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.

Type casting (which is what you are advocating) is lazy casting. I don’t give a shot about how an actor looks. If they can’t act their looks won’t fool a discerning audience and if they can act them they will take the audience beyond their looks. I appreciate that most films and tv shows are populated by shit actors and most audiences are therefore reliant on type casting to carry a film but we should be aiming for better than an actor who just looks the part.

YABU OP - also suggest you avoid Hamilton!

Haven’t RTFT so someone else might have said this, but by OP’s argument all the cast of school nativity plays should be Middle Eastern adults.

and I continue more Films where the real life historical person was not White, yet the actor cast was of European White descent .

Film: “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (2014) is based on the biblical story of Moses and his defiance against Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses as he leads thousands of slaves out of Egypt. Moses is played by Christian Bale in the film.
Character’s Background: Moses, like Noah, hails from ancient Middle East. He eventually leads the enslaved Israelites to freedom.

Film: “The Conqueror” (1956) was a film that chronicled the rise of Genghis Khan - John Wayne played him.
Character’s Background: The emperor and legendary conqueror Genghis Khan was mongol, and born near the border of present-day Mongolia and Siberia.

Film: “Noah” (Russell Crowe ) (2014) is a retelling of the biblical story of a man chosen by God and entrusted with a mission as he purges the Earth with an apocalyptic flood.
Character’s Background: Noah, much like other biblical figures, is from somewhere in ancient Middle East. That means it’s unlikely that he was so fair-skinned.

Films: “Short Circuit” (1986) is a sci-fi franchise about an experimental robot that is struck by lighting and gains human-like intelligence.
Character’s Background: One of the robot’s inventors is Ben Jabituya, a scientist of Indian descent.
Actor’s Background: Fisher Stevens is not of Indian ancestry and essentially donned brownface for the role. For comparison, pictured above is real-life Nobel Prize-winning Indian scientist Har Gobind Khorana.

Film: “The House of Spirits” (1993) is a film based on Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s bestseller of the same name. It tells the story of a rancher, his wife and their family as they face turbulent times in Chile. In the film played by Meryl Streep!.
Character’s Background: Clara del Valle Trueba is a clairvoyant and the wife of said rancher. Much like all of the characters in the film and book, she is Chilean

There's been a White Man playing Jesus, for centuries..this is small-fry

She's buggered off, Taco. After a rant about the 'PC Brigade', whatever the hell that is.

Hello Augusta2012

No Vivian Cash was not of pure European ancestry. Sorry to tell you she had African-mixed ancestry. There is a one photo from later in her life which some say shows that she is white. I guess if you don’t have elderly multiracial friends or family (and ignore every other photo of her) you might think so but it is not convincing.

I know I'm a bit late to the thread but...until I saw her name on credits I didn't even know Gemma Chan wasn't white. It's like when naturally dark white actors are given Indian roles. Doesn't really matter.

I don't know op but I'm very excited a bess of Hardwick film is coming out!!

Yet in the 1960s Johnny Cash received a lot of abuse because of who his wife was/how she looked. This is all very well documented.

Interestingly, in the film, they portrayed his wife as some sort of villain, and even the film shows him leaving court alone and coming home to her censorious displeasure. It is shortly after this arrest that the chronology of the film shows them separating. Yet in real-life Vivian was there with him at the courthouse, and held his hand as they stepped out of the courthouse (photographs were printed in the newspapers). Yet in the movie the scene showed him coming out alone from the court.

Yet was after his drug arrest, and that newspaper photo, that he started to receive abuse from people in the South for having a black wife.

The story of Vivian Cash is fascinating. I’ve just fallen sown a rabbit hole reading about her;

nandor.net.nz/2017/07/17/black-is-an-invisible-colour/

She certainly looks as though she was of mixed heritage (She was putatively Italian American and registered officially as caucasian but i wonder if her maiden name is a clue to the truth).

Excellent flounce from WinterfellWench. Imagine being so racist that you think having PoC represented in adverts and TV shows is some kind of "box ticking exercise."

jophie why are you C&Ping chunks of that blog as though they're your own thoughts? If you’re the blog’s author then say so.

I know Mary’s mother was French
(Auld alliance and all that) however Mary is Scottish as she was born in Scotland. Why are posters trying to dispute this fact?

And no I am not suggesting that suddenly school nativity plays should be obsessed with the physical appearance of the characters and only cast little children who would actually look like the real biblical characters.

Instead, I am simply highlighting a flaw in your argument (for those uncomfortable with Gemma Chan), in that for hundreds of years Europeans have white-washed characters and re-created them in their image.

And some of us (who are darker skinned) to this day regularly have to look at films and deal with this issue of racial bias in film casting, towards one group of people.

So by that analogy, as an example - in the fresh prince of bel air reboot that’s rumoured, there would be absolutely no problem if they cast, say, Tom Holland as the main character if he was the best actor? No one would say anything? There’s be no uproar? Because the premise of the series has no basis in race. Any teenager can be a delinquent and get sent away.

@WinterfellWench I suggest you do a little research there is plenty of evidence to show that PoC have been in the UK since before the Tudor’s. In fact there is a book called black tudors which tells you a little about a few real black tudors.

@charlestonchaplin genetics work in odd ways. I have a friend who is black and her husband is white. One of her children is white with blue eyes/blond hair and one looks traditionally mixed race. She hates it when people stare at her when they are out presumably trying to work out if the child is hers. A cousin of a girl I grew up with had two black parents but she was very pale with red hair.

@MiseryLoves As PPs have said repeatedly- casting a BAME actor in a white part is fine because there are loads of white parts that white actors can go for. Casting a white actor as a BAME part is not fine because it's taking a rare BAME role away from a BAME actor. It's really not hard to understand.

All I want to say is that I don't believe that human races exist, because there is no scientific evidence for the existence of races...
Races are a made-up label --- a social construct created by white supremecists for the sole purpose of creating an outgroup/s in society, that outgroup was traditionally cast as inferior and was discriminated, enslaved by the group who considered themselves superior....

But @peachgreen the fresh prince of bel air isn’t a ‘black’ part, is it? Same as, idk, nick fury in the marvel universe is white in the comics but played by a black actor on screen.

MLK and Malcolm x are ‘black’ parts
Queen Elizabeth and Eminem are white parts.

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air absolutely is a Black role. The programme as a whole sensitively and effectively tackled issues around race and racism. Totally inappropriate to cast a white actor.

As a fictional character where race has no bearing, Nick Fury could be any race and it's great that the part went to a Black actor. Future adaptations might cast a white actor and that would be fine. But it wouldn't be fine to cast a white actor as a character who was created as Black because Black actors don't get the same number of opportunities as white actors do.

Peachgreen Do you think Bess of Hardwick is a PoC role or not?

Title of this thread is

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

it seems to me, some people are uncomfortable with the idea of more diversity (and therefore less fixation about races in films and tv). Because they believe we have to keep diversity in check, for fear it might get out of control.