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.

Do you feel the same about hair colour?

Doesn’t bother me in the slightest.. as long as the actor is good, and portrays the character well, so what.

Art and Artistic Licence, I doubt there is any historical film or biopic, that doesn’t distort names, characters, and dates, to create a more compelling story. These aren’t documentaries people are producing.

I saw a production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe at Christmas where all the Pevenseys were Black. It made absolutely no difference to the story.

However, my issue with colour blind casting in some circumstances (mainly history based shows) is that it potentially leads people to ignore/forget about/be unaware of historical race based oppression.

There should be more historical shows about people from an ethnic minority background created. Harlots showed how to do great job showing how Black people lived in London in Georgian times.

I've just thought of last Christmas' Agatha Christie. That was a great way to have a Black lead, in a historical setting, properly contextualised. Incidentally, the lead actor, David Johnson, is not a fan of colour blind casting

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/david-jonsson-murder-is-easy-bbc-b2466425.html

I went to see Les Mis at Southampton when they were touring. The child playing the young version of Cosette was white. The woman playing the adult version of Cosette half an hour later was black. It was really strange.

Goodness you must have been horrified for decades by virtually every drama that inaccurately depicted every part of England as exclusively white over every historical period. I’ll just have a look for all the threads you started on being distracted by that total lack of accuracy………

Oh.

Some things it's fine. I loved Hamilton and Bridgerton but there was an explanation for all the colour blind casting. Hamilton, although based on historical facts, is a musical so you do suspend some level of accuracy as no one sings and dances through life and Bridgerton, is just fantasy in a way, an exploration of what it could have been like if Ethnic minorities were accepted as equals right from the start.

But it does annoy me in films and tv where it's supposed to be a dramatic representation in a specific time and place.
I wouldn't like to see Asians and Black characters represented by different races. It's just confusing if there are suddenly ethnic minority in an everyday role when it just wasn't normal.
A film about the British in India or South Africa during apartheid would be a total mess with colour blind casting.

This doesnt bother me. Would you want actors from an ethnic minority to not have many acting opportunities because they were the wrong colour? I wouldn't.

Yes. They must have been furious about Jesus being depicted with blue eyes by Robert Powell...

I don’t have a problem with it, unless they’re misrepresenting an actual historical person. I think Netflix was sued for casting a non-Greek person as Cleopatra?

Stop focusing on the colour of skin &pay attention to what really matters

I watched a film recently having read the book first. The lead character in the book was an icy blonde yet in the film she was dark haired and different body type. That was annoying.

But white people play people of colour all the time and no one notices/cares

Ghost in the Shell : Scarle Johansson
The last Samurai: Tom Cruise
Exodus God's and Kings: Christian Bale

There's a whole article about it here...

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/26-times-white-actors-played-people-of-color-and-no-one-really-gave-a-sht_n_56cf57e2e4b0bf0dab313ffc

I agree. It doesn't work. It just feels like a point is being made.

They could be in period dramas. Black people still existed and there were even black people in Britain. But we know that specific people were not black. Anne Boleyn wasn't black. Do we need another production about the Tudors, especially the same tale of Henry VIII's various marriages, rather than a story of Mary I's fight for the throne or Kett's rebellion? If the aim is for greater diversity of casting, why not also a greater diversity of story?

I don't want an Indian Catherine the Great or a black Mao Zedong. I suppose 'Thermae Romae' has Japanese Ancient Romans, but then it's a Japanese production only and they're all Japanese, not this individual basis.

I totally get what you mean.🙄Accuracy is everything. It really pisses me off when I see period dramas where you have actors from working class backgrounds playing the middle/ upper classes and royalty. It's also deeply offensive to show women having agency because that just not how it was.

Well done for starting this thread, I am always grateful when people like you, IMO, show their true colours. Its good to be able to put a name to the mindset.

There has been colour blind casting in the theatre for years, it's just become the fashion in cinema and TV so more people are being exposed to it. I think there are positives and negatives.

Firstly, as some people have already said, it can mean the past sometimes appears less racist than it actually was.

Secondly, the reality is that there have been black people in Britain for millennia. So why cast a black actress as Anne Boleyn in yet another drama about Henry VIII and his wives? Why not make a totally new and more realistic story about the thousands of black people we knew were in Tudor London, including e.g. named black musicians in Henry VIII court. Or a drama about one of the powerful black royalfamilies in Africa at the time (to be fair, I think these kind of stories are now being told in the US and in some African countries)? And why is it that Woman in White has been on TV so many times yet Armadale (also written by Wilkie Collins) which has a mixed race lead character has never been dramatised?

On the other hand, done well, deliberately changing the race of a character can make you think more about the character's motivations. And clearly it's beneficial to have more options for black and asian actors

And @WithACatLikeTread.

It doesn't work and must be stopped! I find it outrageous.

I really enjoyed 'Bridgerton'.

I thought Golda Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte, Adjoa Andoh as Lady Agatha Danbury and Rege-Jean Page as Simon Bassett were all fantastic in their roles.

I never thought that they should not be playing these particular characters.

I don’t care broadly speaking but having Jodie Turner-Smith play Anne Boleyn was ridiculous.

I reminds me of when it was the fashion to say that you don’t see peoples colour. Then it was pointed out that was pretty racist, and untrue. People’s race is part of their story, and when you get things like historical interracial relationships being portrayed as widely accepted it becomes misleading.

If TV casting is racially inaccurate, I usually pretend it's set in an alternate reality version of the time period and that removes the dissonance. To be fair though, there would always be some dissonance anyway -- everyone with perfect teeth, no smallpox scars, no rickets, costumes and hairstyles that reflect the decade it was filmed in (this is a plea for female characters to have more authentic Victorian / Edwardian hair). I can't imagine putting a b+w filter over most stills and finding them indistinguishable from photographs of the era.

For stage productions you have to suspend disbelief anyway, so I've never had any issue with those.

However, I think producers should be allowed to cast the way they see fit. If they want to go for accurate casting that should be their right, and the same for inclusive casting. Some creative visions will be for an immersive and authentic experience (as much as possible), while others will focus more on a powerful emotional experience. Same with what different viewers are interested in. I understand both perspectives and enjoy different stories on different merits.

Also, tiny nitpick, but Tom Cruise played a white character in the Last Samurai. Whether it was a good call to Americentricise a film about Japan is a different question.

I'm intrigued why 'Jew-face' is still acceptable. Bradley Cooper as Bernstein, Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer, Helen Mirren as Golda Meyer but no one bats an eyelid. There's definitely some inconsistencies on what's un/acceptable out there at the moment.

Also, tiny nitpick, but Tom Cruise played a white character in the Last Samurai.

My bad. Pick one of the 25 examples on the (not comprehensive) list I shared.

I think it's great. I love the diversity and it's so good to see more people represented. Wicked Little Letters, it made absolutely no difference that she had a darker skin colour? I mean, is that what you base it on? Skin colour. They ar all actors, pretending to be someone else. It really doesn't matter what skin tone you have, in my opinion.