• Godort@lemm.ee
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    18 days ago

    No, you dont understand. All the historical records of that period I’ve seen dont have black people doing things.

    What do you mean fantasy movies from the 80s aren’t historical records?

  • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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    18 days ago

    One of Arthur’s knights is literally from Africa

    Granted he was portrayed as having vitiligo instead of just being biracial (his dad was a white guy who was a famous traveling knight)

    Point still stands though, the historians of the day themselves literally saw nothing weird about that other than “oh yeah this cool guy came to the court from Africa too. His armor is a bit fancy and decorative but he swears it’s a symbol of the pride his Queen wanted to project for his country.”

    • I always found his descriptions very funny, or, not really the description itself, but the thought process of the original storytellers it reveals.

      “Well there’s people with light skin and people with dark skin, so when they mix… The baby looks like… A cow?”

      Although, now I actually wonder, did they know better and this was just something to make Feirefiz stand out?

      • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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        18 days ago

        What happens when your one black friend also happens to have Vitiligo and has a mischievous streak for people who ask if everyone in Africa looks like him

    • Cypher@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Correct me if I’m wrong but you mean Feirefiz? Who is a Saracen knight who attends a feast held by King Arthur and not one of Arthur’s knights?

      I wouldn’t refer to Wolfram von Eschenbach as a historian either.

  • historypresent@lemm.ee
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    17 days ago

    I’ve often thought that it is odd that anyone can be frustrated about the race of Disney characters and actors. Like most of Disney’s stories are just tales passed across cultures through time. They are literally made up stories and the point is that the story changes as time and culture changes

    • EpeeGnome@lemm.ee
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      17 days ago

      They are characterizing patterns seen across various medieval inspired fictional works, ranging from historic but not really, to full on fantasy inspired by medieval Europe.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        18 days ago

        If you’re passing them off as just regular people nbd in that setting then yeah that’d be inaccurate.

        Then again, plopping in random white people into an Ancient Chinese setting would be pretty inaccurate too, even though there might’ve been “some non zero number” of whites over there at the time. Or in a random crowd shot of Nazi soldiers you plop in a few black soldiers. Certainly existed, but while funny it does make it seem inaccurate (and silly imo).

          • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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            18 days ago

            It’s all about diversity in my Nazi soldier representation. The Asian woman was top tier decision from Gemini

        • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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          18 days ago

          Ancient China did have a lot of Central Asian and Turkic white people. Red hair, blue eyes and all. They just weren’t European whites.

          • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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            18 days ago

            I think the implication of European whites was clear from the comment though

      • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
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        17 days ago

        “Most historical settings”

        Roman sure, especially as you get closer to Africa but nonzero elsewhere also

        Middle ages, mediæval and renaissance almost certainly limited to higher nobility households either as nobles or “interesting” servants or major trading ports, especially closer to Africa.

        The chances of a mediæval serf in a germanic country not looking northern Europe, or Mediterranean at a huge stretch, are functionally zero though, as anyone who came with the Romans will have been long dead with their genetics widely dispersed, and anyone who came over recently would likely be in an urban area, with marriage or higher level employment being their only chance to end up in a rural area.

    • EpeeGnome@lemm.ee
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      17 days ago

      If you mean what I think you mean, then you’re being down voted because your phrasing isn’t clear. I interpreted your comment to mean that removal any of dark skinned characters would often make the depiction less historically accurate, due to their historical presence as a minority of some sort across much of medieval Europe. If so, I agree that is amusingly ironic.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        17 days ago

        I’m saying that depicting black people as a normal feature of Medieval Europe would be huge stretch. Whether that should stop people from doing so, I don’t really care about that. Accuracy isn’t exactly the only thing to consider in such situations.