Historical drama

Maxine Peake was superb as Hamlet. Absolutely embodied a late teenaged boy. It’s called acting.

Sigh. Read what you said and unpick your own ‘logic’. You said that people of colour are ‘over represented in the media compared to the national population’ so that ‘people going on about colour blind casting giving people of colour more work is actually ridiculous’.

So, as people of colour are ‘over-represented’ in the media compared to their proportion of the UK population, are you suggesting that doing away with colourblind casting will restore ‘proportionate representation’ or something? Or why is it ‘ridiculous’?

I think it depends on context. Certainly in the theatre where you have the cast playing a number of roles you often get sex and colour blind performances.

In plays I’ve seen, it wouldn’t have worked for the following characters
Mary Seacole - needs to be a black woman as the structural inequality is important to the play

A Jewish male intellectual in the holocaust- needs to be a white male as it is based on recent historical events where identity is an issue

It did work
A woman playing Stanley Baldwin - we all knew who was being represented and it was their reaction not their identity that mattered

An Asian actor playing Winston Churchill- again in the context of the play with the cast playing multiple characters he was completely believable

Not all black people are Moors. Moors are of Arabic/Muslim descent.

I have absolutely no idea how that was your take from what I said and is certainly not something I meant or said.

What? Moor was absolutely used to refer to black people. Othello is another example.

It's not like the rest of the Arthurian mythology is completely authentic and factual - I actually agree that in some productions realism is important, but at the point in which you're accepting magic and dragons, then the argument that it's the black knight that's inaccurate is a bit hard to swallow....

No it's a "moor". Or Turkish/Arab potential member. Highly unlikely to be in 5th century Britain.

The violinist was Joseph Emidy who was enslaved by the Portuguese, after he was freed he eventually came to live in Cornwall and became a violinist, composer and the leader of Truro Philharmonia Orchestra. The Cornish writer Alan Kent wrote a play about his life

There were quite a few Black people in Georgian England, some of them led really interesting lives. I haven't heard of the person you mention, but I read of one guy who escaped slavery and ended up leading an orchestra in cornwalll! A drama based on that would be fascinating, but someone would have to go to the effort of writing something new rather than endless remakes of the same things.

I guess it depends whether you see them as actors, or actors of colour?

I hear Tom Holland can't actually climb buildings, maybe he should not play Spiderman!

I have absolutely no idea how that was your take from what I said and is certainly not something I meant or said.

So now colourblind casting is bad because it unfairly advantages actors of colour?🙄

I agree with this. I would actually have no issue if all the cast of Pride and Prejudice were all of colour. It’s when a person of colour is cast in a role when at the time it would be an issue and commented on. It really jars and probably only works if you’re uneducated and can’t see how a person of colour popping up in rural Tudor Britain would be strange and a matter for discussion.

A case in point was ‘Wicked Little Letters’ which is based on a true story and depicts real people. The main character was the first female Police Officer in West Sussex Police, Gladys Moss. The actress who played her was of obviously Asian descent. All the way through the film comments are made about never have seen a female officer before and was she a real officer etc etc but not one person commented on an Asian person in a rural Sussex village. It really jarred and I ended up googling ‘Gladys Moss’ on the off chance she did have some Asian heritage and of course she didn’t.

In Murder on The Orient Express I thought ‘oh here were go again’ when there was an actor of African descent playing a doctor but it was commented on and made part of the story of why he was so grateful to his benefactor for supporting and paying for him to go to medical school at a time when this was almost unheard of. That makes total sense and highlights the struggles people of colour have gone through in previous decades not airbrush it out which is what ‘colourblind’ casting ultimately does.

Also in answer to all the comments about people of colour not getting roles research has shown that in tge media people of couloir are actually over represented compared to the National population. That doesn’t bother me in the slightest but people going on about the fact colour blind casting gives people of colour more work is actually ridiculous.

Threads like these always make me wonder if people of colour have been edited out of some parts of British history.

I have a set of books with an very interesting inscription from the 1740's. It's to xxx from yyy for something rather. I've done extensive research on yyy and their connections as they were a very prominent figure of sorts in their time, but not quite - think wife of a politician. Now the interesting part: the only reference to xxx I could find is a woman of colour (again well connectied)! The books would have been quite valuable at the time and have an philosophical content. Xxx was very likely well educated and definetly accepted in society beyond being a sevant or some sort of curiosity. Xxx also appears to have been born in Britain, but it's a bit obscure and I don't have proof of this.
Obviously we will never know for certain, but I wanted to put this out there for a bit of food for thought.

But in order to have non white actors cast as say the Bingleys in Pride and Prejudice (which is what the new adaptation has) you have to. Because in reality anyone who wasn't white in regency britain would have had their lives massively affected by racism. So you either ignore that, or you would have to rewrite the story. In the same way if you adapt something set in 19th century britain and change the male main character to a woman, but ignore the misogyny and incredibly restricted lives women faced then, it wouldn't make sense.

No it's a "moor". Or Turkish/Arab potential member. Highly unlikely to be in 5th century Britain.

the black guy in BBC's Arthur for example

not sure which character or version of 'Arthur' you're talking about but stories featuring a black knight of the round table go back to the 13th century....

But when historical truth is twisted to create a narrative that fits today's ideas then surely that is wrong.

For example the recent Elvis film has Elvis being great friends with BB King a black blues singer who recorded at the same tiny record studio as Elvis but 3 years before Elvis ever walked through the door.They probably never even met, if they did it was in passing. I can't find any record of them ever having met.

The same film has Little Richard (the black man who's records Elvis and other white stars "covered" aka stole) playing a support slot for big mama Thornton is a tiny club in Memphis... Richard was the main act in a Hollywood movie that year and was earning $10,000 a week.

So on one hand they promote a black artist into a more prominent role...and demote another to just be on hand to provide a story line.

Therefore I can agree that there is an issue about representation, but when representation is jarring or tokenism (the black guy in BBC's Arthur for example) or a downright lie then yes I have an issue with it's implementation.

I understand what you are saying, I just disagree. I don't think ignoring that is as progressive as you seem to think it is. https://mazinsaleem.substack.com/p/colour-blind-casting-as-historical

You ignore that the actor isn’t white. You are blind to the colour. It makes no difference to anything. I don’t understand why you think it would. It’s not a difficult concept.