What happens when they cast a black actor to replace another ethnic group?
:The sound of a thousand dicks ripping when the single African character was found in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 :
BlaCk pEopLe neVEr wEnt tO EurOPe iN The MiDdlE AgEs!
Look, I just want historical accuracy in my movie about sea monsters and cyclopses!
As we all know, despite part of the story taking place in Africa, there were no black people in ancient Greece!
i assume its about elon musk getting mad there was black people oddessy, Nolan dint care about accuracy.
Dont forget about the whitewashing too.
US christians would lose their minds if you got a middle-eastern to play that one specific person.
Donnie Darko. Now there’s a movie I haven’t thought about in a while.
I will believe its about equality when we get Black Hitler in a Netflix historical drama. WITH the gay sex scenes, please.
Best I can do is Black Jesus on Adult Swim.
Oh nein! Ein schwarzer Hitler!
If there’s ever a Hollywood Adaptation of Hamilton, I hope that Lin keeps to his casting choices as reflecting modern America, not 1776 America.
The Conservatives would lose their mind. But I also couldn’t imagine a white guy playing Hercules Mulligan. Certainly not singing Yorktown.
Actually probably most of the original cast would be in it, anyway. Sort of like In The Heights, except hopefully reprising their own original roles.
Certainly wouldn’t be a sung-through musical though. Hollywood would need to split it into two, with extra “world-building” and dialogue, like they did with Wicked.
John Wayne as Genghis Khan!
Rhe racist role that cost him his life
I don’t care about the race of the actor 99% of the time until they race swap a character just for the sake of inclusiveness.
If you wanna be inclusive then make a new character of that race.
How would you even know if they were the one who casted auditioned best anyway?
Dismissing any black person for a role because if they happen to get cast its just for inclusiveness is just racist
Hey I’m all for recasting anyone into any role, but it’s suspicious when they seem to keep doing it with gingers… Are the writers all dyslexic racists?
What’s wrong with doing something just for the sake of inclusiveness? That is a moral good in and of itself. Really, inclusiveness is limp-wristed weak term. The better term would be “correcting historical exclusion.”
We used to find it acceptable to only write white characters. Characters were written white not for any important narrative reason, but just due to a racist ideal of white as default. Then when people try to correct this historical exclusion, fragile white men lose their god damn minds.
When you’re used to privilege equality feels like discrimination.
Because it’s not real inclusivity it’s pandering.
Yeah yeah racists gonna racist but to me race swapping a character for the sake of being inclusive is the worst way to do it. It’s basically going “fuck people are complaining we’re not inclusive enough. Fuck it this characters black now. See guys! We’re being inclusive! The character acts exactly the same as they did before because we can’t be bothered to actually put effort into this change, but we’re inclusive!”
If you can’t come up with a new character or a new story with whatever characters you want from the beginning it feels forced and disingenuous.
good actions for wrong reasons are… still good actions. you want to hire black actors to pander to minorities? sure, it’ll still help a little child imagine themselves as the hero, and help the actor show their skill. you want to hire a sensitivity consultant because it’ll look good in the credits? please do, at best they’ll really help, at worst they’ll get a free paycheque.
and if a race swapped character acts the same way as they did before? well alright, as long as it’s not completely nonsensical. obviously there are social and cultural differences but the world is vast, plenty of personalities out there.
we become what we do. this inclusiveness might be caused by pandering today, but because it’s being done at all, tomorrow it’ll be the norm
not the best way forward, but better than not moving at all
I don’t think there is any such malice intended. Corporate media conglomerates tend to be focused primarily on how to offend as few people as possible. Insulting potential customers isn’t profitable.
I don’t see it as disingenuous. It seems like the audience just wanting the characters to look like them. And this is how media has always been done. Look how Disney took classic and violent Germanic fairy tails and then morphed them into sanitized Americanized versions of the characters. Should we abandon Disney’s Sleeping Beauty because the prince doesn’t stay faithful to the source material by raping the princess to awaken her?
Tales get reinterpreted. Stories get retold. New versions of old stories are made and retold through the lens of new times and places. Welcome to human culture. This is how we do things. This is how we always do things. This is how you end up with a white Jesus or a Chinese Jesus.
I hate to break this to you, but the US is no longer a white nation. It’s a multi-racial, multi-ethnic melting pot. The majority of newborns in the country are not white. Audiences want characters that represent them. And sometimes that means retelling classic characters through a new lens. Sometimes that lens is racial. Consider it from a few perspectives.
Think of the people actually making this art. These films are the work of actual human beings! Don’t forget that. Especially in works of fiction, where everything is fantasy anyway, why shouldn’t the characters in a work not look like the human beings actually creating that work?
Or think of the people viewing it. Let’s say you’re a 5 year old black girl in the US, and you’re really into fairy tale princesses. You want to imagine yourself as a princess in a classic fairy-tale castle, something out of a fantastical version of Medieval Europe.
Is a young black girl allowed to have such dreams? Or must she have historically-accurate dreams? Must she dream of being a princess in Great Zimbabwe?
Or is she allowed to dream of being a princess at all? Must she dream of much lower social strata?Must her dreams be so confined? Must a child dream of historical accuracy? Are we policing the dreams of our children based on race? If she wants, why can’t she imagine a classic fairy tale castle where everyone looks like her? Or as diverse as the world around her?
By your rule, she could never have her dream realized on screen. Little white girls get to have that vision fulfilled, little black girls do not. Being a fairy tale princess is only something white girls are allowed to really do.
Children will have the dreams they have. And it’s not healthy for children to grow up only idolizing people and characters that do not resemble them. It is incredibly valuable to have real and fictional examples of people of your race, gender, etc. doing the things and living the lives you dream of living. And fictional characters often are role models. Hell, most fairy tales have an explicit moral to them. They’re designed to be role models!
By your rules, we couldn’t make an Asian Cinderella that a young Asian girl could look up to. We couldn’t create an black Rapunzel a young black girl could identify with. Etc. We would just always have to tell them with white characters. Even though these are completely fantastical stories in literal magical worlds. But because their original authors would have assumed white characters, we just have to keep doing that forever. Hopes and dreams of children be damned.
You know what that really results in? That results in these old works being abandoned and forgotten. Again, the country’s future is majority-minority. Viewers want to see themselves in the art they view. Artists want to represent themselves in their art. If we adopt the rule that you have to respect the original author’s ethnicity choices, that will simply result in classic stories being abandoned. If we had some rule that we couldn’t remove the rape from Sleeping Beauty, Disney never would have made that movie. All the stories you grew up with as a kid, where all the characters are just assumed white? Those will never be retold. They’ll just be remembered as “those old racist stories.”
Is that really the future you want? I don’t think so. I grew up with stories where most of the characters were assumed white. And you know what, if casting a multi-ethnic cast for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory means the story gets retold down the generations, then I’m all for it. Works need to remain relevant to the times they are in. Otherwise they will not be retold.
We’re not deleting the old copies. You’ll always be able to go and rewatch the original versions of these works. But if we’re talking new works? New versions of old stories? It needs to remain relevant to both the people making it and viewing it. And ultimately, more inclusive works are simply more popular with audiences and thus, more profitable. Hamilton made bank.
Must a child dream of historical accuracy?
is such an amazing quote, well written
Real inclusiveness would be for Ken Jeong to play Samuel Jackson in his biography.
I’m talking works of fiction. Even Hamilton is not meant to be a faithful documentary accurately predicting historical events.
How would you feel if Super Mario was a white male instead of an Italian?
But seriously, some changes might stick like a sore thumb, it depends.
Or maybe don’t pick characters that three minutes of thought would reveal massive problems with swapping them.
I absolutely care about historical accuracy! That’s why that show depicting Rome in all white is so fucking dumb. It was a Mediterranean Empire, for fuck’s sake! It had people from all around the Mediterranean, even in the upper echelons. For instance, there were emperors from the Balkan and modern central Turkey.
But anyway, what matters more to me than the ethnicity or appearance of the characters is the faithful representation of social and political structures or technological restrictions. Race can play a part in this, but it’s hardly the only part and rarely the most important. Wealth, while often correlated with race, is generally the more significant factor.
For example: Arrows piercing plate like so much paper understates the power advantage between those who could afford proper protection and those who had to make do with textile armor. I don’t care if the guy inside that cuirass is white, black, green with purple dots or actually not a guy: an arrow slowed by friction hitting a sloped steel sheet at an angle is gonna slide off. I’d rather see an Asian female knight stride into battle with confidence and terrify lightly armoured peasants than have a male knight shot through the chestplate.
Ofc, they’re all white. Have you seen their marble busts? They’d choose black marble if they were black
Beat me to it.
From the Balkan? Really? Man you’re not going to believe when I tell you the meaning of the word Caucasian.
From the Balkan? Really?
Maximinus Thrax was named after his origin in Thracia, which would have included the European part of modern-day Turkey along with parts of Bulgaria and Eastern Greece. There were other Thraco-Roman emperors as well, I just picked one arbitrarily. My main point was “not white”.
Man you’re not going to believe when I tell you the meaning of the word Caucasian.
Go right ahead! I’m interested in the point you’re looking to make. And if your point is also “not white”, be sure to also address it to all the people whose Italy is filled with Brits that make milk look tan.
My point is that, if you’re trying to say that someone from the Balkans is not white you’re just wrong.
Balkan is a region from the Caucasus so they are more Caucasian than any of the white/Caucasian from the USA today.
My point is that, if you’re trying to say that someone from the Balkans is not white you’re just wrong
They’re not British-white is my point, but I probably should have said so explicitly. I assumed that a reader would be familiar with the phenomenon of shows about Rome being cast predominantly British, but in hindsight, that’s a bold assumption to make.
Balkan is a region from the Caucasus
Wat
I mean, they’re both bordering the Black Sea, if that’s what you mean, but the Balkan is on the west side while the Caucasus is on the east. Unless you’re working off some other definition I don’t know of?
so they are more Caucasian than any of the white/Caucasian from the USA today.
So today’s US and UK actors not the same “white” as the Caucasians in antiquity? Even if we extended that to the Balkans, that just underlines my point. I’m not looking to argue about specific terms for specific ethnic backgrounds here.
I’m talking about the fact that, by and large, historical Romans don’t actually fit the way TV shows the last few decades tended to portray them. I picked two decidedly non-“modern British white” emperors as examples of prominent non-mBw Romans.
If you want more examples, Septimus Severus was of Punic (originally Phoenician / Semitic people who settled in northern Africa) descent, born in modern-day Libya, which I’m fairly confident we all agree is not Caucasian, nor white, and most certainly not mBw. He is visible in this family portrait (although one of his sons was condemned by the other, which is probably why that face has been erased):
Does that look white to you, by whatever definition you would like to apply?
Ok. So
English --> Caucasian Balkan – > not Caucasian, not close enough.
And that’s not a joke.
I just consider very funny that the people from the region that gives name to the Caucasian “race” are not considered white enough to be considered Caucasian.
BTW this is a just a problem in the USA. The only time in my life a had to catalogue myself in a race tag was when I traveled to the USA. And it’s very stupid because I’m Spanish but I couldn’t tag myself as latin, they say I must use Caucasian.
Like I said, this is a thing only in the USA. Nobody cares about the “races” they invented.
You know what we call people whose job is to pretend to be other people they are not? Actors.
I always tell people like this that jesus was a short brown skinned jewish man and I take offense to white people portraying him in video and people portraying him as white in paintings too and I swear they would shoot me on the spot if we u.s. losers but we are canadian losers.
Its even worse than that. They had a white voice actor when the cartoon character is black!
In Germany, Turk from Scrubs has the same voice actor as Howard from The Big Bang Theory.
In Denmark there was a bit of controversy when Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) was dubbed by a white actor. Not much though, since it’s a dumb controversy.
There’s always been race swapping in films. Just look at John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan.
Maybe we should ask Mongolians how they felt about John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan.
It’s totally fine when white people do it. /s
I believe there was also a shitstorm when the chick in Ghost in the shell was chosen to be white (instead of Asian), and similar with Avatar the Last Airbender?
Am I allowed to be annoyed at race swapping if I’m consistent? If you’re going to make a movie about characters with a canon appearance, the actor should conform to that appearance.
If you’re making Romeo and Juliet, the actors should at least look Italian. Now, if you’re doing a full reimagining, that’s a different thing. If you’re making West Side Story, half your cast should look Puerto Rican. But if you’re just doing a straight telling of a story, especially a historical one, casting choices shouldn’t distract from the story.
Romeo and Juliet is a great example of why I think it’s fucking asinine to even care.
Specifically, if the actors need to look Italian, you will need to argue that an accurate telling of that story has never been accomplished.
Was it an accurate telling when Shakespeare himself was involved in the production? When the actors were exclusively pasty English men? Or was it only accurate after Shakespeare himself was dead and a translated production was performed in Italy by Italian men and women? Do the actors need to actually be 16 and 13? Or can maybe young looking adults be used? Should we go back to the original Italian spelling of their names or is anglicisation in this case ok?
Why does your suspension of disbelief only stop when the skin color changes? What even does an Italian look like? Rome was a commercial hub for centuries that saw settlers from all over the known world. Are they not Italian?
What’s even better is there’s a great opportunity to use subtext to tell a much deeper story with Romeo and Juliet specifically by making one of the families black, because the specific beef between the Montague’s and Capulet’s isn’t really discussed.
Sure, there are times when it’s important to get those details right. Specifically, when ethnicity is a central component to the story being told. Those stories aren’t very common, and almost certainly will be the ones you think of as exceptions to everything else I just said. Otherwise, bro, it’s a movie, everything about it is a lie.
What’s even better is there’s a great opportunity to use subtext to tell a much deeper story with Romeo and Juliet specifically by making one of the families black, because the specific beef between the Montague’s and Capulet’s isn’t really discussed.
Yeah… you mean like West Side Story? That’s a reimagining, I specifically said that was fine.
No. Not like that.
I like how they only addressed what they perceived as your weakest point, very compelling.
It was the only point that seemed worth engaging with, since it raised the one good exception, and I’d already addressed it.
Was it an accurate telling when Shakespeare himself was involved in the production? When the actors were exclusively pasty English men?
16th century English theater and modern film are wildly different things. When you have basically unlimited access to actors of every physical description, there’s no excuse not to be accurate.
Do the actors need to actually be 16 and 13? Or can maybe young looking adults be used?
I specifically noted looking the part.
Should we go back to the original Italian spelling of their names or is anglicisation in this case ok?
What? It was written by an English playwright, and what difference is there anyway? It’s Italian, not Chinese. It’s the same alphabet.
Why does your suspension of disbelief only stop when the skin color changes?
I never said that it did. I’d be equally annoyed by other obvious anachronisms and inaccuracies
What even does an Italian look like? Rome was a commercial hub for centuries that saw settlers from all over the known world. Are they not Italian?
Like people with deep northern Mediterranean ancestry. Sure, there were plenty of immigrants of varied ethnicities, but they probably didn’t have names like Montague and Capulet.
Otherwise, bro, it’s a movie, everything about it is a lie.
But when it’s a movie with a specific setting and characters, deviations from the characteristics of that setting are immersion breaking. When I’m watching a movie, I don’t want to be reminded that it’s just a movie. I want to buy into it. I can’t do that when Genghis Khan is being played by John Wayne.
Again, if you want to reimagine a basic story in a new setting, sure that’s fine. Change the characters to your heart’s content, so long as they’re consistent with the new setting.
Yeah, but then you’ve got the weirdos who don’t feel that way unless it’s a white character being cast differently and the other weirdos who think it’s only acceptable when it’s a white character being cast differently.
hey now! John Wayne always gave the colored folks roles they deserved! /s
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