I don’t think that’s the main thrust of the argument. It’s in the article but he talks about how art can be good with or without a political message and sometimes art is just bad even with a political message. So the quality of the film itself as a film is tangential.
I think he’s tying into one of the factors that a segment of the audience is being appealed to on is nostalgia, but nostalgia is always slightly disappointing because you can never really recapture the intensity of emotion you felt originally, the film can only ever gesture to it. And reactionary forces are misdirecting that disappointment to say, actually the film would have been good if not for the minority characters. When, in reality, it’s can be a whole host of potential problems. You can pick any one of them out of a hat.
The response to RLJ is fascinating, due to the massive disconnect between critics and the masses on a blockbuster movie where the critics were the ones who overwhelmingly loved it.
I’m imagining a story about a serial killer whose calling card is leaving chopsticks driven through each of his victims’ eyes and being dubbed by the media as the Wonton Killer, with the story being about the racist fear of the (white) masses suspecting every Asian man they encounter and the struggles of a 3.5-star Chinese takeout place dealing with decreased business.
Wontons
Vaguely racist