How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I just wanted to know how do you guys feel about them race swapping characters that are white by casting black actors or actresses I am not a racist but I do think that it's getting kind of getting ridiculous I understand with films like black panther wakanda forever but roles like commissioner Gordon and Ariel the little mermaid film and I know the guy from Westworld was good as commissioner Gordon but personally I think jk Simmons would probably have made a better commissioner Gordon no offense to the guy from westworld he was good but I liked pat hingle more than him again no offense Geoffrey Wright was good but he just didn't blow me away in the batman and Halle bailey I just don't know anything she has been in I mean did she start on the Disney channel or something because I don't know her and they actually spray painted her hair orange and it just looks terrible just terrible I'm sorry that's just the way I feel about it. I understand that being inclusive is an important thing in Hollywood today and that certain characters can be played by black actors and actresses who have the talent but sometimes I feel like movie studios are trying to force people into being inclusive and not casting actors who bust their asses trying to get a role. But what do guys think do you agree with my views or do you think I am not being fair let me know down below!

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on "white-washing" roles.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Please use punctuation next time.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I think it's ultimately a question of asking just how relevant a given character's whiteness is to who they are as a character and, in the case of long-established characters like Commissioner Gordon, whether or not a character being white in every single one of their older iterations means that they have to continue being white in newer ones. If it's just a matter of thinking Jeffrey Wright specifically is not a good actor to play Gordon, that's one thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean his casting is an instance of forced diversity (and it's also a bit condescending to assume that a veteran character actor like Wright didn't also bust his ass working his way up to such high-profile roles).

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

If its done well in this case i mean if theyve chosen the actor for his or her acting ability rather than just basing it on their skin colour etc then I have no real issue with it.

Look at the character of Nick Fury who was always portrayed as a Caucasian but then was changed as they brought in the acting chops of Samuel L Jackson and very few battered an eye as it was done well.

If changes are made purely to push diversity then theyre better off creating a brand new character then the race of that new character isnt an issue.

To me it leads to several problems

1. The characters that are changed they aren't race swapping the villain and making the villain worse they choose a specific type of character and make that person black. Bad guys have to look and act a certain way often time straight white and male.
2. The bar for the characters is a one way street, if it's a white actor in the role it's white washing and bad. "white washing" is something that happened decades ago yet anytime it's even marginally used the film/art is trashed.
3. The biggest problem with race swapping is that all the films look/feel the same. In the effort to look good in a press release or a photo you either get shallow meaningless characters or redundant figures. This is the irony of "diversity" these films don't give you a diversity of ideas just different pallet swaps of the same characters.
4. It pushes a political agenda..in art. While many people hate the idea of propaganda if you agree with the message it's sending then its okay. Awards and Lists now have to be rewritten to be more inclusive, standards are dropped and stories aren't being told because gatekeepers think that they are better than you.
5. It's a deliberately divisive issue that emboldens people to threaten and harass working actors by not catering to your audience you create the other. When someone has been othered they tend to react terribly. Studios don't care about this because they can virtue signal and act like they have nothing to do with this...they are the good guys but...
6. Those same studios will pander to bigoted and racist ideologies of other nations if they can profit from it. You have a tipping point where morals/values don't matter as long as you are making money. These companies are taking the worst parts of capitalism and communism and merging them into someone worse.

Nick Fury was race swapped in 2002 a decade before The Avengers by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch it was a meta joke

https://i.insider.com/553f04c6ecad04...jpeg&auto=webp

This is what the writer had to say....

Interesting. I didnt know that it was done in 2002. Before Jackson I only ever knew the character to be white from the older comics and his cameos in the 90s animated Spider-Man.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Errrr, zero problem with it at all. Why would there be?

Unless the character is well known for being white, historically like Bill Clinton or something.

And paragraphs! My eyes really can't handle reading posts written like this, I often give up after just a few seconds.

I would agree with this, it only matters when it's about a real person since you probably want them to look similar. Otherwise it shouldn't be in the thoughts of anyone. It seems the issue comes from filmmakers/studios intentionally doing it, which I don't like either but I understand why they do it. I just wish it was something that nobody had to even think about and it was all done and received in a more natural way.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

If it is a fictional character,then it doesn't bother me at all. I'm all for the best actor possible getting the role.

i dont understand whats your problem with posts written like this as for the threads title itd be fun to see white obama and black George w bush it would make me laugh but apart from laughing i would also be pissed off or maybe not i dont know im just trying to make this long and annoying to read so sorry for saying bs but its not like i never say bs outside of this thread as a matter of fact i always do so summing up i think that i feel very good and very bad at the same time when they race swap characters it just depends on how many white and black women were swapped for hot nude asian girls

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I feel like fighting, being angry n stuff. Am I right? Right?

I only care when it happens to comic book characters because they never ret con any of their characters. Purity is king at Marvel and DC.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Swapping race or gender to spread political agenda is bullshit. Having a black actress playing Anne Boleyn is no better than having black-faced white actors playing blacks in the old films (it's actually worse, as there's the added hypocrisy involved in modern times).

Not interested to write anything more elaborate as these threads are bound to get locked anyway.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I think everyone's already said anything I could possibly want to about this: often it's fine, sometimes it messes too much with the core of a character, and it can be done deftly and well, or it can just be a cynical ploy to garner some press. It's pretty much all in the specifics. I don't think anyone could write one overarching rule that led to intuitively pleasing results in all scenarios without a lot of ad hoc exceptions.

In the case of Wright's Leiter, I think a big part of whether or not it's justifiable is whether or not it would be realistic at the time. In the modern day, there are no doubt quite a few black CIA agents, and Leiter's very essence never relied on his race, so I'm perfectly cool with Wright being Leiter as long as he's as good as the other Leiter actors. Sometimes they make it obvious that they're race-swapping for politics, but this is the kind of situation that makes sense for the context.

In Nick Fury's case, they introduced a black multiverse variant in the comics, so take it for what you will. Jackson makes a better Fury than Hasselhoff did.

Now switching everyone around in that live action Power Rangers movie... Power Rangers was ALWAYS about multinationality, so switching the races around was pointless. I mean, Zach was COOL because he was a great dancer, and that stemmed from pride of his heritage. And they took that away from him in the 2017 movie just because they didn't want teenagers getting offended by something that's actually a compliment. No one is saying all black people act one way just by making a black guy a good dancer.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Everytime I start to type something I end up deleting it. So go ahead and finish my post for me:

The real problem here is....

I actually think the term "race-swap" itself is completely a couched and intentionally politically-charged term that says a lot about the person using it and immediately makes me back away from that person.

Yes that too. Good call. Reading text formatted like that on a computer is difficult, and given my propensity to get headaches, I'd rather not deal with a sea of text like that. I need ponds.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Plus, "race-swap" is not really accurate as to what movies do. The don't "swap" anything - they just turn caucazoid characters to minority ethnicities, but never do the reverse. To do the reverse would be seen as "racist".

Counterpoint:

"They are real. It's all real. Think about it. Haven't Luke Skywalker and Santa Claus affected your lives more than most real people in this room? I mean, whether Jesus is real or not, he... he's had a bigger impact on the world than any of us have. And the same could be said of Bugs Bunny and, a-and Superman and Harry Potter. They've changed my life, changed the way I act on the Earth. Doesn't that make them kind of "real." They might be imaginary, but, but they're more important than most of us here. And they're all gonna be around long after we're dead. So in a way, those things are more realer than any of us."

They aren’t actually real though, no matter how much influence or impact they may have on us. And it really doesn’t make a difference if Luke Skywalker or Santa or Superman or Wonder Woman or James Bond are white or black or whatever. The movie can be just as good and I can enjoy the movie just as well.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I'm not sure "they're real because they influence us" is much of a counterpoint, because the ways in which they influence us presumably don't have a lot to do with their race.

It is a counterpoint to the notion that their "unreality" is what gives license. We may not agree with the idea as a refutation of the claim, however, it does apply pressure to the warrant that Allaby uses to support the claim.

And to anyone who contends that it doesn't matter, I invite you to take the Pepsi challenge. You either have to agree that whitewashing does not matter, or you have to agree that the ways film influence do intersect with race (i.e., which is why we criticize whitewashing).


Moreover, the crucial premise upon which "updating" franchises depends is the notion that yes, race does matter in film--that if you are a black person and don't see yourself on the screen that that hurts deeply and is marginalizing and amounts to erasure and so on. The whole idea of race swapping to increase diversity is premised on the idea that we need diversity, that racial representation matters--and not just those other ways that allegedly have nothing to do with race.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

The comparison to Santa Claus doesn't work. He's a mythical figure who can take on pretty much any form, not a character specifically created for a movie or a TV show. He's not even one character, his backstory or look varies depending on which part of the world you live in. Therefore complaining about him looking black instead of white is automatically useless and petty since there's no rigid set standard for how he "should" look like. Not to mention Santas often are from someone's own family, for example if you grow up in an Asian household it's highly unlikely that Santa will be white.

I agree it is sort of a counterpoint to the overly broad phrasing employed, and I generally find policing overly broad rhetoric to be valuable (though a lot of people find it pedantic). But in this case I think it's easy for Allaby to tweak that rhetoric and leave the underlying point.

I agree that it poses a challenge to the idea that it matters at all, though I think, like the above, it's less a rebuttal and more just something that forces the person to further explain or develop their position.

In this case the contradiction would be mostly avoided by suggesting that minorities benefit more from seeing representation in media than majorities do. I find that a little pat (and the kind of thing that becomes self-fulfilling the more we choose to focus on it), personally, but it's internally consistent.

Agreed, and you saying this has made me think about each character's creator. There's a tricky ethical thing involved there, since characters are enduring works of art and it's not entirely clear what we owe to the people who conceived them after they're gone.

Sure, if you're in China, then a Chinese Santa Claus makes sense. If you're in Africa, a black Jesus makes sense, right? Is there a reason, however, that we might need to systematically "update" Santa Claus in America? Not that this is happening - there are so many depictions of Santa (film, TV, toys, cards, cartoons, figurines, books, mall Santas, parents in red pajamas) that everyone can get the Santa they want. However, if you woke up tomorrow and our cultural depictions of Santa were systematically flipped to say... ...Asian Santa that would be a bit odd, wouldn't it?

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

It would, but you know that never could happen, and that hypothetical scenario still makes no sense.

(On another note, Jesus is logically much closer to black than white since the usual depiction of him as Caucasian is a revionist image)

But this just amounts to accepting one of the horns of the dilemma; "Yes, race does matter in terms of representation." And this amounts to a contradiction of the original claim, "No, race does not matter."



The claim that it does not matter has been replaced by a new claim: Asymmetry of racial representation is justified because minorities need it more. However, doesn't this logic seem to validate the obnoxious complaint that "diversity" just translates to the demand "be less white"?


Audiences are generally fine with creating new characters that are diverse, but resistant to established properties being altered (especially if the justification is that race matters). There is always room at the top, but the systemic swapping of redheads, for example, with African Americans does not suggest room at the top, but rather a contest over who will top a hierarchy--exclusion wearing the mask of inclusion, a writing over, a palimpsest of cultural alteration (e.g., not unlike the Christian church appropriating a pagan holiday and making it Christ's B-Day). And if our only answer in light of historical re-writing is "turnabout is fair play," this is a little too close to "might makes right."



The pendulum is always swinging. History is rife with over-corrections. I don't think that there has ever been a time when art has truly been fair. Someone is always getting the short end of the stick. The challenge is not be complacent (fatalism, giving up) and not be chronocentric (that prejudice for the "now" which assumes that we finally have the balance right, unlike our foolish ancestors), but to keep working to get the balance right.

I think it's more of a clarification than a contradiction, because I think "race does not matter" is not the core claim, but an argument in service of the core claim, which is actually "it's okay/good to swap races of characters so more minorities are depicted."

I agree with this.

Actually, Coca-Cola set the standard (for the U.S. anyway). ;)

Thought this comment might go nice with the previously mentioned "Pepsi challenge"!

I think "olive-skinned" is closer to it. However, I am fine with "White Jesus" for white people in the same way that I am fine with "Black Jesus" for black people and I wouldn't take the appropriated image away from either group. Culture is appropriation. It's really a question of how we appropriate and why. If, for example, you want a racialized Jesus because you're praying to an ethno-nationalist God, that's not good at all. Identity, especially racial identity, is a dangerous game. We don't want to make villains of "others," but is there not also danger in habitually making "heroes" of ourselves?

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Referring back to the OP - there was a reference made to Halle Berry.
I think they were talking about Zoe Kravitz playing Catwoman in the recent The Batman (2022) film.

However, Halle Berry did play "Catwoman" in an eponymously titled film from 2004, but that was not an issue of race changing as Berry did not portray "Selina Kyle" (the identity of the traditional Catwoman), but was a different character altogether.

In any case, both actresses are mixed race: Halle Berry has one black & one white parent, Zoe Kravitz's parents are both half black & half white.

I don't think there is any question that there are some advocates for diversity who maybe go too far, or whose arguments may be hypocritical. Like anything, not everyone is a great ambassador for every cause. So you can argue these things on a case by case basis....but probably not very well with anyone who goes around calling this race swapping. Something weird and paranoid about such a term. Especially since, the vast majority of the time, the change has no substantive difference whatsoever and so why anyone cares is well beyond me. Well, maybe not entirely beyond me. I can always theorize in private

Despite depictions, I always imagined Jesus looking nothing like me (or Jeffrey Hunter, Max von Sydow, or Willem Dafoe), but like a middle-eastern, Semitic man based on his heritage as the son of before-common-era Jews.

Ertha Kitt did play Selena Kyle/Catwoman on the TV show, right?

The first (and only time) that I gave a crap was when they cast Will Smith as James West in The Wild Wild West movie. Mostly because the series was a childhood favorite of mine and I just knew that he would Will Smith the character up. And he did. But then the entire movie was such a dumpster fire that it ended up not mattering. And Kenneth Branagh as Miguelito Loveless? I know Peter Dinklage wasn't a thing yet but, "Hey, instead of a dwarf let's have him be legless. That's almost a dwarf" was not the answer.

Oh yes! (Forgot about that, momentarily.)

That's perhaps one of the earliest changing an established character's race... and we know, due to the time period, it wasn't because of a huge social outcry for diversity or political correctness on screen (although it was the height of the civil rights movement).

Eartha Kitt happened to be a huge megastar at that point (even more so internationally than in the U.S.) and she was available when Julie Newmar became unavailable.

Eartha did an exceptional job at making the role her own.
But one unfortunate bit of trivia - when Eartha came on, all allusions to romance and the very obvious sexual tension between Newmar's Catwoman and Batman was dropped. Obviously, they were in no hurry to compete with Star Trek's first interracial kiss on TV.

I recently watched all the episodes of the original 1960s TV Batman show. What a fun kick that was! I loved Julie Newmar's Catwoman, she really reminds me of someone, but...never mind...no one would believe that story:D

I really dug Eartha Kitt as Catwoman too. I don't know how fans reacted to her back in the 60s? But I doubt anyone thought it was race swapping, just a different actress playing a part as the original wasn't available.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Hey, I wonder where's the one who started the thread :shifty:

https://media.tenor.com/2IATEco5yboA...l-suspects.gif

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that comic book movies are cinema" -- Martin Charles Scorsese (Probably)

Maybe he died hard for kicking the hornet's nest.

I agree with you almost completely except that it didn't matter in any way that the actor was black (Denzel, for example, would have been wonderful) but yes I was a childhood fan and I knew Smith would Smith it up and ruin it and he did, it was awful.

And there wasn't anything untoward about it in terms of agenda. Will Smith was on top of the world at the time so he was just a "big name actor" to plug into the "franchise role." The whole world loved Smith, so why wouldn't you choose him as a lead? The implied act was not one of "updating" or "checking boxes" or "changing" (e.g., not like the modern expectation that any redheaded character is at risk of being swapped "in the name of").



In this case, the whole approach of the film was wrong. It was just a bad movie and we all recognized that and it was no big deal (these days there is often a moral outcry when updated characters don't sell tickets, as if audiences are obligated to simply show up and watch as an act of solidarity), and we all had a laugh about the goofy mechanical spider.



https://youtu.be/Wo2KB1dEDdk

True story, it is the last movie I ever got up and walked out of.

They did this quite a bit in The Essex Serpent even though it was anachronistic. Didn’t make any difference to me. I dislike watching a movie or tv show where they easily can have a diverse cast, but they stick with all white actors, which makes no sense.

"How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?"

:shrug: Wow. You really seemed to go out of your way to misinterpret my post and put me on the defensive. I don't know what to tell you. Except to reiterate that it was the one and only time my experience would apply to the question posed by the OP.

Eh, never mind. I guess maybe I misinterpreted your post.

For me, it all depends on if the characters are established as having definitive qualities.
Ethnicity is both inherent and formative - it's one undeniable factor (among many) that make people who they are.

I will admit to a bias: I care much less when they change a character's race for a movie when I don't care about (or know about or have not followed) a character or story, but I do care when it's a character that I may have grown up with or who's story is part of my history (in that it affected, entertained or taught me).

So, I have to consider, it doesn't matter the character, the story or the franchise - there will be people as dedicated to their characters as I am to mine. (This consideration seems to be one that a lot of filmmakers have forgotten to take into account.)

And this doesn't have to be just about race - it can be about any inherent or definitive characteristic that defines a character - I was angry when they made Dr. Doom into an apparently American business tycoon (with the powers of Electro & Colossus no less!) instead of a European monarch from a fictional Baltic country in the Fantastic Four (2005) movie... and the subsequent movies have only taken him further from the definitive character he once was since then.

Now, I know the history of the west, of the media, of entertainment, and of Hollywood - and I'm all for a rebalancing of the scales for more equal representation - but not by sacrificing established characters to political correctness via forced race (or nationality, religion, orientation, age, etc.) changes.

It depends on the medium or story, but in the realm of comics, creators in the Silver Age were forward thinking and created a lot of diversity since the late 60's which film makers could choose from (but they'd rather change well-known characters, even those nearly a century old, rather than choose from a well-spring of already diverse characters because that's what they think their agenda demands).

I'm also for creating new characters (so that established ones don't HAVE to be altered). Back in the 90's, DC Comics came out with a new "imprint" line of books called "Milestone" (that was eventually integrated into their larger universe) and which featured ethnic minority heroes so that there was greater representation in comics. No problem with this - established characters didn't have to be altered and new characters were introduced.

I sense something underlying here by SOME creators who engage in race changing - I don't think the motive is ALWAYS or ENTIRELY an altruistic one... they not only seem to want to put their proverbial mustache on the Mona Lisa, but there seems to be a desire to hurt or disrespect long-time & older fans because those fans represent something the new, woke creators seek to degrade & destroy rather than honor.

Some who are always looking to be offended have identified "offense" as both their own, standard, knee-jerk reaction to ANYTHING they don't like or don't agree with, and as a weapon. Thus they are ready to try to use it themselves against others at any given opportunity.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Race-swapping and color-blind casting all seem to be illustrations of how we're a long way from being finished with race issues. We're also a long way from even defining race since most of us have some mixes in our background somewhere. My own genealogy quest gave me some surprises. My take on it is that it depends on whether the apparent visual race of the character is an essential part of the character....e.g., a black mob of klansmen in 1890 Alabama, or a bio-pic about Malcom X portrayed by an asian might not work well. Whether an actor can portray the character when the racial identity of the character is an essential part of what the movie is about seems to be a long continuum and how far you can stray from the bare truth "depends". Sometimes, even reality can make this confusing. -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFc6I0rgmgY

Anyone remember this one?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....SR210,210_.jpg

This remake of the 80's rom-com with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore was a mess.


Not to mention:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._AC_SY580_.jpg

This bastardization of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? only gets mild respect as one of the final film projects for the late Bernie Mac.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Race swapping is ok except when it’s not. JFK can’t be portrayed as black & MLK can’t be portrayed as white. Other than examples like this, race swapping is fine IMO.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Since we're still talking about this dubious topic, we might sketch out some tentative criteria.

1. Is the character an actual historical character with known "race"/ethnicity? This is the most sensitive, but Bob Dylan has been played by a female and an 11-year-old African American in the same film, which no one cared about On the other hand, Anne Boleyn was played by a black actress Jodie Turner-Smith which resulted in controversy. NOTE: If you really want Western culture to be replicated (i.e., ideas, values, principles), then it is probably a good idea to invite POC to imagine themselves as Brittains of yore. On the other hand, some people thought that Oliver Stone's JFK is a documentary (some people even appear to have thought Wakanda was a real African nation), so historical accuracy might count for something too. You be the judge.

2. Is the character fictional, but part of a group which is/was historical actual (i.e., real) with uniform "racial"/ethnic characteristics (e.g., Vikings, Samurai)? This is less sensitive, but is still within the realm of the historical, so the above concerns still apply, just not as acutely.

3. Is the character fictional and part of a fictional group which is - nevertheless - based on/representative of an historically actual group with uniform racial characteristics in a fantasy setting (e.g., Lord of the Rings)? Less sensitive still, and more of a question of respecting the original artwork. EX: George Takei taking a strong principled stance against making Sulu a gay character (because the original character was not gay and the change in the JJ-verse has more to do with Takei's sexual identity/preference than anything that was said of Sulu on the show or in the films).

4. A fictional character in a fictional world or, more or less, in a part of the "real world" which is multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial (e.g., modern London is 36% white) such that anyone might plausible have been that person? Who cares? NOTE: Unless, of course, the change is made from black to white, female to male, gay to straight, in which case the Twitter mob will object as a matter of course.

The further we go down the list, the less the change matters -- unless the move is seen as a sort of intentional colonization or erasure of the "other". EX: M-SHE-U started off as a joke about gender swapping characters, but this now appears to be a systemic change to the Marvel landscape. There is an intentional effort to combat toxic/traditional masculinity by erasing male heroes with female heroes and this is upsetting some people. Ditto for Kathleen Kennedy and Co.'s odd assertions that "The Force is Female" and that the Empire is "a white-supremacist organization." Whether you like it or hate it doesn't matter, these are not cases of "random" or "whimsical" flips of race or gender but systematized attempts to change institutional practices of cultural story-telling.

I'll agree with that part. ;)

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

To the OP: if you come here to start a dialogue (fight), use punctuation and paragraphs. Nobody has got the time or the inclination to read that mess.


As for the question, my answer is I do not care. But I think people want to see themselves and their stories in the media and this may be where our society needs to do better.

I have an idea! An alternative history movie about JFK as America's first black president could be intriguing with lots of narrative possibilities AND tons of free press from all of the buzz such a controversial movie would make. Geez, I wish I was a director/producer and I'd make that movie! Guaranteed, no matter how bad it was it would make money.

I've had to remove the last five or six posts. Nothing offensive or insulting to anyone, I wouldn't think, but stuff that had left the movie-related part of the topic.

Obviously the initial topic is about film, and naturally abuts political and cultural issues, but in pure content terms (even if the posts are civil and substantive and all that), the distinction is between "is still about movies" and "is just about race/gender in general." A fine line, maybe, but one that has to be drawn somewhere.

I knew you hated the dude. I think that’s my first post ever removed. I’m getting close to Sexy Celebrity status.

This reminds me of how kid sidekicks came about - and why they worked, but only to an extent.

The idea was that since comic books target audience was boys, they'd create boy characters that boys would assumedly relate to.

Robin was the first (followed by a slew of others), but it immediately became questionable as to what sort of adult guardian Batman was to involve a child in crimefighting - he was almost as crazed & irresponsible as a legal guardian as he was as the vigilante who threw criminals off rooftops... that he started out as.

(Not only was Robin supposed to draw more boy consumers, but he was supposed to soften the once-lethal Batman of the time. This was another double edged sword because while it humanized Batman to take on a junior partner, it also made people question how fit of a guardian could Bruce Wayne be if he's willing to put a 10-year-old in the middle of gun fights... what kind of "hero" would do that?).

Stan Lee wrote about how kids might be able to relate to kid sidekicks' ages, but they still wanted to be the adult hero, not the kid sidekick. Lee hated the idea of kid sidekicks and not because of the logistics of putting kids in danger. He felt kids still wanted to relate to (or be) the adult hero - thus he along with Steve Ditko created Spider-Man - where the teenaged boy WAS the hero - he didn't have a side-kick and he wasn't one. The idea worked. It was the best of both worlds... or did kids just think a guy with spider powers was cool?

I'm free associating here a bit (so bear with me)... I've seen some recent videos regarding Disney's new live-action Little Mermaid, and they have clips of kids saying "she looks like me!"

But narrating some of these clips are black commentators calling it bogus (claiming parents put the kids up to saying these things for the videos). Their reasoning is that when they were kids they didn't watch a Disney film or see Superman and say, "I can't relate to this character because they are a different color than me." They just enjoyed being entertain and wished they could fly like Peter Pan or Superman. They didn't sit there and say "I wish I was white like Peter Pan or Superman." Conversely, they didn't see their first black hero and say "Now I can never relate to or follow Superman again because he's not black like me."

What they were saying is that the whole "looks like me" is a contrivance to try to justify changing the races of established characters, but that in reality kids don't identify with or relate to fictional characters based solely on skin color (unless they are taught to).

Nope, whatever it was that came across the wrong way, I thought I was agreeing with you. I also grew up with that show and the fact that they chose a black actor to play the lead was no issue at all, and I was saying that someone as naturally suave or cool as Denzel would have been wonderful (though maybe he was already too old) but Will Smith Will Smithed up the joint and made it seem incredibly silly, which is what I thought you were saying.
If I did misinterpret, my bad, that's on me. I thought I was agreeing with you but maybe I misunderstood what you were saying.

Edit - Oh, wait, I see what happened, the wording in my post is really weird, I think that happened because I was putting it one way and then decided to put it a slightly different way but when I edited it, I left some of the words from the old part in so it came out weird and not really what I meant. That's my bad.
FWIW, if you ever think I'm trying to bust yer ballz in anything other than fun, I promise you, I'm not.

No worries Wooley. After rereading it a couple of times I more or less figured out the point you were making.That's why my followup post. Overreaction on my part. :facepalm:

Bubba Ho-Tep?

I think it goes much farther than JFK and MLK. Racial identity is important to a lot of characters and, can get downright essential when applied in some situations, time frames, behavior, etc. and a lack of racial identity could get bizarre with others.

Actual historical characters - e.g., we all know (or should know) that George Washington, our first president, was a white slave owner. He's an interesting historic character in that he was intensely ambivalent about slavery, but nevertheless, he was a white slave owner. Any alt-race portrayal misses the point, which is exactly that.

Being a history geek, as well as a movie geek, I could drone on all day about the place of some actual historic characters in the history of racism, but it becomes absurd to try to change what they were, for better or worse. It's less for fictional characters, but for a lot of historic characters, much of what they were about was race.

So, do we have a black George Wallace or a Japanese Franklin Roosevelt, or how about a white Jackie Robinson?

When it's part of the story, it's an important part of the story, and color-blind casting gets downright absurd. We need a lot of social evolution before our culture forgets how all of this played out.

They dyed me this color!

Not necessarily. And there is not just one point (i.e., "the point") relevant to discussing a person's role in history. Alternate racial depiction may invite people to stand in the shoes of Washington to help them get "a" point of an art work (e.g., to come to know the man who learned the hard way how to manage the logistics of defeats, the man who refused a crown to ensure that the American experiment in democracy could have its chance). White Man's Burden (1995) attempts to encourage understanding via racial role-reversal, not unlike gender-swap flicks like Just One of the Guys (1985). Indeed, we might learn the complicated history of race in America by inviting different demographics to imagine themselves as the slave-owners. And why not? There is no essential connection between whiteness and slavery. Human history is a history of slavery. There is not a part of the globe which is free of its stain. In early America the slavers happened to be white.



Someday, when light white skin and dark brown skin are basically gone--and they are on the way out as so-called "races" continue to mix liberally--the only option will be to cast a mocha-colored person as Washington or as an African slave fresh off the boat. I wish them well. And I hope that they can see what was good in the values of the Enlightenment, which are pulsing in our founding documents, which eventually led to the end of slavery. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and so it has always been.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Another case where race-altering in movies may have had unforeseen results if one were to delve beneath the surface:

The abomination that has come to be known as Fant4stic (2015).

We could assume they changed the Human Torch's ethnicity for whatever reason, but he was a character with relatives in the movie which made explanations for his sibling being a different color a bit more complicated than necessary.

Traditionally the Human Torch (Johnny Storm) was the younger brother of the Invisible Girl (Sue Storm) - to emphasize this fact they were both depicted with the same blond hair and blue eyes.

But for this particular movie they chose a black actor to play Johnny and a white actress to play Sue. And it wasn't a case of they chose an actor who happened to be black to play a character supposed to be white, but a whole narrative was written around this Johnny's ethnicity because his biological father, Dr. Franklin Storm, was a significant part of the story and he was also black.

The official backstory for this movie version to explain why Johnny & Sue were different ethnicities was that Johnny's parents, (the Storm's), were black - they adopted Sue (a white orphan) when she was an infant and Johnny was their natural child.

So what, you ask? At the time I did a little research on orphan & adoption statistics - I don't remember the exact numbers, but the facts were that white infants are something of a commodity (to white parents seeking to adopt) - there are often waiting lists for white infants. Conversely, a sad fact is that black orphans far outnumber white ones and thus go without families at a far greater rate than white orphans that are more readily adopted. Orphanages are desperate for anyone to adopt black children.

So, with that in mind, let's consider Dr. Storm and his wife - he's a renown scientist and well-to-do. But instead of he and his wife adopting one of thousands of black infants that need a home they adopt a white orphan! Is this what a black couple seeking to provide an orphan child with a home would do?

What are the odds that a wealthy black couple seeking to adopt would choose a white child (who we know has far greater prospects for adoption & would probably be on a waiting list for wealthy white parents) over their pick of thousands of black children they could provide a future for when orphanages are desperate to find homes for black orphans?

The whole scenario rang ridiculous... and all this complicated confusion surrounding a backstory that never had to exist just to force a race change to a major character?

Heck, it would've been easier to just have Reed (Mr. Fantastic) or Ben (the Thing) or even Victor (Dr. Doom) played by a black actor since none of them had any family connections as major characters in the movie.

In the overall scope, the race-altering ended up being the LEAST of this movie's problems - to Marvel fans, this movie was sheer blasphemy on every level and made its 3 predecessor films look like classics! :)

Social evolution and dominant attitudes tend to lag way behind laws, courts and visionary attitudes of people who are in front of the evolutionary curve.

That's especially pungent when you think of movies, which, after all are intended as a profit making product, where profit will depend on whose butts show up in the seats in the theater and who pays to stream the product. Putting it in that context, I'd love to sit in the room when marketers in studio offices make their calculations about who will pay to see a movie and how the determines a budget. They'd be fools to not think about who will be offended, who will like it, who won't see it, and who has an attitude about it. I don't think they're fools but they also don't always get it right.

It's fairly cringe-worthy to recall that most un-Jewish of actors, Charlton Heston, who got to play Moses and Judah Ben Hur, as well as a host of other very Anglo-Saxon actors who played in ancient world epics as Greeks, Romans, biblical figures, etc., not to mention blackface white actors.

I'm sure this is probably a short list but, it's obvious that we are not finished with this yet...color-blind casting still is going to be controversial, regardless of the skill of the actor -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...d_in_blackface

Again, a lot depends on the perceived intention. I cringe when I see old American films with WASPy actors playing Chinese/Japanese characters. I cringe because they, as a matter of policy, typically excluded actors in Hollywood who actually were Chinese/Japanese, because such depictions were all too often race-based caricatures, and because there were some low intentions in many these depictions (e.g., to portray the other as a buffoon and/or as a beast).



On the other hand, when a Japanese high school works with what they have when they do a production of MacBeth or when a Bollywood production house features a person from Punjab as the U.S. President, I probably won't care.



The biggest question is, I think, "Why are you doing that?"

It could happen in real life without the help of Bollywood. The new Prime Minister of the UK is of Indian descent.

Sure, and I would also be fine if President Lincoln were depicted in a Bollywood production by the same person.

Race swapping is ok except when it’s not.

I don't think we can forget another bottom line, which is whether this group or that will cause the movie to make a profit, hit a target audience, work with product placement, create a media swarm that promotes or damns it. Producers and financial backers make a guess on this, like on whether Black Vikings or ancient Romans played by Asians will draw or repel an audience, sell tickets, streams and disks.

I admit that, having someone in a movie that looks like me is a factor in my interest. It's not the only factor, but I can't ignore it. I doubt that anybody else would either and money is never NOT a factor.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Just came across this clip accidentally, but it reminded me of this thread = pretty much the same topic.
Despite how you may feel about Bill Maher, there's a lot to think about here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDkNmbJLB3o

Yeah, for sure...there's no absolute connection between race and slavery, except that this is what happened in the US after the American Revolution (some few exceptions before that). That's why I distinguish between actual historic characters and fictional ones. If you create some sort of George Washington, identified that way, who was black and didn't own slaves and led the army in the revolution and also do Valley Forge, Yorktown, etc, you're fictionalizing a historical character as much as you would if you fictionalize an Abraham Lincoln who didn't get shot and did serve 4 more terms (not unconstitutional at that time), so you might as well make him a vampire hunter too.

I found Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter to be enjoyable because of its silly fiction, but a black George Washington actually being portrayed as the historic character in a presumably "true story" is a bit of a stretch, since race was part of Washington's story and everybody at that time knew it. I'd be curious to see it but my expectations would be low. I think I'd rather do a sequel to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

How did you feel about the play Hamilton?

......that we are a long way from having a definitive answer to something that is an emotional issue. Being the fountain of wisdom as well as artistic and historical judgement that I am, if I can't figure this out, I doubt that anybody else can. We're just going to have to blunder our way around this for the next century or two.

I like it as musical entertainment, but musicals are generally not the best source for historical correctness since they are, after all, written by musicians rather than historians and written for an audience that's looking for snappy songs and great costumes. I'm thinking that it's parallel to watching the Wizard of Oz so you can learn about how tornadoes work or how monkeys can fly.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

The Wizard of Oz (1939) made me think about how we (as a society) are much more accepting of race changing in stage shows or movies when it's done across the board than when it happens to just one or two established characters. The Wiz (1978) is an example - no one really had a problem with an all-black version of a movie that originally had no black actors. Same with Hamilton (I'm assuming since I haven't seen it).

Where this doesn't work is where you're dealing with historical fact and the topic or point of the story is race. You could not, for instance, swap the races of the officers and the soldiers in the movie Glory (1989) - which tells the true story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the Union Army's earliest African-American regiments in the American Civil War.

Most artworks take liberties with history and one is generally poorly advised to try to learn their history from musicals and movies. What I am really asking is whether you were morally offended by it.

I'll be definitive here and say maybe so, maybe no. These offenses are matters of degree and intent and being a mongrel myself, I try to not spend too much of my life worrying about it. Our contemporary filters on race, ethnicity, history, gender and offense are so narrow these days that it's pretty hard to not step in something.

My personal boundary for "moral offense" generally requires some obvious deliberate intent. If it's dumb or lazy, that's less obvious. Often in movies, it appears that script writers make a guess as to who they can afford to offend without too much blowback. Nazis, gangsters, arms smugglers and klansmen are pretty much always fair game but anybody with a bit more ambiguity than those boogey men can become like pirates (rehabilitated by Disney among others) or supposedly innocently convicted inmates (Shawshank). Overreaching scientists like Dr Strangelove can be connected to Nazis, magicians or alchemists defy church teachings, scientists, of course, created Frankenstein because they have no morals, and police seem to generally sit in a narrow boundary with corruption.

Movies need a villain, hopefully one that's established fairly quickly in the plot, but with all of these considerations, it seems like you have to just pick one and run with it. Let the lawyers weigh in on the legal problems and the producer decide on who we will offend with this flick.

What with my personal ethnic and genetic mix, I can almost always find somebody offensive in a movie, so that's why I stick with those matters of degree and intent. Don't even get me started on history, accuracy and interpretation.....I can go on way too long on that.

The reason why I ask is that you appeared to be morally offended at the idea of a black George Washington as this would muddy the historical waters of Washington's position as a white slave-holder. This appeared to be something more deeply wrong to you than an historical inaccuracy (which we all agree that it is). If so, how does this square with your moral assessment of the casting and writing of Hamilton?

Corax can go all night. :D

A black version of Washington would be interesting but what would be the point? If it's an exercise in color blind casting, IMO, it would miss the historical facts in a way that make me wonder why would somebody cast like that. It wouldn't muddle history so much as it would muddle the movie, since I'd spend the first 30 minutes trying to figure out what they're up to. As an exercise in cultural appropriation, it just doesn't compute. While we're at it, they might as well make the slaves white, which would bring the movie to where it's like a 1960's gimmick intended to illustrate the point that slavery is bad.

As for Hamilton, I'd guess that most Americans don't even know who he is other than "Hamilton", the guy on the money. Again, some sort of alt-race version of this guy, the sort of device that's meant to push an allegory, confusing an audience. I understand that there are apocryphal tales about Hamilton's origin story, but as a historical character, if he presented to the world with a black appearance, somebody in that very race conscious world would have noticed and it would be a big story. Again, it leaves me with that "what are they up to" question more than, "what a liberation....anybody can play anybody".

I guess it leaves me with that cynical observation that we are not as advanced as we like to think.

Perhaps because the POC actor just looks right (passing not only for white, but also passing for Washington) or perhaps the POC actor is the best actor? Or perhaps it might be an artistic choice, inviting African Americans to see themselves in the personage. Or maybe we're just in a future where there aren't that many white-skinned people left as people worry less and less about "racial purity."

But would this be "pungent" or "cringe-inducing"?

Did Hamilton compute? Most people seemed be able to catch on and enjoy it just fine.

Or it could be a new gimmick? And perhaps the message might be that slavery was a complicated question at the time, that the founders had to choose between winning a war for independence or excluding slave-holding states from the early union?
This is a dangerous standard as "most Americans" know very little.

And yet the play got people interested in the actual history of Alexander Hamilton. It actually elevated public discussion and inquiry into the historical person. Who knew what hip hop could do?

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Since Hamilton has become a main topic and since I haven't seen it, I'd like to ask what is the point?

I'm presuming it's something along the line of a story that takes place at a point in history where very few minorities could play a role since virtually all of the key figures in the specific story were white males - so the idea is to flip it and make all the actors minorities because in such a story no minorities could play a part?

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

If it's the artist choice to cast someone black/white/asian whatever that's cool. For example one of the best race swaps in cinema history was Morgan Freeman in Shawshank. Written as an Irish white dude. Director saw Morgan was right for the role and man did he nail it. It felt genuine and not forced upon the production for social/marketing purposes.

The problem, which has happen at a nauseating rate the last few years is doing it for the sake of representation/diversity instead of story/fit. It's disingenuous and it reflects in the recent movies. Probably why foreign places like Bollywood and Koren film are starting to beat Hollywood. They don't have to worry about socially making people happy and just focus on story, like Hollywood use to. Maybe we should start pressuring those markets to put white/black people in their movies. I feel underrepresented in Korean films.

The focus on race/identity in Hollywood is killing the industry. Race/Identity is interesting aspects to a story but if it's the main theme it makes for very dull movies. Anyways my 2 cents.

I find it insulting to coloured people when characters have their races swapped.
You are telling me that there is no original black or brown or female or gay character good enough to have their own movies.


Cause the brave experiments have worked. I would rather have a Black Panther and similar black superheroes over a black Superman.
I would rather have an Atomic Blonde over a female James Bond.


There are plenty of writers (irrespective of their own race, gender, sexual orientation) out there creating original stuff with original minority characters. Back them instead of flipping genders or races.

You can't really culturally colonize unless you re-shape and re-purpose what is already there. If you add celebrating the birthday of Jesus alongside pagan festivals of Saturnalia and Yule (and other Winter Solstice "hits"), for example, then you simply have clutter and competition. If, however, you make the time of Winter Solstice into Christ's Birthday then you have displaced, conflated, and colonized your competition. This makes Christianity the only game in town.

Naah, disagree. We should rather back and trust the competition, and it will emerge out of it in shinning colours with its distinct narrative, which will be remembered for a longer time, instead of finding short term attention by dancing the same dance with only different clothes.

If the art is good enough, it will find viewers. There's a large and diverse audience asking for newer diverse stories.

I tend to agree, especially when it comes to historical characters, fictional ones less so, and fantasy characters even less, but even then, it depends on the context and the plot. It's not like any reasonably literate person doesn't know the racial and cultural context of these characters and it's not like we actually live in a society that somehow has managed to evolve to the point where we don't see race anymore. Maybe some day either that will happen or the inevitable blurring of lines and mixing of races will happen, but it's not this year yet.

The converse of the Washington-Hamilton constellation of characters would be a white portrayal of Frederick Douglas or Martin Luther King. I can imagine a horrified moral outrage over that portrayal along with suspicion that whoever did this is up to something.

After all, it's a movie and movies are probably 80% visual. The movie has 2 hours or thereabouts to introduce characters, lay out a plot and resolve it. Much of that time consists of establishing shots, pans, zooms, etc so it has to be compact in its verbal content.

I'd contrast that to live theater. There I've seen black Hamlets, Japanese Macbeths, etc. In fact, one of my favorite Macbeths was set in Japan with samurai knights. It worked really well. Aside from references to Hamlet as the "moody Dane", there's not much about that story that requires any particular place or race. Live theater is mostly verbal, with little action and no FX, so words and gestures count for a lot more than they do in a movie. Color blind casting can be fairly inconsequential.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

The Hamilton question wasn't addressed to me, but I'll say something briefly because I had a conversation about this with someone else IRL awhile ago:

The use of minority actors to play the Founding Fathers doesn't bother me partially because they've achieved borderline-mythic status in the popular imagination. There is some nexus of both age and awareness at which the figure depicted, fictional or not, becomes so much larger than its source that it's not really possible to "violate" it. When enough legend has been built up around someone or something, it becomes less a person than a material that artists can work with.

There is no hard rule for when (or if) this happens that applies to all figures equally, but I'd say there's some kind of exponential increase in the required age/awareness if the thing being changed was particularly germane to their noteworthiness. MLK's race is completely inextricable from his noteworthiness, so the threshold there would be much higher. But we care about George Washington as a General and a President first (and he's got a couple of extra centuries on him), so it matters less there.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

To answer your question it's stupid because people only do it to look politically correct everyone is worried about offending everyone they can't for the life of them make white people good guys isn't that stereotyping too since it shows that all white people are bad I guess they might be but it's hard to say because I neither know the color of my skin nor the color of my black neighbors.

My guess is - if they remade the musical 1776 and replaced just a few characters with ethnic minority actors, it would be seen as either confusing or a blatant attempt at forced diversity in Hollywood (or even tokenism). People would be searching for a reason why only one or two specific Continental-Congressmen (or their wives) were now being played by minority actors.

But if the entire cast were made up of ethnic minorities for all the roles (where originally all were white males with 2 white females in the cast), that would be more widely acceptable as it is with Hamilton.

Agree, disagree, thoughts?

The remake of Annie seemed to be unfairly uncontroversial despite Annie being the only one turned into a black character. The bad reviews were simply just about it being a badly made movie.

I think by this point you can pretty much do whatever you want with Annie and it would just be another Annie movie.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I never did answer the question. With my hands.

That was not his dream, however. His dream was that of a colorblind society in which his children would, "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content. of their character." If we hold that his race is what makes him great, or that it is somehow essentially tied to it, then we really deny his greatness (which was to transcend race with love and unity). There is only one race, the human race. Here is crazy old EJO making the point rather emphatically at the U.N.



https://youtu.be/iSFDrOxWCXY


If we truly honor Dr. King, then we should be open to him being portrayed by potentially anyone. If we ever get to the promised land he spoke just before he was murdered in Memphis, we will not, in the end, remember him as a black man, but rather as a man.