Awesome Thought Experiment That Show How Racist This Film Is

To the OP:

You really seem upset that there's a film about white people vacationing in Thailand and the film concerns itself more with the white family and people of similar backgrounds that they can communicate with, and that the film doesn't cultivate stories of the locals for some reason which you have failed to articulate.

I'm sorry, but the choice to focus on this family isn't "racist". The Thais were not shown in a racist light. I didn't see any Thais depicted in anything like a condescending manner.

So, ultimately your complaint is that the film is about white people visiting Thailand but not about Thais.

I'm sorry, but that's just not racist. That's not what racist means. A film doesn't have to be about everybody to not be racist. Your standard is untenable and, in my opinion, undesirable.

If you want to make a film about how the Thais experienced the tsunami, go ahead and do so. If you fail to include any whites, or Lankans or Indonesians, I won't accuse you of racism solely for not checking all of the race boxes in a manner that meets with my approval.

Until you have a cogent notion of what "racism" is, please don't go around throwing the accusation as a weapon to make yourself feel superior.

Am I missing something?

I just finally saw this movie, knowing full well that people had (undoubtedly) criticized it for being racist. However, what I saw was ONE white family, sprinkled with a few other European whites, and the rest of the background people were Asian.

I don't recall seeing a lack of Asian men, women, and children walking around, both as aids to the victims, and as victims themselves.

This criticism seems tired if you ask me. There was not ONE scene that did not include a member of the main family. The film presents that it is the story of ONE white family, not a story about every victim from the Tsunami.

As far as the choice to change the family from Spanish to British, I will agree, I'm not sure why this was decided. That said, does it really matter? It doesn't change the fact that this was an uplifting and genuinely beautiful cinematic effort.

Why must everyone whine about race?

And...by the way, Taiwan is free to produce a 9/11 film if they want with primarily Asian characters. Surely there were Asians affected by the 9/11 tragedy. This was an American one, and since film is largely an American art, I guess I don't see the complaining.

I am getting fvcking tired of people pulling out the race card for every darn little thing. Sometimes decisions to do things a certain way have NOTHING to do with the issue but dumbasses still have to bring it up and make a non-issue an issue. Why don't you bitch about all the other prejudices showm, like blue eyed actors instead of brown eyed ones or using blonds instead of brunettes or redheads? How about substituting a doctor when it was a nurse or any number of other changes you could say were showing a prejudice against? Give me a fvcing break! People are just too ridiculous!

A similar thing happened with the recent 'joke' where someone gave spoof names for the airline pilots of the San Francisco crash, and they were reported on a San Francisco tv station. A lot of people seem to think it was very funny, but do you think it would have been even considered, let alone done if the three kids killed in the air crash were American not Chinese? It's as if dead Chinese people -even dead KIDS- matter less than dead Western kids.
-I didn't see any Sandy Hook jokes around...

I prefer Imaginality to reality.

On the one hand the movie wanted to concentrate on the family and they obviously bonded with other tourists because they could speak with them which is probably the main reason mostly tourists were showed.

On the other hand you'll need to watch an Asian production(Chinese, Thai, Korean, Indian, Japanese) if you ever want to see Asians playing any major part in a movie. In Hollywood and European productions you usually only have Whites and Blacks.
If you watch an American movie you would think that only Whites and Blacks exist in this world. The lack of any other ethnicity was always in Hollywood productions unless the other ethnicity like an Asian has a certain purpose like playing a Kung Fu fighter, a restaurant owner, cab driver etc.

I think the biggest respect we can show to other people is to let them tell their own stories.

When a house fly lands on you, are you offended and do you call the fly a racist?

There is plenty of racism in the world. PLENTY. To focus on this particular movie..........it's laughable.

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PS. If a Thai movie company made the reverse of this movie in a NY based disaster flick as in your example, I'd say, OK.

Why can't a Thai movie company make a movie about Thais is NYC? How would that be racist for a Thai movie company to make a movie about Thais in another country. It boggles my mind that you can even breath on your own.

I want to try a thought experiment here. Imagine if a Thai company made a movie about 9/11, and that movie was specifically about the experiences of a Thai family in Tower One. Don’t worry, it’s not a bummer - it’s an uplifting story of how these people escaped death and got home safely. But imagine that, in this Thai movie, every character is Thai. There are white people running around in the background, and two of them have a couple of lines, but every single character in this story about the attack on the World Trade Center is Thai.

You’d think this was pretty weird, I bet. You’d think it displayed provincial thinking, perhaps even a cinematic xenophobia. You’d probably even laugh at how petty and small-minded this film seems.
You’d dismiss it.

Why would I be surprised that there might be a group of Thai people interacting in that scenario? The fact that it's a Thai FAMILY is the weirdest thing considering the function of the building, but it's not out of the question I suppose.

But there WERE survivors of 9/11, so I don't really see a problem at all. People of all sorts of races and of more than one nationality definitely were present during 9/11. Your thought experiment doesn't really seem terribly problematic to me.