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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Maybe at its most base level that is the case, but there is really far more to it than that. Say the film retained its original setting but introduced a single modern American as Romeo. This would ruin the story to a much greater extent than a full retelling does for numerous reasons.

In the Wheel of Time show, canonically anyone can and does have children from any race. They literally changed the rules of reality for diversity, despite the fact that the main character is a different race from the rest of his hometown, which is a major plot point.

Fantasy nations should mostly be somewhat racially homogenous, maybe with exceptions for big cities. I would much prefer a fantasy movie starring 100% black people made by people who hate me to one starring an unnaturally diverse cast made by people who don't hate me. At the end of the day I just care about my own suspension of disbelief and I think a lot of other people do too.

I would much prefer a fantasy movie starring 100% black people made by people who hate me to one starring an unnaturally diverse cast made by people who don't hate me.

An adaptation of a Shakespeare play that had an all-black cast could be great. Peter Brook's version of the Mahabharata - 9 hour stage play then 6 hour TV mini-series then 3 hour movie - had that kind of unnaturally diverse cast because he felt it was a universal story, not just one applicable to India (I don't know how Indian people felt about this, I'd understand not being too gruntled about having Asian, African and white actors play historically Indian characters). It was a good effort, but it was definitely not the original.

You could make a version of the Three Musketeers that was all-Asian (in fact, there was a Korean TV series that did just this but was dropped after the first season). It'd be odd, but it would work way better than having the traditional version except now d'Artagnan is Korean but he's also still from Gascony.

That being said, casting a black Porthos for the 2014 BBC version of the Three Musketeers worked extremely well, but they were careful to give him a back-story to explain this. They didn't just drop in black Porthos and nobody blinks an eye.

Original African or Caribbean legends/myths with appropriate character art, or shows, or movies, would be great. Taking white characters and race swapping them isn't for anybody's benefit in the long run.

An adaptation of a Shakespeare play that had an all-black cast could be great.

Like this one

Oooh, that could work really well. Orson Welles had imagination and theatrical vision to spare. Caribbean island (cough Haiti cough) as the place where a warlord believed the promise of witches about becoming king? Translates over with little difficulty!