Colour Blind casting

[ThinWomansBrain]

I know any statement that starts "I'm not racist but..." is usually exactly that, but I find colour blind casting in period drama really distracting.
I've seen two films and a play in the last week where it's been really off - why go to all of the effort of period costume and make up, and then have really implausible actors?

Wicked little letters - first Asian police woman was 1970s. not 1920s
National Theatre production - 1930s play - white couple with an inexplicably Asian Child
Catherine Booth (co founder of Salvation Army) was not black

It's particularly jarring when they are supposed to be portraying real characters.

In contrast, I saw some contemporary dance/theatre this evening, I don't even race or gender of most of the dancers.

Maybe when it comes to period drama and similar adaptations Hollywood & Co should move away from European history or more specific Victorian England backgrounds.

Take a look at stories that naturally feature non white characters. There must be 1000's of stories out there that are worthy of our attention and could be easily told through film. (Like it was done with King Richard or Black Cake)

Instead we get yet another film about Napoleon, or the 3 Marketeers... and dare I say it, isn't it time for another Robin Hood?

I think as an industry, there is a real luck of imagination and a desperate clinging to the old ways. Colour blind casting is lazy and unimaginative. A real shame on an industry that is supposed to be creative.
Runt over.

Take back what?

You said

'How can Snow White 'lips as red as rose, skin as white as snow', be played in any way convincingly by a black girl?!'

When it was pointed out that a black haired albino would be able to fit the criteria you pivoted to 'lighter skinned...'.

You are arguing for a position which denies Black actors roles that it would be reasonable for them act well in because you can only see a certain type of white person in it. You essentially what black actors to no they have no business in those roles. If that isn't know your place I don't know what is.

You said a bit more, IMO, disingenuous, goady shit and finished up by slating the latest Lord of the Rings adaptation for it's lazy tick boxing.

'Lenny Henry as a hobbit, in the same small tribe as a south east Asian looking hobbit for example...'.

Have you been to the Caribbean? In Jamaica there are there are White Jamaicans, Jewish Jamaicans and South East Asian Jamaicans along with Black people who descend from a whole host of different African countries. (You do know that Africa is not one country, don't you?). The motto of the island is 'Out of Many One People' based on its multicultural roots. This multicultural mixing pot of a population is evident across the Caribbean.

There is good faith on this thread but I haven't seen you demonstrate it.

*you essentially want Black actors to know

Eh? Are you seriously comparing Tolkienesque literature written a hundred years ago and based on early Saxon, Scandinavian and Germanic folklore, to a modern multicultural Carribbean society? And saying because the modern version exists, we should be able to represent any society we like composed in any way? 🤷‍♂️

Have you seen the latest Shogun series that's just dropped? A story of feudal Japan. Do you think it would be reasonable to cast black people and native Americans in it because those kind of mixed societies exist nowadays? If not why not?

And you think I'm talking in bad faith?

I think it's the right statistic. The awards are a proxy for the quality of the roles.

Your argument is similar to saying: we don't want to look at the % of women CEOs, we just need to look at the % of the whole workforce who are women.

There aren't enough high quality lead roles for POC. It's getting better, but we aren't there yet. The best roles tend to be written for white people, the evidence for this is the winners of Best Actor and Actress.

Very similar to how women at work tend to be in lower paid roles, even though we might make up 50% of the workforce. We're underrepresented at the highest levels.

Is colour-blind casting a perfect solution? No. But I support it because it's an effective way of increasing acting opportunities for POC, which is an important issue to me. Why shouldn't an artist screenwriter be able to say about their own art and creation: "allow everyone to audition for this role". I support this choice for screenwriters, producers etc.

It was sarcasm. The view that only black actors 'benefit' from these guilty, weak attempts to level up is ridiculous.

As soon as I watched Wicked Little Letters I knew there would be a thread. FWIW I thought Anjana Vasan was absolutely brilliant and her eye rolls were hilarious.

To an extent yes. That is why it is called art, and why acting is a craft. It is supposed to evolve, a bit like humans are supposed to. If your imagination stops when you sees skin colour...

So what if it was written a hundred years ago and based on folklore? It's fiction.

I mean the Lord of The Rings is made up elf shit. They can cast whatever colour people they like in any role

And I think this is where you have you mistaken me and others on this thread.

Nobody is saying people shouldn't be allowed to cast like that. Just that it's usually not a great idea.

As I said about Rings of Power. It was absolutely slated when it came out and is seen as one of the biggest bombs of streaming TV history. There are a number of reasons for that (bad writing, unlikable characters) but the frankly bizarre casting decisions that led to nearly every scene being jarring and incongruous in the extreme.

So by all means cast any TV show or movie any way you like, I hope you make some money, I just don't think you will and I certainly wouldn't do it if I were a screenwriter.

That's not so black people 'know their place' as you put it earlier.

By all means let's create more opportunities for everyone, there are plenty of stories to be told. Like I said, one of the weirdest things about Rings of Power is that there actually is plenty of opportunity to have really good, consistent roles for non-white people in the original Tolkien manuscripts in a way that would have made sense and added much needed depth to the stories.

Instead the show runners bizzarly decided to just go colour blind and throw in a few black dwarfs and hobbits. 🙄

Lunacy, box office suicide and actually a really lazy and borderline condescending way of ticking a 'diversity' box without actually having to make any effort to support your non-white actors or set them up for success.

I'm guessing youre not a fan, so I'll hold off on taking your opinion tbh. 🙄

I am generally fine with it- programmes like Bridgerton are not based on reality so I like the fact that there is a diverse cast.

I did go and see Frozen and a little black girl was playing young anna And then grown up white Anna appeared which did confuse my daughter a bit at first because they looked so different. Both little Anna and older anna were fantastic actors. They just looked nothing alike

I saw the trailer for Wicked Little Letters and when I saw the blatant 'Woke' casting like the Asian police woman - I just didn't want to see the film after that and I feel a lot of people feel the same. And having a different race child from the parents with no explanation makes me sigh 'Not Again'...

@ColonelDax well no, as I said made up elf shit. But seeing as dwarves aren't real why are you so certain they shouldn't be black?

Happy with my conclusions, also happy to change them when information comes along to suggest that I should. You can write as eloquently as you like about how some views (yours and the other posters you mentioned) on this thread have been misunderstood. You can't polish a turd, is my view.

"Minority actors/actresses need to have more high-profile roles available to them."

totally agree. I'm currently reading a series of 4 novels by Vaseem Khan about the first female police officer in Mumbai set in the period just after Partition. They are not only v enjoyable, but they portray the role of women in that period as well as the fallout from Independence and WWII. They would make a fantastic TV series, and would provide lots of parts for both Asian and white actors. This is the kind of thing I'd like to see more of.

Well then your prejudice has made you miss a gem of a film.

These are the novels, if anyone's interested.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/315544-malabar-house

GiggleHoot
Because we are living in a dystopian nightmare, foretold in 1984. We’re learning to shut our mouths but one day the tide will turn.

I can only hope!!

Agree. The Tudors is widely taught in schools, I don’t think having her played by a black actress is helpful. Otherwise, I couldn’t really care less, but yes, as another pp said, you can’t use a white actress to play Mulan.

Representation is important, and there are talented actors of all ethnicities that need work. When I was growing up, there were no heroines on screen who looked like me or my mum or aunties.

However, now that there are some - which is great and much needed- I often find myself thinking "Oh great, I wonder what her back story is and if her experience is similar to my mum as an immigrant in 70s England", only to find that her ethnicity is completely irrelevant to the character or plot. Then I feel like a bad modern viewer, because of course I should have looked past her race to begin with! So it's a bit jarring.

I think there's a more fundamental problem that pp have touched on, which is that filmmakers seem to tell mostly white-focused stories. I'd love to see programmes set within different communities. I think and hope this is changing, slowly.

Do you think it would be ok to have white people representing indigenous black people in films based in Africa?

Novel idea but maybe if TV and Film companies made more output about black British peoples experiences, including historical experiences - then black actors would have more choice of roles. As long as they keep making bloody programs about The Tudors (enough already) then colour blind casting opens up opportunities to none white actors - which is fair enough.

Given up to 1950s less than 0.5% of the UK population was black there is clearly less opportunity for black actors in UK historic dramas. Is it ‘fair enough’ to misrepresent European history? Does the same hold true for other cultures?

I have a huge problem with colour blind casting for two reasons.

Firstly, it denies the lived reality of being a person of colour. No, a person of colour would not have been part of the aristocracy in Regency England. No, a person of colour would not have been a policewoman in 1920s Britain. No, a person of colour would not have been Prime Minister in the nineteenth century. Pretending this would be the case denies the reality of historical racism and essentially pretends that society has always been fair, equal and multicultural. It also removes the ability for people of colour to represent the reality of their own histories and ancestors in these eras. Many people of colour in the arts are starting to push back against colour blind casting for this reason.

Secondly, people aren't colour blind. We see colour. We make connections and assumptions based on what we're seeing. We know two white people can't give birth to an Asian child. So in a film where there is an Asian child living with white parents, I'm going to be assuming adoption has taken place. If that's not the case and I'm expected to believe this Asian child is the natural genetic child of two white people, it's going to be hugely jarring and impact on my ability to believe the story. If you want to cast an Asian child in a role with two white actors as parents, then you need to make it believable - that child being adopted needs to be part of the story. Otherwise you're once again denying the reality of race.

The real issue that needs tackling is the White Eurocentric focus of much of the entertainment industry. We need to be telling more multicultural stories and histories that allow people to play roles that are authentic to their racial background. Actors of colour shouldn't be essentially forced to play a white person. That's what colour blind casting really asks them to do and a lot of well-meaning people seem to think that's ok, when it really isn't. We wouldn't be ok with a white person playing a slave in 19th century America, would we?