That whole passage reminded me of Ridley Scott's dismissive comments when confronted about the lack of diversity in his movie Exodus: Gods and Kings.

His imagination couldn't stretch to envisioning studios giving him financing for his movie with "Muhammad so-and-so from such-and-such" as the lead. This obviously due again to him not being able to imagine audiences flocking to see a movie that didn't have a well known white face in the lead role.

The funny thing with imagination is it rarely tallies with real life. In real life his great white hope of a movie lead my the great Christian Bale and featuring giants of cinema like Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley was a bit of a flop. In fact it made less in the box office in the US as well as worldwide than both Life of Pi and Slumdog Millionaire, two movies lead by unknown brown faces from one of the dark regions of our little planet.

It's almost as if second guessing the audience and their reactions based entirely on your own hubris and personal biases isn't a great idea after all. If the book, movie or music is good enough people will flock to it.