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I forget what it is called, but what does this community think about when a movie takes a character that was white or a male and makes it a different gender or race for the sake of it?
To the point of advocates, I was cajoled into seeing the recent spiderman movie and I remember there was a cameo of some black superhero, and all of the black kids in the audience went nuts over it. And it was clear in that moment that there's a compelling need, to some extent, for more representation of x demographic, because, for instance, it can't be positive to grow up watching superhero movies and none of them look like you.
At the same time, I think it's often done in an absurd and borderline incompetent manner. I think there are three basic situations with respect to a character's race and gender. 1. Where there isn't really any implied gender or race, so the character's demographic profile can reasonably be whatever the producers want it to be 2. Where there may be an implied demographic profile, but it isn't unambiguously clear, there is a degree of ambiguity, and it isn't crucial to the structural integrity of the film (for instance, the bond films. The characters have historically been white, but 007 is really just Britain's top spy job and it's totally plausible that a black guy could land that job) and 3. Where there is clearly an implied demographic profile and absent the character fitting that demographic profile it's just confusing and nonsensical.
I don't mind the first 2 all that much, but the third is increasingly common. For instance, in House of Dragons, the princess is married to a black guy. However, he's gay and they have an arrangement where they can each sleep with whoever they want, and as a result all of her kids are white. There's a challenge to the succession claims of her kids, but all of the arguments against their succession are like 'I just have a sense for these things. I just know they aren't her kids' or there will be a quiet and vague reference to the fact that her kids don't look like her husband. But no one is ever just like 'she has 5 kids and they are all white. She has blonde hair and her kids all have curly black hair. Obviously they are not her kids'. Or in the recent lord of the rings show, in the hobbit community they are all white except for two people who are not married to each other, and one of those characters had a kid with a white hobbit, and their kid is white. And the producers/writers never thought to or saw the need to address that. I mean the hobbits are a genetically distinct and notoriously insular group and have been for thousands of years. Even ignoring that a white woman and a black man had a paper-white kid, how is it that in a community that has been self-enclosed for thousands of years only two people are black? Or you can even take Bridgerton (which I confess I have not watched), where one of the lords is a black guy. I mean this is in England several hundred years ago. One show might be a period piece for that same time period and cast characters that are black so they can write scenes that highlight how they were treated unfairly, and then another will go the opposite direction and cast a black character that would obviously have been white and you're supposed to ignore their skin color. Like it just doesn't make sense. Another example that really bugged me was in the Foundation show. I read all of those books. And one of the main characters was named Salvore Harden. His whole thing was that he was super masculine in a conventional sense. And they made his character a black woman. It's just not even the same character. I mean that's a character that they perhaps could have made black (so probably in the second category of characters), but making him a woman was just absurd and desperate.
They don't even try and explain this stuff. They just put it out there. I see the general need to increase diversity in film, but it's being done in such a stupid way and I think highlights the sometimes superficial and low quality thinking that comes with DEI lenses. Like if you google these instances I'm talking about the articles all have this tone of 'to all the racists out there:' like you didn't just make a king of england a black trans woman (not necessarily that I've seen that, but just as an extreme). By all means, write more demographically diverse characters into the first or second categories I mentioned earlier, but at some point there has to be some sort of recognition that there are parameters you have to work within in some cases, most prominently a historical drama.
I consistently feel like the current influence progressives have is little more than the dog that caught the car. I think they have been given a 'lets see what you've got' moment in culture and society, and once the current environment, which is more politicized and emotionally charged and thus does not apply a normal degree of critical thinking to ideas, passes, I think people are going to look back and observe that they really fucked it away and lacked serious recommendations when they were given the reigns. There is a way of doing this shit that makes sense, but that is not the way things are being done.
The responses to this are a little out there IMO. They tend to be 'not seeing diversity in film has no impact' or 'it's not weird for two white parents to give birth to a black child'
It's kind of funny to watch this conversation play out here as I'm taking a break to watch House of Dragons. The guy who would inherit the throne if the princess hadn't ostensibly had kids with his brother, meaning they are the true heir to the throne, is currently laying his case down in court and making the formal allegation that they are not his brother's true kids and when he talks about how he knows they aren't his kids he's just like "vibes are how I know! I just have an instinct for this sort of thing!" Like even within the premise of the show, that a black guy is married to a white woman, they are just so afraid of stating the basic fact.
I actually think the opposite. It's profoundly unhealthy to care if people look like you, and we should be teaching our kids to not worry about such things. When I was growing up, I consumed media featuring all manner of people - black, white, male, female, you name it. I never cared if they looked like me, I cared if they were part of an interesting story. I think that's the attitude we need to cultivate in kids, not feeding the attitude that "yes it really does matter what people's superficial characteristics are".
Taken at face value, this seems like a strong argument for race blind casting. You* can't simultaneously say appearances don't matter and make a big deal out of casting a non-white actor (or otherwise portraying) for a customarily white character. Maybe you don't need Black Panther, but if you're going to argue for that you ought to be open to black Captain America or Hispanic Iron Man or female Thor. Or, say, black Ariel.
*rhetorical you, not you specifically
It's an argument for race blind casting in some cases, sure. But not all. While I don't care about the race of characters per se, I care a great deal about adaptations being faithful to the original. So, no race swapping established characters, but yeah original characters can be whatever and it doesn't bother me.
What does that mean, though? There are certainly stories where changing the race of certain characters at the very least demands some justification, but there are plenty where it does not. Does it really make any sense to insist that Hamlet only be played by Danish actors? Was it a problem that Tom Cruise played the role of a Japanese man in Edge of Tomorrow? (Or, if you want something more recent, basically everyone in Bullet Train).
I don't think that it's particularly complicated. If the character is described a certain way in a book (or other source material), then they should stay that way in an adaptation. And yes, that goes for making characters white as well as making them black. The sword cuts both ways. I was annoyed that the Wheel of Time show felt the need to take white characters and make them black, but I would've been equally annoyed if they had taken the black characters and made them white.
I think you're overthinking this. It really is quite simple.
So there's no legitimacy to complaints about black elf OCs in Rings of Power or black Ariel?
In principle it's not that complicated. In practice it doesn't seem quite so straightforward. I see this argument advanced when it comes to changing a character's appearance, but it tends to get applied in very selective and arbitrary (and one sided) ways. No one complains when adapters change, e.g. a character's hair or eye color, height/physique. Recasting a customarily white character tends to provoke a far stronger reaction than vice versa (nobody complained about Neeson or Hardy in the Nolan Batman films, for example), but also concerns about authenticity/fidelity go out the window if the casting choice is sufficiently cool (approximately no one complained about SLJ as Nick Fury or Jason Momoa as Aquaman, despite them bearing virtually no resemblance to their character's original appearance).
I do recall people complaining about Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher in the movie, since the character is supposed to be a behemoth and Tom Cruise is more... petite. There was much celebration when the character in the TV show was played by a big guy.
Yep, I definitely remember those complaints. I hadn't read the books and I thought (and still think) Cruise did a really good job in the movie, but having seen the series now I definitely see their point. Cruise did as well as he could for a guy his size, but only for a guy his size.
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Oh, no, we're keeping Black Panther. But he's going to be played by Robert Pattinson.
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Agreed. I come from South America; Latin American countries don't have their own animation industries, so I grew up watching imported American cartoons and Japanese anime. I never had any problems identifying with Goku just because he was Japanese.
To this day, I feel a thousand times more represented by Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres (a white Briton written by an American Jew) than I do by a character who shares my race like Jaime Reyes. HJPEV thinks like me; Jaime merely looks like me.
This is an interesting case, since Goku is actually an alien, and the Earth of Dragon Ball is far removed from the real Earth, with none of the same countries as real Earth or even countries that are equivalent to real countries on real Earth. Goku's backstory was based partly off of Journey to the West, which is an old Chinese story, while his character design was by a Japanese artist following Japanese manga standards, giving him a highly stylized appearance that evokes a Japanese person to the audience. Goku's backstory was also based partly off of Superman, who's another alien who takes the appearance of a human from a particular country (USA in this case).
There's a similar thing with Mobile Suit Gundam; with over 20 different shows and movies across 40+ years, all the different protagonists, many of whom are drawn in the mukokuseki style common to anime, should be assumed to be at least part-Japanese unless stated otherwise.
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You can both be right.
It can be unhealthy to care if people look like you, and (assuming most people do care and this is unlikely to change) still a good thing to provide representation to a demographic.
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This might vary depending on how much you generally identify with characters in movies/shows. I get really immersed when watching something, and that immersion gets stronger for characters who I feel similarity to. For example, if I'm watching a show where a woman is fighting, I feel it in my body. Watching a show where men are fighting, I'm just an observer.
The experience is just fundamentally different for me, aside from any political/societal concerns.
Are you sure this is because you are female? I feel the same way, as a male, because watching a woman fight subverts expectations. If a woman is typically more vulnerable and less aggressive, then it means more to see her fight and risk more than a stronger man would risk in the same situation. Even for a superhero like Buffy, there is power in the idea of what is supposed to be "the weakest" element -- not only a girl, but a pretty girl, and not only a pretty girl but a child -- standing up as the only line between monsters and men. This is (or was, until it got beaten into the ground recently) powerful to a wide range of viewers regardless of their sex. For a more extreme example, the little girl in Kick Ass, who is not even superpowered -- it's extremely emotional to see her mix it up because she is a supposedly weak female child, not because the viewer is a weak female child.
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That is interesting. I always identified with the male characters as a kid. I hated being relegated to the pink power ranger role in preschool. Raven in Teen Titans was the first female character I felt a strong connection with.
Most of the books and shows I was exposed to as a kid featured boys being the main character/hero and girls being poorly written plot devices or hyper-feminine. I always identified (roleplayed in make-believe) as the hero, regardless of gender/race. I wanted to be Aladdin for Halloween and ran into an issue there with the shirtless vest look. But for the most part no one made much of it.
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That is indeed a possibility. I would say I identify with characters in the sense that I empathize with their situation, but not in the sense that I see them as a reflection of myself in some way. For example, in video games the whole concept of self insertion is completely foreign to me. When people talk about it I can intellectually understand what they mean, but in terms of understanding what that is like they may as well be talking about drinking gasoline for nourishment.
So, given that I just don't self insert at all, that could explain why I have no trouble identifying with characters regardless of demographics, and why others do have trouble.
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