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How is this uncharitable?
Someone said that black casting in LoTR is unnatural. How else am i supposed to disagree with it?
A lot of people are criticizing LoTR for casting black and minority actors while saying that Amazon only did this so they couldn't criticize the show at all. But then instead of attacking the show people are attacking the casting. Why does the casting matter if both sides say it doesn't matter?
I think calling the casting unnatural is racist and there's no other way to put it. That's my honest opinion. But I don't think anyone wants to explain what else they could mean, so now I'm the bad guy for pointing it out.
Sweet Eru Iluvatar. If some studio were making a new movie - hang on a mo, I just thought of the perfect example.
Now, suppose the studio thought "We really need an A-list actress in the lead role to make this a sure-fire blockbuster", and they cast, lemme see, Scarlett Johansson as General Nanisca. Would you say that was "naturally cast" or rather that casting black actresses, be they African-American or other black ethnic mix, was the "natural casting"?
One argument would be "they should only cast native Dahomeans in the parts". That's not the argument we're making.
The second argument would be "wait a minute, that's completely the wrong actress to cast in the part, it doesn't matter if she's really good".
You are trying to make the equivalent of "Why not cast Scarlett Johansson?" and telling the rest of us we are racists if we say "That's not the proper casting for this character". If they have (and they probably do) white European slave purchasers in this movie, or white European generals etc. then casting Scarlett as Lady Brassnobs is fine and appropriate. But casting Scarlett as part of the Dahomean Amazon army, and the only white Amazon, is going to make people go "What the hey, movie studio, this is not the correct thing to do even if white people do exist in this world and the Dahomeans are in contact with them".
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Literally no one said that but you.
One person (not the one you replied to here, but in the other link I mentioned) referred to certain casting choices as "natural," which (charitably) seems like an obvious reference to fitting the lore Tolkien wrote. There are races in the original Middle Earth; different people from different regions are described as having varied skin tones etc. Just like in the real world. Nobody said it was unnatural to cast black people, unless you uncharitably modify the words they used in a separate context.
In roles where it doesn't make sense--not unlike casting a black child as the natural offspring of a Norse father and a Japanese mother. Maybe these people are wrong or mistaken or even racist, but if you're going to make that argument, you have to actually argue against what their real position is--not the naked one you (or Amazon) invented for maximum pearl-clutching.
Sure, I'd be surprised if this was Amazon's reason for casting that way (I assume they're just on the "maximum skintone diversity" train like everyone else in the movie business outside of Bollywood). But if people think Amazon does seem to be responding to real criticism by deflecting to "you're racist," that's an argument that seems plausible, too, and it's not racist to point that out.
Er... you were just telling me about people on both sides of the casting issue who think the casting matters, so I don't understand this question.
Then don't call it unnatural, as you're, again, literally the only one who has done so. But even if that's the only way to put it, you still have to actually explain yourself. Why is it racist to think that characters shouldn't be skin-tone-swapped from their author's visions in film adaptations? Like, if the next Black Panther movie had the king of Wakanda played by Tom Hanks, I assume some people would be upset--would they have a point? I've seen tons of people get annoyed at originally-Asian characters being played by white actors, so it seems to me that movie watchers are pretty consistent about being annoyed by this, and Hollywood is pretty consistent about telling them to fuck off, since they're gonna buy the movie tickets anyway.
Calling people "racist" is a serious accusation, certainly an inflammatory one, and so if you're going to do it you have to do it with lots of evidence and clear reasoning. You can't just be like "y'all racist" without putting in some work. Define your terms, or better yet, taboo your words. If you literally can't explain your problem without using the word "racist," then you don't actually understand your own problem.
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