Jump to content

Why is Hollywood responding so strongly to actors criticisms regarding Game of Thrones predominately white cast with the big upcoming epic fantasy adaptations?


Mwm

Recommended Posts

 

11 minutes ago, karaddin said:

@polishgenius not that it makes any difference to your point, but just for the sake of me understanding - you're using Asian in the British usage which includes South Asian right?

 

 

Yeah, obviously it's true really true of all Asian people in the UK but it was specifically brought to mind by the fact that Cas Stark  complained about Guinevere being black- but didn't imply that Angel Coulby, who I presume they were referring to, is not British- whereas Dev Patel cast as David Copperfield is seemingly not English.

And of course there are far more South Asian people in the UK.

 But it's not just Cas (who possibly wasn't actually thinking of Patel I suppose), I think a lot of us do it subconsciously at one stage or another.


 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I must have missed that the Arthurian legends were set in a fictional post apocalyptic world, I always thought they were set in some approximation of 6th or 7th century England. 

No, the Arthurian legends (even the originals) are set in at-best bollocks alternate history of England and France in a period that never really existed.

More recent attempts (like the 2004 King Arthur movie or Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles) to set the Arthurian legends in some kind of real historical framework are the exception, not the rule. Ironically, by pushing these back into the late to immediately post-Roman period they are actually venturing into a period when black people in Britain, brought in from Roman Africa and their descendants, were a more common sight.

Merlin, specifically, is set in a generic alternate fantasy world with relatively little connection to real-world geography or history (there's an absolutely massive, Alps-level mountain range on the same landmass as Camelot, for starters).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I do?  Why?  What is it you think I don't know?  That they are a mash up of Welsh and English origin stories with a few crossovers to a couple possible Arthurs who appear in historical accounts?  That Gwen and Lance were added several hundred years later by a French guy?  Or what?  

First that Arthur was mostly made-up out of whole cloth by a British propagandist church chronicler in the 8th C called the Venerable Bede, functioning pretty much as did certain chroniclers in the court of Charlemagne, and the host of poets and minstrels he employed to tell the story of his greatness and origins as he wanted them to be told. And again, later, by Geoffrey of Monmouth -- nearly everything he wrote was fiction, and he even boasted of it slyly within the text

That certain English kings grabbed on this fictional Arthur, claiming him as an ancestor and / or prototype to legitimize their not necessarily legitimate claim to the English crown, kings like Henry II, Edwards I and III, and Henry VII, in particular, who resorted to all sorts of charlatanish frauds, including planting some bodies at Glastonbury and declaring them the discovered graves of Arthur and Guinevere.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, Werthead said:

No, the Arthurian legends (even the originals) are set in at-best bollocks alternate history of England and France in a period that never really existed.

More recent attempts (like the 2004 King Arthur movie or Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles) to set the Arthurian legends in some kind of real historical framework are the exception, not the rule. Ironically, by pushing these back into the late to immediately post-Roman period they are actually venturing into a period when black people in Britain, brought in from Roman Africa and their descendants, were a more common sight.

Merlin, specifically, is set in a generic alternate fantasy world with relatively little connection to real-world geography or history (there's an absolutely massive, Alps-level mountain range on the same landmass as Camelot, for starters).

There is no evidence whatsoever that black people were common even in northern Africa, let alone in northern Europe. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Zorral said:

First that Arthur was mostly made-up out of whole cloth by a British propagandist church chronicler in the 8th C called the Venerable Bede, functioning pretty much as did certain chroniclers in the court of Charlemagne, and the host of poets and minstrels he employed to tell the story of his greatness and origins as he wanted them to be told. And again, later, by Geoffrey of Monmouth -- nearly everything he wrote was fiction, and he even boasted of it slyly within the text

That certain English kings grabbed on this fictional Arthur, claiming him as an ancestor and / or prototype to legitimize their not necessarily legitimate claim to the English crown, kings like Henry II, Edwards I and III, and Henry VII, in particular, who resorted to all sorts of charlatanish frauds, including planting some bodies at Glastonbury and declaring them the discovered graves of Arthur and Guinevere.

Everyone thought Troy was a myth too, until the random German gentleman 'archaeologist' found it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

No, everyone thought The Iliad was fiction. Cause it is.

Excuse me, are you suggesting that the heroes of legend, clad in the most glorious gleaming bronze armour, were not capable of throwing their spear with such power and precision that they pierced 10 men in a single blow?

And that the feats of most of these heroes did not pale in comparison to the mighty Achilles? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Gronzag said:

There is no evidence whatsoever that black people were common even in northern Africa, let alone in northern Europe. 

If I remember my Egyptian history at one point Nubians from the upper Nile region did invade and conquer the Egyptians in the lower Nile region. So yes there were black people in northern Africa. Slave captures went on during wars between lower Nile regions and upper Nile regions for many years, and when the Romans took over Egypt, Nubian slaves were transported all through the empire, including Britain. If Arthurian Britain is considered to E when the legions left Britain, there is a non zero chance of having a dark skinned Guinevere. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Gronzag said:

There is no evidence whatsoever that black people were common even in northern Africa, let alone in northern Europe. 

None whatsoever.

Well, apart from archaeological and genetic evidence (from the 3rd Century AD) and recorded evidence of African soldiers serving on Hadrian's Wall (4th Century).

Quote

Everyone thought Troy was a myth too, until the random German gentleman 'archaeologist' found it.

Troy was and remains a myth. There is a Hittite city on roughly the same spot, but there is very little evidence that it was destroyed by Greeks sneaking inside in a giant horse.

That the Hittite city was a possible real source and inspiration for a story created hundreds of years later is certainly possible, but the actual evidence for them being the same is thin.

That said, there's probably a stronger argument for the Trojan War having happened than King Arthur. Arthur was anachronistic at the time of his creation (being King of England and wearing full-plate armour at a time when neither actually existed) and the reason he gets jammed into the darkest of the Dark Ages is because there's no other space for him, and the historical evidence for there being a king of his kind in that period is limited (though there are a couple of half-vaguely-convincing candidates).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Werthead said:

None whatsoever.

Well, apart from archaeological and genetic evidence (from the 3rd Century AD) and recorded evidence of African soldiers serving on Hadrian's Wall (4th Century).

I do notice in most of these articles and conversations that 'North African' is a byword for 'black', when that isn't really the case, in so much as they wouldn't be what you would recognise as someone from sub saharan africa. Which I guess is what Gronzag is getting at. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Everyone thought Troy was a myth too, until the random German gentleman 'archaeologist' found it. 

Where's your archaeological record then, for Arthur?  :P  But go ahead, like many gullible thousands, put your silver penny down to pray at King Edward's faux Glastonbury tombs containing randomly picked-up bones.  Good grief Monmouth even says he made it all up!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Where's your archaeological record then, for Arthur?  :P  But go ahead, like many gullible thousands, put your silver penny down to pray at King Edward's faux Glastonbury tombs containing randomly picked-up bones.  Good grief Monmouth even says he made it all up!

The best evidence for a historical Arthur at the root of the legends are the reference in the Y Gododdin to a warrior being pretty good, but "not Arthur" -- which has been argued to be a late gloss, but there are scholars who now think it was part of the original, dated to the mid-6th to mid-7th century -- and the archaeological evidence indicating that the name Arthur became for a brief time fairly popular among Irish and British elites in (ta-da!) the  mid 6th to the mid-7th century.

Could have been the minor Welsh king Arthur ap Pedr, or perhaps the Dál Riatan prince Artúr mac Áedáin, or some other figure that we don't know about. Had pretty much nothing at all to do with the mythic figure that became his namesake.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Ran said:

The best evidence for a historical Arthur at the root of the legends are the reference in the Y Gododdin to a warrior being pretty good, but "not Arthur" -- which has been argued to be a late gloss, but there are scholars who now think it was part of the original, dated to the mid-6th to mid-7th century -- and the archaeological evidence indicating that the name Arthur became for a brief time fairly popular among Irish and British elites in (ta-da!) the  mid 6th to the mid-7th century.

Could have been the minor Welsh king Arthur ap Pedr, or perhaps the Dál Riatan prince Artúr mac Áedáin, or some other figure that we don't know about. Had pretty much nothing at all to do with the mythic figure that became his namesake.

Not historical proof, but legend again, quite as made-up as the Trojan War. Or Charlemagne warring with Saracens in Jerusalem -- which didn't take place -- only 300 years or so later

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sure. The idea hat there was some kind of contact and conflict between the Achaeans and the Trojans that could have been  the seed of the Iliad isn't crazy, and the fact that genuine Bronze Age matter is there in the Iliad is clear. But the figures, the conflict, and so on, would have only the thinnest connection to whatever reality spawned them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Where's that guy that has photographic evidence of the true life location of the events depicted in Lord of the Rings?  He might have files on Arthurian legends, Troy and black people in Northern Africa.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Zorral said:

Not historical proof, but legend again, quite as made-up as the Trojan War. Or Charlemagne warring with Saracens in Jerusalem -- which didn't take place -- only 300 years or so later

What do you mean, legend? There's archaeological evidence that for a century or so a particular name came into fashion at a time when that sort of thing happened because some namesake was well-regarded, as the Y Gogoddin reference suggests. That's not legend. The Arthurs' I mentioned are historical figures, attested near-contemporaneously, not 300 years after the fact.

Arthur is an unusual name. It had a brief appearance associated with warrior elites in a time frame that fits the generation after some figure made the name popular. That figure is likely not known to us, or is some minor attested king or prince who for whatever made people want to name their sons after them, and that's how the name came to later medieval chroniclers.

@Cas Stark and his basic point is right, that just as the Iliad contained some historical facts, the basic impetuous behind the Arthur legend has some seed of reality in it.

 

(And your point, re: Charlemagne  -- there was a historical Charlemagne and he sparked all sort of made up romances hundreds of years after his existence; the legendary King Arthur never existed, but it's very likely that his name derives, in some fashion, from a historical figure as well, given the literary and archaeological evidence, but yes, all the legendary stuff has very little to do with whatever reality this figure existed in.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I do notice in most of these articles and conversations that 'North African' is a byword for 'black', when that isn't really the case, in so much as they wouldn't be what you would recognise as someone from sub saharan africa. Which I guess is what Gronzag is getting at. 

That would be strange, as the discussion was about a "black Guinevere" as represented in the series Merlin being believable. The actress in question is not from sub-Saharan Africa (she's British of Guyanese - South American - descent and does not look like someone from sub-Saharan Africa).

In modern parlance, "black" also refers to a wide range of skin tones, not specifically people from sub-Saharan Africa. Trying to argue that is very much a case of moving the goalposts after the argument has been lost.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

That would be strange, as the discussion was about a "black Guinevere" as represented in the series Merlin being believable. The actress in question is not from sub-Saharan Africa (she's British of Guyanese - South American - descent and does not look like someone from sub-Saharan Africa).

In modern parlance, "black" also refers to a wide range of skin tones, not specifically people from sub-Saharan Africa. Trying to argue that is very much a case of moving the goalposts after the argument has been lost.

It based on a comment that black people were 'a more common sight' in Britain in Roman times, and also Groznags comment. When evidence is often raised of this, as it was during the whole Mary Beard , BBC thing, I noticed that often they would refer to anyone North African as 'black' , which wasn't really the case. It's not really moving the goal posts, unless you want to determine that race is some sort of binary and anyone who isn't north european pale as snow is black.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...