I love viral overcoding as the central metaphor, and I agree that that's what happening when you see reinterpretation of historical remains as gay or trans. I can also buy that that's what's happening with the endless gay interpretations of masculine stories like Fight Club—although Fight Club very well may be a sort of "Born in the USA" type cultural misunderstanding---a parody that ends up standing for the thing itself.
The thing I can't buy here is the stuff about black mermaids. Mermaids are absolutely fantasy creatures--they don't need to stick with any physical laws and even if they did there are plenty of black fish. In general, I understand the desire to keep fantasy worlds pristine as they were described, a la Tolkein, and I do think that the black/gay/transwashing of Tolkein etc are part of the phenomenon of overcoding. BUT, these are innocuous misdemeanors in comparison to almost everything woke does—e.g. rewriting history by editing the archaeological record. I think the latter type is such a dangerously authoritarian violation of truth that it should receive much more attention than it does, while complaining about a black mermaid just makes us look pedantic and ridiculous.
Which part specifically
I love this film but this is an odd take.
I love viral overcoding as the central metaphor, and I agree that that's what happening when you see reinterpretation of historical remains as gay or trans. I can also buy that that's what's happening with the endless gay interpretations of masculine stories like Fight Club—although Fight Club very well may be a sort of "Born in the USA" type cultural misunderstanding---a parody that ends up standing for the thing itself.
The thing I can't buy here is the stuff about black mermaids. Mermaids are absolutely fantasy creatures--they don't need to stick with any physical laws and even if they did there are plenty of black fish. In general, I understand the desire to keep fantasy worlds pristine as they were described, a la Tolkein, and I do think that the black/gay/transwashing of Tolkein etc are part of the phenomenon of overcoding. BUT, these are innocuous misdemeanors in comparison to almost everything woke does—e.g. rewriting history by editing the archaeological record. I think the latter type is such a dangerously authoritarian violation of truth that it should receive much more attention than it does, while complaining about a black mermaid just makes us look pedantic and ridiculous.