To think that racial diversity in film casting has gone slightly bonkers...

[AngeloMysterioso]

When you have an Asian actress playing Bess of Hardwick?

I just can’t see why anyone thought it was appropriate to have such a prominent woman in English history being played by somebody who is Chinese- can you imagine the outcry if an important black woman was being played in a film by someone who isn’t black, or indeed a significant Asian character being played by a white woman? There’d be uproar, and rightly so. And yet, in the new Mary Queen of Scots film we have a white Englishwoman being played by Gemma Chan.

This Chinese author/blogger said pretty much the same thing, pointing out that when Ed Skrein was cast as a fictional Japanese character in Hellboy the public response was so furious that he ended up quitting. And Bess of Hardwick isn’t even a fictional character, she was a very real woman, an ancestor of our current Queen, whose life and legacy are quite remarkable.

I don’t want anyone to think that there is any racism behind this post at all. I think Gemma Chan is a fantastic actress, but I don’t know, there’s just something about it that reeks of tokenism.

I wish I could find it but a black female journalist wrote a brilliant article explaining why Idris Elba shouldn’t play Bond...basically all the reasons Elsie is giving.

Hard to disagree with the points she made.

There is some real hatred on this thread, which I think is a great shame.

It seems to me the focus should always be on the highest quality production. In the world of ballet or classical music, while black people are still a minority, their presence is increasing and there has been a strong representation of Far East Asian talent for a long time. This is because the level of skill and sheer brilliance required to succeed is so high that there is no room for concerns about ethnicity. I have seen a Chinese lead ballet dancer whose 'parents' are white. No one minds, because it is the ballet that counts.

Historical dramas are a bit different, I accept, because they are trying to convey historical authenticity. However, the emphasis should still be on the best production. What is needed, is more productions that can accommodate a greater range of actors without them appearing to be shoe-horned into a role. It isn't fair on actors like Gemma Chan to have to play white people if they want a major role in historical dramas.

There has been huge variety between performances of Shakespeare, including all black castings, Tudor settings and modern settings. The very brilliance of Shakespeare lies in fact that they supersede time and space. I think there is potential for Jane Austen storylines to be set in 1960s Jamaica or modern Singapore. I think a TV series of A Suitable Boy with an all-Indian caste would be just as popular as Channel 4's Indian Summers series was a few years ago. If I was a BAME actor, I would be much more excited about playing the lead role if I was the same ethnicity as the character.

James Bond’s father was Scottish, his mother Swiss, he went to Eton and was brought up mainly in France in the fifties. Ian Fleming’s own artistic representation shows he was not black. To say so is not to imply that black actors can only play “street” or “ghetto” or aren’t fit to play Bond, it just doesn’t work without a re write of his back story. You could shoe horn a black actor in and keep the back story and hope for the best but it would be jarring and wouldn’t fit that particular narrative, of James Bond as we know him. I’d love to see them change it, I really would, so much could be done with it.

@JamesBlonde1 you're so lucky you don't have worry about not seeing anyone on tv that looks like you and that's your privilege. You really don't know what that might feel like so you are not really placed to say whether there is a problem or not.

Honestly, it's white people talking about how racism isn't a issue again. It's actually so cringe.

Or everything Elsie said and I missed entirely

She is widely believed to have been of Macedonian descent,

No. She WAS of Macedonian descent. The Ptolemies were obsessive about maintaining the 'purity' of their line, so much so that brothers married sisters.

though many modern-day scientists insist she also had African roots.

No historians of any repute.

That means that it is very unlikely that Cleopatra was as fair-skinned and light-eyed as Hollywood portrays her.

She could very easily have been blue-eyed and light haired - much lighter than Liz Taylor, for example. The most famous Macedonian of them all, Alexander, is believed to have had blonde or red hair.

The next generation are going to have a really skewed view of history and a warped understanding of the struggle for minority rights. So many people learn most of their history from screens.

As a history lecturer, I'd be worried if anyone thought period dramas do anything other than pay lip service to historical accuracy. Watching them requires suspending your sense of disbelief and seeing them for what they are; entertainment. I don't mind if a Victorian drama is riddled with inaccuracies as I'm not using it as a historical source.

As it goes, I can't recall a historical drama where the skin, makeup or teeth of the key characters was portrayed anything close to accuratelycas a romantic lead with a few rotting stumps in their head or a pox scarred heroine doesn't play well with viewers demand. I'm probably case guilty of this as anyone.

If you think you're learning history through period dramas then you've probably got bigger problems than Gemma Chan's ethnic origins.

There is some real hatred on this thread, which I think is a great shame

Where though? It’s a worthwhile discussion in the main. Honestly I’m so tired of seeing disagreement shut down as “hatred” it’s near constant.

Black soldiers came to Britannia with the Roman armies and settled. Groups of many races came to these islands through the centuries and settled.

In very small numbers - even relative to the size of the population then - and over a period of hundreds if not thousands of years.

DNA studies show that the genetic make-up of the British people has remained basically unchanged since the Ice Age. See Brian Sykes' "Blood of the Isles."

As it goes, I can't recall a historical drama where the skin, makeup or teeth of the key characters was portrayed anything close to accuratelycas a romantic lead with a few rotting stumps in their head or a pox scarred heroine doesn't play well with viewers demand. I'm probably case guilty of this as anyone.

I don’t think there’s much call dor “rotting stumps” in Edwardian or WW2 drama, say.

If you think you're learning history through period dramas then you've probably got bigger problems than Gemma Chan's ethnic origins.

You really need to do some reading on Public History and Public understanding of History.

Nice easy podcast here to start with;

www.history.ac.uk/podcasts/history-today-ihr-understanding-past-21st-century-lecture-series/historical-knowledge-and

You did read @FunkyKingston is a history lecturer right??!

You did read @FunkyKingston is a history lecturer right??!

Thats why i’m shocked. Guess what my training is.

Eh? Why on earth was my post deleted for saying 'I have no words'?

If you’re continually depicting black people in historical drams as having an equal status to white people, surely that is a dangerous re-writing of history. If people (including children) are continuously shown the past on film and tv and a happy multicultural place, that erases the fact that racism is (and was) a problem.

Or are we saying that there was no racism, then it came - when and why?

I think the way to do it is not to pretend the past was different, but to start telling different stories. There must be tons of interesting untold non-white stories out there. We need more of these on tv and films. We need to be seeing the true stories of black history, not pretending their stories were different.

What if Sophie Okonedo were cast as Elizabeth 1 in a biopic? She’s a brilliant actress & could play any role she set her mind to

But, there’s zero chance that a black woman could ever have been The Queen of England....so wouldn’t it be an absurd characterisation?

She was absolutely brilliant as Queen Margaret, Henry VI's wife.

Well I don't watch costume dramas and assume they are historically accurate, they rarely are for goodness sake.

I find the micro-aggressions on this thread very disturbing and make me wonder how far as a country we have truly come.

If you’re continually depicting black people in historical drams as having an equal status to white people, surely that is a dangerous re-writing of history. If people (including children) are continuously shown the past on film and tv and a happy multicultural place, that erases the fact that racism is (and was) a problem.

Yes, exactly, that’s the concern if you care what messages about history the audience are getting.

Same kind of issues in depicting the progress of Women’s rights and gay rights, although casting is less of the issue there, of course.

I think you're annoyed about the wrong thing

Predominantly this happens the other way around

In one of the 9/11 films Tom Cruise's cousin (a white man) was cast as the Angel Of 9/11 a military hero who saved hundreds from wreckage

Except, that man was black, and no one bothered to find out, they just assumed the heroic guy was white.

Today I saw Creed in which Tessa Thompson a black but hearing actress played a Deaf woman and I saw a trailer for a film in which Bryan Cranston plays a quadriplegic

These parts are extremely rarely if EVER offered to disabled actors and NO ONE gives a fuck about that

I speak as a disabled person.

Maybe Gemma Chan shouldn't be playing Bess Of Hardwicke but no, diversity has NOT gone "too far" it hasn't gone far enough.

FWIW Hamilton deliberately cast black actors as white people because black people never get to play those historical parts

It is the most successful stage show in American history.

What kind of movie is this?

If it sticks to historic facts, then having an actor who clearly doesn't look anything like the historic person would have looked does seem weird.

However, if it is as accurate as, say, the lastest film version of Pride&Prejudice, then I wouldn't mind, that sort of thing is more like theatre, anyway, and in theatre, women can be men, men can be women, women can be the mothers of men only ten years younger, and adult women can be ten year old boys.

I wish I could find it but a black female journalist wrote a brilliant article explaining why Idris Elba shouldn’t play Bond...basically all the reasons Elsie is giving.

Wait what, since when did James Bond actually exist?

I am quite sure that even if he did exist, he didn't do most of the stuff he does in the movies, so I don't see why it matters by whom he's played. (Well, okay, I wouldn't buy a female James Bond, but that's because of the misogyny. If you want Bond to be racist, then he has to be white, but if it is just supposed some enjoyable action nonsense and you just cut all the shitty behaviour, I don't see why it would matter.)

I am quite sure that even if he did exist, he didn't do most of the stuff he does in the movies, so I don't see why it matters by whom he's played.

Yes, i don’t understand the problem with a black Bond, either. I know Fleming made him an old Etonian and the books were set in the 40s/50s, but the films have always been set in the decade they were made and Bond of the films is not really the Bond of the books anyway.

"@Gwenhwyfar it was just to show @augusta2012 that national statistics aren't useful in this context. They were using them to decide how much representation PoC should get on tv, which I happen to think, is bollocks."

Yes, but I disagree with you. If you're going to argue that PoC are under-represented, how can you do that without using national statistics?
Or do it in a programme by programme basis for example so in EastEnders they may well be under-represented, but over-represented on Emmerdale, for example.

I don’t think there’s much call dor “rotting stumps” in Edwardian or WW2 drama, say

where did I specifically mention Ww2? I'd beg to differ (certainly in relation to the late c19th/e20th) most working class adults would have had significant tooth loss and decay. A cursory glance at the number of ww1 recruits rejected for poor dental health would have shown you that. Certainly not the perfect, evenly spaced pearly white smile that actors portraying them have.

Thats why i’m shocked. Guess what my training is.

Well ditto. See above.

Nice easy podcast here to start with

Please don't patronise me.

Especially as the discussion, interesting though it is, would appear to concern public history (historians communicating their research to wider audience beyond the academy) in factual programming, not dramas as is being discussed on this thread. Public history is valuable of communicating a sense of the past and what we do to a wider public and we should apply rigorous standards to that. Although a lot of this is narrative rather than analytical and at times is a poor reflection of what we do (but that's a separate thread).

A drama with a setting in the past isn't and shouldn't be held to the same standards and you underestimate the intelligence of the public if you think the viewing public are taking it as gospel.

Has anyone seen Hamilton in the West End or Broadway? Black George Washington, black Aaron Burr, the three Schuyler sisters played by a black actress, an Asian actress and a white actress. It works.

Please don't patronise me.

Well you need to read up.

A drama with a setting in the past isn't and shouldn't be held to the same standards and you underestimate the intelligence of the public if you think the viewing public are taking it as gospel.

There is a large body of Public History research into history knowledge amongst the general public and where they draw their information from. No need to ‘estimate’ or guess and not really much to do with their intelligence, either.