wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I was…”

Sorry, I was responding to an entire train of thoughts by various people that I was completely baffled by. It was late at night and my feathers were very ruffled because a lot of the posts were giving me uncomfortably racist and classist vibes (like seriously, people were offended that Taika joked about them as rich boys?).

@wafflediaries, I was using the “rich boys” comment as an especially flagrant representation of the low esteem in which Taika appears to hold the Thor franchise as a whole. There’s a lot of other evidence in his interviews (not to mention the film itself) that he doesn’t care about the characters or the world with which he was entrusted; that was particularly dismissive and easy to use as a symbol for the rest.

I don’t think it’s classist to be annoyed by that kind of attitude, considering that people of all classes have enjoyed literature about royalty, knights, gods, and other “rich kids” for millennia. I couldn’t find any context for the “we shouldn’t really give a shit about what their problems are” quote, but I did find a video where he claims that making Thor into “a buffoon” (his word) was the only way to make him relatable. That just seems inaccurate, considering that people have been interested in the problems of gods and heroes, and found their struggles relatable (albeit writ large), for so long; I take it that it’s the normative claim, that we shouldn’t care unless he’s brought down to ground level, that really motivates the characterization. Wonder Woman got along just fine without debasing or ridiculing its exceptional, quasi-immortal princess heroine; I don’t think it’s classist to prefer that approach.

I also hope you’re not suggesting that it’s racist to criticize any of Taika Waititi’s work. Saying that he wasn’t well-suited to contribute to the Thor series because he wasn’t invested in it, and that he ended up making a Taika Waititi movie rather than a Thor movie, doesn’t strike me as a racist attitude. (Even saying he’s a crap director – which I’m not, but some people very well might – isn’t inherently racist, though I wouldn’t be surprised if people on Tumblr claimed it was.) If you’re saying that my long discourse on the treatment of race in the Thor franchise, exploring the issue of Loki’s internalized racism in the first Thor movie and the critique of imperialism in Thor: Ragnarok, was racist… well, sorry; I tried to be as respectful to all parties as I could, but it’s a delicate issue and we can always offend people despite our best efforts.