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My facebook has been ablaze with the War of the Rings of Power, and by that I mean Amazon putting out tons of propaganda to indicate that everyone is racist for not liking the the Rings of Power, followed by half of the people saying no that doesn't make us racist, and the other half saying they just don't like it because it's a bad show. A similar thing is going on for the Little Mermaid, too. Alas, that these evil days should be mine.
The thing that strikes me is that no one is saying the obvious. To me, and I'll guess to many others, I really don't mind diversification of media. Or, that is to say, I wouldn't mind it, if it weren't for the fact that it's now the norm, it's practically mandatory for any show that doesn't want to be cancelled by internet SJWs, it's crammed down my throat everywhere, and it's turned into a major moral issue where half the audience browbeats the other. I feel like I'm being subjected to someone else's religion.
But that woke audience always comes back to "Why are you against black people playing roles? What are you, racist?" Well, no, I honestly don't think I'm racist. But in the position I'm put in, I get that I am taking actions that a racist would. The only difference is that a true racist would be against black people being cast no matter what, and I am only against it being mandatory and moralized. But since we live in this world, where it is mandatory and moralized, does that mean that there's nothing that would really satisfy me short of black people not being cast?
I don't quite think so. Another point that the woke audience comes to is "They clearly just thought that Halle Berry was the best person to play Ariel". And really, I think the answer to that is, no, they clearly prioritize diversity casting. She is black and they want to cast lots of black people because it scores them points with the woke crowd (and possibly also because it drums up controversy, which may be good for business). And then on top of that, they thought she'd be fine for the part. I don't know how I can prove that, but it just seems evident to me that diversity casting for its own sake is something that is being given high priority. In some limited cases, it's possible to prove it, such as with Ryan Condal, the showrunner for House of the Dragon who indicated that they cast black people to play Valerians explicitly for the purpose of diversity-washing. However, I'm guessing that Condal regrets saying that outright, because it's not a good look. It gives the other side ammo and also casts doubt as to whether the people hired really would have earned the spot on merit alone.
At this point. I don't really know what it would take to convince me that most castings of black people are not just to fill a quota. But this puts me in a tough spot, because I don't really want to be racist in action, even if I know I'm not in thought.
Agree with this take. A few quick additional reflections -
(1) I have no issue with diverse casts where it's actually thematically appropriate. In a show like The Expanse, for example, where people from all over the world have gone to space and made babies, it's entirely appropriate to have a cast of diverse (and often racially ambiguous) actors. My favourite show of all time is The Wire, which has a predominantly black cast because it's actually trying to reflect the makeup of Baltimore. Same with Hamilton - there was a specific artistic purpose there in using non-white actors to play revolutionaries (namely, to emphasise the fact that these people were in some ways outsiders). But in a show like Rings of Power or House of the Dragon, giving seemingly random roles to black actors without any attempt to address their race in the actual story just feels like bad world building motivated by petty politics.
(2) Also, why is diversity casting so overwhelmingly focused on black actors rather than e.g., South Asians, East Asians, or indigenous peoples? This is true even for a lot of British productions, and our South Asian population is a lot bigger than our black population. The obvious answer it seems to me is that white American elites have a weird quasi-fetishistic relation with blackness, and as cultural imperialists, they end up importing their own psychodramas to the rest of the Western world. And that's something I strongly resent.
(3) As OP notes, the issue is definitely not that productions with racially diverse casts are now more common, it's that it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify shows that don't exemplify racial diversity. This forces a dilemma on anyone looking to tell historical stories situated in Europe's past. Do they risk the wrath of the media-activist complex ("yet another show about white people"), or do they find ways to include non-white actors even at the cost of verisimilitude (as in, e.g., Vikings or Bridgerton)? Verisimilitude isn't the be-all and end-all, but it's not nothing either.
(4) Finally - and this is a much broader rant - it frustrates me yet again how narrow the lens of contemporary "diversity" actually is, and how focused it is on the most visible forms of difference. Linguistic diversity, for example, remains the exception rather than the norm in most shows, with everyone talking in English. What about class diversity, or neurodiversity, or regional diversity, or faith diversity? My academic workplace is 'diverse' in terms of gender and race, but everyone is from a fairly elite background and there's not a single openly Christian person among the thirty or so academics I interact with on a monthly basis. That seems like a striking failure of diversity, at least if one were naive enough to think that the concept was genuinely about encouraging heterogeneous representation rather than political point-scoring.
Is that really the case though ?
I would expect that if someone put out a show with an all-white cast (someone downthread mentioned TheNorthman), they wouldn't get a backlash strong enough to actually hurt their bottom line (as long as they don't go aggressively market their product as all-white/anti-woke etc.).
Some theories:
True Believers: A lot of the people involved in media production care more about diversity than about being faithful to history / the original work
Cowards: A lot of those people are in a disproportionally woke-leaning social environment, so even if the backlash doesn't hurt the movie's bottom line, it might still make their friends angry at them or make them open to careerist back-stabbing
Profit maximizers: I'm mistaken and actually the backlash would be hard enough to hurt the bottom line
No such thing as bad publicity: the problem isn't the backlash, it's that putting woke characters is good for the bottom line either directly (by marketing to minorities / the woke) or indirectly (because marketers can cherry pick (or fabricate) "racist" comments on the internet, make up a fake controversy, and get everybody to talk about their movie)
I actually suspect that the wrath of the media-activist complex could be good for the bottom line, if exploited in a similar way: find (or fabricate) the dumbest comments, blow it out of proportion, reap the free publicity. Though that only works if you don't care about your reputation in lefty circles, which tends to be important in the media world.
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