AIBU to think objections to Snape casting are mostly racist?

I agree.

Also Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet, which as well as dressing the actors in modern day clothes, kept the original Shakespearean language, moved the setting from Verona to Venice Beach, and had a multi-cultural cast.

Alan Rickman was at least 20 years older than he should have been to play the character. Which is a bigger difference - a whole generation gap or different skin colour?

I don't think it has to be rigidly faithful to the character descriptions in the book.

Ann Bolyn was a real person. She existed.
So yes... her skin colour is totally relevant.
Its as relevant as MLKs.
Or are you saying that only black people can play black historical people, but white people are pretty much replaceable?

Its not really the same though. Anne Boleyn's skin colour wasn't relevant to her story. So making her black doesn't change the narrative. Other than Henry 8 probably wouldn't have married her if she were black. I don't actually know if that could/ would have happened.

But Martin Luther King couldn't be played by a white man. The whole story wouldn't make sense. Likewise Rosa Parks. Or Kunta Kinte in Roots. Although he is fictional.

Im a huge HP fan, I agree that a black Snape doesn't really match the book. But his skin colour isn't integral to his character, provided they manage the hate/distrust/bullying so it doesn't appear racist.

Not racist, but a die hard fan of the books. They could literally of done it for any other character and it wouldn't of mattered, they did this on purpose.

I feel the poster means being cast as a white person, playing a black person but without the whole 'blacking-up'.
No way would a white person be cast to play a black person of historic importance... just wouldn't happen.

I've not read any of the HP books.
How was the character described in them?
Personally I find it offensive to cast people who don't resemble how the characters are described.
Arrogant to decide that the casting director knows better than the person who actually imagined and wrote the source material.

So people of a different race are not allowed to be liked or not liked because of where they are from, so they are all one collective person so if anyone doesn't like them it is racism only

How patronising and insulting

Yeah that is a good point. But the fact remains it's unreasonable for modern day BAME actors to have to face a discriminatory situation whereby they are pretty much barred from being part of plays or works from a certain era.

They are actors. So let them act.

So you think that all those tens of millions of fans all round the world who are now adults will also be considered irrelevant by the production company? That's a few billion ££££ in revenue they'll be kissing goodbye to then. 😂

She was ten when the first film came out. Not the sort of age when you're likely to be sitting in judgement over the acting ability of the cast members.

They looked quite fusty and retro even when they came out IMO. But I sort of got the impression that being fusty and retro is what the fan base liked about them?

Gary Oldman would be a brilliant Snape.
I don’t get HBO, so I won’t be watching it anyway. Still, I agree with the poster who said it is far too soon to be remaking HP.

Not relevant now. This was over half a century ago. Whataboutery is not strengthening your (already weak) argument.

I have no interest in the skin colour of the new Snape except to say that it’s tough on black actors born and raised in the west who have their roles limited because of their ethnicity. Perhaps we should all relax about colour blind casting. As long as he is a good actor it’s not an issue.

the trouble is that there seems to be a lot of woke casting that places people because of their ethnicity rather than their acting ability

having said this it is rather tiresome that the reason for any criticism of someone from an ethnic minority is, in the minds of so many tedious people, always put down to racism…..

I think that it can whitewash history and dilute the struggles of ethnic minorities. If not their slavery, rape, abuse and murder. I'm part Lakota Sioux, I'd object to a film were black men gave out blankets, coated in small pox to white, blond , blue eyed locals.
Could women be cast in a war film and join the troops storming Normandy? It's food for thought. Writers etc need to create roles for everyone.

Are you completely unaware of the long and inglorious tradition of white actors doing blackface? Olivier in Othello? The Black and White Minstrel Show?

Exactly what I said! Wouldn't happen! No way in hell would a white actor or actress be allowed to play a real life black person. The 'we need colourblind casting' people wouldn't be so keen on it then! Colourblind casting is only suitable when it's a black person playing a real life white person. 🙄

.

If an actual real life historical white person can be cast as black - see eg. Anne Boleyn, a fictional character written as white can also be cast as black. No problemo. The Only problem being of course if a white person was cast as a black person (fictional or not), then we'd have uproar, wouldn't we. I'd love to see a white MLK or Malcolm X, for example. Really challenge the narrative and play with those labels.

So do you think everyone in plays that were written in or about the Victorian era or before should be white characters played by white actors?

yanbu - I think a lot of people just assume characters are white when they read a book. According to AI, “Sallow is a state of appearance, not a skin color or racial category. Any person of any race—including Caucasian, Asian, or Black—can look sallow if they are unwell, fatigued, or anemic”

So he could be a sickly black guy with a hooked nose after all!

It is primarily a children’s TV show.

Most adults will be familiar with the story.

How many children are honestly going to see the bullying scene as a racist lynching?

Some kids might, but I don’t think that will spring to mind for most children.

What makes you think that a upper middle class business man, of social standing, in Victorian England wasn't white?
He was reportedly a mix of two men and his mame taken from another.

I would have liked a black McGonagall. Maggie Smith really made it so much her own that I think a huge change would make sense, otherwise everyone will automatically compare. And certainly from the trailer, the new actress seems to just be doing an impersonation of Smith, which already feels a bit jarring to me.

There are also far too few major roles for sympathetic, intelligent, inspirational black women.

One of the main problems with HP adaptations and race is that a) they're children's books and b) they have strong themes that are an analogy to racial issues.

In the wizarding world, it appears that there are zero race issues related to skin colour. JK Rowling only specifies someone's skin colour by default if she wants to make it clear that they aren't white British, but that was quite normal at the time. But she chose to use an analogy, and not have Hermione go, "bugger, I thought that I'd leave race issues behind in the muggle world and now I'm getting wizardy racial slurs".

So given a lot of the plot is driven by wizardy racism, when you randomly swap the ethnicity of characters it can add a weird dimension of "wait, was Snape bullied for being black?" or "a black Hermione would have surely mentioned something about Muggle racist bullying when she was bullied for being a muggle?".

Much like Lupin's werewolf stigma was an analogy for AIDs stigma, a kid's book is the wrong place to lay out those issues verbatim.

If realism isn't at least vaguely important why do they bother putting actors in period costumes rather than just wearing jeans? Why use appropriate props and keep plot devices like lost letters rather than them all just texting each other? Why bother filming them in historic locations rather than on the side of the M25?

There are literally hundreds of modern film adaptations of Shakespeare that are set in modern times where they wear jeans, text etc. 10 things I hate about you, She's the Man, Warm Bodies, etc. Even the fucking Lion King!