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Like laundry, people are lumped into broad white or coloured categories. Add diversity to the picture and its non-challenged white males vs similar white females. They aren't actually challenged, white little people are getting non-buffoon movie/series play now too. Coloured little people are still lacking though. Don't see the challenged getting roles. Will that change soon too?
I feel everybody should see themselves throughout all media shown in their country, at least once in a while. I don't feel people should necessarily be limited to playing roles specifically calling for who and what they are. I think ads will lead the way. Why not challenged or little people etc selling you on clothes, colognes, pet food, insurance, you name it, their fellow consumers?
On the other hand does white national history/mythology themed entertainment go too far inserting people of colour where they may not have been? Is it nowadays whites soothing their conscious over ancestral wrongs against POC? Whites are certainly divided over it. Look at comments on Halle Bailey as the little mermaid --Hans Christian Anderson, Denmark 1837. Some whites are irked, like POC have always been over movie/series casting where whites played POC. Turnabout isn't fair play in some points of view.
But aren't white complaints about miscasting just as valid as the decades old coloured ones? Danube Maidens are/were white, no? The mermaid is also in African folklore, at least in Gabon. I was told the equator's mermaids' hair is straight but otherwise (not the aquatic parts) looking like Gulf Atlantic Africans.
In pure fantasy entertainment I don't think colour casting should matter much. House of the Dragon made a nice move in a black skinned pure Valorian(sp). But for me, true diversity would be a black inhabited continent or variety of nations but that'd really alter Martin's world. Thanks Martin for approving casting's choice of Steve Toussaint as Corlys Valaryon.
Thereal Member # 22452
posted Some whites are irked like POC have always been over movie/series casting where whites play POC.
I don't think the latter is the same as the former, outside of being a disorganized group there shouldn't be anything from stopping a marginalized group/ community from building their own but it's like that Drake hook from Fake Love:" I've been down so long it looks like up to me."
Where your group has been stuck in a degraded status so long you can't think or react appropriately to the racial hierarchy until something extreme happens. That's why I feel like Black people can't be competitive in creating our own because of tokenism highlighting one of us in prominent forms of entertainment or socially.
BrandonP Member # 3735
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When it comes to casting PoC to play characters that were originally White, I would draw the line at historical figures whom we know were or at least looked White. You wouldn't want audiences to think Henry VIII or Julius Caesar were really Black dudes, for example.
That wouldn't be a problem with most fictional characters, although there are some whose ethnicity has a lot to do with who they are. Black Panther's whole shtick is that he represents a wealthy hi-tech African nation, so making him anything other than African would go against that. Likewise, Speedy Gonzales would be a totally different character if he wasn't modeled after Hispanic culture.
However, a lot of characters are what we could consider "race-neutral" and so don't need to be any particular ethnicity. As much as I don't care for Disney's recent live-action remakes in general, Halle Bailey playing Ariel is harmless because there's no reason the Little Mermaid has to be a redheaded White woman. Her character isn't tied to her ethnicity the way someone like Black Panther would be.
Antalas Member # 23506
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stop using "POC" as if other ethnicities were represented lol it's only blacks/mulattoes and whites either in America or Europe.
Fantasy doesn't mean you have to break the coherence of the whole universe to fill your racial quotas imposed by this woke industry. In house of the dragon/GOT blacks come from the summer isles yet here they use a full black actor and his mulatto children to play velaryon characters, I saw the first episodes of the new lotr series and again they put blacks/mulattoes everywhere it doesn't even make sense at this point.
Thereal Member # 22452
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Why do you care? Are you displeased they didn't cast North Africans of your phenotype?
Antalas Member # 23506
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quote:Originally posted by Thereal: Why do you care? Are you displeased they didn't cast North Africans of your phenotype?
I care because I love these fictions. North african actors would have been amazing but if they come from a specific place that would make sense in regards to what the authors of these universe wrote. I would have been also upset if they had put north african actors everywhere without any coherence so that it can fill their quotas.
Thereal Member # 22452
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Would you have been upset if producers/casting companies put North Africans of a certain phenotype in these TV shows or ones who looked indistinguishable from Europeans?
Antalas Member # 23506
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quote:Originally posted by Thereal: Would you have been upset if producer/casting companies put North Africans of a certain phenotype in these TV shows or ones who looked indistinguishable from Europeans?
depends : if they took a specific type of euro looking north africans to play white/european characters then why not this has been done with many other ethnicities as long as the chosen actors look like the targeted ethnicity but if they had chosen a typical north african to play a nordic type of elf let's say then yes I would have been upset.
Tukuler Member # 19944
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Everybody knows POC are Indians and East Asians and any other non-whites/non-Europeans cast by whites/Europeans in these fantasy epics. GOT had Indira Varma and Jessica Henwick. Also Ait ben Haddou Moroccans play a whole city of brown slaves in GOT.
quote:... thousands upon thousands of brown slaves from a city called Yunkai. ... praised by these slaves, one white woman with blonde hair in a sea of color, ...
POC includes all the above --Indians, East Asians, North Africans, plus Inner Africans-- some dispute if Black Americans the original coloured people are even included among POC.
Only two replyers? Aren't there other members with something to say? Don't be shy.
I'm hoping for a whole gamut of views. Also hoping the poster who only writes respectfully without giving commands to black people is when he addresses El Maestro, will go ignored unless he comports himself decently. If he comes to dominate this thread it can only happen if you reply and transfer control to him.
Elmaestro Member # 22566
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I'll give this a go.
I think the casting much like the term POC is trash because they both produce a net negative for black people, more specifically American Descendants of Slavery. (ADOS I think is the term)
Now I don't look to speak for Black Americans in this regard but as a "POC" looking from the outside in all of this progressive ideology works towards the opposite of benefiting them.
POC essentially lumps in all traditionally Non-white people into a single category of shared experience. It is no question that in America, Black people have had the objectively worst experience historically but once they're categorized as POC everyone is looked at as sharing those same experiences. People of different ethnicity and perceived race have different interests, goals and agenda. Now to correct the historical wrong doing of society, the collective conscious will treat all of the agendas as equally urgent and important. And if they're all equally important, the more difficult tasks to achieve will be the most neglected. for example.
Outside of a minority of ADOS - The collective majority view immigration issues as being equally important as reparations. But reparations is significantly more difficult to provide than pro-immigration clauses etc. This will result in one of these advents being seen as a pipe dream and the other a notable cause. And this isn't even touching on conflicting interests within the realm of POC, which, based on my observation, black people will take the L more times than not.
As far as "Blackwashing.." It's lazy. If Hollywood was in the interest of funding original content representing black people before f*kin 2010 this wouldn't have been the future we have to deal with. It makes more people upset/discontent than it makes people happy/satisfied. Nobody appreciates a palette swapped token of nostalgia unless the OG design was mediocre or worse. It really doesn't matter the color of the swap. Also, The issue of historically poor representation of black people doesn't gets solved with making a mermaid black. All this does is exacerbates the issue by creating more creating more division for the sake of looking "bold".
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