Wokeism of the day *Revised Mod Note in OP and threadbanned users*

Ash.J.Williams

Invidious wrote: »

Did black people really benefit from Kenny Leon's all-black Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing? Did women benefit from Phyllida Lloyd's all-female version of Julius Caesar at the Donmar? Or did it just teach black and female actors that they can make a living off woke productions of these plays designed to favor their identity and exclude everyone else?

Or is it just art ?

Rodney Bathgate

ExMachina1000 wrote: »

So black actors can play white characters but white actors can't play black characters.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you :discrimination based on race

i.e. Racism.

Ash.J.Williams

Rothko wrote: »

It doesn't make sense to have Anne Boleyn to be played why a white woman?

Why not ?

Tony EH

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Yeah two young leaders of their field to be fair

Yeh, but one is black...shock horror. :eek:

Invidious

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Why not ?

How about a movie about Martin Luther King, starring Tom Cruise in the lead role? You'd support that too, right?

Ash.J.Williams

Invidious wrote: »

How about a movie about Martin Luther King, starring Tom Cruise in the lead role? You'd support that too, right?

And right back to square one we go

Rodney Bathgate

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

And right back to square one we go

Give an answer that makes sense this time and that might not happen again.

Wibbs

Invidious wrote: »

How about a movie about Martin Luther King, starring Tom Cruise in the lead role? You'd support that too, right?

Actually that might be interesting, if you set it in a world that was majority Black and Blacks were in the seats of power and influence. Another might be to cast a White guy in the role of Othello, again in an otherwise Black ensemble cast. Turn the tables. Though in both cases there would be good artistic and dramatic reasons to argue for it and the casting would be deliberately skewed to make an audience see things in a different way and would be directly commenting on "race" and perceptions around it.

Now if they cast Tom Cruise as King with a straight face surrounded by Black followers, a Black wife and kids etc, giving speeches to Black audiences as if nothing was amiss or out of place, then that would be majorly WTF? Casting a Black woman as Anne Boleyn is in this latter category in my humble. It's pure stunt casting for attention and virtue signalling, though I'd bet it's almost entirely for attention and free advertising. And it's working.

Tony EH

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Why not ?

Because there's a whole host of problems with it.

Boleyn was a white woman who existed. She was married to a white king, who also existed, in a time when there were very few or no people with sub Saharan features in the country and even if there were, they CERTAINLY wouldn't have been hitching up with any royalty.

At its very least level, it just looks silly. At it's worst, it creates a huge historical anachronism that absolutely impossible to ignore...and all in an effort for a TV station to appear right on and generate a little bit of inevitable controversy for their upcoming show.

But it's especially galling if one has an actual interest in history and likes to see period dramatisations produced with as much accuracy as possible and arguably one of the easiest ways to try and achieve that is to try and reflect the people of the times as they appeared.

I've said it before, but this is like having Brendan Gleeson play someone like Cetshwayo in a modern retelling of 'Zulu'. It would look equally stupid, regardless of the talent of the actor/actress in question.

jam_mac_jam

I think there is a difference between a fictional character and a historical figure. Especially with such a well known figure.

It's just a bit stupid as it takes you out of the story more.

Ash.J.Williams

Tony EH wrote: »

Because there's a whole host of problems with it.

Boleyn was a white woman who existed. She was married to a white king, who also existed, in a time when there were very few or no people with sub Saharan features in the country and even if there were, they CERTAINLY wouldn't have been hitching up with any royalty.

At its very least level, it just looks silly. At it's worst, it creates a huge historical anachronism that absolutely impossible to ignore...and all in an effort for a TV station to appear right on and generate a little bit of inevitable controversy for their upcoming show.

But it's especially galling if one has an actual interest in history and likes to see period dramatisations produced with as much accuracy as possible and arguably one of the easiest ways to try and achieve that is to try and reflect the people of the times as they appeared.

I've said it before, but this is like having Brendan Gleeson play someone like Cetshwayo in a modern retelling of 'Zulu'. It would look equally stupid, regardless of the talent of the actor/actress in question.

It really isn’t that big a deal who plays who as long as the best person gets the job , you can lag behind or get with the way things are going

Wibbs

Nulson Mundala wrote: »

When the media wants to show diversity, why do they always cast a white woman and black man couple?

Why not Asian man and black woman? Or Arab woman and white man?

Is the black man/white couple seen as the safest bet?

Black men may be seen as a threatening, or fetishised as exotic or seen as more manly, but Black women are far less visible, it seems they're less attractive to advertisers and majority White audiences in majority White countries. Or that's what advertisers think. Black women commentators have long noted this. Black women also have a tendency to have their skin colour lightened in photos and very rarely will you see a Black woman in the media with her natural curly hair. When I thought about this recently coming off another thread, the only one I could think off the top of my head on the telly is one of the actresses on the SciFi series The Expanse, Dominique Tipper.

Ash.J.Williams

Nulson Mundala wrote: »

I saw a tv documentary about William the Conqueror where an emissary was portrayed by a black actor. I turned it off. It's just too ridiculous having a historical documentary where a European courtier is portrayed by a black actor.

That really is your own business

Ash.J.Williams

Rodney Bathgate wrote: »

Give an answer that makes sense this time and that might not happen again.

I did way back

46 Long

46 Long wrote: »

He was more an Anglo supremacist, but fair enough.

ExMachina1000

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

I think there is a difference between a fictional character and a historical figure. Especially with such a well known figure.

It's just a bit stupid as it takes you out of the story more.

Exactly.

If it's just any old action movie or thriller etc then anyone can play anyone. It would be decided by the script anyway.

AllForIt

Has anyone else noticed media pundits using the word lives in place of people? Today this was in relation to 'lives' dealing with the pandemic, not in relation to what you might think.

Ash.J.Williams

Nulson Mundala wrote: »

True. But as someone with an interest in history, it's sad when the producers put in gaslighting woke bs.

But it's ok, I just bypass the mainstream and get other content from youtube etc.

Mainstream is sh1te though

Ash.J.Williams

AllForIt wrote: »

Has anyone else noticed media pundits using the word lives in place of people? Today this was in relation to 'lives' dealing with the pandemic, not in relation to what you might think.

No

stefanovich

Nulson Mundala wrote: »

I saw a tv documentary about William the Conqueror where an emissary was portrayed by a black actor. I turned it off. It's just too ridiculous having a historical documentary where a European courtier is portrayed by a black actor.

It’s factually incorrect. I’d prefer if historical dramas were historical.

Invidious

ExMachina1000 wrote: »

If it's just any old action movie or thriller etc then anyone can play anyone. It would be decided by the script anyway.

I'm not all that sure about that. James Bond is embedded in our imaginations as a white British heterosexual male. Could we put a black lesbian in that role and have it work? It would take some doing.

Ash.J.Williams

Invidious wrote: »

I'm not all that sure about that. James Bond is embedded in our imaginations as a white British heterosexual male. Could we put a black lesbian in that role and have it work? It would take some doing.

If you’re over 44, I doubt teenagers give a ****

Ash.J.Williams

Nulson Mundala wrote: »

Same. Most people feel the same I think.

And if not, why not get a Chinese actor to play a pharaoh?

Instead of the usual non pharaoh looking people that usually plays pharaohs?

Tony EH

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

It really isn’t that big a deal who plays who as long as the best person gets the job , you can lag behind or get with the way things are going

No. Getting with "things the way they are going" is never something I have ever done. And when the going thing is just an effort at cheap publicity, I am even less inclined to get with it.

Look, the expansion of fictional roles that include everyone, regardless of sex and race is a good thing. It's something that most people, the vast majority indeed, will "get with", except for those who just hate the idea of black people, etc being in TV shows no matter what.

But when you set out to make an historical piece, there are certain constraints to observe and one of them SHOULD be an attempt to reproduce that history as best you can. And casting a black woman to play an historically white person just to look good and get the internet in a frenzy is not the way to do it.

As for "best person for the job", I just don't believe that there's any reasonable way that Jodie Turner-Smith (a person that has only very recently turned from being a model to being an actress and who's record has been largely bit parts) was the "best person for the job" out of the presumably large range of actresses that auditioned. I just don't buy that. The possibility of that is very remote indeed.

It just stinks, as Wibbs has said, of stunt casting to generate some cheap controversy and create interest in an upcoming program that, more than likely, wouldn't spike the interests of most TV viewers.

Ash.J.Williams

Tony EH wrote: »

No. Getting with "things the way they are going" is never something I have ever done. And when the going thing is just an effort at cheap publicity, I am even less inclined to get with it.

Look, the expansion of fictional roles that include everyone, regardless of sex and race is a good thing. It's something that most people, the vast majority indeed, will "get with", except for those who just hate the idea of black people, etc being in TV shows no matter what.

But when you set out to make an historical piece, there are certain constraints to observe and one of them SHOULD be an attempt to reproduce that history as best you can. And casting a black woman to play an historically white person just to look good and get the internet in a frenzy is not the way to do it.

As for "best person for the job", I just don't believe that there's any reasonable way that Jodie Turner-Smith (a person that has only very recently turned from being a model to being an actress and who's record has been largely bit parts) was the "best person for the job" out of the presumably large range of actresses that auditioned. I just don't buy that. The possibility of that is very remote indeed.

It just stinks, as Wibbs has said, of stunt casting to generate some cheap controversy and create interest in an upcoming program that, more than likely, wouldn't spike the interests of most TV viewers.

Wasn’t john Wayne chinese at one stage

Tony EH

Invidious wrote: »

I'm not all that sure about that. James Bond is embedded in our imaginations as a white British heterosexual male. Could we put a black lesbian in that role and have it work? It would take some doing.

This is part of the problem with stunt casting though. Why is it that firmly established characters or historical figures need to "targeted" for a colour/sex swap?

Why not simply write a new character. A spy who is a black lesbian in a new film series is perfectly fine, unless of course one hates black people and lesbians.

A black, lesbian, "Bond" would fail miserably, because that character has a look and feel that has been established over the course of decades. Arguably, that character gets rebooted with each movie, apart from the Daniel Craig ones. But it's still grounded in a particular fashion. Doing a colour/sex change on it just won't work.

But there is nothing stopping producers from creating new characters in any mould.

RandRuns

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Wasn’t john Wayne chinese at one stage

Nearly 70 years ago.

biko

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Wasn’t john Wayne chinese at one stage

If he identified as Chinese there is nothing anyone can do to stop him.

Wibbs

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Instead of the usual non pharaoh looking people that usually plays pharaohs?

True enough. You rarely saw a Middle Eastern actor or even someone who looks Middle Eastern in such roles, though that has changed somewhat in latter years. In the fifties they were either White Americans or White English people with plummy accents. Same for Romans and that hasn't changed much. They're rarely portrayed by Italians and Latins. The cast of the Sopranos would be a far better bet in a Roman setting. Cleopatra is one that tends to divide. Black Americans and others seem to think she was Black or at least Brown, but she was the last of the Ptolemy dynasty, a Greek(with some Syrian in her line). Not some blonde Swede I grant you, but Liz Taylor in the role wasn't so much a stretch. Still someone Asian would look completely "wrong" as an ancient Egyptian and unless they were portraying particular periods like after the Kush takeover a West African would look a bit odd too. As a Pharaoh anyway. The Egyptian royal court was quite "diverse" at times, so you could have Black, Arab, European milling about. Asians no, though they were aware of Asians, as one tomb painting has them represented in the list of non Egyptian feckers we know of. Probably Silk road types. One Asian burial has been even found in Rome. But such examples would be rare, even in a huge empire like Rome.

My take on this such as it is would be that if such casting is setting out to make an actual dramatic and artistic point then game ball. And Whitewashing is bad and stupid and divisive*, but so is Blackwashing for the sake of it. There can be the hint of some daft "revenge" swinging of the pendulum the other way and too far. "Feminist" casting does similar. The things is; two wrongs don't make a right and two idiocies don't make a wisdom.






*John Wayne being Ghengis Khan? oh jayyysus. A Roman soldier at the crucifixion was bad enough. Mickey Rooney as a hideous Asian stereotype. Fcuk me that was risible. Whitewashing of Asian folks was much more in play for longer, right up to today with it.

Ash.J.Williams

Tony EH wrote: »

This is part of the problem with stunt casting though. Why is it that firmly established characters or historical figures need to "targeted" for a colour/sex swap?

Why not simply write a new character. A spy who is a black lesbian in a new film series is perfectly fine, unless of course one hates black people and lesbians.

A black, lesbian, "Bond" would fail miserably, because that character has a look and feel that has been established over the course of decades. Arguably, that character gets rebooted with each movie, apart from the Daniel Craig ones. But it's still grounded in a particular fashion. Doing a colour/sex change on it just won't work.

But there is nothing stopping producers from creating new characters in any mould.

James Bond would be the colour/gender/sexuality that relates to the current audience I would say , which so far has been white but could be due a reboot


It’s about revenue , James Bond will be what the revenue dictates he his