Yup. Characters should remain consistent if it’s important.
Tonto should not have been played by Johnny Depp. Gross.
The original Ancient One was a poor stereotype of a Tibetan person and Tilda Swinton is cool so I’m ok with this one.
Liam Neeson is a great actor with a ton of gravitas and he pulled off the role well, but yeah shoulda found a middle eastern dude. Maybe that hot Djin dude from American Gods can be the next Ras Al Ghul.
Anything to do with Scarlet Witch’s background is a retcon, she was originally introduced as Magneto’s moustache twirling daughter. Despite her tan in the referenced photo she’s more often depicted as white, but I could see her being middle eastern, but it would make sense that she’s half Jewish at least, given her father’s background.
Lastly, she’s a fucking mermaid. Who gives a shit? How many of the dude bros bitching even watched it?
If it’s bad to use white actors for black (or other colored) roles then it’s bad for black actors to do white roles. If it’s okay to do those switches then it’s okay for all. Forget colors it shouldn’t matter.
Having said that, Disney just did the Ariel thing ffor the “look at us being sooooo progressive, please give us your money for this utterly shit movie” instead of trying to just make a great movie
I think people need to figure out if the race of a character is culturally significant in any way in the context of the story and IRL. Like, part of Black Panther’s whole deal is he’s from Africa. Hard to budge on that character’s ethnicity. Ariel from the Little Mermaid could literally be any ethnicity and the story would remain the same. Crying about white erasure is pathetic when no actual culture relevant to white western people is being lost.
But Ariel wasn’t white. She was a fish person. So they were free to do whatever.
Real mermaids rise up
A big issue here, especially with the MCU stuff, is that it’s not a skin color thing with those changes. They updated the whole character in order to make them into races that are more friendly to China. They’ve done this repeatedly and stripped identities and character traits from characters over and over again.
Every single Romani character that’s appeared in an MCU movie has had their heritage removed and replaced with generic white. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are good examples (since they’re the ones in the meme) but I don’t see any way that Robert Downey Jr is going to be able to do the complicated Romani backstory of Dr Doom very well.
I agree that Ariel was swapped for marketing reasons (and arguably specifically to cause outrage and get people talking) Ariel doesn’t have a racial heritage that plays into her life and identity… She’s a mermaid from the sea… Not a member of a group with a large history of being discriminated against.
Maybe that’s for the best? It’s a bit weird that MCU went so big on Romani people in specific. That said unless a Romani person identifies themselves, you’re going to have trouble picking them out of a crowd. They are as diverse as the regions they’ve traveled through.
At this point, I’d be surprised if there was anybody outside of China that actually watches Marvel content.
The virtue signaling just backfires. “Rainbow washing” is a thing now. Companies never gave a fuck about a progressive message, they care about trendy things to cash in on.
I get the impression Ben and Jerry’s does actually care bout progressive issues, but they are that rare exception.
It’s too bad they don’t have ownership of their company any longer. They sold B&J to Unilever and now they have a reduced platform to share progressive values. Any progressivism out of Unilever is cynical corporate pandering.
The original actress/singer for Ariel absolutely dominated that role as well, and really the whole cast was damn near perfect. It’s one of the few Disney Princess movies that should have been left alone.
Literally every single live action remake that Disney has created has been inferior in every single way to the originals. Aladdin, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, all terrible cash-grabby productions (esp. TLK, good lord it’s bad).
I enjoyed Beauty and the Beast. shrug
It’s fine. I like plenty of movies that aren’t criterion level cinema. The remakes are cashgrabs meant to capitalize on your nostalgia though.
It’s definitely a cynical move by Disney no matter how you slice it.
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“If you think we’re super woke, you go support the movie. We get money.”
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“If you hate it (because we thought a superficial change would cover the fact we barely tried), it’s because you’re a nasty racist bigotface, your opinion is disregarded, galvanizes our first crowd into giving us more money, and angry actually-racist bloggers probably hate-watch it while advertising it for free. We get money.”
Ain’t the culture wars grand (if you’re selling to both sides like a proper arms dealer)? :D
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I personally think it isn’t wise to use an actor of any race in substitute of another, if that character’s race is part of the story. The only reason I could think of to change the character’s race, gender, status, etc. would perhaps be to tell a different story, but then it should be renamed and be a different story. But if a character’s race, gender, status, etc. is tied to that character’s story, then it shouldn’t be discarded frivolously.
From what I see, I feel that a lot of the disconnect is based on whether people find an attribute (in this case, race) important or not as part of the character’s story.
I feel I half agree with you. The other half of me thinks, there’s a lot of things we change for an actor acting a character. After all, it’s an actor, playing a character. Someone called Ben can play a guy called John; your grumpiest aunt can play a sweet grandma; often we have actors in their 30s and 40s playing ternagers and 20s; and men playing women even used to be a thing.
I think you have a good point, but I also think it’s okay to have an acceptable disconnect of, this is people acting out a story, not the real thing happening in front of me.
So what is white if Romani isn’t? I really do not understand the American concept of race, for me they are all humans.
Hating Romani is more a European thing.
I’ve heard plenty of the usual stereotypes passed along by americans. When it comes right down to it, most people are happy to repeat what they’ve heard about any ‘others.’ It really takes someone special to fight against that by trying to not have ‘others’ in their life (i.e. by accepting all as their in-group).
Whiteness, at least from a racist perspective, isn’t really about skin color, it’s more like a club for ‘approved’ ethnicities. There’s many Italians with darker skin than Mexicans, but Italians are considered ‘white’ and Mexicans are not. Same for large parts of the Middle East and Asia.
Romani are white skinned Europeans, but they’re not ‘racist approved’, so they make up rumors they’re actually from Egypt and omit them from the White Club.
The determination for what counts as white is highly inconsistent. Before the 1700s Germans were not considered white. Before the 1800s Irish were not considered white. For a time in the 1900s Finnish people were considered Asian (while many Finns were striking for better working conditions, what an odd coincidence). Italians weren’t considered white until about a hundred years ago. It goes on and on.
Roma people have historically been very persecuted because of racism and ethnocentrism. Case in point: the holocaust killed up to 500,000 Romani people, but the actual figures are not known. Roma people are among the groups that are rarely talked about when the Holocaust is mentioned, despite losing up to 50% of their total population at the time.
Arab and North African folks are usually considered white on the US census but that isn’t really an accurate picture.
Race is a social construct that doesn’t have clear borders. Racial categories mostly exist as a way of creating division and limiting access to resources, to flatten the diversity of individual cultures represented by a racial category… or to inflict direct and systemic violence. The experience of being a racialized person is entirely the creation of the society that a person lives within; for example, African folks usually don’t self-identify as “black,” within Africa, but that’s an important racialized experience that people can speak to in a place like the US.
Holocaust killed Russian and Jews as well, which are white. In fact I would say the Holocaust killed mainly white people.
Racism is not limited to skin color
That wasn’t the point. It’s not the suffering Olympics.
Yes, the point I’m trying to make is that people’s color is only tangent is racism (but of course it helps to highlight differences between different group of people). That’s why Roma, even if white, are still discriminated against. Sorry if I misunderstood your point, or not made mine clear
Okay well if you want to get into that, the concept of whiteness is very selective to racists. Roma, Jews, and (until recently) Russians are not considered white. The very fact that they were targeted the way they were tells us that. They may have white skin but that doesn’t matter to the concept because they aren’t in the club.
“Not white enough” would be my guess.
So what is white if Romani isn’t?
Race science is less a formal science and more a series of excuses for doing social murder and war crimes.
Romani people are Indo-Aryan, more closely related to modern day Indian people than Europeans. They typically have darker skin than Europeans as well. It’s not really an American concept either; I’ve generally seen a lot more anti-Romani sentiment in Europe than the US.
Other people have longer explanations which are great. I just wanted to point out Romani people are not Romanian even though many Romani people have settled in Romania. It’s just a coincidence.
The American concept is deceptively complex. At first it’s just literally skin color. The Simpsons meme with the cop holding the color swatches is absolutely true. Then it’s about stereotypes. So yeah your skin is light, but are you anything they have a stereotype about? Their entire concept of self relies on stereotypes being true. Otherwise they can’t be smarter just because they’re of pure European descent.
Family Guy, if it was Simpsons they’d be yellow instead of white/pink
Hah, don’t know how I switched that one up.
I absolutely remember people being mad about the first one.
The others not so much. The fantasy movies don’t really matter the same way as a historical movie about slavery does. The fantasy characters are even gender swapped without a problem at conventions.
And yes that means the racists who got mad about Ariel are dumb.
Wait until you tell extremist, right-wing Christians that Jesus wasn’t a white guy! Oooohhh boyyy!
Also, I think it’s important to not forget that in the internet age, a very small minority of hateful asshats can appear to have a very large voice. They are still a very small, minority group of asshats.
I feel like there’s a lot of cherry picking here too, because if we take the MCU, it also does some race swapping that nobody has a problem with.
Nick Fury is one, but Samuel L Jackson is so cool in that role, it doesn’t matter.
Heimdal is another one. Norse mythology, probably not a lot of black there, but Idris Elba is also so damn cool in the role that it does not really matter, and I’ve never heard anyone complain about these people.
I think in general it’s more about if the people in the roles do a good job or not. Tilda Swinton did a great job. Johnny Depp… Maybe not so much, but I also do remember people were mad about that one.
Fun fact about the Lone Ranger, the most likely real world basis for the protagonist is a man named Bass Reeves. He was black, and an escaped slave. The misrepresentation has been present since the beginning, if I’m not mistaken.
Why do they only replace characters with red hair?
My issue is that we are pairing nationality with skin color or ethnicity here. Those are not mutually exclusive. There are 2nd or 3rd generation Asians immigrants in Mexico, just as there are Mexicans living in Ireland, and Irish people in India, etc… Somebody could be a fully integrated national but not part if the nations major ethnicity. Even saying AFRICAN-American is kind of pointless, like it matters where your grand-grand-grand-grand-parents came from. They’re as much American as anybody else. We don’t call everybody else European-American for comparison.
In movies meant to be historically accurate though it would be very weird to switch things up. Especially when so much was based on appearance at certain times.
People reference white Americans as “Americans of European descent” very regularly.
Tbh I’m perfectly fine with other races picking up any roles, except for historical movies.
Another thing on historical movies that irk me to no end is the perfect posh English for every effing Roman or Greek movies
Somewhat relevant to your second point, I don’t like it when they speak English and it doesn’t make sense.
Breaking Bad bothered me so much with how often the native Spanish speakers were talking in English, while in Mexico, with other native Spanish speakers. It isn’t like they didn’t allow Spanish in the show, there was a fair amount, they just arbitrarily decided that the scenes where it made the most sense to speak Spanish that English was the right language.
AFRICAN-American
Well, that started out as a euphemism for “black” because some people decided that made them uncomfortable… Of course in the literal sense, Elon Musk is African American, even though everyone knows that’s not what’s intended…
Believe me, white folk do get offended about non-white characters being changed to white, in fact they the most likely ones to be offended, especially when it comes to historic figures. All this meme is doing is framing an inaccurate depiction of white folk to suit a biased narrative. Keep in mind also, a minority few cannot represent an entirety. Just as all black or asian folk are not alike, same holds true for white folk. This an era where a difference in race is not the concern, but rather the upper class rich people that use ethnic label stereotyping to have us fight among each other as distraction. Don’t fall for their trickery of dividing us.
I complain about all of it. Yeah I’m sure it “doesn’t affect the story” for most things, but I feel either get someone who is the correct race or make a new character.
That funny because when I put my non-USA definition of is white and not-white or african, this image as absolutely no meaning.
Even after the white washing debate we got the biggest white wash ever. The Indian ruler of Asia Khan noonien Singh, played by the whitest man in existence. Benedict Cumberbatch.
I honestly don’t care at this point. New Ariel sucks not because they switched her to black, but because it just sucks as a whole. The only thing that’s actually kinda pissing me off is…
…could we stop swapping gingers with blacks? Please? Pretty please? Both are minority, ffs. But one is even kinda rarer than the other. Go on, switch the blondie, but leave the ginger as ginger ;-;
if white is being used this generically then romani should be listed as white and arab should be middle eastern and tibetan asian if not lumping both as asian.
