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


Mwm

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5 hours ago, dbunting said:

I am one who thought Cruise shouldn't have been cast as Reacher. Reacher in his very essence is supposed to be a massive man whose mere presence is intimidating, Cruise is not that. But, Cruise has a charisma and box office draw that is hard to match and so he was cast.

As to the race of characters, unless you have a case of a white actress being cast as Harriet Tubman, where the race of the character is critical to the role, then any race should be fine, let the acting win out. 

And yet movies and TV adaptations of Wuthering Heights, for instance, have always been casting white actors as Heathcliff (with a very rare exception), even though the character being visibly non-white and different from the other characters in the novel, and racism he suffered growing up, is a big part of his story in the novel.

That's the most egregious example of constant whitewashing I can think of, but there's more. Captain Nemo (an Indian fighting against British colonials) also gets cast as a white guy often. Every single Romani character in Hollywood is played by white actors - and a lot of Americams and Western European people seem to think Romani look white. Remember that time when Hollywood cast a Spanish actor - as in, from Spain (Antonio Banderas) in The House of Spirits as an indigenous American man opposite a bunch of white Spanish people (played by a bunch of  white British and American people)?

And Hollywood is not even the worst in that respect. Take a look at any Mexican telenovela. They keep casting the whitest people they can find in all the lead roles, in a country with the largest indigenous American and mestizo population, where whites are a minority. Which, admittedly, is not whitewashing in the strict sense - since these are not pre-existing characters - but it's certainly messed up.

 

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11 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

You mean, pseudo-historical. 

There are no actual historical places in LOTR, ASOIAF or The Witcher. 

 

There are lots of actual historical places in things like Gladiator, 300, Les Miserables, Alexander, Rome, Romeo and Juliet, Chernobyl and War and Peace, though.

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33 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

There are lots of actual historical places in things like Gladiator, 300, Les Miserables, Alexander, Rome, Romeo and Juliet, Chernobyl and War and Peace, though.

Of course there are, because none of these are fantasy stories, or set in a fully fictional universe. And some are even based on real historical events.

What does any of that have to do adaptations of high fantasy series?

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1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

So if your fantasy dwarf isn't speaking actual Middle English, he may as well have a New York accent.

I see your line of reasoning, but I think it's taking things too far. Clearly we don't have the exact same accents in the UK that we would have had in medieval times (we don't even speak the same language really). But accents, like a lot of other things, are short cuts and signals used to communicate things about a character. 

If you for instance gave Gimli a posh London accent instead of his, well I think it was supposed to be Scottish, accent then you would be communicating an almost entirely different character. London being a byword for soft educated weaklings, and Scottish and northern people being hard working salt of the earth types! 

British accents also convey a sense of history and time.. a New York accent is far too modern and depicts skyscrapers and yellow taxis. I think it would be obvious that it would be out of place in Middle Earth. 
 

1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

You mean, pseudo-historical.

There are no actual historical places in LOTR, ASOIAF or The Witcher.

Yeah I was talking about actual historical movies in general, where English accents are used. I don't think most people think twice about it, but you notice it when it doesn't happen. Remember Oliver Stone's Alexander the Great movie, with Irish accents.. and some other odd european ones. It just was bizarre. 


As for the rest of your posts, well yeah Hollywood has a bad history of casting white actors in roles of non white characters. The most obvious one I remember being John Wayne as Genghis Khan.. eye tape and mascara. Is anyone defending that? 

I'm not sure what pointing that out even adds to the conversation really, unless you suggest there is some sort of casting revenge period we need to go through to make up for the crimes of the past.

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1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

As for accents - why shouldn't a dwarf have a New York accent? How is an RP British accent or Scottish accent or whatever more "accurate" for a fantasy creature in a fantasy world?

If your argument is that it's supposed to be a medieval world - none of the modern accents existed in Middle Ages. RP is the most different one from how people used to talk in that time.

So if your fantasy dwarf isn't speaking actual Middle English, he may as well have a New York accent.

Like all the upper class Romans in Robert Graves Claudius novels speak like upper class Brits -- rank and file soldiers etc., as Tolkien does too with orcs, for instance speak like grunts in the British army.

The writing lesson of this kind of language choice is that character, class, etc. are revealed to the contemporary reader by the usage of contemporary modes of speaking, behaving, and so on, for surely neither Graves nor Tolkien could actually recreate what was long gone.  We do not know what Roman music actually sounded like either.  We don't know really what any music actually sounded like played with instruments at the very least any time prior to recorded music. (Though, of course, the sophistication and preservation of technique and instruments for much in modes of Indian and other Asian musics, and particularly rhythms in the incredible multiplicity of drumming among the many people of Africa can tell us a great deal!  Musical forensics is pretty interesting btw.)

So, whoever wrote this:

Quote

British accents also convey a sense of history and time.. a New York accent is far too modern and depicts skyscrapers and yellow taxis. I think it would be obvious that it would be out of place in Middle Earth.

clearly knows nothing of the history of NY, or who lived here, then, or during the construction of sky scrapers, and seems not to realize there is no such thing as a New York accent, as even just the city of NYC is enormous, so is the state, and then there's New Jersey right across the river, that, due to the history of colonization shares a whole lot with NYC varieties of talking.

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15 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I see your line of reasoning, but I think it's taking things too far. Clearly we don't have the exact same accents in the UK that we would have had in medieval times (we don't even speak the same language really). But accents, like a lot of other things, are short cuts and signals used to communicate things about a character. 

If you for instance gave Gimli a posh London accent instead of his, well I think it was supposed to be Scottish, accent then you would be communicating an almost entirely different character. London being a byword for soft educated weaklings, and Scottish and northern people being hard working salt of the earth types! 

British accents also convey a sense of history and time.. a New York accent is far too modern and depicts skyscrapers and yellow taxis. I think it would be obvious that it would be out of place in Middle Earth. 
 

Yeah I was talking about actual historical movies in general, where English accents are used. I don't think most people think twice about it, but you notice it when it doesn't happen. Remember Oliver Stone's Alexander the Great movie, with Irish accents.. and some other odd european ones. It just was bizarre. 


As for the rest of your posts, well yeah Hollywood has a bad history of casting white actors in roles of non white characters. The most obvious one I remember being John Wayne as Genghis Khan.. eye tape and mascara. Is anyone defending that? 

I'm not sure what pointing that out even adds to the conversation really, unless you suggest there is some sort of casting revenge period we need to go through to make up for the crimes of the past.

If by "casting revenge" you mean "making an effort to occasionally cast some people who aren't white, too, and not treat white as default when race is not specified/is unimportant". Which, apparently, greatly upsets some white people who fear they might see themselves represented on screen only 70-80% of the time, instead of 99%.

As for accents, how is it any more bizarre to hear an Irish accent in an ancient Macedonian than to hear a British accent in the same context? Or English language at all?

As for American accents being more "modern", Received Pronounciation (aka posh Brit accent) is one of the most modern accents of the English language. Some of the American accents, like the Apalachian, are among the least changed from the 16th-17th century and most archaic ones.

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6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Like all the upper class Romans in Robert Graves Claudius novels speak like upper class Brits -- rank and file soldiers etc., as Tolkien does too with orcs, for instance speak like grunts in the British army.

The writing lesson of this kind of language choice is that character, class, etc. are revealed to the contemporary reader by the usage of contemporary modes of speaking, behaving, and so on, for surely neither Graves nor Tolkien could actually recreate what was long gone.  We do not know what Roman music actually sounded like either.  We don't know really what any music actually sounded like played with instruments at the very least any time prior to recorded music. (Though, of course, the sophistication and preservation of technique and instruments for much in modes of Indian and other Asian musics, and particularly rhythms in the incredible multiplicity of drumming among the many people of Africa can tell us a great deal!  Musical forensics is pretty interesting btw.)

Going by that mindset, American accents would arguably be the most fitting for Romans, since USA is currently the most powerful "empire" in the world, as the British Empire used to be in relatively recent past.

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2 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

As for American accents being more "modern", Received Pronounciation (aka posh Brit accent) is one of the most modern accents of the English language. Some of the American accents, like the Apalachian, are among the least changed from the 16th-17th century and most archaic ones.

Recall this guy had a hissy because there was a Sikh in the WWI film 1917 -- we are wasting our time arguing with him.

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1 minute ago, Annara Snow said:

USA is currently the most powerful "empire" in the world

Not much longer, maybe not even now!  Whereas Uhtred intones, "Destiny is all," we in the USA intone "Leadership is all and there is none, other than turning the government into the family gangster biz and making a profit out of national disasters."

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1 minute ago, Annara Snow said:

Going by that mindset, American accents would arguably be the most fitting for Romans, since USA is currently the most powerful "empire" in the world, as the British Empire used to be in relatively recent past.


Yeh, but most of these films are really made to suit America,  and in America's mythos England will always be the Empire to America's plucky everyman. That's why in Ben Hur the Romans are British and the Hebrews are American.

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4 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

If by "casting revenge" you mean "making an effort to occasionally cast some people who aren't white, too, and not treat white as default when race is not specified/is unimportant". Which, apparently, greatly upsets some white people who fear they might see themselves represented on screen only 70-80% of the time, instead of 99%.

What we are talking about here is deliberately casting characters against their specified race. The conversation isn't about having more diversity in general casting, but specifically casting non white actors in white roles and visa versa. I'm interested in whether you have some solution to combat Hollywoods historic casting crimes.

9 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

As for American accents being more "modern", Received Pronounciation (aka posh Brit accent) is one of the most modern accents of the English language. Some of the American accents, like the Apalachian, are among the least changed from the 16th-17th century and most archaic ones.

Think Polish has just answered this point, but yeah as I was saying, the British accent is usually a shorthand for a lot of things, specifically designed for a US audience. I also think it's quite strange that we use British, specifically RP english to signify historical figures, but unless we want to depict Roman figures by making all actors speak Roman Latin I don't think there is much we can do. While I see you are trying to make a seemingly clever point about this, it tends to fall down because we all understand the shortcuts and significance of certain accents.

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Recall this guy had a hissy because there was a Sikh in the WWI film 1917 -- we are wasting our time arguing with him.

I didn't actually but whatever.

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1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

Tolkien, by his own words, based the look of Orcs on the "the degraded and repulsive version of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol types'. Ouch. So it's not a strictly European tale, or it is but in a European-centric (of that time) sort of way...and it can only be a good thing to make a non-racist version.

 

(Before anyone attacks me, I'm not accusing Tolkien of being racist, that is, no more than most people of his time, but he was definitely using a racist concept there.)

Yeah, the swarthy Easterlings who served Sauron because they were morally and physically inferior to the fair Western folk is definitely pretty fucking racist. 

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4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

What we are talking about here is deliberately casting characters against their specified race. The conversation isn't about having more diversity in general casting, but specifically casting non white actors in white roles and visa versa. I'm interested in whether you have some solution to combat Hollywoods historic casting crimes.

Think Polish has just answered this point, but yeah as I was saying, the British accent is usually a shorthand for a lot of things, specifically designed for a US audience. I also think it's quite strange that we use British, specifically RP english to signify historical figures, but unless we want to depict Roman figures by making all actors speak Roman Latin I don't think there is much we can do. While I see you are trying to make a seemingly clever point about this, it tends to fall down because we all understand the shortcuts and significance of certain accents.

I didn't actually but whatever.

Your point about accents basically "this is the right way to do it because Hollywood has been doing it that way". 

There's obviously things you can do when you're a Hollywood director, casting director etc. - simply, do something different.

As for "specifically white characters" being cast as non-white - could you soecify which characters are those?

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1 minute ago, Annara Snow said:

Your point about accents basically "this is the right way to do it because Hollywood has been doing it that way". 

There's obviously things you can do when you're a Hollywood director, casting director etc. - simply, do something different.

No my point is that making an elf speak with a freakin New Jersey accent would look immensely stupid.. and most people understand why that is. 

4 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

As for "specifically white characters" being cast as non-white - could you soecify which characters are those?

How about you answer my question yeah?

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8 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

No my point is that making an elf speak with a freakin New Jersey accent would look immensely stupid.. and most people understand why that is. 

How about you answer my question yeah?

What question was that?

Was it the bit about "how to combat Hollywood historical casting crimes"? That was the question?

I think I've already said: stop doing it!

Stop whitewashing POC characters. (And that's hardly even a "historical" issue - some of the examples are from 1990s or even the 2000s, not 1950s).

And it would also be nice to stop treating white as default, when race is not specified/is unimportant. 

I find it funny when people complain about "forced diversity", but no one complains about forced uniformity or forced whiteness. A lot of people seem to think that you need a really strong reason to make a character POC, but you don't need a reason to make them white.

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"There are no black people on Game of Thrones."
I suppose he meant "people" as in "population" otherwise he's plain wrong.

Of course, GoT could have done much better (LotR was a while ago). But I think what Boyega is really saying is that all of the main characters were white (the Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryens). And the original problem is that both Westeros and Middle-Earth were based on medieval England (English legends and/or English history), hence the overall "whiteness"...

The question then becomes: can you have a fictional universe without including diversity?
I think Boyega is arguing against the possibility... However, his argument that we see "different people, different cultures everyday" does not necessarily apply to all fictional settings. So should such fictional settings be changed in the name fo diversity?

There's also something about numbers. Different countries don't have the same diversity to begin with. In the US, WASPS will soon be a minority. In European countries, whites still account for between 80 and 99% of the population...

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20 hours ago, mormont said:

First of all, worst thread title ever.

This is really all that needs to be said on this topic.

As for the discussion, I enjoyed Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet - even though "swords" were guns, Mercutio was Michael from Lost, Tybalt was John Lequizamo, and Verona became "Verona Beach" that was shot in Mexico City and Veracruz.  Adaptations are just that.

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21 hours ago, Mwm said:

From what I always knew of Hollywood, is that they follow a strict if its not broken then don't fix it strategy. And yet, just actors like John Boyega are bitter because the right people got the roles for The Lord of the Rings movies and Game of Thrones, Hollywood is throwing all thoughts of source material out the window for the big upcoming Wheel of Time and Middle-earth TV series on Amazon.

As I think has been mentioned a few times, Robert Jordan was rather bafflingly vague on skin shades and ethnicity in WoT, given his mind-boggling attention to detail when it came to the cut and colours of dresses, so the cries of "not being true to the source material" are dubious as best, and more instructive about the automatic assumptions of the people saying such things than what the source material actually says.

We do know that the Two Rivers are located at a rather southerly latitude (around that of the Mediterranean) and that all of the Two Rivers folk uniformly are darker-skinned than Rand (who stands out for his relatively fairly complexion, along with his height and red hair). The complaint about the lack of consistency that people have been making - that Mat should also be darker-skinned like Egwene, Nynaeve and Perrin - does make sense, but not that the people of the Two Rivers or Andor are darker-skinned than what they are in the book, because the book never really gets into a big discussion about it.

More to the point, Robert Jordan made a big deal out of the fact that his countries are multi-ethnic. Most Tairens we meet are dark-skinned, but Siuan is somewhat fairer-skinned. Andorans seem to be mostly Mediterranean in appearance, but their founding queen (and thus her ancestors which ruled Andor's precursor nations) Ishara was very dark-skinned. Most of the Borderlanders seem to be Asian in appearance to varying degrees, but there are some who are more European-looking (and we do hear that people from other countries do travel to the Borderlands to join the fight against the Shadow and are welcomed). In the multi-ethnic context of the setting, adopting a more colour-blind approach to casting is more appropriate than it would be to, for example, casting the Starks in GoT (although, based on the recent work that's been done on looking into the latitudes Westeros sits at, there wouldn't have been anything too amiss with having darker-skinned people from the Reach or Stormlands either).

With regards to The Second Age, there is very little source material to go on. The source material that does exist confirms the Numenor is located far to the south of Middle-earth and the Numenoreans established colonies right across Arda, in the far south of Harad and lands unknown beyond the horizons. Numenor having a large number of non-white characters would not be out of keeping with the material we know about.

Quote

 

Even with the failed Bloodmoon prequel pilot, there was shoehorning even with what would be the ancestors to the characters in Game of Thrones.

 

Did they?

We haven't seen the pilot, so have no idea which actors were cast in which roles. They made it clear that some of the action would be taking place in Essos and, as the story of the Long Night, clearly Essosi powers like Hyrkoon and maybe Yi Ti would have been involved, possibly more heavily than in GoT itself (especially since we could expect Azhor Azhai to show up at some point in a major role). The non-white actors could have been for those locations quite easily.

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27 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

What question was that?

Was it the bit about "how to combat Hollywood historical casting crimes"? That was the question?

I think I've already said: stop doing it!

Ok cool. Happy with that. So if someone is a specific race or colour in the source material, don't change it, keep it as it is. Cool. 

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