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.

This is a good critical read on The Last Samurai if interested: https://historicalhistrionics.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/the-last-samurai/

I feel this ☝️☝️ (and Americanizing a film, as you say) is highly related to colour blind casting: many PP in this post are calling out "historical accuracy" and "people's story" and being the "fashion" as a reason against inclusive casting. As well as "diversity of story".

There are many chances for Hollywood to change (e.g. in the case of the Last Samurai, the film makers could have gone against fashion, been more historically accurate, better portrayed the true people's story, told a truely diverse story), but they didn't - and no one cares, unless the film industry is changing to be more diverse and inclusive (I.e., casting a Black actor in a lead role), and then someone starts a mumsnet post to complain.

POC existed historically.

It's true. We really really did.

The focus on period drama in tne UK means that historically a lot of talented British BAME actors have suffered from lack of lead and high profile parts and have been forced to go to the US to develop their careers (Idris Elba, David Harewood, Parminder Nagra, Marianne Jean Baptiste etc.. ). So the shift to using more BAME actors on period/historic dramas is a good thing (although we also need more quality contemporary drama with lead BAME characters).

Colour blind casting can work really well - see Armando Inanucci's version of Great Expectations. The race of any of the actors was not mentioned or an issue - they were just the best actors for the part, the fact some weren't white was merely incidental.

You either do that or you include explictly BAME characters and their race is mentioned and accurately contextualised in the time and place - as people have said Harlots and the recent adaption of Murder is Easy did this well.

Where it can fall down is where an uneasy third way is trodden and as people say can give an in accurate picture of the real prejudices and struggles BAME people in the UK faced. For example with Wicked Little Letters it would seem very odd that the residents of a conservative seaside town in the 30s would be (accurately) prejudiced against a female police officer but not mention the fact she isn't white.

Tom Cruise’s character in The Last Samurai is a white American who trains the Imperial Japanese Army.

Without colour blind casting, how should non-white actors get jobs? Yes, there could be more shows about non-white people, but there aren’t.

In the meantime, do you think it’s fair they should be excluded from many roles?

And for people complaining about the unfairness of white actors not being allowed to play non-white roles, this is probably because there are many many other white roles for them to choose from. There is not the same problem of lack of roles.

Of course acting is by nature a difficult profession to get roles in, but if it can be made fairer, why would we not wish to be so? My brain can cope with the perceived cognitive dissonance, so I can’t see why we can’t all be more open-minded about this.

Doesn't bother me one bit and unless there's a discussion.it's only reading this thread that I even thought about the police lady in Wicked Little Letters .
I'm more bothered about the depressing fact that the 2 men aiming to be the next US president are old white men. Or that ITV think the best replacements for the last main presenters of This Morning are Ben Shepherd and Cat Deeley, as much as I like both presenters I was shocked that ITV didn't use the time to introduce more diversity it's the 21st Century and we are nearly a quarter of the way through it. Move on.

In Eastenders it’s even more unbelievable that the long standing characters haven’t sold up, pocketed the £1.5m or so from their property and moved away to somewhere where there isnt a murder every Christmas.

I think if you don't want to watch certain adaptations then don't, but I don't want every period drama to be produced to your standards.

I'm happy with a wide range of casting approaches, main thing for me is the quality is good.

I find such casting can be distracting because racism is real and if a character in a film is black I will assume that other characters in the film will be reacting to them as a POC. So if Anne Boleyn was black, she would be treated differently (ie worse) than if she were white, so I would be interpreting the story that way.

Another point is the confusion can go both ways. I watched a tv drama about women in the SOE in France in WW2. I had completely failed to realise that the character played by an actress of Asian heritage wasn’t colour blind casting. I wrongly assumed that there was no way they would have risked someone of that heritage trying to work undercover in Nazi occupied France. Noor Inayat Khan was such a wonderful brave woman.

It’s make believe, I love the costumes of period pieces etc but I do not think it is a realistic representation of the time. I love what Bridgeton managed to do.

It is not the skin colour, it is the skin colour in the wrong place, time or job that I find difficult. It detracts from your immersion in the story they are telling and yes I do find it difficult to accept. Casting should be truthful and I think many times it has nothing to do with who is best for the part but rather a tick box exercise to meet some criteria which in my view makes it worse i.e. chosen for your skin colour rather that the innate you, your skill, experience etc. On a side note I live in the rural north west and I do not think many understand how few people of colour live up here so maybe we notice it more because it is not our day to day experience.

I do have to point out the nativity plays in schools everywhere where the whole cast is white.so much of history is whitewashed it seems a positive move to me to change this.maybe you are distracted by colour but do you get annoyed watching something where Jesus is white for example? A nice away from whitewashing is a positive move id say.
Also what about gender,does that distract too?surely it's not too confusing.

I sort of understand what you mean OP - in wicked little letters, for example, the judge / magistrate is a black man - my friend tapped me on the shoulder during the film and asked if that was likely at the time. In all honesty, no, the first black magistrate was a man in the 1960s, not sure about the first judge but I would assume after that time.

anyway, in that respect the colour blind casting meant that we were both temporarily knocked out’ of the film’s ‘world’ so to speak.

it is good that non-white actors get the chance to play more roles though. And for many shows it really doesn’t matter, but when something is very anachronistic then it does mean that you lose the immersion a bit.

Height…teeth….hair colour…..eye colour…..age……. No one seems too bothered when those things aren’t historically accurate.
I did like the change to the background of the detective’s character in Murder Is Easy though, it added to the original story imo.
Agree that more dramas should be commissioned that reflect the real history of the UK in particular - it certainly isn’t all White as usually portrayed.

Actually black people have been in the UK since Roman times so black people in a period drama could be historically accurate.

We won't truly have colour blind casting until it's truly colour blind. That means any colour in any part. For me there's something almost patronising about the current trend for inserting black actors, and only black actors, into the most unlikely roles. It's like patting them on the head and giving them extra toys to play with to try to make up for them not being treated well in the past. You can't make reparation this way.

At the moment it all feels uncomfortable and strange. Queen Charlotte (ie a real person) being played by a black woman with no comment or alteration to historical facts would be colour blind. Queen Charlotte being played by a black woman, with an awkward plot that has the palace giving away titles and whole estates and trying to integrate two sides of society - black and white - is just ridiculous. Like the ball scene with black on one side of the floor and white on the other - never happened and there are people out there who are gullible enough to think it did. Either produce a historical drama based around known history, or make up a completely new story to support the alternative plot and don't pretend it's a story about real people who led well documented lives.

Absolutely this. There was huge applause from everyone when the new West Side Story used actors of the correct ethnicity (unlike the original version) but non white actors playing real white people is OK.

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 do a lot of work in schools, and attend a lot of nativity plays. The cast in them tends to reflect the racial profile of the school just fine these days. I've seen plenty of black baby dolls in the manger too😂.

I mean that's technically correct but I think before Windrush the average % of non-white people in the UK was similar to the % of Zoroastrians who are present today.

Have you ever met a Zoroastrian? Maybe you have but probably not, so the idea of peppering period dramas with non-white actors is a bit silly tbh.

I actually think context here is key to the production. Sometimes an actors skin colour gives important information about their role in the production.

For example one of the reasons the world of Game of Thrones felt so realistic (apart for the dragons obvs) was because the casting was done in such a way that it was consistent, so everyone from the North was white, those from the West were blonde and aryan looking, the southerners were olive skinned and those from the summer islands were black. When Dany went east she met a more mixed racial group which was consistent with that areas history.

It made it very easy to see who was from where, what their motivations were and added a realistic grounding to the casting.

Compare that to something like the Rings of Power, or Witcher series where race seems randomly assigned and it leads every single place to feel like everyone there place and detracts somewhat from the overall theme.

Yes, especially in murder mysteries when everything is a potential clue to who’s the killer, and you’re racing to work it out before it’s revealed!

This is another great point. The fact it only seems to apply to non-white actors feels slightly condescending. Like it's some kind of a 'reward' for them. 🙄

I do find it jarring when member of the same family are different ethnicities as I find that unrealistic.

There must be some historical figures who can't be colour blind cast though. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King spring to mind. Their race is integral to their story.

I agree with your comments about Queen Charlotte. I suspect it was done in order to highlight the issue of racism but the way it was done seemed, to me, to be divisive. It almost seemed to suggest that there was good reasons for there to be such a divide between black and white and they needed some kind of "saviour" character to come in and make them all play nicely together. It seemed very badly done and had undertones of actual racism ie suggesting there was inherently a big difference between the black people and white people that needed "fixing" or "overcoming".