper stip for most of it’s run.
Gina
I’m swooning over Idris Alba in ANY role…*droooooool*
Mike in NC
What are the odds Haley Barbour has a platinum membership card in his wallet?
David Brooks (not that one)
Here in Seattle, we were promised cloud. But the moon was clearly visible, through a haze layer, and by 10:15 I could clearly make out the penumbral shadow. Partial started at 10:33… and, at 10:34, a thick cloud bank moved in. I couldn’t even catch light through my 8″ scope.
Then – a solstice miracle! Cloud opened up enough late in the partial phase for us to see the thin crescent turn into totality. Even my non-scientific wife was excited. It was still hazy, with cloud wisps passing through, but the moon was a pinkish-gray, and I could make out larger features through the scope. Castor and Pollux put in a brief appearance nearby.
About 20 minutes later, just after midnight, thick clouds moved in for good. Still, it was better than I expected.
Then again, for a Boston transplant, nothing can ever match the significance of the 2004 eclipse.
John Bird
I would like to point out that at least a few members of the Council of Conservative Citizens take the Heimdall thing personally . . . because at least a few members of the Council of Conservative Citizens actually worship Heimdall.
I’d put a benjy on it.
Ruckus
The hell that some mythical cartoon creature should be white or whatever. I like the fact that they are pissed at a corporation having the balls to be run by a lefty.
Hob
@John Bird: There are some Norse-oriented neo-pagans in the modern racist fringe, but Heimdall would be an odd choice– he’s really a supporting character whose job is entirely in Asgard, he doesn’t do anything in particular for mortals except occasionally sleep with one of them.
Except… ha ha, OK. At one point he’s referred to as “the whitest of the Aesir“. So maybe the CCC thinks he’s extra-important for that reason, and maybe the casting was partly Branagh making a sly joke.
(edit: Jesus Christ, I thought I was kidding. Note that the “student leader” quoted there calls Elba, who was born in London, an “African actor”.)