The Witcher on Netflix 2: Man of steel and silver

[SweetPea]

52 minutes ago, Week said:

It's fucking skin pigmentation. It's rare for Nilfgaardians to have red hair -- how important is the color of their hair? Would too many red-haired Nilfgaardians ruin the story? Of course not. How is hair color any different from skin color?

Let's give Geralt blue hair while we're at it, it's just hair color after all. Who cares if it ruins the immersion and doesn't fit in the world.

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'Race' is a social construct in the real world and does not need to be carried into fantasy worlds. 

Hard to argue with you when you have such a superficial understanding of race, but this is getting very off-topic and I'd rather not go into it.

[Week]

Just now, SweetPea said:

Let's give Geralt blue hair while we're at it, it's just hair color after all. Who cares if it ruins the immersion and doesn't fit in the world.

The first sentence is an example where the color of his hair is not arbitrary. The inability to recognize the difference between that example and saying skin colored black "doesn't fit in the world" of dwarves, elves, halflings and monsters should be embarrassing for you. -- THERE CAN BE NO SKIN DARKER THAN WHITE.  

Just now, SweetPea said:

Hard to argue with you when you have such a superficial understanding of race, but this is getting very off-topic and I'd rather not go into it.

lol. It's pretty clear who has a facile working knowledge of race.

[mormont]

3 hours ago, SweetPea said:

You misunderstood me.

I think we all understand you, very clearly.

Which is really the end of the conversation as far as I'm concerned.

[Ran]

2 hours ago, SweetPea said:

Because we have a pretty good image of her from the books, and black people are nowhere to be found in the Witcher universe.

I don't really know much about the setting, haven't read the books or played the games as of yet, but was curious and Googled and apparently you are wrong. There is one, explicitly black character, and one possibly black character, both hailing from "overseas". 

[Werthead]

18 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The thing to do early in the season would be to have a CGI shot of Yen being a butt ugly 90-something year old who switched off her glamour for some reason, and then with a swish and a flick, she puts her young and pretty gameface on. Done. Now Geralt isn't some cradle robbing creep, he's an unwitting (or willfully ignorant?) geriatrophile.

I do wonder why any sorceress of any age or [lack of] beauty would want to facilitate a man's inner pedophile by putting a teenage glamour on themselves. Early 20's is OK, might still raise eyebrows, but there's no ickyness to it.

Geralt is considerably older than he looks as well (I think he's about 100 or so in the books), so they're actually about the same age.

As for the age-masking thing, most sorceresses IIRC make themselves look 25-ish (like Triss in the games) or up to 30-odd (like Yennefer in the games), mixing youth with just enough experience to be respected. Book-Yenn deliberately made herself look younger because she was deformed (a spinal defect) and wanted to recapture that lost innocence. I mean, whether that's just Sapkowski being weird and making an excuse for it I don't know, but that's the explanation in the books.

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Maybe she's in her early twenties for reals

The actress is 22. At different points in the books, I believe, Yennefer is said to look 20 and 16, so it's really not that big a problem from a book-lore point of view.

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It's acceptable to have actors who are the wrong age, have the wrong hair and eye colour, the wrong build, the wrong facial features. But if they happen to be the wrong race, that's when suddenly the description in the book is a fundamental from which one cannot deviate without ruining everything.

I recall almost no problem whatsoever with casting Frodo way younger than they should have had in the LotR movies (by human standards, Frodo should have been somewhere between 30 and 45; Elijah Wood was 18 when they started filming), but having Arwen replace Glorfindel at the Fords of Bruinen (about five minutes out of the film and absolutely nothing of consequence to the plot whatsoever) was like Satan taking everyone's copy of the book and weeing on it. That was, er, interesting.
 

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I agree a hundred percent with everything you said, and I know I have a particular bias. As much as I love the books, I love the games too. When I heard this series was being made, I thought of Geralt as he is visually portrayed in the games. I know that's unrealistic (I mean this was never going to be animated). But I think this is the trouble this series in particular has--a very visual, recognizable set of characters. Unlike GOT which had characters that varied in our heads. I mean, I was far less disappointed when Robert Baratheon didn't have black hair versus Cavill in place of the Geralt in the game, his voice actor, etc.

It's worth noting again that Netflix did not pay CDPR a licence to adapt the games or use the games' visual style for the show. In fact, the TV series will have to deliberately avoid doing anything that looks like it treads on CDPR's toes. Netflix's Kaer Morhen cannot look remotely anything like the game's Kaer Morhen, the cities have to look different, the costumes have to be different, Geralt's medallion can't be the same design etc. If they do anything that looks like it came from the games, CDPR can sue them.

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But to cast a black woman in the Witcher world that didn't have any black characters at all? And make the lore changes necessariy to explain it?

The Witcher's lore has always been a bit spotty (a masterpiece of worldbuilding like WoT, Malazan or ASoIaF, The Witcher most definitely is not). Humans in the Witcher world are us, basically. Earth is destroyed by the usual suspects (climate change/nuclear war) and a few thousand humans fleet to the Witcher world via a magical portal. All the Earth's ethnicities and groups would be intermingled and arrive together. Given this isn't a massive amount of time in the past (just over a thousand years), it was always illogical that complete and total homogenisation of the races would have taken place so quickly.

Furthermore, the Continent is a pretty big place. If we accept that, I don't know, Redania is on the latitude of Poland then you don't have to go too far south before you're in the equivalent of Egypt (somewhere south of Toussaint, in northern Nilfgaard proper), so it was always illogical that the Nilfgaardians were presented as primarily a white race (although some of their more distant conquests were not so portrayed).

Even if you use the historical inspiration for the setting, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the complete whiteness of everything is ahistorical and blinkered. Eastern Europe was half-conquered by the Ottoman Empire, who cheerfully traded at large with the rest of the continent extensively.

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Don't tell me that they couldn't find a single white actress to play a minor role like that.

As far as I can tell, quite a few people complaining vehemently about the casting of Fringilla barely have any idea who she is (she's in two of the books fairly briefly and in the third game even more briefly). She's also from Toussaint, one of the more southerly lands on the Continent (comparable to the south of France/Spain), leaving plenty of scope for her or her ancestry to have come from elsewhere

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black people are nowhere to be found in the Witcher universe

Apart from the entire populations of Zerrikania and Hakland, and the main villain of The Witcher video game, and several characters in Hearts of Stone and two characters in The Hexer TV series, of course, plus the characters in the books Ran mentioned.

Probably not a great idea to start talking details about a franchise like an expert when you are really not that familiar with it in the first place.

[3CityApache]

 

27 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Geralt is considerably older than he looks as well (I think he's about 100 or so in the books), so they're actually about the same age.

Wert, Geralt's age as about 100 is only considered in the games. In books it was never specified, but Sapkowski used to say in interviews, that he was "above fifty" in the time of Baptism of Fire.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

4 hours ago, SweetPea said:

"You literally sound like you're saying" = "I know that's not what you're saying but I'm gonna intentionally misinterpret it anyway"

You said minorities can't take part in cultural moments and a predominantly white cast alienates them. You said they can't identify witch characters of different races. I think that is nonsense. I can easily enjoy works of entertainment dominated by characters of a different race or sex, and it doesn't alienate me at all. I can easily identify with characters of a different race or sex. If you can't, the problem might be with you. 

You misunderstood me. I think generally an actor shouldn't be cast for a role that was written for a different race. Especially for a role in a universe where that particular race is not even featured.

If the race is irrelevant for a character, I'm fine with an actor of any race, as long as it's plausible and fits the world.

I'm sure the books would have been an enjoyable read if the author wasted words on pointing out the race of every single character. This is such a silly argument I'm amazed people still use it.

But you fail to understand that this is the definition of privilege: having everyone and everything look white--and yet that these oh-so-open minded people can step away from white representation (which they've had their entire lives) and live with brief moments of non-white representation is not the same as someone living his/her life with NO representation. They don't get that choice of "oh, I can step into the white world," unless they step outside of the culture of the United States. A young, queer boy/girl may have gone their entire lives without seeing someone they identify with featured in popular books, movies, media, leadership positions, and everything else. Your arguments are the same as when teachers try to expand the literary canon: "Why can't we just keep the traditional books?" 

The Witcher is a fictional universe where we can begin changing this terrible reality. Fringilla could be literally of any race or ethnicity, and it changes absolutely nothing. Well, I guess you suddenly feel like you're on the outside looking in. Imagine feeling this way with every piece of storytelling that exists in your society. Politically correct is accommodating your worldview. Addressing issues of structural racism are the opposite thing. I think if you have a thought about race/gender/class, most likely if you reverse your thought into the opposite notion, you'll be closer to saying okay things.

[SweetPea]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

I don't really know much about the setting, haven't read the books or played the games as of yet, but was curious and Googled and apparently you are wrong. There is one, explicitly black character, and one possibly black character, both hailing from "overseas". 

You are correct, my statement that there are no black characters at all was wrong. I maintain my position however, and still think that a single hint in all the books at an off-screen character is much different than a sorceress with a prominent role in society. It's going to require changes to explain, probably by the introduction of people from a distant land, like they did in the games.

And I suspect I'm not alone in telling you that if you haven't yet read the books, you really should, you're missing out.

56 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Apart from the entire populations of Zerrikania and Hakland, and the main villain of The Witcher video game, and several characters in Hearts of Stone and two characters in The Hexer TV series, of course, plus the characters in the books Ran mentioned.

Probably not a great idea to start talking details about a franchise like an expert when you are really not that familiar with it in the first place.

I'm only talking about the books, the rest is irrelevant. And as far as I know, Zerrikanians aren't black in the books, unless I missed something.

[Week]

Skin tone. You're talking about skin tone. The requirement that there be a retcon or new culture for THE COLOR of skin is YOUR requirement. Black characters do not require any different society, culture, language, race, etc in this FANTASY LAND. 

[Zorral]

I just wanna know where are the Turks!!!!!!! this fantasy world that harks to medieval and Renaissance era middle and eastern Europe is chock a block with Turks.  And Mongols.  And Jews. And Africans.  And all kinds of people of color because, you know, the Turkish Empire, the early Polish Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and all along, the Holy Roman Empire.  All of which had armies and slaves of every kind of person of every color.  As mentioned in the previous thread, even Captain John Smith, whom most people only know in terms of the Virginia Colony, adventured out in those lands, fought duels with Turks, and was enslaved by the Turk and fought with Turkish armies, and finally got away, walked mostly, back to England.  His book about that period of his life is exciting.

IOW, if these periods and locations are the basis for the source work, the source

There were also a lot of people who weren't beautiful and were older than twenty . . . . Sometimes one thinks that kids who spend all their time playing these sorts of games and reading this sort of fiction and watching this sort of screen entertainment must feel frissons of shock when they look around the material world and see all ... these ... old people!  

[Spring Bass]

Humans have only been on Witcher World for ~1500 years. That's not even so long that you'd expect them to have local adaptations for sunlight/etc depending on latitude, not least because there's been some apparent large population movement since they arrived (the Nordlings only showed up where they are in the books 500 years earlier). You really could have a jumble of people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds all over the place. 

 

[Rorshach]

This thread makes me sad. For humanity.

Also, for not seeing Idris Elba as Geralt. That would have been amazing.

(Side note, I always imagined the "White Wolf" part to refer to Geralt's hair..)

[Ran]

8 hours ago, Zorral said:

I just wanna know where are the Turks!!!!!!!

From the wiki, it sounds like steppe peoples are in Hakland (horsed archers, drinking from skulls), that desert-dwelling Semitic peoples are in this Zerrikania place, and other groups can be found "overseas" in places like the port town of Zangvebar (which, the wiki notes, is an alternate spelling of Zanzibar). I'm guessing that a Polish writer is not someone who would be shy of putting forward the idea that ethnic peoples would stick with their own and head out in different directions to populate the world.

@SweetPea

I don't know more than what the wiki tells me, but Fringilla being Nilfgaardian seems fairly incidental rather than important to her character. If they wanted to say she was an orphan after her parents from overseas died of sickness and was adopted by some childless Nilfgaardian noblewoman, would it really impact anything in terms of world-building? Sort of how Salladhor Saan and Xaro Xhoan Daxos are Summer Islanders who've settled in Lys and Qarth (respectively) on GoT. And for all we know, maybe that's actually what they'll do.

Maybe the best choice when changing a character a lot is to rename them as well, as GRRM asked D&D to do when their ideas for Jeyne veered wildly from the novels, but otherwise... I'm not sure anyone knows whether this character is being changed a lot or not.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Rorshach said:

This thread makes me sad. For humanity.

Also, for not seeing Idris Elba as Geralt. That would have been amazing.

(Side note, I always imagined the "White Wolf" part to refer to Geralt's hair..)

I love Idris Elba too although it sometimes feels as if he is the only black actor in existence as it's always him people pick whenever there's thought of let's have a black actor play bond, Dr who, etc, etc. There are other great actors who are also black. Elba is damn good though and also seems a great guy based on his documentary and chat show appearances.

They really need to give Elba another crack at the dark tower though as he could still be great in that with a better screenplay. Let someone else have a crack at other potentially iconic roles.

[Rorshach]

12 minutes ago, red snow said:

I love Idris Elba too although it sometimes feels as if he is the only black actor in existence as it's always him people pick whenever there's thought of let's have a black actor play bond, Dr who, etc, etc. There are other great actors who are also black. Elba is damn good though and also seems a great guy based on his documentary and chat show appearances.

They really need to give Elba another crack at the dark tower though as he could still be great in that with a better screenplay. Let someone else have a crack at other potentially iconic roles.

This is more about his size, really, but perhaps Michael Clarke Duncan would do as much? Or is he too old now, I can't remember.

[The Anti-Targ]

15 hours ago, SweetPea said:

 

Hard to argue with you when you have such a superficial understanding of race, but this is getting very off-topic and I'd rather not go into it.

Irony much?

[The Anti-Targ]

14 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Too dead, sadly.

Waaaaah, don't remind me

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, red snow said:

I love Idris Elba too although it sometimes feels as if he is the only black actor in existence as it's always him people pick whenever there's thought of let's have a black actor play bond, Dr who, etc, etc. There are other great actors who are also black. Elba is damn good though and also seems a great guy based on his documentary and chat show appearances.

They really need to give Elba another crack at the dark tower though as he could still be great in that with a better screenplay. Let someone else have a crack at other potentially iconic roles.

Hopefully movies like Black Panther can furnish us with a new generation of African (+American/British/Euro) actors who can bring a similar look and feel as Elba. Michael B Jordan and Chadwick Boseman would both be great as well, with a few more years of grizzle on their faces. A bit too young and pretty to be Geralt for now. They need to be ruggedly handsome. Some people might say Henry Cavill isn't ruggedly handsome, but I would say that in MoS when he had his full beard he was pretty much exactly that. And that's what Elba is too.

Michael Clarke Duncan would have made for a good Letho (assuming he's a book character and not limited to the games).

[Rorshach]

38 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Too dead, sadly.

That may be a problem. 

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

Michael Clarke Duncan would have made for a good Letho (assuming he's a book character and not limited to the games).

Letho is game only, unfortunately. The only Witchers in the books are Geralt’s colleagues from Kaer Morhen - Vesemir, Eskel, Lambert and Coen (who dies at the Battle of Brenna which is why he’s not in the games).