Colour Blind casting

We get Saffron from crocuses that grow alongside roads? Well I never, you learn something new everyday!

@YankSplaining OK cool. So a half asian person can play an Indian, so why not a mixed race person play a 'white' character? (often the assumption by white people is the character was 'meant' to be white, rather than it being specified or remotely relevant) In Bollywood they have British actors who pretend to be Indian constantly.

Ben Kingsley is half-Indian. His birth name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji.

With the Disney films, I think that what most people object to is any detail being different from the version they grew up with. As far as they are concerned the animated classic was the definitive version, and the live action remake should be a carbon copy of that. I grew up reading the Harry Potter books. Any details altered/absent/invented in the films annoy me.

Personally I think that we've had enough disappointing live action remakes of the animated classics and it's about time that Disney dug out some different stories. If they search around the world for them then that's even better.

On the subject of employment prospects for black actors, I feel that Tom and Jerry is worth mentioning. The NAACP campaigned against the woman character in some of the shorts, which made the voice actress Lillian Randolph angry, given that it was difficult to find work as a black actress in 1949 America.

One wonders how the Americans lost the Vietnam war, I've never seen a film where they lost a battle.

I think if it's an historical character who is real, I guess you want the actor to look like the person. So bar using white face it could look a bit unconvincing. If it's a fictitious character then I don't really see the issue. Many characters exist where their racial background isn't specified or relevant to the story. There's been many instances of white people portraying other races in the past. Ben Kingsley playing Ghandi. Brad pitt playing an Irish traveller. Numerous actors pretending to be Italian or Hispanic or native American. I mean it is acting, right?
If black people could only play characters specifically written as black that would basically exclude them from 90% of acting jobs.
I don't really care as long as I believe in the character and that's down to writing, direction and acting ability, not race.

I find it really distracting. In period dramas. Particularly in Wicked Little letters, as like a PP said was sure the first Asian police woman didn't come till later. I

even if it is fictional how can you ave snow white as a south american

Sometimes I like to watch a film or TV production that's as accurate as it can be in every detail (Chernobyl, say). Sometimes I like to watch a quirky story that's unfolding in a parallel universe that has only the vaguest resemblance to our own (Wonka). Sometimes I enjoy seeing a writer experiment with an alternative history in which things were similar-but-different (Bridgerton).

And sometimes I like to watch live as an ethnically diverse cast in modern dress play white people from renaissance Italy while speaking iambic pentameter in Lancashire accents, clad in modern dress in a plain black box studio theatre with no set at all. There's no attempt at making any of it realistic, but that can be a good way to experience the story, engage your imagination and look for the human aspects that transcend the setting.

Variety is the spice of life!

I know. People are stupid.

It's a musical, of course it isn't. It's not supposed to be a depiction of real life. All the queens are on stage for a start, together. The problem is the suspension of belief. If you look at a screen and think 'that's not right' you can't believe the rest. The magic is lost.

I think you'd be amazed at how many people believe what they see at the cinema. The constant re-writing of WW2 so that only America can save the world (I'm not a war film buff) is an example. The coward in Titanic was in fact a hero but the name is now shamed for his family. There are many more examples.

Eh, I'm not 100% sure. We know from ancient Greece that the tales in the Odyssey and epic cycle were very well known throughout the peninsula even before writing was widespread. I would encourage you to read about oral cultures both in Europe and Africa - you'd be amazed at how sophisticated they were (still are in some places), how far they could disseminate info and who were entrusted with the telling of those tales (clue: by no means always white men).

Also, women played a big role in the early era of mass book production and printing. You've got the female Lollards, the awesome Margery Kempe, Katharina van Bora, Birgitta Boltofsdotter and loads more who achieved fame and respect in their lifetimes.

I agree that the 'white man controlled the images and stories that were disseminated' was true to an extent in western Europe but that's cos most people in those geographies were white until pretty recently. But even in western mediaeval Catholicism we've got the beautiful images and iconography of the Black Madonna haven't we!? As to Jesus, I am Eastern Orthodox and the Christ on my icons, my eucharist book and in my church is dark and swarthy. As Aristotle said, we make Gods in our own image.

I do think that times are changing - we are hearing more stories from People of Colour (see my comments on Disney, as mass market as you can get) - there's a great thread in the Reading section about novels set in the Deep South and I'm about to add to it with a list of the fantastic and award winning books which have come out in the past 30 years by Black Women about the Black Female experience in the deep south.

And, above all, even before this century, even white folks have always enjoyed stories from People of Colour - Richard the Lionheart sang Saracen ballads, the late Plantagenet court enjoyed stories and tales brought to them and sung by Turkish merchants; children have loved One Thousand and One Arabian Nights for centuries.

Even our canonical classical literature is heavily influenced by ancient Babylon (see Martin West "The East Face of Helicon" for an AWESOME, if heavy, examination of this).

Humans have always swapped and integrated art and stories from different cultures. That's why art and literature are so rich and amazing.

Well, the Little Mermaid was first published in 1837 according to a quick google. It wasn’t too long before the British Empire was in full swing. But ‘ruled the world’ was a lazy phrase on my part - of course huge parts of the world were not - but I intended to give some context for why indigenous stories did not gain the traction the ones penned by European authors did.

@Redundantrobin But at the time the Little Mermaid and Snow White were written, the world was ruled by white people whose interaction with global majority races was one of oppression. Is that true though?

I think they were both published in the early 19th century, at that time the British Raj wasn't ruling India, I assume Indians were ruling, the Qing dynasty were ruling China, the Ottoman empire was pretty vast, colonisation had started in Africa but it was by no means the whole of Africa. White empires were spreading but I don't think it is true to say that when the Little Mermaid and Snow White were written that the world was ruled by white people.

Yellow, purple, white. It's where we get @SaffronSpicefrom.

I’m not sure. What colour are they?

@Redundantrobin It's spring. Haven't you seen all the crocuses growing by the side of the British roads?

Well yes, of course that’s what I’m asking on this thread about colourblind casting in the UK.

Then why aren’t they being made into films?

I don't know. But I think that what you are asking is "then why aren't they being made into films by Europeans or Americans?" Because those are the films we tend to watch in Britain. Films made by Kenyan ( for example ) film makers retelling ancient Kenyan fairy tales don't tend to become very popular here, especially if they're in a foreign language!

But it wasn’t until the advent of the printing press that such tales became known beyond a relatively small group of people, so in that sense, it was men (being the first to write them down) that ‘wrote’ them. I don’t doubt the oral traditions were not the exclusive purvey of men, but in terms of turning folklore into fairytales that spanned continents, it’s them.

And given it was white men who had access to that distribution model, it’s not a surprise that they are Eurocentric in details. Same reason Jesus is very white in the most famous depictions (eg renaissance).

We create in our own image and within our own world view.

So now we can choose to perpetuate the same view of what is beautiful, strong and powerful, or we can show the next generation that these things can be found in anyone.

Well, they have. If you look at the Disney cannon, we've had Aladdin (One Thousand and One Arabian Nights), Mulan (folk heroine from the Northern and Southern Dynasties) and Coco (Mexican folklore about the role of ancestor worship).

I'm not feeling very confident about PPs' assertions that 'fairy tales were written by men', though. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty etc etc are folktales, millennia old and passed down way before writing was widespread (or even known in many regions). In the sense that these were often stories passed down in front of the hearth or round the campfire to children, it's most likely to have been mothers who were the chief transmitters of this oral lore.

Also, many of these tales are based around passing on seasonal knowledge so are based more on geography, eg Snow White is about symbolising and reifying the experience of dwellers in Northern Europe during the difficult winter months, the Odysseys Wandering tales are about the experiences of early travellers from Greece towards Sicily - so I would say geography played more of a role than race/skin colour in why these stories were deemed important.

Then why aren’t they being made into films?

It’s a play on Reliant Robin, which is a British car, so no co-opting here.

And saffron is indeed an ethnic spice, brought to England in the same way most things were, turnips notwithstanding. My point, that you don’t seem to quite get, is that you seem to have double standards.

It’s ok for you to co-opt something ethnic (saffron) but not ok for global majority people to co-opt something white (the Little Mermaid).

Why?

And I have already posted (page 12, 0813) about the problem of too few parts being written for global majority actors - it’s definitely something to be addressed.

But until we reach a point where white voices aren’t heard more loudly in the commissioning meetings than black and brown ones, we need to offer good, juicy parts to everyone.

You mention that Disney significantly changed the plot to Snow White; did you take a moral stand against that?

Because the fact that you think it’s ok to update the story to remove the torture of a woman, reflecting modern sensibilities (or as modern as they were in 1937) but not to change the definition of beauty to include a non-white face says a lot.

I suppose the ones we know best are 1001 Nights or Arabian Nights. Disney has certainly used one of the stories, Aladdin, don't know about any others but I think the Thief of Baghdad might also have its origins in 1001 Nights but it is linked to Aladdin.

Just thought Sinbad is another one.