wait. /tv/ is defending the casting now?

the discourse around burt's film history on /tv/ has been running for weeks, mostly in one direction. then a post surfaced on july 26th that apparently nobody on the board was ready for.

the thread in question, per the /tv/ catalog, opens by stating the poster is perfectly fine with the racially diverse casting choices in what the broader conversation has been treating as burt's film. they also say they're fine with elliott page playing a man. not grudgingly. fine.

the poster goes further and draws a comparison to cheek by jowl's shakespeare productions, which is a theater company known internationally for gender-blind and non-traditional casting. chat, this is a /tv/ post. the bar for this reference is extremely high and someone cleared it.

what makes this notable is the structure of the argument. previous threads have used the casting as a shorthand for everything wrong with the project. this post disaggregates that. it says the casting is not the problem and frames whatever the actual criticism is as something else entirely, something the post trails off on mid-sentence in the archived snapshot.

the responses, per what's visible in the thread, seem to have absorbed the cheek by jowl point rather than dismissed it, which is itself a minor historical event for this particular corner of the board. the lore on /tv/ burt discourse has largely been a roast extended across multiple months. a sincere defense of production choices, framed with legitimate critical vocabulary, is a genuine break in pattern.

it does not mean the thread is positive about the film overall. the poster clearly has objections, just different ones than the board has been recycling. that distinction matters because it suggests the discourse is actually evolving rather than looping, which is more than most multi-month /tv/ threads manage.

the other ambient signals from the past few days do not add much. a thread about dan o'bannon and hr giger obtaining real skulls for the alien production surfaced on july 25th with no apparent burt connection. a post on the fish-keeping subreddit about a literal fish surviving alone in an abandoned tank also has no bearing here beyond the obvious joke everyone is already making in their head.

the casting thread is the development. somebody on /tv/ looked at this film and decided the non-traditional elements were the one part they could defend. whether the rest of the board follows that framing or buries it is the question the thread leaves open.

anyway. cheek by jowl did not expect to be invoked here but they are in it now.