So, i think there's a power dynamic between the two that people seem to miss in this conversation. The question, to me, isn't really about whether the character's racial experience has anything to do with the story. Rather, who is in the position of power to decide how stories are told and by who. I'm an Asian living in Asia. In general, for Western entertainment to remake or adapt Asian stories, it is seen as a mark of pride. This is because colonialism and ongoing cultural imperialism have given many Asians an unspoken deference to the west (mainly white people). So, we really don't care who plays what character. The fact that our stories are given attention by the west, means that they are of 'quality'. Not many Asians will openly admit to this, of course. In other words, when Asians say they're fine with our characters played by white people, it is 'consent' built up by white supremacy via past colonialism. So until everyone is actually equal, whitewashing to me, will always mean an exercise in cultural supremacy; while the other way round, is in fact, a challenge to said supremacy.
@@FamouSly78 I'm confused about your comment. OP is saying that it's very common for racial minorities outside the west to have somewhat of an inferiority complex when it comes to Western culture. That doesn't mean they don't appreciate Western culture, they do. What it means is that for a lot of people, Western validation has more value to them than any other validation, and that can be problematic. The power dynamics of the world usually reflect which Western validation is more valued. So, being appreciated by America or the UK, will make some foreigners feel more valued than if they were given validation by Poland or Hungary. They know Western culture is not a monolith.
That seems a bit of a simplistic answer? What about Irish, Polish or Jewish films? all white but hardly people that have enjoyed much privilege, also Asian is a bit generic, Mongolia, Thailand, China and Japan have all been imperialist powers in Asia arguable (and in the Mongolian, Chinese and Japanese case definitely) worse than any western imperialist. So if an Irish or Jewish actor played what was originally a Japanese or Mongolian character surely the Japanese or Mongolians in that cultural dynamic are the privileged groups compared to the experience of the Irish or Jewish actor?
Do you think that this effect is only caused by colonialism? I live in Australia and we often talk about how we have a 'cultural cringe' about everything Australian, including our accent. A lot of the things we appreciate most about our culture are things that have been accepted by Americans. Because America has such a large cultural impact on the world, and produces so much of the world's media, it's considered 'the best'. I think the effect you're talking about would be seen in practically every country, including majority white ones.
It’s not about taking away representation. It’s about being authentic. As a “POC” (I really don’t like that term) I’d rather be represented authentically than as an empowered joke.
mashallah ! Achinth, Murali is a very rare name i can only think of Murad merali. check his work on youtube . he is a very aware person of color. he broaches these topics from time to time and knows his stuff.
Interesting take! I feel this way about accents too. Why hire someone who can do a bad fake accent when you could literally hire someone who speaks the language and can do it perfectly?
I can say from my own experiences that it takes quite a lot of time to winnow down a long, possibly rambling talk (speaking about myself rambling, not you, (I haven't noticed a ramble in your content)) to something short and concise. In fact, it can add quite a bit of time! But it's worth it, rewriting it the second time around because it's always better, shorter and more to-the-point. I mean, it's what I did with my Best Man speech at my brother's wedding, and it was regarded as the best of the night. Remember the core of what you're talking about: for a Best Man speech, it's short, sweet and about love. That core is gonna vary depending on topic, but always remember to go with the strongest argument (advice from a professor of mine, back in the day). And I quite enjoy your long-form content, so don't feel like this advice (perhaps unprompted) is saying your work isn't already great. I just hope this is helpful and not patronizing. If it comes across as the latter, please accept this pre-emptive apology and feel free to call me out on it.
I'm really glad you brought up the point that Asian people living in Asia are going to potentially feel different about Asian representation in American films than those who live in America. Great video!
Yeah honestly that was a take I hadn't entirely considered. I'd say what bothers me is when white people are more offended on behalf of minorities than minorities are on behalf of themselves. To me that just comes off as white virtue signalling and doesn't help much.
@@webx135 100% fair. I know sometimes when I see representation of a marginalized identity in something I try to see what kind of discussion is happening around them already before voicing any concerns. Because 1) as you said, it can come off very virtue signaling and 2) *I* shouldn't be leading that conversation anyway. I am the whitest white girl ever.
@@webx135 i've noticed that this phenomenon, aside from just being annoying, can also make it harder for minorities to advocate for systemic change. i'm jewish, and every december i hear people fighting over whether to say "merry christmas" or "happy holidays"-it's the christian holiday season, so both greetings mean basically the same thing, except the latter feels more pc. but meanwhile in the real world, antisemitism and islamophobia are rampant on social media and in the conspiracy theories that elected officials spout. the "happy holidays" conversation blows up because it's something most americans will encounter regularly and can easily form an opinion on, but it shifts the discussion to interpersonal interactions when the real problems are with a system that reinforces antisemitic and islamophobic violence. (i'm using my own experience as an example, but i've also seen this phenomenon with discussions of cultural appropriation, disability, and feminism, among others)
@@webx135 "white virtue signalling" implies that white people don't actually have any morals or any care for the people they live with. they just act a certain way to polish their own reputations. this is a HORRIBLE estimation of someone. human beings, whatever skin color, feel empathy. just the same way you can feel sad when hearing a puppy crying, you can get pissed off when someone else's rights appear to be trampled on. Being offended on someone's behalf is also called "caring about other people"
@@PoorMuttski I don’t think you understood what Webx said. The issue is white people getting offended for minorities when they aren’t offended or don’t find much issue in the topic at hand. You said it’s “caring about other people” but a lot of minorities have issues with this too, because it often drowns out poc in those conversations. It happened with Disney’s Raya, when Lindsay Ellis was on fire for some tweet and a bunch of white people were like “Listen to SEAsian voices!” While putting down or burying what SEAsians had to say on the matter. And there are a bunch of white people that do this to polish their reputations. It’s not very shocking or unheard of, very common. Of course, not all white people but they are there. It doesn’t make sense to get offended for people when they aren’t offended in the first place. That’s why it’s better to do what Mainely Mandy said they do, get a sense of where the conversation among minorities is going before you make your own comment on behalf of them.
My opinion; I think we should have a term for American Washing, when an American team takes a property with strong cultural ties and completely destroys it, to the point there is no deeper theme. If you can't make those changes have enough depth to respect the original material, it just shouldn't be made. It doesn't have to be a copy&paste with English speakers, it can be a completely original product, but it needs to have enough meat to be respectful. Fairytale adaptions are probably the best place to point, even if they're low hanging fruit. There are many adaptions of fairytales from certain cultures that are beautifully adapted to other cultures, even though they pretty much never follow the original story to a T.
@@jackdoyle7453 that doesn't count. That's Americans fing over Americans. That's just theft, not appropriation. Like if I stole someone's barbie doll and drew all over it in permanent marker. Appropriating a story to be culturally relevant is more like buying a Barbie second hand, and dressing her up in hand made clothing that was influenced by a different fashion than the one she was shipped with.
I do feel like “blackwashing” in some ways can be done condescendingly, and is in some ways worse representation that just having original characters that are minorities
Definitely, I remember when people were complaining about Ariel being played by a black women - many of those people said it would be okay if Ursula (the villain) was played by a black woman
the biggest concern I have with these adaptations is the fact that they are made in the first place. Like why do we have to tell the same story over and over again? Are there no other interesting stories to be told in which the "insert minority here" can have a chance to shine and fill a role with their originallity rather than being constantly compared to the first person that played it? I wouldn't watch that Arielle movie, but not because I don't think that Halle Bailey is a bad cast but just for the fact that I don't want to have a story rewarmed. Give the girl a great role in a nother story that is new. Like I don't care if White or Black or Asian, I really don't wanna see another adaptation on Cinderella at all. Hollywood has become super lazy and they now put all these actors from minorities in the roles and think they do the minority communities a favour. I personally don't think so and would love to see them in strong new stories. But then again I'm white and European and what do I know what Black people e.x. want? Guess we just need more Black directors, Black producers, Black camerapeople etc. to find out. Or just watch Nigerian movies. But then again Nigerian is Black but not the Black African-American experiences people in the US wanna see.
@@skarbuskreska as a black girl I agree with everything you said 👏🏾💯 and I feel like anti-SJWs wouldn’t of become such a big thing if more Hollywood films and tv shows provided more original black characters and stories especially ones that don’t always use the same cliché or negative stereotypes.
As an Iranian who watches a lot of movies, I almost always get frustrated by the one dimentional Iranian fanatics represented in American movies that even don't get the name of my country right. To be fair, Iranian media also does the same lousy job representing westerners (yep, that's the term they use). No one cares to dig deeper and look beyond politics and stereotypes.
@@adlerzwei maybe they are a thing because america basically destroyed and destabilized the entire middle east and then had the audacity to say they were trying to help
The problem is that Hollywood is like the Borg from Star Trek. In its nature, Hollywood will assimilate everything. Once a film goes through the Hollywood process, it doesn’t matter if pink people play green people or green people play green people. The film is still a reflection of Hollywood and not the authentic culture it may purport to represent. Take Crazy Rich Asians, the P.F. Chang’s* of Asian cinema. It looks Asian, but really, it’s just a Hollywood movie with the same old “prince and the common girl” narrative we’ve all seen. Do we wonder why only 3 people in all of China went to see this movie? Chinese people watch their own movies all of the time. Do they really want to go see a movie in which Hollywood tries to show them who they are? (*For those not familiar with P.F. Chang’s, it’s an American restaurant chain that takes Asian food, surgically removes every molecule of Asian flavor, and then serves it with a choice of brown or white rice.) It’s not that I think Hollywood is consciously trying to assimilate everything. It’s the nature of scale, the mechanism of industry, and the distance a story has to travel from its source to its destination that cause authenticity to get watered-down and repurposed. You won't get authentic diversity out of any large institution, regardless of who is running it. Steaming services are a better answer to diversity. You can search out and watch homegrown content from around the world. Even if those movies try to emulate Hollywood movies, they are still much more authentic representations of a diverse world. The stories are out there. You just have to look for them. If you want diversity, stop watching Hollywood movies because you’re never going to get it from there. And while you’re at it, stop eating at P.F. Chang’s.
Crazy Rich Asians did well among Asian Americans and Singaporeans, which makes sense since that's where the film is set and where the characters are from. The film isn't "coded" like a lot of Chinese dramas, so it makes sense for it to not do well in China. That said, there are still plenty of romance genre tropes in Chinese media that would be quite recognizable to western audiences, including the poor girl getting swept off her feet by a rich dude. That trope is pretty international. But yeah, calling it PF Chang's makes sense. Kinda mediocre, not that authentic, and trying to do too much at once, like basically any chain restaurant. But I also think it was *trying* to be PF Chang's, not necessarily trying to be authentically "Asian."
@@elustran I'm not praising Chinese cinema as being without standard tropes. My kids watch Chinese Pixar clones on Netflix all of the time. But non of these come with the pretense of championing diversity. Crazy Rich Asians is a rather harmless, though still a bit racist, movie. But as we both agree, it's P.F. Chang's. And I believe that's all you ever get when you look at culture through a top-down corporate lens.
One thing I dislike about "colour blind/heterogeneous" casting is how its oftentimes presented in works of historical/historical-fantasy fiction. Because the population being either homogenious/heterogeneous says a lot about the society presented in works such as this. If you have a city or a villeage with lots of different ethnicities, then that would imply that this society has undergone an intense level of migration in the recent past (a process that would have been very strenious and dramatic considering the time-period involved). Yet then the society being presented oftentimes lack all these societal nuances. It's "color blind" by completely eliminating the notion of ethnicity. Which is rather jarring since ethnicity is a huge component of humanity both on an individual and societal level. And its especially jarring in historical settings since historically ethnicity has been EVEN MORE impactful than it is presently. Historically, multi-ethnic/multi-identity societies tend to have been very stratified and balkanized (different groups having different roles and priviliges). People tend to create very color-blind without justifying or explaining why this society is color-blind to begin.
This is what bothers me the most. I remember watching a fantasy show (don't remember which) in which we are told that the main character is discriminated against because of his ethnicity but the casting of the rest of the characters was so multi-color that he didn't stand out in any single way. Also there were supposed to be 3 different cultures living together in the same place and they couldn't even make any differences between their clothes. Either you have a historical story in which differences in culture matter or you don't but saying one thing and doing another makes no sense to me and kinda ruins the experience as a history fan.
There's also a counter-problem, where people _imagine_ various historical spaces to have been purely White when they actually weren't, and become very angry when people of other races show up. There's a really good book that just came out analyzing this, "White Mythic Space: Racism, the First World War, and _Battlefield 1," by Stefan Aguirre Quiroga. (I'm about halfway through right now, very thought-provoking)
It's absolutely fine to me on stage, because you're drawing from a pool of only local actors. One of the best performances of "MacBeth" I saw was done entirely by a black and latino cast in SoCal. And the most popular version of Hamlet recast everyone as animals (a Lion as King?). Still, onscreen, it's odd to me unless contextualized. I mean, if Othello is NOT black/Arab and Desdemona and Iago aren't a different race ... it's a really weird story.
I think you could play with this really well by portraying a world where racial and ethnic lines are drawn vastly differently, where skin colour might not mean anything at all. You could show this by using clothing to very obviously and visibly show the differences. I mean, it’s how things were in Europe before the idea of whiteness became what it is today. Jewish people are currently often hard to point out to most Americans, whereas a person in the Middle Ages would find that very easy. Religions play a huge part in ethnicity, show that! Also, I think you could present a very interesting world where the majority of people are non-white. For western audiences, this would really show the lack of diversity in a culture in a way that they would have simply glossed over if the characters had all been white. I don’t know, I’m a white person from a majority white country in Europe, but I would love to see these kinds of things represented in movies and tv.
@@bettievw Doesn’t Avatar: the Last Airbender present a world with mostly Asian- and Native American-looking people? Having seen the whole series, I don’t think I ever saw an unambiguously White person in any of the episodes, even if many of the Asian-coded characters were drawn with big anime eyes instead of ones with noticeable epicanthic folds.
I'm Costa Rican. So my perspective is an outsider's. I understand the situation both ways. I think sometimes the characters' race doesn't matter. Sometimes it does. Say, I don't mind a black Little Mermaid because mermaids are mythical creatures that can be any color, and in the animated movie they had a Caribbean crab. So they just could move the story to the Caribbean. I do mind the Snow White issue because she's supposed to be white as snow but whatever. Eartha Kitt played Cat Woman in the original show at least once. I wouldn't dig a white actress as Mulan or Moana. But Shakespeare, for example, is beyond race. Any actor should be able to play any Shakespearan character if they have the talent to do so. And who cares what color Commissioner Gordon is? It's irrelevant to the story. It doesn't matter. Anne Boleyn though, matters, because it's history. I don't want to see a white Frederick Douglass. I saw a movie in which tall, blond, thoroughly British Julian Sands plays a historical Spanish character. So have Viggo Mortensen, Jason Isaacs, Julia Ormond, Marlon Brando, Sigourney Weaver, Stellan Skarsgaard (yep, a Nordic man playing Goya). But then Anthony Quinn (Irish-American-Mexican) played nearly all over the international and ethnic spectrum, from Mexican to Italian to French to Arab to Native American to Stanley Kowalski). I don't think it matters very much in most cases. But I would prefer the character's ethnicity to be respected when it's relevant to the credibility of the plot. Korean and Japanese filmmakers do wonderful things adapting Western fairytales to their own cultural context. Tales and legends are universal and can take place anywhere. As for me, if ever my life story makes it to the movies, I want to be played by Gal Gadot. Never mind that she's taller, thinner and prettier than me.
Absolutely agree. When it is about fictional characters, like comic book characters or fairy tales I feel one can do whatever interpretation they want, so any person can play it. But historical characters should stick to the race of that character. An Egyptian shouldn't be played by a guy with a tan like in the Exodus movie of 2011. The same way when it is a European period drama, often with historical figures it makes no sense to have a person of color. Years ago a historical Tracian figure was played by a black guy. It was quite ridiculous and I think people had the right to be outraged.
I saw the movie where John Wayne played Ghengis Khan. Yeah, JOHN WAYNE. Playing GHENGIS KHAN. And yeah, however bad you're imagining it to be, it's actually worse in reality, for OH SO MANY reasons. Ever wanted to see a legendary Mongolian warlord from ancient history portrayed like he was an ultra-conservative, old white American cowboy dude in cosplay Samurai gear? Nope, me neither - thanks Hollywood, I hate it!
@@Maerahn I think that whole movie was cursed. It was shot on a nuclear misles testing ground and many people got cancer and died after they worked on it.
@@cobrakaier238 I agree that historical character should be played by people who look similar to them.... that said how similar? Like I'm peruvian if they would cast someone to play a Peruvian character I would expect them casting a Peruvian or half Peruvian and not let's say a chilean or columbian (nothing against those countries >-
I do kind of have an interesting take on the live adaption of Ghost in the Shell. In the movie plot they mention how much involvement the Eurocorps have in New Tokyo and the fact that the Major was revealed to be a Japanese girl who was kidnapped and had her "ghost" forced into Scarlett's "shell" taking away her identity,.. to me it was like a very literal and extreme depiction of appropriation and Western imperialistic influence in Asia. Not saying it's good or bad. Just kind of a soft take I had after seeing the movie.
@@jackdoyle7453 I know it's not mainstream there, but the screenplay for the 2017 movie wasn't written by anyone in Japan. And it's really just my own reading. I doubt that's exactly what the writers had in mind.
I think ultimately the problem with 'race-washing' - if you can call it that? - is more an issue with movie production companies and their financial incentives. Because of the large costs of making a movie, movie companies will prefer remakes/franchising/re-telling of historical events as they are proven products with brand recognition. At the same time, companies also want to appeal to a growing ethnically diverse middle class with disposable income. (Some individual directors also want to balance their cast to more accurately shape a typical US distribution) Bottom line is that existing brands become more diverse as a bid to increase profits. Until that changes, I don't see any type of 'race-washing' stopping.
Yes! Super agree. Hollywood could absolutely make stories about historical POC, folklore and legends from not Europe, or new contemporary stories about POC, but instead they'll continue to keep telling the same stories, now with diverse casts! Robin Hood, King Arthur, Anne Boleyn, Captain America...super white stories but with diverse casts. It all comes down to what sells, and retelling the same stuff over and over is a safe investment.
as an asian living in asia, i really find the label "POC" a very western concept, and a political one at that. we do not call our asian neighbors "persons of color" or any such term that groups people by complexion. and yet americans will call us "POC" nonetheless. but pointing out the difference between being an asian-american and being asian in asia goes far beyond politics and pop culture. if the conversation is about how does this make americans feel, then i can understand why you would disregard the opinion of the vast non-americans. but if the question is "how does this make anyone feel" then you can't really say that the contrary opinions of non-americans don't count just because they don't align with the american mainstream. personally, i think race-bending just for the sake of appearances is extremely cringe-y, whether that be whitewashing or blackwashing or whathaveyou. to a cinephile, the story / source material is basically sacred, and any changes made must make sense and not for political reasons. the moment a movie becomes more about political appearances than the art of storytelling, it ironically crosses out its own purpose. sometimes i think people forget that cinema is first and foremost Art as there seems more chatter about the politics that surrounds it rather than the genius (or lack thereof) of the people who made them. when parasite won best picture, it baffled me as to why people who haven't even watched it said that the oscars has gone full blown woke, and to me, purely as a cinephile, it's a very bizarre context to politically judge a piece of movie one hasn't even seen. and again when black panther came out, i thought it was a cool film, but there were all these nonsense conspiracies surrounding it. i wonder if americans are aware of how strange it is to politicize things that are not political in nature. like, don't get me wrong, i understand that media / pop culture is influential, but you guys also made politics into something like "pop politics" and it's seriously polarizing the hell out of young people today. i hope americans understand that non-americans have a varied and very different cultural historical experience than them, and that while racial injustices have made their indelible mark on american society, some of your uniquely american problems don't even exist in some countries.
The problem is that in the US, we've whitewashed our history and source material. Only white men had power and they used it to erase the history of others. Its hard to write great media and get it recognized under the racial conditions we had. There is some of course but when the oppressors decide history they dont tend to preserve the works of the oppressed. In doing so we've ensured that if we "stick to source material" most of our media would be white men (even more disproportionately than now). In a country that is still full of racists (the last big Civil right push was the 60s- people are still alive) it further harms minorities because they don't get to see themselves be the heros. If we stick to the source material theyd be stuck mostly with new media, especially given Hollywood's "need" to avoid controversy and racists are loud. We just had people convicted of lynching someone ffs. In this day and age. The worst part is it was probably only because they recorded themselves and thought it was a good look. Politics literally impact how you live your life. Everything is political just because of that. When racists beat you down in every other area, wanting some media to escape is not wrong. Americans are big into racial stereotypes. When that is perpetuated in media, it makes the problem worse. People write media often with biases. Its not wrong to scrutinize the why although I will agree that we've taken it too far in some senses. People shouldn't be attacking an actor for taking a job and let that color our perception of their performance. If people have legit criticisms it should be for the casting team.
@@pixality7902 using material literally made by white europeans doesn't sound like the most rational way to showcase the diversity in america. if anything, that just makes the effort look like you don't want to embrace your own roots. and despite the cultural destruction from the past, no not all of cultural traces have been erased. latin america alone is TEEMING with its own cultural stories. reading books is one of my passions, and you can't just pretend that there are no works of literature by afro-americans, asian-americans, native americans, latin americans, etc that are still existing today. also, literally NO ONE is stopping anyone from creating new works. you don't have to rely on just adapting old works over and over. i watch a ton of asian movies and new voices and new stories pop-up everywhere. i usually don't see any asian remakes of older asian works as far as asian cinema goes. there's no excuse why that can't be the case in america. i didn't like crazy rich asians, but at least those people made an effort to make something original. seriously, no one's stopping anyone from making new things.
@Maggy Frog I agree but I also see some problems. What I know that a lot of Afro Americans don't know their roots - you have many cultures from Africa. The second thing is that new things are harder to sell, brands are valuable. I understand that but I still think that if you push your agenda too hard it'll have opposite result.
Something that stuck with me from other video essays that talked about PoC representation (specifically "The Day Rue Became Black" by Yhara Zayd and "Asians In Hollywood" by Accented Cinema) was how if there's any way a PoC character doesn't HAVE to be the race they originally are, then they'll be white. people defend white washing with "the character's not human" or "it's not in Asia" when there isn't ever a "reason" to be white either.
The only downside about the video essay of The Day Rue Became Black is that she goes on to Magnus. The bad thing she does while discussing Magnus is that she does not differentiate between people complaining Magnus is Asian (while he is supposed to be Asian) and people complaining he looks Chinese (while he is supposed to be from Indonesia). It is a bit as if a Swedish guy would play an Italian; you should not complain he looks European, but people complaining he looks Swedish would have a point.
@@MissMoontree I went back to the video to double check what you're talking about. The one criticism Yhara Zayd showed that specifically complained about why the actor "looks Chinese" isn't actually saying "they should've gotten an Indonesian to play the character", especially since the actor wasn't even Chinese (not Indonesian either but he was South east Asian). The person was just being racist and summing up all Asians as Chinese. I do think it's worth discussing how any Asian is cast to play an Asian character of a completely different nationality which just generalizes us and feels inauthentic but it wasn't really the discussion of that specific video and maybe not something the video creator, a black person, can speak on for us.
@@MissMoontree "It is a bit as if a Swedish guy would play an Italian" I admit, all I can think of right now is this: ua-cam.com/video/YnVbKryHMQA/v-deo.html
Actually in recent adaptations of asian series many asian characters are played by black actors. As an example, L from Death Note was treated that way when Netflix made their version.
@@tenjou0 yeah, although I see western adaptations making an anime character black as an attempt at diversity rather than when they pick someone white for no real reason other than it being the default race in the west. I could be wrong though
I really think "blackwashing" is a symptom of a much larger issue people of color face in the west. We have hardly any original characters to call our own. "Blackwashing" to me and my friends feels very bare bones and unoriginal. It's basically the table scraps of representation. And honestly it's not good enough to change an existing character to a person of color. We want original complex characters to represent us, not appropriated white power fantasies. And another thing. 99% of POC like you and me don't even know what racial homogeneity feels like. So it's important to me that not just Asians are represented. My God mother and father are black. My best friend shes black, my bridesmaid is Mexican my stepfather is Mexican. My step mother is middle eastern. These people are equally important to me and it's means so much to me when I see representation of other people on the screen. My life is full of diversity and I demand my media reflect that. To do otherwise is white supremacy. Simple.
This is exactly how i feel 💯 and I know it’s easier said than done but I wish we had more original black films and tv series of different genres like what the East Asians did with shows like squid game
@@rubyaddison5446 I definitely understand wanting more original characters. But… I also find it hard to really have beef with racebending. I guess it’s because when a Black actor I love and support gets a coveted established role they want to make it their own like I assume any white actor would (same logic behind POC cosplaying white characters) After a while it just feels like overthinking something that should be fun. There’s room for both IMO.
@@blkloislane yeah and that's JUST east Asians, specifically Koreans. Where are the monumental south Asian shows for Indian Pakistani and Nepali? Where are the shows for the South East Asians like the Vietnamese Laos and Phillipines? Hell there hasn't been an accurate depiction of African Asians like Egyptians since Prince of Egypt. The world is intensely different and "Asian" "African" "Latino" and "Black" needs to stop being seen as a monolith words.
I remember Eartha Kitt as Catwoman. She was the first one I remember, then we had Halle Berry and that whole mess of a movie, TV's Harley Quinn has a black Catwoman. I remember a comic book too. I just thought it was established canon. Zoë Kravitz is just another in a line, I thought she looked awesome. I didn't know it was meant to be unusual casting, I don't want to say I didn't see race but I just wasn't aware it would be a factor.
I thought it was an interesting example to pick, as she has been potrayed by black women several times. It would be more unusual if she was played by an Asian woman.
The weird part will be Jim Gordon being black. His daughter (or niece in some versions) Barbara Gordon was a red head, something that was a thing because Dick Greyson had a thing for red heads, something he got teased about.
@@linusa2996 his daughter can still be a red head and he can still have a thing for red heads. I mean look at Meghan and Harry's child Archie he is a red head I think. It's possible for a biracial child to inherit blonde or red hair from their white parents, it just doesn't happen as often. So I don't think it's necessarily a problem
In general I feel that any character can be played by any race, sex, gender, etc UNLESS the character in question is shaped by these factors. So I wouldn't mind if, for example, Hermoine was black but her being female is what created several plot lines and situations with other characters, which would necessitate rewrites if the role were to go to a man. Of course this line of thinking can be used against diversity ie lets make every character a white dude because it doesn't shape their character. I don't really know how to answer this.
@@moscanaveia There might even be a great moment of confusion for Harry hearing her called "mudblood". He is already upset in the book because of the tone, and it's Malfoy saying it, but if he thought it was racist, too ... Hermione might have to act quicker to have her punch come first. THEN Ron can explain it's a wizarding term. I think including Blaize Zabini's character more, seeing him accepted by the white wizards would drive home this alternate form of bigotry.
The whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, to me, indicated a much deeper problem with the adaptation, and that was a failure to understand the source. While the themes of GITS can be fairly universal, they are also tied deeply into Japanese cultural experiences, layered into the very specific bureaucracy of the Japanese security and legal apparatus. The original also found a balance in exploring Japanese ideals of collectivism verses individualism in a way that gave room for both philosophies to breathe, while merging into each other. The movie adaptation goes straight for individualism. I mean just look at the name of the character to see how much they bungled the adaptation. Major is not her name; it's her rank. She is THE Major, because it's her title. This all indicates that they didn't really understand the material they were adapting, and just wanted to go for the surface level appearance of what people thought that Ghost in the Shell was, so casting a white American woman in a role that should have gone to a Japanese woman is just the cherry on top of that shit sundae.
The Major was what she was called when she was fighting in the war and it war not her rank, and she did not give her self the nickname.... also the shell she used was one of a white woman in the original manga and anime. and this has to do with having sex with white women is a kink in japan and a power status in the Japanese elite. Also it is hinted at the major might be a boy, also the major does not really care what her body looks like and it is just a ends to a means to satisfy the society around her. Think Stevie Wonder's sunglasses he does not have them for himself the has them for us. The thru line of the the movie is what make us human and our Identity. the major questioning if she is even human to the casual biparty that Togasa get for being un modded. also if we want to go down the rabbit hole GITS is a Japanese remake of Philip K. Dick 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 64.media.tumblr.com/dfc420db24d76a5e4354721a717106fa/tumblr_n7imlzdIbh1rpfx57o1_500.gifv
@@-BigTMoney- She's called the Major because that's her rank; the Self-Defense Forces in Japan are part of the country's National Police service, and she fought in overseas conflicts because she was a member of the Japanese military. This is well-established in the original manga (which included two instances of her wearing her military uniform for official duties outside of her role as a counterrorist operator), as well as it's follow-up works. A major theme of the original manga was the use of soldiers enforcing internal laws (something that was a more and more prominent issue at the time of writing, with the implementation of multiple national counterterrorism teams around the world pulling operators from military personnel). The first manga established her gender very firmly as female (through several outright statements, and one very adult scene that spelled out her biological gender). There was no work that implied her body was that of a European woman before the film.
I thought her body was synthetic, and could literally look like anything and as far as casting goes, Johansson looked the part. I mean I guess ideally for a live action role we could get an actual android to play it, but we aren't there yet.
There's a part in the movie that addresses the fact that she was born japanese - she goes looking and it's heavily implied she finds her childhood home in the movie(an apartment iirc). It's also alluded to in the anime that she/he might be either or nonbinary and that it's of no consequence which used to be the case because the major is the major, the end. They could have casted literally any attractive woman in the role and it would have been appropriate for the story since it's just a shell to the major, nothing more. If they casted a black woman or native american woman for the shell - it wouldn't have impacted anything other than pissing off the neonazi skinhead crybabies....They should have done that actually...
@@johnmccarron7066 I read the manga when they first came out in Japanese, I finished high school in Tokyo in 2000, and moved to Osaka. If you are familiar with manga and anime you can tell the race by how they do the eye shape, so it does not have to be stated what race she is b/c you can see it. I have not read them in English or any of the rerelease so I am sure some small retcons have happened thru translations and updates thru the years. I am sure what you said is accurate for the versions you got and I am old and out of date with current build of the series. these differences we are talking about don't change the core of who she is just a different shell on the same cyber brain (see what I did there ;-)
I always love how much nuance you bring to your videos. You always go the extra mile to consider every point of view and I think it makes for really good content
The casting of Jamie in the musical Everybody's Talking About Jamie is a really interesting case. The character is based on a real white person and was originally portrayed by a white actor, but has since been played almost exclusively on stage by non-white (usually Black or mixed-race) actors for a number of years now. However, when the time came to cast the film adaptation, they went back to a white actor. Jamie was great because it had a Black actor in the leading role of a show where the character's race has no bearing on the plot, and with the 'colourblind casting' for the film, this representation was lost. (This is not a critique of Max who played him in the film - I think he did great - just an observation on the nuances of the casting decisions)
I think this comment is interesting because my first contact with the Jamie musical was through the Korean stage show, which was of course played by (freaking amazing) Korean actors and singers. I loved the actor on the film, but it was an adjustment.
I think it falls in three groups: 1. The character is core or fundamental to the story and is well known. Then the character's traits should be respected. Here we need to create new *chararcters* who are diverse. 2. The character is secondary or is depicted ambiguously (like Senku in Dr. STONE - his father is definitely Japanese, but they actually point out they're not related by blood and he certainly looks Caucasian in the manga). Preference to being true to the character, but probably less significant and there is room for diversity. 3. The character is either new or or has been depicted in several different ways. Really - just open. We really need to make this a more diverse area. For me, the problem really is more that if you just race or gender swap, it suggests something odd - that the background or history of the character doesn't matter. Consider Superman (Kal El). He grew up on a farm in rural Kansas and spent his time in a very whitebread town. His entire story is... well.. white and male. If you just swap in a black person *with no other changes* - it suggests that there are no cultural or experiential differences between white Americans or black Americans and they're interchangeable. There are ways to do it - there are, in fact, black Supermen. But they're either different people or they're from alternate universes. They may even have the same name and more or less the same backstory - but there are differences that might make the character more authentically black or Asian while preserving the core concept of the original character. Like Calvin Ellis on Earth 23 (DC comics). He's Kal El. Born on Krypton. But he's black. He's still basically Superman, but he's distinct with differences that come both from being black on Krypton AND on Earth. He's the President of that universe's United States, for example. I'm not sure I've communicated this well.
We don't get mad (most of us).We just don't always understand the point of changing the race . I mean I also don't like it if a white guy plays a role that was originally black or asian.
its interesting how a lot of times they handle black people poorly in media by tokenizing them(finn from SW) or just making them black versions of white characters. Maybe thats what people are getting mad at, instead of your passive aggressive assertion that its just because racism.
Whenever I see this topic pop up, I always end up thinking about the people who actually get to make these casting decisions. I think part of the problem is that people write what they know. Like, I really want more queer stories and movies and characters, but I can't imagine it'd go well for a non-queer person to tell those stories. And I don't think that's their fault, either--we just have our limitations of perspective. So ultimately, I think if we had more diversity in the roles of casting, directing, story writing, executives, etc, maybe we'd see more diversity everywhere else.
and you really don't want the marginalized actor to have to do the heavy lifting of authentic portrayal if the script and directing have no notion of it. especially since it's the actors who get all the backlash from their own community if they can't wrangle it into something intelligible.
You're so right. People may even want to do the right thing, but many wouldn't feel comfortable speaking on something they know nothing about. The power in production must be shared.
I agree, but mostly what we are getting is the token lesbian or gay male in over abundance. They are not even good homosexual roles, just homosexual overly played, overly stress. Seems like gay people can't live normally, instead they have to go around throwing gay-ness into everyone's face. We need real gay characters, not overtly gay characters that presently tend to offend people. Most of the gays and lesbians I have met are so normal you would NOT know they are gay or lesbian at all, until they are with their partner. Although I have seen Gay males who flamboyantly FLAME as they walk through a crowd, that is not what I see as the norm for most of my gay friends. Mind I have one friend that over plays the victim card and looks for insults because he is gay. I have seen the same thing in black friends that also play the victim when they started the incident. I see victims every where... Karens who call foul or scream oppression when they are they idiots causing the problem, white men screaming the Black, Jews or what ever are cancelling us. This is after their views are aired on TV, Facebook, or other media... people today are all about being victims.
I think that there's a little "death of the author" happening with Night of the Living Dead. Romero may not have intended racial allegory, but the fact that the lone survivor, a black dude, gets shot at the end certainly feels like racial allegory. It hits different than it would if it had been a white guy
i personally think 'death of the author' is a bit of an overblown concept, but it definitely hits different -- and if it helps us think about race in a productive way, then it's a valid conversation. But I don't feel comfortable erasing the original purpose of the film.
Oof Netflix Death Note. One of my favorite Manga series of all times and set in my own city of Seattle. I didn't have high hopes for the adaptation, but still, hearing that it was bad just sucks. I wanted to be excited for it. But the American film industry has been adapting Japanese stories and films since Kurosawa films. I don't really mind if they want to take an movie and remake it with a western cast and setting. Japan adapts western media as well. Edited for typos and an extra thought.
Your commentary on Duane Jones is interesting - I always took his murder at the end of the original film to be a pretty explicit commentary on race, and who we see as “dangerous”. Duane was clearly a hero of the story, stopping a real threat (zombies), but to the police officers who shot him, none of that mattered. The police assumed he was a zombie without giving any benefit of the doubt, just as police assume the guilt of black folks in our society in much the same way. I always ask myself; if Duane Jones character had been white, would the police have presumed he was infected and shot him so quickly? Would they have attempted to talk to him more first? the power of our ability to find meaning in media is crazy haha
I always assumed the exact same thing! It really seemed like some hardcore civil rights commentary there, particularly considering when that movie was filmed.
@@neuralmute I have to wonder if his character dying like that was in the original script (prior to casting), and it only took on the racial context afterward because he was being portrayed by a black actor. If that is the case, it definitely goes to show that there are some events where the context changes based on the race of the characters.
Love the complexity that T1J brings to the topic, and I would love to see more diversity in actors. I am wary of many of the one-sided arguments (such as whitewashing bad, black washing okay) because, in general, I find that trying to enumerate the circumstances in which we hold people to different standards inevitably leads to more argument and divisiveness than seeking a common standard and identifying the areas in which is not being implemented fairly. That said, I think there is a much more powerful argument against black washing (or gender-swapping) than those in the video: tokenism. Sometimes, it feels like studio execs decide to change the race, gender, or orientation of the character as a stunt or a hedge against failure. In these cases, the people producing the movie either try to engender controversy to get more media attention and/or claim racism/sexism/homophobia if people don't like the movie, especially if fans of the original IP don't like the adaptation. But when this approach is taken, it's prioritizing skin-deep representation over nuanced writing. When this happens, everyone loses because the character is shallow and a poor representation of their race/sex/orientation, and a poor representation of the original property. If we want more diversity in movies, the emphasis should not really be on whether or not to re-cast or non-traditionally cast white IP, a la amazons Rings of Power series. The emphasis should be on raising awareness of other IPs. I'd much rather see Evan Winter's Rage of Dragons or N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance series with their nuanced characters than see a bunch of people trying to tokenize Tolkein and butchering it in the process. I recently saw an educational media company proudly put forth its mission statement. 2 or 3 of the 6 points were about diversity and inclusion. None were actually about the educational impact itself. When diversity becomes the primary goal (rather than the quality of the product) everyone loses, and the same is true with representation in movies.
My Stance: swapping of any kind is only a problem if the thing being swapped had some importance to the character in question. If the character just happens to be insert blank then I don’t care.
I think the problem with this is two-fold. First, fans of these works often grew up with these characters. They have a certain idea of who the characters are and what they look like and they naturally want to see the characters they grew up with, put to live action the way they saw them growing up. This is especially true for visual mediums like comics and manga where you actually get to see how the characters look on page. When you change the characters you're inherently alienating that core fanbase to some extent. And what's the tradeoff? Presumably you'd get a wider audience coming to see your movie. Except no, you won't. The people who would want to see the movie already (the aforementioned fanbase) are now less inclined to pay money to do so and the people who you're trying to draw in aren't suddenly more likely to go see a movie they already weren't interested in just because some of the characters are now black. The second problem is that it's just plain lazy and offensive. The Harley Quinn movie and its race-swap of Black Canary was mentioned in the video so let's use that as an example. What was the purpose? Why race-swap a white character instead of simply using an already existing black character? There are many black superheroines to choose from but instead they decided to use a white character and just make her black. Why? Could they not be bothered to find a black character (there are many black superheroines to choose from)? Do they think black characters aren't interesting or marketable (that's just patently untrue)? Essentially what they're saying is that they couldn't be bothered to find a black character to use but they knew they'd get shit if they didn't have one so they palette swapped a white character and that's good enough. That's not diversity, it's tokenism.
I understand the casting of Hamilton sending a message by using all actors of color. I have always wondered about the Anne Boleyn casting, though. While being "white" was not intrinsic to her character, being English was.
On Ben's Blackness not being integral to Night of the Living Dead's story, but being an essential part of the recasting, I see that as being similar to the Parent Trap remake not just using twins. When a movie/property makes a non-standard choice, it's a gesture of respect to the original filmmaker to maintain that kind of choice.
Ben being Black is essential IMO. I'd go so far to say that if someone doesn't think it is essential, they are missing a huge part of the meaning (whether Romero intended that or not).
@@travcollier I agree. I think the essentialness of Ben's Blackness is always lingering around complexity of his relationship to Barbara...and how other people react to their relationship with each other. It is tense. And remember interracial marriage was just made legal with Loving v Virginia that year before...but black men were still regularly lynched when white men got too nervous with their proximity to white women. But I think his Blackness' essentialness becomes apparent at the very end of the film. I don't want to give spoilers if people haven't seen it, but I cannot see what happens at the end as being NOT about race.
@@troopersjp Quick correction. "Miscegenation" is interbreeding, not marriage. Interracial sex (or intimate relationships) was illegal. There's an equal protection argument for interracial marriage, but interracial sex being legal rests on an implicit right to privacy. This is sadly a relevant detail given the recent leaked opinion from the US Supreme Court. PS: Similarly, the Lawrence v Texas case which would also be undermined by that ruling struck down a law against sodomy. PPS: I'd apologize for "getting political", but it's very much on topic IMO ;)
@@travcollier Hello! No worries about getting political on my end. But I do need to correct you a bit here. It is true that the word "Miscegenation" is defined in the dictionary as interbreeding, but Anti-Miscegenation laws were predominantly about making interracial *marriage* illegal...though some laws made both illegal. Loving v. Virginia was about the illegality of interracial marriage, not interracial sex. Virginia did have a law that made interracial sex illegal. And just like in Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas, the police burst into the home of the Lovings, in the hopes to catch them in the act of sex in order to arrest them. However, unlike Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas, the police did not catch the Lovings in the act of sex. When the police questioned them as to what their relationship to each other was, they noted they were married. And they were arrested for their interracial marriage violating Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which spoke about marriage only, not sex. This is significant because Loving v. Virginia's Supreme Court ruling had nothing to do with a right to privacy. Loving v. Virginia struck down Virginia's Racial Integrity Act on the basis that Interracial Marriage Bans violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, and additionally, that their law violated the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause because "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law." Threatening of Roe v. Wade's right to privacy has implications for Lawrence v. Texas not Loving v. Virginia. If Obergefell v. Hodges were overturned, *that* would have implications for Loving v. Virginia. This is not to minimize the danger to marginalized people of all sorts due to the threatening of Roe. v. Wade. But some of these details are important. There were lots of places that had laws against interracial marriage, but not interracial sex, for example, all of the French colonial spaces like Louisiana that followed the Code Noir, had sex legal, but marriage not. Alabama has interracial sex when the people were married be a felony, but interracial sex when the people weren't married was only a misdemeanor. So what is up with that and they does this matter? Because there is a long history of of white men who were slave owners sexually assaulting the black people they had enslaved. Sometimes because they wanted to impregnate those black women and to force them to give birth to another generation of enslaved people. That sort of interracial sex was not only not illegal, but there was a capitalist incentive under the slavery system for white men to sexually assault black women. This is one of the reasons the first anti-miscegenation laws were in the 1660s in slave states specifically forbidding white people form marrying Black and Mulatto enslaved people and indentured servants and none of the former slave states had repealed their anti-miscegenation laws before Loving v. Virginia. The impending overturning of Roe v. Wade is a disaster. But I think it is important to note the ways in with different sorts of oppression are rooted in different histories of violence...because knowing the distinctions makes it our ability to fight those oppressions more effectively.
8:17 In the Manga they point out The Major's body was a generic model from the US. One of the most important plot points in all of Ghost in the Shell is authenticity. The Major's body doesn't look like her as a small japanese girl. While the outside of her is changed she still consider herself her unironically and authentically; even thought the only part of her that is still her is her brain. Heck a plot point of the anime in am episode was a guy had androids in the same model as The Major's body, as that model was common. Scarlett Johansson was an inspired choice. Togasi, and Ishikawa yeah. Make them all japanese. Bato... I think he was also all full synthetic body too.
Full prosthetic doesn't mean white though. In the manga and in the movie there's hardly any people who aren't east Asian. Motoko doesn't stand out from the crowd. She's generic. Attractive but generic. This would imply that she looks like an attractive east Asian woman. A white woman would stand out.
@@treacherousjslither6920 You are putting a lens on all of your own basis. Of course she doesn't stand out with a US body made from America. Because global tastes have changed. Watching the original movie and Manga NeoTokyo... There are dozens of of aesthetic choices mishmashed from everywhere, into a hive city that at its core is Japan. *In The Future* Japan has become a lot more cosmopolitan. If you what what a cosmopolitan non-western society looks like look at early Turkish Republic. Ataturk baned the Habib, and the Fez. There was enormous social pushback for decades. Which some of it is only getting dealt with now. See all the social turmoil Erdogan is whipping up. Penultimate point, there are a few times in the GitS franchise where section 9 team goes to other countries. No one points out how Japanese/Pan Asian Motoko *looks*. Final point, my personal head cannon that is supported by how everyone treats her and makes passing remarks. I think she has a conventional attractive body in the 2040s. Going back to NeoTokyo's example the architecture is all other the place. Phrases and signs from everywhere. The global society has been chugging along for almost 100 years. If you look at the US, our standard of beauty has hanged to have a lot more latin American influence. Japan in GitS has been a super power for decades, while the US has receded a little bit. This would change the currents of fashion. Which is to all say all of these factors become factors. Could she have subtle Japanese/Pan Asian influences on her body? Absolutely. Would *most* of her features be consider globally conventionally attractive? Even more emphatic yes! If this story is a near future possible take... I would expect Motoko' body model to be based off of an actress/model. Bases doesn't mean *looks exactly like*. Do I think that Scarlett Johansson makes an okay Motoko? You could do worse.
I think it's totally different the feeling when you're in the original country than when you're a minority watching the adaptation in the U.S. I don't think any person in Colombia would have cared if ugly Betty would have a white actress in the main role, but the latin population in the U.S. would do. People here in Mexico don't even know there's a U.S. version of Queen of the south, much less care that the lead actress is brazilian.
I watched The Fresh Prince, 227, The Jeffersons, and other Black casted shows and related to many of the characters because what you look like has nothing to do with what you've been through or what you're interested in. I'm a poor kid from Philly who has a rich uncle like Will. I have gossipy neighbors like the ones on 227, I've been powerless then suddenly gained power like George Jefferson.
Love your content, very well detailed and thoughtful. I do have to push back on one thing, the main protagonist's skin color in Night of the Living Dead was a HUGE deal in the late 60's. George Romero not only put a black man in the lead of an otherwise "white" film, but also the violence, imagery, and interpersonal conflicts throughout the film were explicit statements in their time.... that being said, as far as remakes go, who cares what color the lead is unless the story or themes depend on it?
I find one of the arguments here difficult, that you can't connect with characters or invest in them unless they look like you. Other than Shameless or Ken Loach film I will hardly ever see people like me on screen but it doesn't stop connecting with characters. This isn't say increased representation or opportunity for more actors with diverse background isn't a good thing it is.
i also got stuck on that-i've identified with lots of characters outside my experience of privilege/marginalization, and not identified with lots of characters who came from similar backgrounds as me. if it's an engaging story with compelling characters, i'll go along with it and learn about others' experiences. i think it's partly an individual preference. but also i just don't see many characters with my marginalizations, and i see a lot of characters from dominant groups, so it would make sense numbers-wise that i just haven't had as many chances to see characters of my marginalizations that i identify with (especially given that marginalized characters are more likely to be stereotyped).
He didn't even make that argument, you made that up just to argue against it. His argument was specifically about how weird and isolating it is to identify with characters who look nothing like you EXCLUSIVELY throughout your entire life, he pointed out how ecstatic he was to finally be able to identify with a character racially and how different is was than identifying with them nonracially. You may have had experiences having no trouble identifying with characters that don't look like you throughout your entire life. But thats simply because you've had the privelege of never being forced to genuinely and openly examine your race every single second of your life when out in public. He has not has that, however, and to compare your experiences in the same way is gross and wrong considering they are literally direct oppisutes
@@theyautjawarrior6652 irrelevant to the conversation, and inaccurate, snippy one liners doesn't give your point any more weight. Especailly when its done as ineffectively as you did it.
@@facelessdrone Who are you to tell me about my life? I've been stopped and searched countless times by the police, assaulted by the police multiple times, arrested for crimes I didnt commit, illegally held in custody, put in a cell as a minor. I've never committed a crime in my life. And that's easier compared to some of my relatives why have had British police and soldiers break into the their homes and drag them off to concentration camps because of their ethnicity. The average black person's life is a fucking holiday compared to what we have to endure. When we are portrayed on film its usually by Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or Lenardo de capiro during some the accent equivalent of blackface.
Great video! Impact is always more important than intent, but when it comes to Hollywood remakes, the commercial scale of the intention really is a factor in why some films are rightly accused of whitewashing. There's a difference between the Ghost in the Shell adaptation (or especially examples where books are adapted to film) and, for example, The Magnificent Seven as a riff on Seven Samurai, Ran as a riff on King Lear, the remake of The Ring like you mentioned, even something like Clueless as a riff on Emma. All of those "remakes" had something really specific to say about the context it placed its characters in, and no one would question the care and acknowledgement to source that went into their creative process. Wish more screenwriters and producers would take that approach!
I was disappointed in a video with this title that you didn’t touch on “Blackwashing” in a more literal sense. Why is it when Hollywood does decide to change a White role to a POC they are almost always Black. Not Japanese, not Indian, not Native American, not Hispanic; Black is the go-to. As if Hollywood has this warped sense that that change is gonna give them the most brownie points (ignore pun) vs. giving the role to a less spotlighted ethnicity. “When in doubt with DEI, go Black”. Do you think that is a sensationalized sentiment?
Ultimately, it's very neoliberal for the progress of oppressed minority groups of people. With that said, if you truly have an issue with black and gay people being represented in the media, then the answer is and should be clearly obvious. I shouldn't have to expand on the latter sentence in order to make this clear to you.
@@BleedForTheWorld but as far as i can see, they didn't mention that they disliked LGBTQ+ people or black people represented, they mainly questioned, why, when a character was first white, why does it seem that they have to be black? i believe that's the argument their mentioning.
@@princessmanitari4993 my initial reply to OP wasn't really pointing at them. I empathize with their concern about minorities being casted in this neoliberal landscape.
Minority actors getting jobs was touched on, but I think that point could be stressed more. There are a lot of roles going to white actors, so it strikes a harder chord when a white actor plays a role outside of their experience because they get all the jobs anyway.
we see that even in school plays. i was passed over for the principal's son, and it was obvious to other kids that he was mediocre. All the kids knew and that heifer knew what she'd done.. sheeeesh, the entire system is built from childhood to send a strong message of entitlement to the caucasion one especially the mealy mouthed mediocre ones. They had kept me on there just to appear neutral and then give it all to the white boy.
This video caused me to think a lot about my feelings on different people being cast in different roles and here’s what I have come up with that applies to what I personally believe. When you see someone playing a character you create an image of who that character is and what they look like in your mind. When someone who is of a different race is cast as that character it feels like it’s a new character and like they got rid of the old one. Both actors can play the role great but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it feels like they did away with the original, but if I were to watch the two movies separately without knowledge of the other I’d probably be fine with it. Now this doesn’t apply to Hamilton in my case, I don’t have this feeling that they scraped the old characters, and I had to think of why and this is what I came up with. The casting of the minorities into the role of the founding fathers was ok because the founding fathers in that play are essentially new characters. Yes they still represent real people but except for key story events they don’t act the same or talk the same or rap the same. If they made the play serious, almost documentary like, then I would feel weird about them casting a black man as George Washington, it would feel like I’m being lied to cause that clearly isn’t George Washington. For me at least and I think for a lot of other people it’s really more about that replacement of character with someone who clearly isn’t the same but we’re supposed to believe they are. Like remember when everyone got mad that the new Roderick in the dairy of a wimpy kid movie didn’t look like the old one? That wasn’t a race thing it was because people had an idea of Roderick as a character in their heads and this new guy was not fitting that mold and people refused to believe it was Roderick but if they had started with that second actor in the first movie people would have been fine with it. There’s also the problem of media casting a token black man or Asian man and it just feels wrong and disingenuous.
I somewhat agree with this. Being a huge nerd there is a sense that I have a certain image of what certain characters should look like. It is enough to question castings of the same race so I find it jarring when they cast someone of a different race. I don't know if I'm going to start writing on Twitter about it but I'm sure I make a face when I hear the news. For example, the casting of Death in Sandman seems like an odd fit to me. But, maybe I don't enough of the actress' work. Part of me wants to reject the casting because it doesn't fit that image I have. But, I am also puzzled by how inconsistent I am about it. I have no problem with the casting for Gordon but I had issues with the casting of Deadshot. In both cases 50% of it had to do with their mustaches. I think Zoe Kravitz is great casting for Catwoman. I also thought Zendaya would make a perfect MJ, but then they departed greatly from the comics. Maybe this just stems from them not being the titular character. I honestly don't know but I will admit that I have pondered about it.
@@treacherousjslither6920 Or maybe because it was written by a Latino guy who wanted more POC on Broadway? Hamilton hasn't aged well at all, but I still believe Lin Manuel Miranda's rather naive take on why he wrote and cast it the way he did.
I think one of the more impressive instances of race swapping happened in the Power Ranger movie that came out some years back. A lot of people poked fun at how the different colors of the ranger suits seemed oddly lined up with the color we associate with that race. (The asian gets the yellow suit. The black kid gets the black suit). But the problem I was anticipating would be backlash for not staying true to which character we identify with a particular suit. To many people, Billy is the Blue ranger and it would be weird if he was any other color. So when they kept the characters to their assigned suits but flipped around the races of each character, I thought that was really cool. (Though, they did kill off one of the rangers to raise the stakes. . . and it wasn't the white one) So it's not without its issues. I'm not touching on whether the writing was good or anything like that - I'm just noting an interesting casting dynamic centered around that franchise in particular and I embraced that change.
i found that part problematic . color coded racism to assign ethnicity. Largely Black people are the only ones with a color palette associated with ethnicity. Yellow is only associated to asian when its time to orientalize them and i have never seen indians being assigned the color brown even though they color code themselves with it. i didn't watch the new power rangers bc it looked too plasticky to me and i knew i'd have a problem when they put the caucasion front and center . yikes.
Plus, the main character in Night of the Living Dead was shot by police at the end. The casting may have been from acting virtue, but it gave the story a new meaning when police perceived the black character as a zombie threat when he was not. It may have been unintentional, but this is one of the things that makes this movie extra relevant to this day. When directors allow more minority actors into roles not written for them, it can take on a whole new meaning, sometimes in a profound way.
One thing I think is interesting to talk about in this is "West Side Story". When you have something like Death Note, it's a retelling of the essence of a story in a different environment. Why does that feel less grounded than taking Romeo and Juliet out of Italy and moving it into Upper West Side Manhattan? Is it because West Side Story takes the beats of Romeo and Juliet and reworks the entirety of it into the world of gangs of New York? There's a literary tradition of taking a story and retelling it in a different setting. No one looks at Riff and sees a barely shaded stand-in for Mercutio. No one would think to call that 'non-traditional casting'. Riff's a person in his own right. In the same vein, you have a Fist Full of Dollars, which is a remake of Yojimbo, or Magnificent Seven as a remake of Seven Samurai. Lion King is really just Hamlet. No one really complains about those three, because they rehome the story in a new conflict, and do justice to placing the characters in the new conflict. This is much different than just grabbing a random character and casting an actor to fit a demographic quota. That casting won't affect the character at all, and will lose their place in the conflict of the story. To take your sit-com example, if Chandler Bing had been played by Kadeem Hardison (ignoring for a minute that Kadeem would have played him completely differently to how Matthew Perry played him), would you have seen yourself in that character? The common thing in the writers room for Chandler was "Write Gay, Play Straight". That would have come off different in this theoretically cast version of Friends. Imagine Friends, but produced by Debbie Allen instead. I bet you would have seen more of yourself in those characters even if they were still played by 4 white people. Seeing people who look like you is important, but seeing people who act, talk, and respond like you; who mirror the troubles you've had are probably more important.
Understanding where "blackwashing" bothers me and doesn't helps me understand where "whitewashing" bothers POC. Though honestly I can't think of any good reasons to "whitewash". It's like THE OPPORTUNITY WAS RIGHT THERE. And as a white guy, I WANT to see more diverse people and more diverse cultures. I see people who look and talk like me every damned day. Luke Cage was the shit because I rarely see black people where I live and rarely get to immerse myself in Harlem culture, and I could have lived in that show. I very much could have lived in Black Panther, as I love depictions of separately-advanced African cultures. Africa is always depicted as "bands of primitive tribes" or if they are advanced, "Black guys in white suits". With African futurism, I don't want to just see a black guy in a suit and tie. That just feels like assimilation. And honestly I'd rather see foreign styles spread here than western styles spread there. But like if they did live-action Attack On Titan, and they used white characters, you know people would be up in arms. "It was Japanese so they should have been Japanese" but it's a Japanese story that takes place essentially in Germany. So if they were all Asian in an American adaptation, that would bother me. It would NOT bother me if it were made this way in Japan. One of the more hilarious examples of blackwashing was Idris Elba as Heimdall, "The Whitest Asgardian". I can go either way with this one because I can't imagine a better possible Heimdall. But at the same time, this was specifically Norse mythology. But at least it's a fantasy world. But if they were all white, nobody would have a degree on which to complain, because it is Norse mythology. Their choice to make Asgard diverse wasn't totally necessary. But I'm kinda glad they did it anyway. Especially since Marvel was white af at the time. However, they do have a black woman as "Queen of the Dwarves" in the Lord of the Rings prequel. That diversity was never established in any of the movies or source material, so it begs the question "where did all the black people go in Lord of the Rings?". A better place for this was if they introduced an entirely new part of the Lord of the Rings world. But honestly the race doesn't bother me as much as the fact that she doesn't have a beard.
I'm torn on the Marvel Asgardians. If they were all white it's kind of I don't know. White gods are real so where does that leave the rest of us? So many powerful alien races look just like white people and it's um well damn lol
@Calcifer Dwarves eat whatever grows underground and in the dark. Plenty of organisms exist in such environments like mushrooms, fish, salamanders etc. I imagine they sleep when they get sleepy. They probably have a time cycle that works differently from ours but is efficient and effective for their society. But where do dwarves come from? How did they come into being? Did they evolve from some cave dwelling primates? Or were they magically created from stone by some great earth spirit? Yes I know that this is all made up stuff but even made up stories should have plausibility and internal consistency.
@@treacherousjslither6920 Tolkien was pretty damn specific about how Dwarves worked underground. Their mines weren't just mines, they were underground cities with a large network of trade routes. Any change to the lore is garbage and should be known as garbage.
Honestly though, on that last part, there are definitely black people in Middle-Earth. Albeit in Harad, but people have always traveled. Even in, say, medieval/early-modern Europe, while people who weren't white were very rare (outside of Mediterranean coastal cities and of course Iberia), they weren't nonexistent. Like, even besides black saints alleged to have come from Africa, we have specific records of black African-descended nobility in England going back to at least the Elizabethan period, and in Russia going back to at least the 1730s. And those were both places that were particularly distant and separated from Africa. Obviously they were very rare, but fiction tends to focus on unusual people in general, so I really don't see why the occasional fictional monarch (or mage, in the case of, say, the recent Witcher series) in a European-influenced fantasy setting is the sort of thing that stretches suspension of disbelief. Now, an all-black cast in something clearly set in or closely based on historical Europe? Sure, that's silly. But the occasional unusual person/family/maybe even dynasty? That's realistic. And if there's an empire that has territory in both Fantasy-Europe and Fantasy-Africa/Asia? Even more so. We know for a fact there were African legionaries in Roman Britain, for example. Personally I don't see why this Dwarf Queen couldn't be descended from a clan of, say, Haradaic dwarves. Men don't come in one color, clearly, so why would Dwarves? Or Elves for that matter? I mean, hell, on a similar subject, the Harfoots are described as brown-skinned, and Sam is described as having "brown hands," so, while interpretations may vary, I'd expect most of the (ethnically Harfoot) Hobbits in the original trilogy, going by Tolkien's description, to at least have a Mediterranean tan.
My stance is that either you can care about both whitewashing and blackwashing because it is disrespectful to source material and the demographics represented or you can choose to not care about either because there is always the original work or story. The only inconsistent stance is the "it's ok when we do it." Especially, when many of the characters being blackwashed are gingers, it seems to indicate a distaste for the Irish or the Scots whose plights historically are almost at least comparable to those of black people.
The double standard is to reflect what happens in the real world. Art does not happen in a vacuum. I am not sure I agree with 1. attaching gingers to an Irish or Scottish identity, 2. the statement that they were oppressed as much as black people and, most importantly, 3. that they suffer the repercussions and systemic racism as strongly as black people do. Besides, many of the characters you mention in your other comment were whitewashed, according to your own standards. Mary-Jane Watson was played by, for example, Kirsten Dunst and Emma Stone who are not ginger. Actually, I do not remember any actress who is ginger playing her. The same is true for Cate Blanchett and many others who played these characters. Do you have issues with that?
@@Supermanfan99 Exactly...they are not ginger. They are white women playing ginger characters, which should be opposed by the commenter. (Sorry for not knowing who Emma Stone played...I personally do not give two shits about superhero movies)
@@abelabel3664 Gwen Stacy is a blonde haired character. Also there's a HUGE difference between Kirsten Dunst, a white woman with her hair dyed red playing a white woman with red hair than there is a black woman with black hair playing a white woman with red hair. There's a giant double standard from the left these days and people are getting sick of it.
The new upcoming Lord of the Rings streaming television show on Amazon will feature POCs playing various characters in the lands of Middle Earth, to include a black actress playing the part of a Dwarven princess. There are already criticisms that there should be no POCs at all in Middle Earth outside of the Easterling cannon fodder from the original Peter Jackson trilogy, and counter arguments that Tolkien's works are "too white" and don't feature enough diversity. Will be interesting to see the final product when it's released.
The way I've been phrasing the argument about casting a POC actor in a traditionally white role is, I think, a little more nuanced: White people should not have a monopoly on incidental race. This has come up...constantly, in conversations about fan-casting poc actors for major comic characters like Reed Richards.
I watched a play at my local theatre called Picnic by William Inge. Its a story about a charismatic drifter coming into town, developing a relationship with a woman who is already in a relationship and lives with her mother, the mother disapproves of the drifter being near either of her daughters, but in the end, the woman leaves her established relationship and runs away to chase down the drifter. It was set in the 50's. I knew nothing of this play before going into it, so the entire time, I thought the mother was racist because the actor cast to play the drifter was black and the rest of the cast was white. The mother talked about "corruption" and "inappropriate behavior" and it never occurred to me that she wasn't just racist against the drifter. In fact, it made me largely overlook the fact that the daughter was in a committed relationship, and made me think the mother was clearly in the wrong in spite of the "cheating" aspect. I think that it can be very hard to separate certain characteristics attached to characters by virtue of something innate like "blackness" or "queerness," or the lack thereof. Changing something like the race of a character can have unintended effects, and this isn't contingent on the original race.
That's probably a good way to make Picnic more relevant to a contemporary audience, the play itself hasn't aged that well since gender dynamics have shifted substantially and the skirting around the cheating makes the mother look unhinged by contemporary standards. Like the idea of a drifter from out of town is incredibly dated. 1950s plays have this problem of being too close to the current era to feel period-specific (like Ibsen or Shaw's pre-war plays), while also being dated enough to be awkward without that context in mind. It's interesting also because I feel like the casting of a black actor as say Nora in A Doll's House would likely not cause people to think much of racial embodiment since we are so used to Nora being a Norwegian woman (unless the director decides to update the setting to maybe incorporate themes of racial identity?) but when you take an American play like Picnic from the 50s it does become hard to disconnect racial embodiment from the performance of the character. I think it's probably a product of both its Americanness and its period. I think the takeaway is that as a society we shouldn't be scared of thinking about what those effects are and sometimes it's not bad to raise the question: what if the mother were racist? And it's worth thinking of the consequences when such changes might perpetuate harmful ideas.
Halle Bailey as Ariel is fine, she’s a fictional mermaid. Only racists are pissed about it. Jodie Turner Smith as Anne Boleyn is completely wrong and unnecessary since that was a real historical figure. Literally done to stir controversy.
One thing I wish you had delved into, was the portrayal of non-white characters from multi-racial countries and the possibility U.S people ignore the racism in white-washing these characters. I kept thinking about that casting for New Mutants, and the way people complained about it, but not nearly as much as other cases (at least, this was how it looked for me, a brazilian that regularly consumes mainstream and independent US media). I don't know if it was because the movie was bad and few people payed attention to it, or it was because most people in the U.S have no clue about other country's racial frame and racism issues. They cast two WHITE brazilians, one as a light-skinned black brazilian man and the other as a dark-skinned black puertorican woman. I'm not sure how racism was shaped in Puerto Rico, but knowing we share a history of african slavery and knowing how racism is in Brasil, I know they have some issues too. Most afrobrazilians are poor; we are 75% among the poorest, 80% of the ppl killed by police and only 28% of richest in Brasil. Taking a character who'd be one of the few dozen black brazilian multi-millionaires, who first manifested his powers in anger with the racism he suffered, and casting the whitest brazilian they could find, felt like a huge middle finger. And I'm here thinking how many native or mestizo mexican characters suffered the same fate in Hollywood. Or other afro puertoricans, afro dominicans, afrocubans. U.S. media still treats latinamerica like it's a bunch of non-racialized people until they get to the U.S and become brown. That's bullshit. And I can't believe someone can be colorblind to the point of not noticing the difference between white people (no, they're not light-skinned) and black or brown people.
Atlanta, Donald Glovers FX show, used the switching of races in such a good way by making Justin Bieber a black man. one of my favorite "jokes" they have and it speaks to how they are portrayed in media and real life.
@T1J I've just finished reading Dog Whistle Politics, by Ian Haney Lòpez, and towards the end, he talks a lot about colorblind 'X' being a Republican move to basically make racism much harder to talk about. So, I'd say you're bang-on-the-money in suggesting that colorblind casting was a term invented by white people. It's a rhetorical move to get to "post-racial" without having to change behaviour and, in fact, whilst being able to backslide in some areas and invent whole new ways to be racist under the cover of being current.
The nice thing about a diverse cast: I can actually tell all the characters apart on the first viewing 😁 When there are too many blondes in a movie, I can't keep track of who is who. I can't tell you how many times I saw Fellowship of the Rings before I could remember which was Merry and which was Pippin, and those guys don't even look alike!
Same for me. I can't really hold images in my mind so when I don't know the actors, characters or plot yet and they have similar hair or a similar attitude I tend to mix them up sometimes
In the case of Hamilton, there is also some perspective shift that comes with transposing the white figures onto black performers, similar to performing characters from that time with the anachronistic attitudes and speech patterns. It changes the lens the audience views them through, which can be valuable if used well.
There’s nothing wrong with changing a story to be a different race version of the story and telling it with different character dynamics and culture. What would be wrong is randomly making a character black without any plot relevance or change in script.
A great discussion of a thorny topic - thanks! My opinion on race in casting decisions is - it all depends on the context. That's why I agree with a lot of your points. For example: 1. Biopics about real people: The actor should match the race/ethnicity of the real person. An exception to this might be a very stylized presentation of the person's story in which realism does not matter (i.e. "Hamilton"). But if you are trying to present a realistic depiction of the person, then the figure on screen or stage should at least nominally look like the person. 2. Historical dramas with fictional characters: Do the research. If the historical society was racially diverse, and if the real society's rules would allow a given person to fill a given role (i.e. is our story set in apartheid South Africa or the segregated US South, for instance?), AND if our story is not about race specifically, then by all means, cast whoever gives the best audition for each role. If race wouldn't have mattered in reality, then it shouldn't matter in casting. 3. Modern fictional dramas: As with historical dramas, if the story doesn't depend on the characters' race, then it shouldn't matter in casting. 4. Adaptations of foreign originals: Now it gets tricky, because it gets very easy for business exploitation of someone else's successful project to cross the line into cultural appropriation. I personally feel that adapters should actually rewrite the originals with regard to cultural elements of the story, as well as the racial make-up of the cast. Otherwise, just distribute the original with subtitles. I would like it very much if major studios in the US would stop trying to milk the most money for the least work out of other people's original ideas. Just saying. 5. Fantasy/science fiction: Omg. I just finished a 2-day argument on a certain social media platform all about whether race matters with regard to elves. Ugh. If the story is not about race, and if the character isn't even a human being, then just stop it, people. Just. Stop.
to be fair with the scarlet johannsan ghost in the shell adaptation. many anime fans are wary of live action adaptations of their favourite shows. And the first thing they saw was a big change that went against the established characters and settings it but a bad taste in their mouth because often these adaptations don’t have respect for the source material and this was the impression they got from that
I disagree whole heartedly. I'm mixed, but I've always just considered myself black. I never related to a character because of their race, and it's never "felt good" to be represented. In fact I was most of the way through season 2 of Apple TVs "See" before I even realized that the main characters are mixed exactly like me. I felt literally nothing. Still don't. I watched Martin, Family Matters and Living Single, Sister, Sister,and Hanging with Mister Cooper growing up. I also watched perfect strangers, step by step, saved by the bell and I can honestly say the characters I related to in those shows had nothing to do with their race. I don't deny that to you it "felt good". I'm saying that it "feeling good" is a sign of something wrong that some people are incapable of only relating to a character who is of a similar race or gender. How do you not understand how that's a problem, not something to be praised or pursued? You are literally rooting to internalize supremacy in kids, and then setting the bar so "nobody can understand them, unless they look like them", which fuels division, infighting (light skin vs dark skin), and brings literally nothing good to society. We should look deeper then skin tone, deeper then sexual preference, because we are all part of the same society and the mindset that is instilled by "representation" is toxic to everyone. I'm not suggesting you are bad for "feeling good" about representation, but just because something "feels good" doesn't make it the right thing to do, or something you should pursue to no end. Conflating the two is just flat out dangerous.
Sadly I agree. I do see how a lot of black people and other races can relate more seeing people that look like them on screen. However, i can see myself in a lot of characters that don’t look like me or even have the slightest of the same upbringing. That just goes to show how alike and complex we really are as human beings. Representation is still really important but also is creating new good material and not always doing re makes and relying on good old writing to carry pieces of work. New characters and story lines are much needed.
@@surfinsocal100 100% agreed. I am so sick and tired of having white guys take a white character and make them black and then turn to me like a dog who brought a dead bird into the house. Like putting used up stuff in front of me should make me bow down to them, instead of demanding they make new characters instead of white people's sloppy seconds. Especially when they do it just to piss off other white people half the time, and who do they get pissed at? Not them...me. I didn't ask them for that, I don't know anyone who did. People want new representation not second hand save baiting. The audacity to act like they are doing me a favor in the end....ugh
As a white belgian dude and a huge comic book nerd, I must admit it often feels weird to see a character that I saw as white, for years, suddenly turning black in the movie adaptation, but it doesn't change much, and I guess it's just a matter of how you pictured said character in your head. I realized it felt basically the same when an actor changed for the same character (like Anthony Hopkins and Mads Mikkelsen both playing Hannibal Lecter, in different ways). It's just takes time. It's more of a problem to me when they change the personality. Best example I have of that is Homecoming, that I truly hated as a Spider-Man fan. Not because of the "blackwashing" or "whitewashing", but because they made new characters and just gave them a name from the comics. Like, come on, MJ is like the opposite of the comic books one. Why? Just for a plot twist that fans of the comics will hate and people who don't know the lore won't care ? To come back to the subject, a good example someone pointed out for me is theater plays : a lot of them, in French countries, date from 17th and 18th centuries, where all characters (for the mooooost part) were white. Does that mean that no people of color should star in classical play ? That's absurd. And thus, I feel like getting a more diverse approach to casting is good, even though it would feel nice to have more "new" characters, also.
In many theater plays and whatever we call them in their countries, all roles were/are played by men. I'm pretty sure if a role is written and played well, we forget the actual person aka the actor and see just the role. Of course if the race and their uniqness plays a significant role that might be different, like Othello.
@@facelessdrone Which was pretty odd. It's like they _want_ to make it MJ, but it's not _really_ MJ? It's strange. They could have called her anything else, even Liz Thompson if they wanted to adapt a different girl, but it's an alternate universe anyway, so it's not really that big of a deal.
There are really extreme case of blackwashing that are often ignored, especially in historic movies, like black Anne Boleyn for example. Come on, that was poor taste.
The real frustrating bit about the controversy surrounding Scarlett Johansson's casting as major is that the major is explicitly not Asian. Any ethnicity would have been fine to cast as the major because the major lives in a society that is ethnically unidentifiable there are ethnic Japanese people in that society and she is not one of them
I think when a story is made about someone who lived in real life, like an Historic movie, then I think it matters to make sure that you should get the same race as the historic character. If it's a movie from any kind of country or the history from a certain race. I think that then it's important.
Not sure if this has been mentioned in the comments already but there's also the fact that non-white people in western countries were hardly ever in a position in which they could afford to create their own stories and characters as much as white people did. So, for centuries, white people were, in general and disproportionately more able to pursue writing and directing careers, and although one may argue that some white writers struggled to make ends meet in order to pursue that passion, it's also safe to assume that many of them wouldn't have at all if they didn't have some financial safety net that non-white people just didn't have. If people tend to write according to their life experiences and view on the world, then it follows that we got to where we are now with white over-representation and non-white under-representation, and since people were writing in a culture built on discrimination and worse, even the little non-white representation that whites wrote was full of harmful stereotypes. Nothing wrong with a bit of retcon on known stories to make up for past mistakes and to make it worth it to keep retelling them.
First off, I love the channel, keep doing what you're doing. I find your material enlightening, educational and entertaining. In response to how things are cast in Hollywood. I actually lived there for 3 years and spend a majority of my time as an actor, generally they ask for people of a specific race, age, height, and other physical traits that match what they are looking for. Not to say there are not open auditions based on talent alone, but, a majority that I've seen were very specific.
So Friends is a really good example of poor representation. But unlikely for the reason you think. They used non-Jewish actors to play a clearly insinuated and stereotypical Jewish family and other people. Never clearly naming it once, bar the Chanukah armadillo. Not all ethnic diversity and minority representation issues are about colour.
Yeah, it's important to remember that American constructions of race/ethnicity are not the only one, and not the natural end point of it. Otherwise, you will pull a Whoopi.
Ross and Jack Geller ARE played by jewish actors, while Monica and Judy Geller AREN'T, so half-and-half, also they could be a mixed family, so the "only" offender would be Monica not being played by a half-jew (?). HOWEVER the Gellers were not writen to be jews at the start of the series, they were kinda retconed when David Schwimmer (Ross) started getting involved in the writing around season 7 and he kinda demanded that his jewishness be explicit
I'm black and am a huge fan of the Witcher books and games. I have no issue changing the race of characters like Nick Fury and 007 who's race is not central to the character. While I understand the Witcher takes place in a fictional world, that fictional word is heavily influenced by medieval Poland.... where there aren't a bunch of black and brown women running around so I have a heavy disconnect from the characters the way I imagined them, or they were described and their onscreen depiction. I don't feel a need to interject us into a Polish Fantasy world. I have many other issues with the Netflix adaptation but that is the most relevant to this topic. Ironically, the Witcher (especially the games), constantly dances around the topic of race relations between species and how Geralt is treated as one of those subclasses because of his mutations. I'm pretty sure the people who made many of those creative changes had little interest in the themes of the books
Idk, blackwashing CAN actually be dancerous imo, reason being, sadly a lack of education. When my GF watched "Bridgerton" (dedpite it being fiction) and I saw a little and was like: wtf is this? So we're at a point where apparently there was race equality during this time? Imagine talking to someone that has no education on slavery/race relations about history and their preconception is this? No idea how people of colour feel about this, just a white dude that thinks history shouldn't be distorted, especially not by "blackwashing" characters to "whitewash" history. Media has power, even greater than education sadly (kinda like every Germans claiming they'd all been like Oskar Schindler after seeing the movie, despite history classes actually hammering home the fact that >50% of people simply just didn't give a f*, with most of the others being actually worse).
This example is very bad because Bridgerton is entirely fiction fiction. What you're saying is like saying that Game of thrones shouldn't have dragons because it's historically false. Also, what is dangerous is believing that black characters should only be portrayed in regards to slavery. That's very malicious.
@@theyautjawarrior6652 The point that "Natasha Rules" was making is that Bridgerton is not a historical show. It is not "The Crown" or "The Tudors" It is a fictional with no real historical events or backing. The background and costuming is NOT accurate for the regency era at all. The show is only taking the loose aesthetic of the "real time period & place."
Yea Iiterally Bridgerton is some sophisticated smut, it is a FANTASY where they use historical inspiration. Like impressionable young people who don’t know better shouldn’t be watching it because it’s literally like porn. Like the entire bodice ripping genre has historical elements but it’s as accurate to source material as an omega verse fanfiction (all the characters are made to be gay and in a fake wolf hierarchy and men can get pregnant). Honestly the problems I had with bridgerton is that they could have gone even further with it, have even darker skin people playing more complex roles we’re not used to seeing (as opposed to the countess who was playing an archetypal mammy role), more gay, more everything. What I found most fun about the setting is that it is like a fun game of dress up with a bunch of sexy time and people speaking fancy.
There already is a Japanese Death Note live action movie set in Japan so personally I would find it pretty questionable too if a Hollywood studio said "yeah lets do that exact thing but better"
When I found out the remake of The Little Mermaid was going to star a black Ariel, I wasn't a fan. I'd grown up with this character and as a pasty white kid with red hair living on an island, representation in the media was non-existent for me. Now here comes someone else, who's people are also under represented, and they're replacing my Ariel. Color washing doesn't solve the underlying problem: lack of GENUINE representation. In fact, color washing is just as insulting as white washing. If you think about it, rather than create an actual POC character from scratch, actors are given hand me down characters whose portrayals will never appease the masses who are used to their beloved characters looking/sounding a certain way. Rather than doing the work and creating something new, they rehash old ideas and cast POC actors as a way to throw them a bone or appease the woke masses. And what do the actors get? They're booed before they even step on set because they're unintentionally "ruining" people's beloved characters by altering them just by merely existing. The bottom line? Hollywood needs to get its head out of its ass and recognize that America isn't 98% white and 2% "other". POC *are* the majority and deserve fresh, authentic representation.
6:12 this is off topic but your point here about remakes is such a good point that I think a lot of people miss, that a remake doesn’t have to beholden to the original as the original still exists and this is a new vision of the same idea. I personally think it is more interesting to see a newer version of a film rather than a faithful remake, take the example of The Thing from Another World (1950) and The Thing (1982), both play on the same themes and ideas.
I remember Bridgerton getting praise for it's 'colourblind casting' and I was like, but the two main families are still white! There was no reason why the whole Bridgerton family couldn't have been black, or SWANA which would have made a lot of sense given a fair chunk of south west Asia was and still is a part of the British empire. It's just a buzz phrase used by studios to make them seem more progressive than they are. I just also wish we got more diversity within white casting. We keep getting the same actresses who legitimately look the same. I want to see big thick women, like a live action Luisa from Encanto, or women who aren't conventionally attractive, as well as women from around the world.
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So, i think there's a power dynamic between the two that people seem to miss in this conversation.
The question, to me, isn't really about whether the character's racial experience has anything to do with the story.
Rather, who is in the position of power to decide how stories are told and by who.
I'm an Asian living in Asia. In general, for Western entertainment to remake or adapt Asian stories, it is seen as a mark of pride. This is because colonialism and ongoing cultural imperialism have given many Asians an unspoken deference to the west (mainly white people). So, we really don't care who plays what character. The fact that our stories are given attention by the west, means that they are of 'quality'. Not many Asians will openly admit to this, of course.
In other words, when Asians say they're fine with our characters played by white people, it is 'consent' built up by white supremacy via past colonialism.
So until everyone is actually equal, whitewashing to me, will always mean an exercise in cultural supremacy; while the other way round, is in fact, a challenge to said supremacy.
@@FamouSly78 I'm confused about your comment. OP is saying that it's very common for racial minorities outside the west to have somewhat of an inferiority complex when it comes to Western culture. That doesn't mean they don't appreciate Western culture, they do. What it means is that for a lot of people, Western validation has more value to them than any other validation, and that can be problematic. The power dynamics of the world usually reflect which Western validation is more valued. So, being appreciated by America or the UK, will make some foreigners feel more valued than if they were given validation by Poland or Hungary. They know Western culture is not a monolith.
This is incredibly well explained and an analysis I haven’t seen often, thank you so much. And your last paragraph is bang on the money.
That seems a bit of a simplistic answer? What about Irish, Polish or Jewish films? all white but hardly people that have enjoyed much privilege, also Asian is a bit generic, Mongolia, Thailand, China and Japan have all been imperialist powers in Asia arguable (and in the Mongolian, Chinese and Japanese case definitely) worse than any western imperialist.
So if an Irish or Jewish actor played what was originally a Japanese or Mongolian character surely the Japanese or Mongolians in that cultural dynamic are the privileged groups compared to the experience of the Irish or Jewish actor?
@@literaterose6731 So a Jewish actor playing a Japanese character you feel is a reinforcement of white supremacy?
Do you think that this effect is only caused by colonialism? I live in Australia and we often talk about how we have a 'cultural cringe' about everything Australian, including our accent. A lot of the things we appreciate most about our culture are things that have been accepted by Americans. Because America has such a large cultural impact on the world, and produces so much of the world's media, it's considered 'the best'. I think the effect you're talking about would be seen in practically every country, including majority white ones.
It’s not about taking away representation. It’s about being authentic. As a “POC” (I really don’t like that term) I’d rather be represented authentically than as an empowered joke.
mashallah ! Achinth, Murali is a very rare name i can only think of Murad merali. check his work on youtube . he is a very aware person of color. he broaches these topics from time to time and knows his stuff.
Interesting take! I feel this way about accents too. Why hire someone who can do a bad fake accent when you could literally hire someone who speaks the language and can do it perfectly?
exactly. the representation of poc in america deeply affects the way they are viewed and treated
So I pronounce it as 'Pock.'
Then don't use it then.
Still trying to figure out how yall be getting strong arguments across in less than 45 minutes...
I enjoy the lengths of your videos
Fig and Foreign runnin' around the comments. The BootyBread is strong today...
it’s ok i need 45+ minutes to understand lol
I can say from my own experiences that it takes quite a lot of time to winnow down a long, possibly rambling talk (speaking about myself rambling, not you, (I haven't noticed a ramble in your content)) to something short and concise. In fact, it can add quite a bit of time! But it's worth it, rewriting it the second time around because it's always better, shorter and more to-the-point.
I mean, it's what I did with my Best Man speech at my brother's wedding, and it was regarded as the best of the night. Remember the core of what you're talking about: for a Best Man speech, it's short, sweet and about love. That core is gonna vary depending on topic, but always remember to go with the strongest argument (advice from a professor of mine, back in the day).
And I quite enjoy your long-form content, so don't feel like this advice (perhaps unprompted) is saying your work isn't already great. I just hope this is helpful and not patronizing. If it comes across as the latter, please accept this pre-emptive apology and feel free to call me out on it.
It's a thoughtsful crowd.....
Now I have to live knowing that a DBZ live adaptation exists. Thanks bro
If we all gotta live with it then so do you
I'm not stalking you Foreign I swear.... but glad to be seeing you everywhere!!!💚
Sorry, it’s very terrible. I can rec people who spork it well if you need it?
I'm so glad there were people that didn't know about it because that means there's probably someone out there that will *never* know about it
Damn, we ruined you. Whatever you do don't watch it
I'm really glad you brought up the point that Asian people living in Asia are going to potentially feel different about Asian representation in American films than those who live in America. Great video!
Yeah honestly that was a take I hadn't entirely considered. I'd say what bothers me is when white people are more offended on behalf of minorities than minorities are on behalf of themselves. To me that just comes off as white virtue signalling and doesn't help much.
@@webx135 100% fair. I know sometimes when I see representation of a marginalized identity in something I try to see what kind of discussion is happening around them already before voicing any concerns. Because 1) as you said, it can come off very virtue signaling and 2) *I* shouldn't be leading that conversation anyway. I am the whitest white girl ever.
@@webx135 i've noticed that this phenomenon, aside from just being annoying, can also make it harder for minorities to advocate for systemic change. i'm jewish, and every december i hear people fighting over whether to say "merry christmas" or "happy holidays"-it's the christian holiday season, so both greetings mean basically the same thing, except the latter feels more pc. but meanwhile in the real world, antisemitism and islamophobia are rampant on social media and in the conspiracy theories that elected officials spout.
the "happy holidays" conversation blows up because it's something most americans will encounter regularly and can easily form an opinion on, but it shifts the discussion to interpersonal interactions when the real problems are with a system that reinforces antisemitic and islamophobic violence. (i'm using my own experience as an example, but i've also seen this phenomenon with discussions of cultural appropriation, disability, and feminism, among others)
@@webx135 "white virtue signalling" implies that white people don't actually have any morals or any care for the people they live with. they just act a certain way to polish their own reputations. this is a HORRIBLE estimation of someone. human beings, whatever skin color, feel empathy. just the same way you can feel sad when hearing a puppy crying, you can get pissed off when someone else's rights appear to be trampled on. Being offended on someone's behalf is also called "caring about other people"
@@PoorMuttski
I don’t think you understood what Webx said. The issue is white people getting offended for minorities when they aren’t offended or don’t find much issue in the topic at hand. You said it’s “caring about other people” but a lot of minorities have issues with this too, because it often drowns out poc in those conversations. It happened with Disney’s Raya, when Lindsay Ellis was on fire for some tweet and a bunch of white people were like “Listen to SEAsian voices!” While putting down or burying what SEAsians had to say on the matter. And there are a bunch of white people that do this to polish their reputations. It’s not very shocking or unheard of, very common. Of course, not all white people but they are there.
It doesn’t make sense to get offended for people when they aren’t offended in the first place. That’s why it’s better to do what Mainely Mandy said they do, get a sense of where the conversation among minorities is going before you make your own comment on behalf of them.
My opinion; I think we should have a term for American Washing, when an American team takes a property with strong cultural ties and completely destroys it, to the point there is no deeper theme.
If you can't make those changes have enough depth to respect the original material, it just shouldn't be made. It doesn't have to be a copy&paste with English speakers, it can be a completely original product, but it needs to have enough meat to be respectful.
Fairytale adaptions are probably the best place to point, even if they're low hanging fruit. There are many adaptions of fairytales from certain cultures that are beautifully adapted to other cultures, even though they pretty much never follow the original story to a T.
I liked the Green Knight inserting more Indian stuff, adding more Indian stuff to the British myth of King Arthur.
@@suddenllybah I have not watched that, but it sounds like a lot of fun.
You mean like Star Wars?
@@jackdoyle7453 that doesn't count. That's Americans fing over Americans. That's just theft, not appropriation. Like if I stole someone's barbie doll and drew all over it in permanent marker. Appropriating a story to be culturally relevant is more like buying a Barbie second hand, and dressing her up in hand made clothing that was influenced by a different fashion than the one she was shipped with.
It’s called Hollywood.
I do feel like “blackwashing” in some ways can be done condescendingly, and is in some ways worse representation that just having original characters that are minorities
Definitely, I remember when people were complaining about Ariel being played by a black women - many of those people said it would be okay if Ursula (the villain) was played by a black woman
Exactly 💯
the biggest concern I have with these adaptations is the fact that they are made in the first place. Like why do we have to tell the same story over and over again? Are there no other interesting stories to be told in which the "insert minority here" can have a chance to shine and fill a role with their originallity rather than being constantly compared to the first person that played it? I wouldn't watch that Arielle movie, but not because I don't think that Halle Bailey is a bad cast but just for the fact that I don't want to have a story rewarmed. Give the girl a great role in a nother story that is new. Like I don't care if White or Black or Asian, I really don't wanna see another adaptation on Cinderella at all.
Hollywood has become super lazy and they now put all these actors from minorities in the roles and think they do the minority communities a favour. I personally don't think so and would love to see them in strong new stories.
But then again I'm white and European and what do I know what Black people e.x. want? Guess we just need more Black directors, Black producers, Black camerapeople etc. to find out. Or just watch Nigerian movies. But then again Nigerian is Black but not the Black African-American experiences people in the US wanna see.
@@skarbuskreska yeah lack of creativity and constant bad remakes in Hollywood is a whole other issue
@@skarbuskreska as a black girl I agree with everything you said 👏🏾💯 and I feel like anti-SJWs wouldn’t of become such a big thing if more Hollywood films and tv shows provided more original black characters and stories especially ones that don’t always use the same cliché or negative stereotypes.
As an Iranian who watches a lot of movies, I almost always get frustrated by the one dimentional Iranian fanatics represented in American movies that even don't get the name of my country right. To be fair, Iranian media also does the same lousy job representing westerners (yep, that's the term they use). No one cares to dig deeper and look beyond politics and stereotypes.
But Hollywood doesn't make movies for you. You are not the target.
To be fair how else do you expect western media to portrait Iran when death to american chants in the streets is a common thing?
@@adlerzwei maybe they are a thing because america basically destroyed and destabilized the entire middle east and then had the audacity to say they were trying to help
@@erikfassbender4754 Yeah sure. Everything is America's fault. The middle east was sooooooo peaceful before America was founded. 🙄
@@adlerzwei no it wasn't but america didn't help and funded terrorist groups to take out dictators and later killed many civilians over there
The problem is that Hollywood is like the Borg from Star Trek. In its nature, Hollywood will assimilate everything. Once a film goes through the Hollywood process, it doesn’t matter if pink people play green people or green people play green people. The film is still a reflection of Hollywood and not the authentic culture it may purport to represent.
Take Crazy Rich Asians, the P.F. Chang’s* of Asian cinema. It looks Asian, but really, it’s just a Hollywood movie with the same old “prince and the common girl” narrative we’ve all seen. Do we wonder why only 3 people in all of China went to see this movie? Chinese people watch their own movies all of the time. Do they really want to go see a movie in which Hollywood tries to show them who they are?
(*For those not familiar with P.F. Chang’s, it’s an American restaurant chain that takes Asian food, surgically removes every molecule of Asian flavor, and then serves it with a choice of brown or white rice.)
It’s not that I think Hollywood is consciously trying to assimilate everything. It’s the nature of scale, the mechanism of industry, and the distance a story has to travel from its source to its destination that cause authenticity to get watered-down and repurposed. You won't get authentic diversity out of any large institution, regardless of who is running it.
Steaming services are a better answer to diversity. You can search out and watch homegrown content from around the world. Even if those movies try to emulate Hollywood movies, they are still much more authentic representations of a diverse world. The stories are out there. You just have to look for them.
If you want diversity, stop watching Hollywood movies because you’re never going to get it from there. And while you’re at it, stop eating at P.F. Chang’s.
Crazy Rich Asians did well among Asian Americans and Singaporeans, which makes sense since that's where the film is set and where the characters are from. The film isn't "coded" like a lot of Chinese dramas, so it makes sense for it to not do well in China. That said, there are still plenty of romance genre tropes in Chinese media that would be quite recognizable to western audiences, including the poor girl getting swept off her feet by a rich dude. That trope is pretty international.
But yeah, calling it PF Chang's makes sense. Kinda mediocre, not that authentic, and trying to do too much at once, like basically any chain restaurant. But I also think it was *trying* to be PF Chang's, not necessarily trying to be authentically "Asian."
@@elustran I'm not praising Chinese cinema as being without standard tropes. My kids watch Chinese Pixar clones on Netflix all of the time. But non of these come with the pretense of championing diversity. Crazy Rich Asians is a rather harmless, though still a bit racist, movie. But as we both agree, it's P.F. Chang's. And I believe that's all you ever get when you look at culture through a top-down corporate lens.
One thing I dislike about "colour blind/heterogeneous" casting is how its oftentimes presented in works of historical/historical-fantasy fiction. Because the population being either homogenious/heterogeneous says a lot about the society presented in works such as this. If you have a city or a villeage with lots of different ethnicities, then that would imply that this society has undergone an intense level of migration in the recent past (a process that would have been very strenious and dramatic considering the time-period involved). Yet then the society being presented oftentimes lack all these societal nuances. It's "color blind" by completely eliminating the notion of ethnicity. Which is rather jarring since ethnicity is a huge component of humanity both on an individual and societal level.
And its especially jarring in historical settings since historically ethnicity has been EVEN MORE impactful than it is presently. Historically, multi-ethnic/multi-identity societies tend to have been very stratified and balkanized (different groups having different roles and priviliges). People tend to create very color-blind without justifying or explaining why this society is color-blind to begin.
This is what bothers me the most. I remember watching a fantasy show (don't remember which) in which we are told that the main character is discriminated against because of his ethnicity but the casting of the rest of the characters was so multi-color that he didn't stand out in any single way. Also there were supposed to be 3 different cultures living together in the same place and they couldn't even make any differences between their clothes.
Either you have a historical story in which differences in culture matter or you don't but saying one thing and doing another makes no sense to me and kinda ruins the experience as a history fan.
There's also a counter-problem, where people _imagine_ various historical spaces to have been purely White when they actually weren't, and become very angry when people of other races show up. There's a really good book that just came out analyzing this, "White Mythic Space: Racism, the First World War, and _Battlefield 1," by Stefan Aguirre Quiroga. (I'm about halfway through right now, very thought-provoking)
It's absolutely fine to me on stage, because you're drawing from a pool of only local actors.
One of the best performances of "MacBeth" I saw was done entirely by a black and latino cast in SoCal.
And the most popular version of Hamlet recast everyone as animals (a Lion as King?).
Still, onscreen, it's odd to me unless contextualized. I mean, if Othello is NOT black/Arab and Desdemona and Iago aren't a different race ... it's a really weird story.
I think you could play with this really well by portraying a world where racial and ethnic lines are drawn vastly differently, where skin colour might not mean anything at all. You could show this by using clothing to very obviously and visibly show the differences. I mean, it’s how things were in Europe before the idea of whiteness became what it is today. Jewish people are currently often hard to point out to most Americans, whereas a person in the Middle Ages would find that very easy. Religions play a huge part in ethnicity, show that! Also, I think you could present a very interesting world where the majority of people are non-white. For western audiences, this would really show the lack of diversity in a culture in a way that they would have simply glossed over if the characters had all been white. I don’t know, I’m a white person from a majority white country in Europe, but I would love to see these kinds of things represented in movies and tv.
@@bettievw Doesn’t Avatar: the Last Airbender present a world with mostly Asian- and Native American-looking people? Having seen the whole series, I don’t think I ever saw an unambiguously White person in any of the episodes, even if many of the Asian-coded characters were drawn with big anime eyes instead of ones with noticeable epicanthic folds.
I'm Costa Rican. So my perspective is an outsider's. I understand the situation both ways. I think sometimes the characters' race doesn't matter. Sometimes it does. Say, I don't mind a black Little Mermaid because mermaids are mythical creatures that can be any color, and in the animated movie they had a Caribbean crab. So they just could move the story to the Caribbean. I do mind the Snow White issue because she's supposed to be white as snow but whatever. Eartha Kitt played Cat Woman in the original show at least once. I wouldn't dig a white actress as Mulan or Moana. But Shakespeare, for example, is beyond race. Any actor should be able to play any Shakespearan character if they have the talent to do so. And who cares what color Commissioner Gordon is? It's irrelevant to the story. It doesn't matter. Anne Boleyn though, matters, because it's history. I don't want to see a white Frederick Douglass.
I saw a movie in which tall, blond, thoroughly British Julian Sands plays a historical Spanish character. So have Viggo Mortensen, Jason Isaacs, Julia Ormond, Marlon Brando, Sigourney Weaver, Stellan Skarsgaard (yep, a Nordic man playing Goya). But then Anthony Quinn (Irish-American-Mexican) played nearly all over the international and ethnic spectrum, from Mexican to Italian to French to Arab to Native American to Stanley Kowalski). I don't think it matters very much in most cases. But I would prefer the character's ethnicity to be respected when it's relevant to the credibility of the plot. Korean and Japanese filmmakers do wonderful things adapting Western fairytales to their own cultural context. Tales and legends are universal and can take place anywhere.
As for me, if ever my life story makes it to the movies, I want to be played by Gal Gadot. Never mind that she's taller, thinner and prettier than me.
Absolutely agree. When it is about fictional characters, like comic book characters or fairy tales I feel one can do whatever interpretation they want, so any person can play it. But historical characters should stick to the race of that character. An Egyptian shouldn't be played by a guy with a tan like in the Exodus movie of 2011. The same way when it is a European period drama, often with historical figures it makes no sense to have a person of color. Years ago a historical Tracian figure was played by a black guy. It was quite ridiculous and I think people had the right to be outraged.
I saw the movie where John Wayne played Ghengis Khan. Yeah, JOHN WAYNE. Playing GHENGIS KHAN. And yeah, however bad you're imagining it to be, it's actually worse in reality, for OH SO MANY reasons. Ever wanted to see a legendary Mongolian warlord from ancient history portrayed like he was an ultra-conservative, old white American cowboy dude in cosplay Samurai gear? Nope, me neither - thanks Hollywood, I hate it!
@@Maerahn I think that whole movie was cursed. It was shot on a nuclear misles testing ground and many people got cancer and died after they worked on it.
@@cobrakaier238 I agree that historical character should be played by people who look similar to them.... that said how similar?
Like I'm peruvian if they would cast someone to play a Peruvian character I would expect them casting a Peruvian or half Peruvian and not let's say a chilean or columbian (nothing against those countries >-
Ticos are awesome.
Love, a gringo
I do kind of have an interesting take on the live adaption of Ghost in the Shell. In the movie plot they mention how much involvement the Eurocorps have in New Tokyo and the fact that the Major was revealed to be a Japanese girl who was kidnapped and had her "ghost" forced into Scarlett's "shell" taking away her identity,.. to me it was like a very literal and extreme depiction of appropriation and Western imperialistic influence in Asia.
Not saying it's good or bad. Just kind of a soft take I had after seeing the movie.
Western imperialism doesn't really resonant to Japan though.
@@jackdoyle7453 I know it's not mainstream there, but the screenplay for the 2017 movie wasn't written by anyone in Japan. And it's really just my own reading. I doubt that's exactly what the writers had in mind.
I actually like this
It always came off as an in story excuse for an out of story decision to me.
@@douglasphillips5870 Ditto
The Castlevania series is a great example of when changing a characters race improves the project.
Issac was a generic villain in the original game.
Issac was the best part of the show when the main trio weren't together
@@arkinyte13 yeah, when I saw the original I was like "they made the right call"
@@GarBear7G I played the game and watched the Netflix show, so I can confidently confirm that the show version is superior.
@Disposable Email Fair😄
I think ultimately the problem with 'race-washing' - if you can call it that? - is more an issue with movie production companies and their financial incentives. Because of the large costs of making a movie, movie companies will prefer remakes/franchising/re-telling of historical events as they are proven products with brand recognition. At the same time, companies also want to appeal to a growing ethnically diverse middle class with disposable income. (Some individual directors also want to balance their cast to more accurately shape a typical US distribution)
Bottom line is that existing brands become more diverse as a bid to increase profits. Until that changes, I don't see any type of 'race-washing' stopping.
I think this is heart of the issue. Capitalism is a bitch
Yes! Super agree. Hollywood could absolutely make stories about historical POC, folklore and legends from not Europe, or new contemporary stories about POC, but instead they'll continue to keep telling the same stories, now with diverse casts! Robin Hood, King Arthur, Anne Boleyn, Captain America...super white stories but with diverse casts.
It all comes down to what sells, and retelling the same stuff over and over is a safe investment.
as an asian living in asia, i really find the label "POC" a very western concept, and a political one at that. we do not call our asian neighbors "persons of color" or any such term that groups people by complexion. and yet americans will call us "POC" nonetheless. but pointing out the difference between being an asian-american and being asian in asia goes far beyond politics and pop culture. if the conversation is about how does this make americans feel, then i can understand why you would disregard the opinion of the vast non-americans. but if the question is "how does this make anyone feel" then you can't really say that the contrary opinions of non-americans don't count just because they don't align with the american mainstream.
personally, i think race-bending just for the sake of appearances is extremely cringe-y, whether that be whitewashing or blackwashing or whathaveyou. to a cinephile, the story / source material is basically sacred, and any changes made must make sense and not for political reasons. the moment a movie becomes more about political appearances than the art of storytelling, it ironically crosses out its own purpose. sometimes i think people forget that cinema is first and foremost Art as there seems more chatter about the politics that surrounds it rather than the genius (or lack thereof) of the people who made them.
when parasite won best picture, it baffled me as to why people who haven't even watched it said that the oscars has gone full blown woke, and to me, purely as a cinephile, it's a very bizarre context to politically judge a piece of movie one hasn't even seen. and again when black panther came out, i thought it was a cool film, but there were all these nonsense conspiracies surrounding it. i wonder if americans are aware of how strange it is to politicize things that are not political in nature. like, don't get me wrong, i understand that media / pop culture is influential, but you guys also made politics into something like "pop politics" and it's seriously polarizing the hell out of young people today.
i hope americans understand that non-americans have a varied and very different cultural historical experience than them, and that while racial injustices have made their indelible mark on american society, some of your uniquely american problems don't even exist in some countries.
You are right they have obsession about race. They have historical trauma, and they want to spray it everywhere.
yes yes yes yes and yes to all of that
The problem is that in the US, we've whitewashed our history and source material. Only white men had power and they used it to erase the history of others. Its hard to write great media and get it recognized under the racial conditions we had. There is some of course but when the oppressors decide history they dont tend to preserve the works of the oppressed.
In doing so we've ensured that if we "stick to source material" most of our media would be white men (even more disproportionately than now). In a country that is still full of racists (the last big Civil right push was the 60s- people are still alive) it further harms minorities because they don't get to see themselves be the heros. If we stick to the source material theyd be stuck mostly with new media, especially given Hollywood's "need" to avoid controversy and racists are loud. We just had people convicted of lynching someone ffs. In this day and age. The worst part is it was probably only because they recorded themselves and thought it was a good look.
Politics literally impact how you live your life. Everything is political just because of that. When racists beat you down in every other area, wanting some media to escape is not wrong. Americans are big into racial stereotypes. When that is perpetuated in media, it makes the problem worse. People write media often with biases. Its not wrong to scrutinize the why although I will agree that we've taken it too far in some senses. People shouldn't be attacking an actor for taking a job and let that color our perception of their performance. If people have legit criticisms it should be for the casting team.
@@pixality7902
using material literally made by white europeans doesn't sound like the most rational way to showcase the diversity in america. if anything, that just makes the effort look like you don't want to embrace your own roots. and despite the cultural destruction from the past, no not all of cultural traces have been erased. latin america alone is TEEMING with its own cultural stories. reading books is one of my passions, and you can't just pretend that there are no works of literature by afro-americans, asian-americans, native americans, latin americans, etc that are still existing today. also, literally NO ONE is stopping anyone from creating new works. you don't have to rely on just adapting old works over and over. i watch a ton of asian movies and new voices and new stories pop-up everywhere. i usually don't see any asian remakes of older asian works as far as asian cinema goes. there's no excuse why that can't be the case in america.
i didn't like crazy rich asians, but at least those people made an effort to make something original. seriously, no one's stopping anyone from making new things.
@Maggy Frog
I agree but I also see some problems. What I know that a lot of Afro Americans don't know their roots - you have many cultures from Africa.
The second thing is that new things are harder to sell, brands are valuable.
I understand that but I still think that if you push your agenda too hard it'll have opposite result.
Something that stuck with me from other video essays that talked about PoC representation (specifically "The Day Rue Became Black" by Yhara Zayd and "Asians In Hollywood" by Accented Cinema) was how if there's any way a PoC character doesn't HAVE to be the race they originally are, then they'll be white. people defend white washing with "the character's not human" or "it's not in Asia" when there isn't ever a "reason" to be white either.
The only downside about the video essay of The Day Rue Became Black is that she goes on to Magnus. The bad thing she does while discussing Magnus is that she does not differentiate between people complaining Magnus is Asian (while he is supposed to be Asian) and people complaining he looks Chinese (while he is supposed to be from Indonesia). It is a bit as if a Swedish guy would play an Italian; you should not complain he looks European, but people complaining he looks Swedish would have a point.
@@MissMoontree I went back to the video to double check what you're talking about. The one criticism Yhara Zayd showed that specifically complained about why the actor "looks Chinese" isn't actually saying "they should've gotten an Indonesian to play the character", especially since the actor wasn't even Chinese (not Indonesian either but he was South east Asian). The person was just being racist and summing up all Asians as Chinese.
I do think it's worth discussing how any Asian is cast to play an Asian character of a completely different nationality which just generalizes us and feels inauthentic but it wasn't really the discussion of that specific video and maybe not something the video creator, a black person, can speak on for us.
@@MissMoontree "It is a bit as if a Swedish guy would play an Italian"
I admit, all I can think of right now is this: ua-cam.com/video/YnVbKryHMQA/v-deo.html
Actually in recent adaptations of asian series many asian characters are played by black actors. As an example, L from Death Note was treated that way when Netflix made their version.
@@tenjou0 yeah, although I see western adaptations making an anime character black as an attempt at diversity rather than when they pick someone white for no real reason other than it being the default race in the west. I could be wrong though
I really think "blackwashing" is a symptom of a much larger issue people of color face in the west. We have hardly any original characters to call our own. "Blackwashing" to me and my friends feels very bare bones and unoriginal. It's basically the table scraps of representation. And honestly it's not good enough to change an existing character to a person of color. We want original complex characters to represent us, not appropriated white power fantasies.
And another thing. 99% of POC like you and me don't even know what racial homogeneity feels like. So it's important to me that not just Asians are represented. My God mother and father are black. My best friend shes black, my bridesmaid is Mexican my stepfather is Mexican. My step mother is middle eastern. These people are equally important to me and it's means so much to me when I see representation of other people on the screen. My life is full of diversity and I demand my media reflect that. To do otherwise is white supremacy. Simple.
I feel like original characters of color not only already exist, but new ones also get dismissed as “woke” garbage. So we can’t really win either way.
This is exactly how i feel 💯 and I know it’s easier said than done but I wish we had more original black films and tv series of different genres like what the East Asians did with shows like squid game
@@blkloislane that’s so true 🤦🏽♀️ and yet those will be the same people complaining about why we don’t create our own
@@rubyaddison5446 I definitely understand wanting more original characters. But… I also find it hard to really have beef with racebending. I guess it’s because when a Black actor I love and support gets a coveted established role they want to make it their own like I assume any white actor would (same logic behind POC cosplaying white characters) After a while it just feels like overthinking something that should be fun. There’s room for both IMO.
@@blkloislane yeah and that's JUST east Asians, specifically Koreans. Where are the monumental south Asian shows for Indian Pakistani and Nepali? Where are the shows for the South East Asians like the Vietnamese Laos and Phillipines? Hell there hasn't been an accurate depiction of African Asians like Egyptians since Prince of Egypt. The world is intensely different and "Asian" "African" "Latino" and "Black" needs to stop being seen as a monolith words.
I remember Eartha Kitt as Catwoman. She was the first one I remember, then we had Halle Berry and that whole mess of a movie, TV's Harley Quinn has a black Catwoman. I remember a comic book too. I just thought it was established canon. Zoë Kravitz is just another in a line, I thought she looked awesome. I didn't know it was meant to be unusual casting, I don't want to say I didn't see race but I just wasn't aware it would be a factor.
I thought it was an interesting example to pick, as she has been potrayed by black women several times. It would be more unusual if she was played by an Asian woman.
yep, and it's also not the first time that actress has played Catwoman
We are probably at the point where cat woman not being black would be more controversial.
The weird part will be Jim Gordon being black.
His daughter (or niece in some versions) Barbara Gordon was a red head, something that was a thing because Dick Greyson had a thing for red heads, something he got teased about.
@@linusa2996 his daughter can still be a red head and he can still have a thing for red heads. I mean look at Meghan and Harry's child Archie he is a red head I think. It's possible for a biracial child to inherit blonde or red hair from their white parents, it just doesn't happen as often. So I don't think it's necessarily a problem
In general I feel that any character can be played by any race, sex, gender, etc UNLESS the character in question is shaped by these factors. So I wouldn't mind if, for example, Hermoine was black but her being female is what created several plot lines and situations with other characters, which would necessitate rewrites if the role were to go to a man.
Of course this line of thinking can be used against diversity ie lets make every character a white dude because it doesn't shape their character. I don't really know how to answer this.
That is why every video game character is a Generic white man with brown hair.
@@jackdoyle7453 You need to play more video games. But yeah, certainly all the flagship games are "insert white male stand in here"
Casting Hermione as a black girl would be particularly poignant, as she is targeted by racial slurs within the context of the story
If every character is a white dude than either it’s a klan meeting or a bad film
@@moscanaveia There might even be a great moment of confusion for Harry hearing her called "mudblood". He is already upset in the book because of the tone, and it's Malfoy saying it, but if he thought it was racist, too ... Hermione might have to act quicker to have her punch come first.
THEN Ron can explain it's a wizarding term.
I think including Blaize Zabini's character more, seeing him accepted by the white wizards would drive home this alternate form of bigotry.
The whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, to me, indicated a much deeper problem with the adaptation, and that was a failure to understand the source. While the themes of GITS can be fairly universal, they are also tied deeply into Japanese cultural experiences, layered into the very specific bureaucracy of the Japanese security and legal apparatus. The original also found a balance in exploring Japanese ideals of collectivism verses individualism in a way that gave room for both philosophies to breathe, while merging into each other. The movie adaptation goes straight for individualism. I mean just look at the name of the character to see how much they bungled the adaptation. Major is not her name; it's her rank. She is THE Major, because it's her title. This all indicates that they didn't really understand the material they were adapting, and just wanted to go for the surface level appearance of what people thought that Ghost in the Shell was, so casting a white American woman in a role that should have gone to a Japanese woman is just the cherry on top of that shit sundae.
The Major was what she was called when she was fighting in the war and it war not her rank, and she did not give her self the nickname.... also the shell she used was one of a white woman in the original manga and anime. and this has to do with having sex with white women is a kink in japan and a power status in the Japanese elite. Also it is hinted at the major might be a boy, also the major does not really care what her body looks like and it is just a ends to a means to satisfy the society around her. Think Stevie Wonder's sunglasses he does not have them for himself the has them for us.
The thru line of the the movie is what make us human and our Identity. the major questioning if she is even human to the casual biparty that Togasa get for being un modded.
also if we want to go down the rabbit hole GITS is a Japanese remake of Philip K. Dick 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
64.media.tumblr.com/dfc420db24d76a5e4354721a717106fa/tumblr_n7imlzdIbh1rpfx57o1_500.gifv
@@-BigTMoney- She's called the Major because that's her rank; the Self-Defense Forces in Japan are part of the country's National Police service, and she fought in overseas conflicts because she was a member of the Japanese military. This is well-established in the original manga (which included two instances of her wearing her military uniform for official duties outside of her role as a counterrorist operator), as well as it's follow-up works. A major theme of the original manga was the use of soldiers enforcing internal laws (something that was a more and more prominent issue at the time of writing, with the implementation of multiple national counterterrorism teams around the world pulling operators from military personnel). The first manga established her gender very firmly as female (through several outright statements, and one very adult scene that spelled out her biological gender). There was no work that implied her body was that of a European woman before the film.
I thought her body was synthetic, and could literally look like anything and as far as casting goes, Johansson looked the part. I mean I guess ideally for a live action role we could get an actual android to play it, but we aren't there yet.
There's a part in the movie that addresses the fact that she was born japanese - she goes looking and it's heavily implied she finds her childhood home in the movie(an apartment iirc).
It's also alluded to in the anime that she/he might be either or nonbinary and that it's of no consequence which used to be the case because the major is the major, the end. They could have casted literally any attractive woman in the role and it would have been appropriate for the story since it's just a shell to the major, nothing more. If they casted a black woman or native american woman for the shell - it wouldn't have impacted anything other than pissing off the neonazi skinhead crybabies....They should have done that actually...
@@johnmccarron7066 I read the manga when they first came out in Japanese, I finished high school in Tokyo in 2000, and moved to Osaka. If you are familiar with manga and anime you can tell the race by how they do the eye shape, so it does not have to be stated what race she is b/c you can see it. I have not read them in English or any of the rerelease so I am sure some small retcons have happened thru translations and updates thru the years. I am sure what you said is accurate for the versions you got and I am old and out of date with current build of the series. these differences we are talking about don't change the core of who she is just a different shell on the same cyber brain (see what I did there ;-)
I always love how much nuance you bring to your videos. You always go the extra mile to consider every point of view and I think it makes for really good content
Your willingness to engage in the nuances of counter arguments really makes you stand out among online creators.
The king is back
The casting of Jamie in the musical Everybody's Talking About Jamie is a really interesting case. The character is based on a real white person and was originally portrayed by a white actor, but has since been played almost exclusively on stage by non-white (usually Black or mixed-race) actors for a number of years now. However, when the time came to cast the film adaptation, they went back to a white actor. Jamie was great because it had a Black actor in the leading role of a show where the character's race has no bearing on the plot, and with the 'colourblind casting' for the film, this representation was lost.
(This is not a critique of Max who played him in the film - I think he did great - just an observation on the nuances of the casting decisions)
I think this comment is interesting because my first contact with the Jamie musical was through the Korean stage show, which was of course played by (freaking amazing) Korean actors and singers. I loved the actor on the film, but it was an adjustment.
I think it falls in three groups:
1. The character is core or fundamental to the story and is well known. Then the character's traits should be respected. Here we need to create new *chararcters* who are diverse.
2. The character is secondary or is depicted ambiguously (like Senku in Dr. STONE - his father is definitely Japanese, but they actually point out they're not related by blood and he certainly looks Caucasian in the manga). Preference to being true to the character, but probably less significant and there is room for diversity.
3. The character is either new or or has been depicted in several different ways. Really - just open. We really need to make this a more diverse area.
For me, the problem really is more that if you just race or gender swap, it suggests something odd - that the background or history of the character doesn't matter. Consider Superman (Kal El). He grew up on a farm in rural Kansas and spent his time in a very whitebread town. His entire story is... well.. white and male. If you just swap in a black person *with no other changes* - it suggests that there are no cultural or experiential differences between white Americans or black Americans and they're interchangeable.
There are ways to do it - there are, in fact, black Supermen. But they're either different people or they're from alternate universes. They may even have the same name and more or less the same backstory - but there are differences that might make the character more authentically black or Asian while preserving the core concept of the original character. Like Calvin Ellis on Earth 23 (DC comics). He's Kal El. Born on Krypton. But he's black. He's still basically Superman, but he's distinct with differences that come both from being black on Krypton AND on Earth. He's the President of that universe's United States, for example.
I'm not sure I've communicated this well.
I always love your NUANCED views on things....you try to respect and steelman ALL sides of a discussion
Its interesting how they always seem to get mad at black people being in more media
We don't get mad (most of us).We just don't always understand the point of changing the race .
I mean I also don't like it if a white guy plays a role that was originally black or asian.
@@dude9318 no it's overwhelmingly anger that comes from no longer being the center of attention
@@tyronechillifoot5573 I don't know dude I guess some white people are like that
@@dude9318 nah we all get mad, dude. regardless of how you think you feel about it, you're mad. :(
its interesting how a lot of times they handle black people poorly in media by tokenizing them(finn from SW) or just making them black versions of white characters.
Maybe thats what people are getting mad at, instead of your passive aggressive assertion that its just because racism.
Whenever I see this topic pop up, I always end up thinking about the people who actually get to make these casting decisions. I think part of the problem is that people write what they know. Like, I really want more queer stories and movies and characters, but I can't imagine it'd go well for a non-queer person to tell those stories. And I don't think that's their fault, either--we just have our limitations of perspective. So ultimately, I think if we had more diversity in the roles of casting, directing, story writing, executives, etc, maybe we'd see more diversity everywhere else.
and you really don't want the marginalized actor to have to do the heavy lifting of authentic portrayal if the script and directing have no notion of it. especially since it's the actors who get all the backlash from their own community if they can't wrangle it into something intelligible.
You're so right. People may even want to do the right thing, but many wouldn't feel comfortable speaking on something they know nothing about. The power in production must be shared.
I agree, but mostly what we are getting is the token lesbian or gay male in over abundance. They are not even good homosexual roles, just homosexual overly played, overly stress. Seems like gay people can't live normally, instead they have to go around throwing gay-ness into everyone's face. We need real gay characters, not overtly gay characters that presently tend to offend people. Most of the gays and lesbians I have met are so normal you would NOT know they are gay or lesbian at all, until they are with their partner. Although I have seen Gay males who flamboyantly FLAME as they walk through a crowd, that is not what I see as the norm for most of my gay friends. Mind I have one friend that over plays the victim card and looks for insults because he is gay. I have seen the same thing in black friends that also play the victim when they started the incident. I see victims every where... Karens who call foul or scream oppression when they are they idiots causing the problem, white men screaming the Black, Jews or what ever are cancelling us. This is after their views are aired on TV, Facebook, or other media... people today are all about being victims.
True, but then sometimes, even with all of the representation in all of the right places (writing, directing, acting) you still get the movie 'Bros'.
RIP the singer of the ghost in the shell opening
I think that there's a little "death of the author" happening with Night of the Living Dead. Romero may not have intended racial allegory, but the fact that the lone survivor, a black dude, gets shot at the end certainly feels like racial allegory. It hits different than it would if it had been a white guy
Especially considering the shooter was working with the police
i personally think 'death of the author' is a bit of an overblown concept, but it definitely hits different -- and if it helps us think about race in a productive way, then it's a valid conversation. But I don't feel comfortable erasing the original purpose of the film.
Oof Netflix Death Note. One of my favorite Manga series of all times and set in my own city of Seattle. I didn't have high hopes for the adaptation, but still, hearing that it was bad just sucks. I wanted to be excited for it.
But the American film industry has been adapting Japanese stories and films since Kurosawa films. I don't really mind if they want to take an movie and remake it with a western cast and setting. Japan adapts western media as well.
Edited for typos and an extra thought.
Your commentary on Duane Jones is interesting - I always took his murder at the end of the original film to be a pretty explicit commentary on race, and who we see as “dangerous”. Duane was clearly a hero of the story, stopping a real threat (zombies), but to the police officers who shot him, none of that mattered. The police assumed he was a zombie without giving any benefit of the doubt, just as police assume the guilt of black folks in our society in much the same way.
I always ask myself; if Duane Jones character had been white, would the police have presumed he was infected and shot him so quickly? Would they have attempted to talk to him more first?
the power of our ability to find meaning in media is crazy haha
I always assumed the exact same thing! It really seemed like some hardcore civil rights commentary there, particularly considering when that movie was filmed.
@@neuralmute I have to wonder if his character dying like that was in the original script (prior to casting), and it only took on the racial context afterward because he was being portrayed by a black actor. If that is the case, it definitely goes to show that there are some events where the context changes based on the race of the characters.
Well it wasn't. Romero said as such.
Love the complexity that T1J brings to the topic, and I would love to see more diversity in actors. I am wary of many of the one-sided arguments (such as whitewashing bad, black washing okay) because, in general, I find that trying to enumerate the circumstances in which we hold people to different standards inevitably leads to more argument and divisiveness than seeking a common standard and identifying the areas in which is not being implemented fairly.
That said, I think there is a much more powerful argument against black washing (or gender-swapping) than those in the video: tokenism. Sometimes, it feels like studio execs decide to change the race, gender, or orientation of the character as a stunt or a hedge against failure. In these cases, the people producing the movie either try to engender controversy to get more media attention and/or claim racism/sexism/homophobia if people don't like the movie, especially if fans of the original IP don't like the adaptation. But when this approach is taken, it's prioritizing skin-deep representation over nuanced writing. When this happens, everyone loses because the character is shallow and a poor representation of their race/sex/orientation, and a poor representation of the original property.
If we want more diversity in movies, the emphasis should not really be on whether or not to re-cast or non-traditionally cast white IP, a la amazons Rings of Power series. The emphasis should be on raising awareness of other IPs. I'd much rather see Evan Winter's Rage of Dragons or N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance series with their nuanced characters than see a bunch of people trying to tokenize Tolkein and butchering it in the process.
I recently saw an educational media company proudly put forth its mission statement. 2 or 3 of the 6 points were about diversity and inclusion. None were actually about the educational impact itself. When diversity becomes the primary goal (rather than the quality of the product) everyone loses, and the same is true with representation in movies.
My Stance: swapping of any kind
is only a problem if the thing
being swapped had some importance to the character in question.
If the character just happens to be insert blank then I don’t care.
"Probably because it sounds kind of gross" 🤣🤣🤣
I think the problem with this is two-fold.
First, fans of these works often grew up with these characters. They have a certain idea of who the characters are and what they look like and they naturally want to see the characters they grew up with, put to live action the way they saw them growing up. This is especially true for visual mediums like comics and manga where you actually get to see how the characters look on page. When you change the characters you're inherently alienating that core fanbase to some extent. And what's the tradeoff? Presumably you'd get a wider audience coming to see your movie. Except no, you won't. The people who would want to see the movie already (the aforementioned fanbase) are now less inclined to pay money to do so and the people who you're trying to draw in aren't suddenly more likely to go see a movie they already weren't interested in just because some of the characters are now black.
The second problem is that it's just plain lazy and offensive. The Harley Quinn movie and its race-swap of Black Canary was mentioned in the video so let's use that as an example. What was the purpose? Why race-swap a white character instead of simply using an already existing black character? There are many black superheroines to choose from but instead they decided to use a white character and just make her black. Why? Could they not be bothered to find a black character (there are many black superheroines to choose from)? Do they think black characters aren't interesting or marketable (that's just patently untrue)? Essentially what they're saying is that they couldn't be bothered to find a black character to use but they knew they'd get shit if they didn't have one so they palette swapped a white character and that's good enough. That's not diversity, it's tokenism.
I understand the casting of Hamilton sending a message by using all actors of color. I have always wondered about the Anne Boleyn casting, though. While being "white" was not intrinsic to her character, being English was.
On Ben's Blackness not being integral to Night of the Living Dead's story, but being an essential part of the recasting, I see that as being similar to the Parent Trap remake not just using twins. When a movie/property makes a non-standard choice, it's a gesture of respect to the original filmmaker to maintain that kind of choice.
Ben being Black is essential IMO. I'd go so far to say that if someone doesn't think it is essential, they are missing a huge part of the meaning (whether Romero intended that or not).
@@travcollier I agree. I think the essentialness of Ben's Blackness is always lingering around complexity of his relationship to Barbara...and how other people react to their relationship with each other. It is tense. And remember interracial marriage was just made legal with Loving v Virginia that year before...but black men were still regularly lynched when white men got too nervous with their proximity to white women. But I think his Blackness' essentialness becomes apparent at the very end of the film. I don't want to give spoilers if people haven't seen it, but I cannot see what happens at the end as being NOT about race.
Your comment implies that the characters being twins isnt essential, when it is literally the entire driving force of the plot....
@@troopersjp Quick correction. "Miscegenation" is interbreeding, not marriage. Interracial sex (or intimate relationships) was illegal. There's an equal protection argument for interracial marriage, but interracial sex being legal rests on an implicit right to privacy.
This is sadly a relevant detail given the recent leaked opinion from the US Supreme Court.
PS: Similarly, the Lawrence v Texas case which would also be undermined by that ruling struck down a law against sodomy.
PPS: I'd apologize for "getting political", but it's very much on topic IMO ;)
@@travcollier Hello! No worries about getting political on my end. But I do need to correct you a bit here. It is true that the word "Miscegenation" is defined in the dictionary as interbreeding, but Anti-Miscegenation laws were predominantly about making interracial *marriage* illegal...though some laws made both illegal.
Loving v. Virginia was about the illegality of interracial marriage, not interracial sex. Virginia did have a law that made interracial sex illegal. And just like in Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas, the police burst into the home of the Lovings, in the hopes to catch them in the act of sex in order to arrest them. However, unlike Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas, the police did not catch the Lovings in the act of sex. When the police questioned them as to what their relationship to each other was, they noted they were married. And they were arrested for their interracial marriage violating Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which spoke about marriage only, not sex. This is significant because Loving v. Virginia's Supreme Court ruling had nothing to do with a right to privacy. Loving v. Virginia struck down Virginia's Racial Integrity Act on the basis that Interracial Marriage Bans violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, and additionally, that their law violated the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause because "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law."
Threatening of Roe v. Wade's right to privacy has implications for Lawrence v. Texas not Loving v. Virginia.
If Obergefell v. Hodges were overturned, *that* would have implications for Loving v. Virginia.
This is not to minimize the danger to marginalized people of all sorts due to the threatening of Roe. v. Wade. But some of these details are important.
There were lots of places that had laws against interracial marriage, but not interracial sex, for example, all of the French colonial spaces like Louisiana that followed the Code Noir, had sex legal, but marriage not. Alabama has interracial sex when the people were married be a felony, but interracial sex when the people weren't married was only a misdemeanor. So what is up with that and they does this matter?
Because there is a long history of of white men who were slave owners sexually assaulting the black people they had enslaved. Sometimes because they wanted to impregnate those black women and to force them to give birth to another generation of enslaved people. That sort of interracial sex was not only not illegal, but there was a capitalist incentive under the slavery system for white men to sexually assault black women. This is one of the reasons the first anti-miscegenation laws were in the 1660s in slave states specifically forbidding white people form marrying Black and Mulatto enslaved people and indentured servants and none of the former slave states had repealed their anti-miscegenation laws before Loving v. Virginia.
The impending overturning of Roe v. Wade is a disaster. But I think it is important to note the ways in with different sorts of oppression are rooted in different histories of violence...because knowing the distinctions makes it our ability to fight those oppressions more effectively.
Yeah, I'm okay with the dragon ball film staying where it belongs. In the trash.
....you're not gonna mention that L went from Japanese-British-Russian to African American in the American Deathnote?
8:17 In the Manga they point out The Major's body was a generic model from the US.
One of the most important plot points in all of Ghost in the Shell is authenticity.
The Major's body doesn't look like her as a small japanese girl. While the outside of her is changed she still consider herself her unironically and authentically; even thought the only part of her that is still her is her brain. Heck a plot point of the anime in am episode was a guy had androids in the same model as The Major's body, as that model was common.
Scarlett Johansson was an inspired choice. Togasi, and Ishikawa yeah. Make them all japanese. Bato... I think he was also all full synthetic body too.
Full prosthetic doesn't mean white though. In the manga and in the movie there's hardly any people who aren't east Asian. Motoko doesn't stand out from the crowd. She's generic. Attractive but generic. This would imply that she looks like an attractive east Asian woman. A white woman would stand out.
@@treacherousjslither6920 You are putting a lens on all of your own basis.
Of course she doesn't stand out with a US body made from America. Because global tastes have changed. Watching the original movie and Manga NeoTokyo... There are dozens of of aesthetic choices mishmashed from everywhere, into a hive city that at its core is Japan.
*In The Future* Japan has become a lot more cosmopolitan.
If you what what a cosmopolitan non-western society looks like look at early Turkish Republic.
Ataturk baned the Habib, and the Fez. There was enormous social pushback for decades. Which some of it is only getting dealt with now. See all the social turmoil Erdogan is whipping up.
Penultimate point, there are a few times in the GitS franchise where section 9 team goes to other countries.
No one points out how Japanese/Pan Asian Motoko *looks*.
Final point, my personal head cannon that is supported by how everyone treats her and makes passing remarks.
I think she has a conventional attractive body in the 2040s. Going back to NeoTokyo's example the architecture is all other the place. Phrases and signs from everywhere. The global society has been chugging along for almost 100 years. If you look at the US, our standard of beauty has hanged to have a lot more latin American influence.
Japan in GitS has been a super power for decades, while the US has receded a little bit. This would change the currents of fashion.
Which is to all say all of these factors become factors.
Could she have subtle Japanese/Pan Asian influences on her body? Absolutely. Would *most* of her features be consider globally conventionally attractive? Even more emphatic yes!
If this story is a near future possible take... I would expect Motoko' body model to be based off of an actress/model. Bases doesn't mean *looks exactly like*.
Do I think that Scarlett Johansson makes an okay Motoko? You could do worse.
As thoughtful and thought-provoking as ever. It's nice to know there are still things you can count on.
I think it's totally different the feeling when you're in the original country than when you're a minority watching the adaptation in the U.S.
I don't think any person in Colombia would have cared if ugly Betty would have a white actress in the main role, but the latin population in the U.S. would do.
People here in Mexico don't even know there's a U.S. version of Queen of the south, much less care that the lead actress is brazilian.
I watched The Fresh Prince, 227, The Jeffersons, and other Black casted shows and related to many of the characters because what you look like has nothing to do with what you've been through or what you're interested in. I'm a poor kid from Philly who has a rich uncle like Will. I have gossipy neighbors like the ones on 227, I've been powerless then suddenly gained power like George Jefferson.
race is certainly not the only reason people identify strongly with characters.
Love your content, very well detailed and thoughtful. I do have to push back on one thing, the main protagonist's skin color in Night of the Living Dead was a HUGE deal in the late 60's. George Romero not only put a black man in the lead of an otherwise "white" film, but also the violence, imagery, and interpersonal conflicts throughout the film were explicit statements in their time.... that being said, as far as remakes go, who cares what color the lead is unless the story or themes depend on it?
Also the ending of the movie is specifically a commentary on race and policing, it would not have the same impact with any other type of casting.
Tony Todd is a criminally underrated actor. I challenge anyone to watch "The Visitor" from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine without crying.
I find one of the arguments here difficult, that you can't connect with characters or invest in them unless they look like you. Other than Shameless or Ken Loach film I will hardly ever see people like me on screen but it doesn't stop connecting with characters. This isn't say increased representation or opportunity for more actors with diverse background isn't a good thing it is.
i also got stuck on that-i've identified with lots of characters outside my experience of privilege/marginalization, and not identified with lots of characters who came from similar backgrounds as me. if it's an engaging story with compelling characters, i'll go along with it and learn about others' experiences. i think it's partly an individual preference. but also i just don't see many characters with my marginalizations, and i see a lot of characters from dominant groups, so it would make sense numbers-wise that i just haven't had as many chances to see characters of my marginalizations that i identify with (especially given that marginalized characters are more likely to be stereotyped).
Based. If you can't connect with a character because they're not the same race as you thats a problem with you, not the writers or filmmakers.
He didn't even make that argument, you made that up just to argue against it. His argument was specifically about how weird and isolating it is to identify with characters who look nothing like you EXCLUSIVELY throughout your entire life, he pointed out how ecstatic he was to finally be able to identify with a character racially and how different is was than identifying with them nonracially. You may have had experiences having no trouble identifying with characters that don't look like you throughout your entire life. But thats simply because you've had the privelege of never being forced to genuinely and openly examine your race every single second of your life when out in public. He has not has that, however, and to compare your experiences in the same way is gross and wrong considering they are literally direct oppisutes
@@theyautjawarrior6652 irrelevant to the conversation, and inaccurate, snippy one liners doesn't give your point any more weight. Especailly when its done as ineffectively as you did it.
@@facelessdrone Who are you to tell me about my life? I've been stopped and searched countless times by the police, assaulted by the police multiple times, arrested for crimes I didnt commit, illegally held in custody, put in a cell as a minor. I've never committed a crime in my life. And that's easier compared to some of my relatives why have had British police and soldiers break into the their homes and drag them off to concentration camps because of their ethnicity. The average black person's life is a fucking holiday compared to what we have to endure. When we are portrayed on film its usually by Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or Lenardo de capiro during some the accent equivalent of blackface.
Great video! Impact is always more important than intent, but when it comes to Hollywood remakes, the commercial scale of the intention really is a factor in why some films are rightly accused of whitewashing. There's a difference between the Ghost in the Shell adaptation (or especially examples where books are adapted to film) and, for example, The Magnificent Seven as a riff on Seven Samurai, Ran as a riff on King Lear, the remake of The Ring like you mentioned, even something like Clueless as a riff on Emma. All of those "remakes" had something really specific to say about the context it placed its characters in, and no one would question the care and acknowledgement to source that went into their creative process. Wish more screenwriters and producers would take that approach!
I was disappointed in a video with this title that you didn’t touch on “Blackwashing” in a more literal sense. Why is it when Hollywood does decide to change a White role to a POC they are almost always Black. Not Japanese, not Indian, not Native American, not Hispanic; Black is the go-to. As if Hollywood has this warped sense that that change is gonna give them the most brownie points (ignore pun) vs. giving the role to a less spotlighted ethnicity. “When in doubt with DEI, go Black”. Do you think that is a sensationalized sentiment?
Ultimately, it's very neoliberal for the progress of oppressed minority groups of people. With that said, if you truly have an issue with black and gay people being represented in the media, then the answer is and should be clearly obvious. I shouldn't have to expand on the latter sentence in order to make this clear to you.
@@BleedForTheWorld but as far as i can see, they didn't mention that they disliked LGBTQ+ people or black people represented, they mainly questioned, why, when a character was first white, why does it seem that they have to be black? i believe that's the argument their mentioning.
@@princessmanitari4993 my initial reply to OP wasn't really pointing at them. I empathize with their concern about minorities being casted in this neoliberal landscape.
In bridgerton consider the settings you would think that since the show is "colour blind".. Where are the South Asian?
Yes...'blackwashing' is as real as 'reverse racism' lol
Production value on this one is insane🙏 so awesome to see
Minority actors getting jobs was touched on, but I think that point could be stressed more. There are a lot of roles going to white actors, so it strikes a harder chord when a white actor plays a role outside of their experience because they get all the jobs anyway.
we see that even in school plays. i was passed over for the principal's son, and it was obvious to other kids that he was mediocre. All the kids knew and that heifer knew what she'd done.. sheeeesh, the entire system is built from childhood to send a strong message of entitlement to the caucasion one especially the mealy mouthed mediocre ones.
They had kept me on there just to appear neutral and then give it all to the white boy.
The thing with Ghost in the Shell is the creator approved of the casting choice.
This video caused me to think a lot about my feelings on different people being cast in different roles and here’s what I have come up with that applies to what I personally believe. When you see someone playing a character you create an image of who that character is and what they look like in your mind. When someone who is of a different race is cast as that character it feels like it’s a new character and like they got rid of the old one. Both actors can play the role great but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it feels like they did away with the original, but if I were to watch the two movies separately without knowledge of the other I’d probably be fine with it. Now this doesn’t apply to Hamilton in my case, I don’t have this feeling that they scraped the old characters, and I had to think of why and this is what I came up with. The casting of the minorities into the role of the founding fathers was ok because the founding fathers in that play are essentially new characters. Yes they still represent real people but except for key story events they don’t act the same or talk the same or rap the same. If they made the play serious, almost documentary like, then I would feel weird about them casting a black man as George Washington, it would feel like I’m being lied to cause that clearly isn’t George Washington. For me at least and I think for a lot of other people it’s really more about that replacement of character with someone who clearly isn’t the same but we’re supposed to believe they are. Like remember when everyone got mad that the new Roderick in the dairy of a wimpy kid movie didn’t look like the old one? That wasn’t a race thing it was because people had an idea of Roderick as a character in their heads and this new guy was not fitting that mold and people refused to believe it was Roderick but if they had started with that second actor in the first movie people would have been fine with it. There’s also the problem of media casting a token black man or Asian man and it just feels wrong and disingenuous.
I somewhat agree with this. Being a huge nerd there is a sense that I have a certain image of what certain characters should look like. It is enough to question castings of the same race so I find it jarring when they cast someone of a different race. I don't know if I'm going to start writing on Twitter about it but I'm sure I make a face when I hear the news. For example, the casting of Death in Sandman seems like an odd fit to me. But, maybe I don't enough of the actress' work. Part of me wants to reject the casting because it doesn't fit that image I have.
But, I am also puzzled by how inconsistent I am about it. I have no problem with the casting for Gordon but I had issues with the casting of Deadshot. In both cases 50% of it had to do with their mustaches. I think Zoe Kravitz is great casting for Catwoman. I also thought Zendaya would make a perfect MJ, but then they departed greatly from the comics. Maybe this just stems from them not being the titular character. I honestly don't know but I will admit that I have pondered about it.
I'm pretty sure the real James Madison did rap exactly like that
I think minorities were cast in Hamilton simply to make the rappin' slave owners more palatable to the modern audience.
@@treacherousjslither6920 Or maybe because it was written by a Latino guy who wanted more POC on Broadway? Hamilton hasn't aged well at all, but I still believe Lin Manuel Miranda's rather naive take on why he wrote and cast it the way he did.
@@neuralmute Yeah that's prolly it. Silly me smh
Came here from The Metatron." Everything is complicated" is a great and often-forgotten truth. Thank you.
I think one of the more impressive instances of race swapping happened in the Power Ranger movie that came out some years back. A lot of people poked fun at how the different colors of the ranger suits seemed oddly lined up with the color we associate with that race. (The asian gets the yellow suit. The black kid gets the black suit). But the problem I was anticipating would be backlash for not staying true to which character we identify with a particular suit. To many people, Billy is the Blue ranger and it would be weird if he was any other color.
So when they kept the characters to their assigned suits but flipped around the races of each character, I thought that was really cool. (Though, they did kill off one of the rangers to raise the stakes. . . and it wasn't the white one)
So it's not without its issues. I'm not touching on whether the writing was good or anything like that - I'm just noting an interesting casting dynamic centered around that franchise in particular and I embraced that change.
i found that part problematic . color coded racism to assign ethnicity. Largely Black people are the only ones with a color palette associated with ethnicity. Yellow is only associated to asian when its time to orientalize them and i have never seen indians being assigned the color brown even though they color code themselves with it.
i didn't watch the new power rangers bc it looked too plasticky to me and i knew i'd have a problem when they put the caucasion front and center . yikes.
My philosophy is, I represent me and you represent you, and something can be for you without being about you
That’s kinda awesome! 👍
Plus, the main character in Night of the Living Dead was shot by police at the end. The casting may have been from acting virtue, but it gave the story a new meaning when police perceived the black character as a zombie threat when he was not. It may have been unintentional, but this is one of the things that makes this movie extra relevant to this day.
When directors allow more minority actors into roles not written for them, it can take on a whole new meaning, sometimes in a profound way.
One thing I think is interesting to talk about in this is "West Side Story". When you have something like Death Note, it's a retelling of the essence of a story in a different environment. Why does that feel less grounded than taking Romeo and Juliet out of Italy and moving it into Upper West Side Manhattan? Is it because West Side Story takes the beats of Romeo and Juliet and reworks the entirety of it into the world of gangs of New York? There's a literary tradition of taking a story and retelling it in a different setting. No one looks at Riff and sees a barely shaded stand-in for Mercutio. No one would think to call that 'non-traditional casting'. Riff's a person in his own right.
In the same vein, you have a Fist Full of Dollars, which is a remake of Yojimbo, or Magnificent Seven as a remake of Seven Samurai. Lion King is really just Hamlet. No one really complains about those three, because they rehome the story in a new conflict, and do justice to placing the characters in the new conflict. This is much different than just grabbing a random character and casting an actor to fit a demographic quota. That casting won't affect the character at all, and will lose their place in the conflict of the story.
To take your sit-com example, if Chandler Bing had been played by Kadeem Hardison (ignoring for a minute that Kadeem would have played him completely differently to how Matthew Perry played him), would you have seen yourself in that character? The common thing in the writers room for Chandler was "Write Gay, Play Straight". That would have come off different in this theoretically cast version of Friends.
Imagine Friends, but produced by Debbie Allen instead. I bet you would have seen more of yourself in those characters even if they were still played by 4 white people. Seeing people who look like you is important, but seeing people who act, talk, and respond like you; who mirror the troubles you've had are probably more important.
Understanding where "blackwashing" bothers me and doesn't helps me understand where "whitewashing" bothers POC. Though honestly I can't think of any good reasons to "whitewash". It's like THE OPPORTUNITY WAS RIGHT THERE. And as a white guy, I WANT to see more diverse people and more diverse cultures. I see people who look and talk like me every damned day. Luke Cage was the shit because I rarely see black people where I live and rarely get to immerse myself in Harlem culture, and I could have lived in that show. I very much could have lived in Black Panther, as I love depictions of separately-advanced African cultures. Africa is always depicted as "bands of primitive tribes" or if they are advanced, "Black guys in white suits". With African futurism, I don't want to just see a black guy in a suit and tie. That just feels like assimilation. And honestly I'd rather see foreign styles spread here than western styles spread there.
But like if they did live-action Attack On Titan, and they used white characters, you know people would be up in arms. "It was Japanese so they should have been Japanese" but it's a Japanese story that takes place essentially in Germany. So if they were all Asian in an American adaptation, that would bother me. It would NOT bother me if it were made this way in Japan.
One of the more hilarious examples of blackwashing was Idris Elba as Heimdall, "The Whitest Asgardian". I can go either way with this one because I can't imagine a better possible Heimdall. But at the same time, this was specifically Norse mythology. But at least it's a fantasy world. But if they were all white, nobody would have a degree on which to complain, because it is Norse mythology. Their choice to make Asgard diverse wasn't totally necessary. But I'm kinda glad they did it anyway. Especially since Marvel was white af at the time.
However, they do have a black woman as "Queen of the Dwarves" in the Lord of the Rings prequel. That diversity was never established in any of the movies or source material, so it begs the question "where did all the black people go in Lord of the Rings?". A better place for this was if they introduced an entirely new part of the Lord of the Rings world. But honestly the race doesn't bother me as much as the fact that she doesn't have a beard.
I'm torn on the Marvel Asgardians. If they were all white it's kind of I don't know. White gods are real so where does that leave the rest of us? So many powerful alien races look just like white people and it's um well damn lol
Black dwarves don't make any sense to me. How do people develop dark skin deep underground where there's no sunlight?
@Calcifer Dwarves eat whatever grows underground and in the dark. Plenty of organisms exist in such environments like mushrooms, fish, salamanders etc. I imagine they sleep when they get sleepy. They probably have a time cycle that works differently from ours but is efficient and effective for their society.
But where do dwarves come from? How did they come into being? Did they evolve from some cave dwelling primates? Or were they magically created from stone by some great earth spirit?
Yes I know that this is all made up stuff but even made up stories should have plausibility and internal consistency.
@@treacherousjslither6920 Tolkien was pretty damn specific about how Dwarves worked underground. Their mines weren't just mines, they were underground cities with a large network of trade routes. Any change to the lore is garbage and should be known as garbage.
Honestly though, on that last part, there are definitely black people in Middle-Earth. Albeit in Harad, but people have always traveled. Even in, say, medieval/early-modern Europe, while people who weren't white were very rare (outside of Mediterranean coastal cities and of course Iberia), they weren't nonexistent. Like, even besides black saints alleged to have come from Africa, we have specific records of black African-descended nobility in England going back to at least the Elizabethan period, and in Russia going back to at least the 1730s. And those were both places that were particularly distant and separated from Africa.
Obviously they were very rare, but fiction tends to focus on unusual people in general, so I really don't see why the occasional fictional monarch (or mage, in the case of, say, the recent Witcher series) in a European-influenced fantasy setting is the sort of thing that stretches suspension of disbelief.
Now, an all-black cast in something clearly set in or closely based on historical Europe? Sure, that's silly. But the occasional unusual person/family/maybe even dynasty? That's realistic. And if there's an empire that has territory in both Fantasy-Europe and Fantasy-Africa/Asia? Even more so. We know for a fact there were African legionaries in Roman Britain, for example.
Personally I don't see why this Dwarf Queen couldn't be descended from a clan of, say, Haradaic dwarves. Men don't come in one color, clearly, so why would Dwarves? Or Elves for that matter? I mean, hell, on a similar subject, the Harfoots are described as brown-skinned, and Sam is described as having "brown hands," so, while interpretations may vary, I'd expect most of the (ethnically Harfoot) Hobbits in the original trilogy, going by Tolkien's description, to at least have a Mediterranean tan.
As a Mexican, I'm outraged there's no Mexican Elves in the upcoming LOTR series from Amazon.
My stance is that either you can care about both whitewashing and blackwashing because it is disrespectful to source material and the demographics represented or you can choose to not care about either because there is always the original work or story.
The only inconsistent stance is the "it's ok when we do it." Especially, when many of the characters being blackwashed are gingers, it seems to indicate a distaste for the Irish or the Scots whose plights historically are almost at least comparable to those of black people.
That’s my issue too. A massive double standard has been created and that’s only going to foster animosity.
The double standard is to reflect what happens in the real world. Art does not happen in a vacuum.
I am not sure I agree with 1. attaching gingers to an Irish or Scottish identity, 2. the statement that they were oppressed as much as black people and, most importantly, 3. that they suffer the repercussions and systemic racism as strongly as black people do.
Besides, many of the characters you mention in your other comment were whitewashed, according to your own standards. Mary-Jane Watson was played by, for example, Kirsten Dunst and Emma Stone who are not ginger. Actually, I do not remember any actress who is ginger playing her. The same is true for Cate Blanchett and many others who played these characters. Do you have issues with that?
@@abelabel3664 Kirsten Dunst dyed her hair red for the role and Emma Stone played Gwen Stacy.
@@Supermanfan99 Exactly...they are not ginger. They are white women playing ginger characters, which should be opposed by the commenter.
(Sorry for not knowing who Emma Stone played...I personally do not give two shits about superhero movies)
@@abelabel3664 Gwen Stacy is a blonde haired character.
Also there's a HUGE difference between Kirsten Dunst, a white woman with her hair dyed red playing a white woman with red hair than there is a black woman with black hair playing a white woman with red hair.
There's a giant double standard from the left these days and people are getting sick of it.
The argument at 14:10 about "taking away work" holds no water. No matter what happens, someone is not getting work.
The new upcoming Lord of the Rings streaming television show on Amazon will feature POCs playing various characters in the lands of Middle Earth, to include a black actress playing the part of a Dwarven princess. There are already criticisms that there should be no POCs at all in Middle Earth outside of the Easterling cannon fodder from the original Peter Jackson trilogy, and counter arguments that Tolkien's works are "too white" and don't feature enough diversity. Will be interesting to see the final product when it's released.
I identify with minds .... not faces. Feeling represented is not something that is high on my list when wanting to be engaged.
The way I've been phrasing the argument about casting a POC actor in a traditionally white role is, I think, a little more nuanced: White people should not have a monopoly on incidental race.
This has come up...constantly, in conversations about fan-casting poc actors for major comic characters like Reed Richards.
I watched a play at my local theatre called Picnic by William Inge. Its a story about a charismatic drifter coming into town, developing a relationship with a woman who is already in a relationship and lives with her mother, the mother disapproves of the drifter being near either of her daughters, but in the end, the woman leaves her established relationship and runs away to chase down the drifter. It was set in the 50's. I knew nothing of this play before going into it, so the entire time, I thought the mother was racist because the actor cast to play the drifter was black and the rest of the cast was white. The mother talked about "corruption" and "inappropriate behavior" and it never occurred to me that she wasn't just racist against the drifter. In fact, it made me largely overlook the fact that the daughter was in a committed relationship, and made me think the mother was clearly in the wrong in spite of the "cheating" aspect.
I think that it can be very hard to separate certain characteristics attached to characters by virtue of something innate like "blackness" or "queerness," or the lack thereof. Changing something like the race of a character can have unintended effects, and this isn't contingent on the original race.
That's probably a good way to make Picnic more relevant to a contemporary audience, the play itself hasn't aged that well since gender dynamics have shifted substantially and the skirting around the cheating makes the mother look unhinged by contemporary standards. Like the idea of a drifter from out of town is incredibly dated. 1950s plays have this problem of being too close to the current era to feel period-specific (like Ibsen or Shaw's pre-war plays), while also being dated enough to be awkward without that context in mind. It's interesting also because I feel like the casting of a black actor as say Nora in A Doll's House would likely not cause people to think much of racial embodiment since we are so used to Nora being a Norwegian woman (unless the director decides to update the setting to maybe incorporate themes of racial identity?) but when you take an American play like Picnic from the 50s it does become hard to disconnect racial embodiment from the performance of the character. I think it's probably a product of both its Americanness and its period. I think the takeaway is that as a society we shouldn't be scared of thinking about what those effects are and sometimes it's not bad to raise the question: what if the mother were racist? And it's worth thinking of the consequences when such changes might perpetuate harmful ideas.
Halle Bailey as Ariel is fine, she’s a fictional mermaid. Only racists are pissed about it.
Jodie Turner Smith as Anne Boleyn is completely wrong and unnecessary since that was a real historical figure. Literally done to stir controversy.
If you're talking about Mary Queen of Scots I felt the same way
I’m so grateful I found your channel. This was another fantastic video.
One thing I wish you had delved into, was the portrayal of non-white characters from multi-racial countries and the possibility U.S people ignore the racism in white-washing these characters. I kept thinking about that casting for New Mutants, and the way people complained about it, but not nearly as much as other cases (at least, this was how it looked for me, a brazilian that regularly consumes mainstream and independent US media).
I don't know if it was because the movie was bad and few people payed attention to it, or it was because most people in the U.S have no clue about other country's racial frame and racism issues.
They cast two WHITE brazilians, one as a light-skinned black brazilian man and the other as a dark-skinned black puertorican woman. I'm not sure how racism was shaped in Puerto Rico, but knowing we share a history of african slavery and knowing how racism is in Brasil, I know they have some issues too. Most afrobrazilians are poor; we are 75% among the poorest, 80% of the ppl killed by police and only 28% of richest in Brasil. Taking a character who'd be one of the few dozen black brazilian multi-millionaires, who first manifested his powers in anger with the racism he suffered, and casting the whitest brazilian they could find, felt like a huge middle finger.
And I'm here thinking how many native or mestizo mexican characters suffered the same fate in Hollywood. Or other afro puertoricans, afro dominicans, afrocubans. U.S. media still treats latinamerica like it's a bunch of non-racialized people until they get to the U.S and become brown.
That's bullshit. And I can't believe someone can be colorblind to the point of not noticing the difference between white people (no, they're not light-skinned) and black or brown people.
Atlanta, Donald Glovers FX show, used the switching of races in such a good way by making Justin Bieber a black man. one of my favorite "jokes" they have and it speaks to how they are portrayed in media and real life.
@T1J I've just finished reading Dog Whistle Politics, by Ian Haney Lòpez, and towards the end, he talks a lot about colorblind 'X' being a Republican move to basically make racism much harder to talk about. So, I'd say you're bang-on-the-money in suggesting that colorblind casting was a term invented by white people. It's a rhetorical move to get to "post-racial" without having to change behaviour and, in fact, whilst being able to backslide in some areas and invent whole new ways to be racist under the cover of being current.
My partner recently introduced me to Living Single, so glad you mentioned it here. Truly an amazing show and cast that deserve more attention.
The nice thing about a diverse cast: I can actually tell all the characters apart on the first viewing 😁
When there are too many blondes in a movie, I can't keep track of who is who. I can't tell you how many times I saw Fellowship of the Rings before I could remember which was Merry and which was Pippin, and those guys don't even look alike!
Oh yeah? I cant tell who is who on Wheel of Time, and there are not many blondes there.
Same for me. I can't really hold images in my mind so when I don't know the actors, characters or plot yet and they have similar hair or a similar attitude I tend to mix them up sometimes
you watched Fellowship of the Rings multiple times and still got merry and pippin mixed up?
Sexists
In the case of Hamilton, there is also some perspective shift that comes with transposing the white figures onto black performers, similar to performing characters from that time with the anachronistic attitudes and speech patterns. It changes the lens the audience views them through, which can be valuable if used well.
There’s nothing wrong with changing a story to be a different race version of the story and telling it with different character dynamics and culture. What would be wrong is randomly making a character black without any plot relevance or change in script.
A great discussion of a thorny topic - thanks! My opinion on race in casting decisions is - it all depends on the context. That's why I agree with a lot of your points. For example:
1. Biopics about real people: The actor should match the race/ethnicity of the real person. An exception to this might be a very stylized presentation of the person's story in which realism does not matter (i.e. "Hamilton"). But if you are trying to present a realistic depiction of the person, then the figure on screen or stage should at least nominally look like the person.
2. Historical dramas with fictional characters: Do the research. If the historical society was racially diverse, and if the real society's rules would allow a given person to fill a given role (i.e. is our story set in apartheid South Africa or the segregated US South, for instance?), AND if our story is not about race specifically, then by all means, cast whoever gives the best audition for each role. If race wouldn't have mattered in reality, then it shouldn't matter in casting.
3. Modern fictional dramas: As with historical dramas, if the story doesn't depend on the characters' race, then it shouldn't matter in casting.
4. Adaptations of foreign originals: Now it gets tricky, because it gets very easy for business exploitation of someone else's successful project to cross the line into cultural appropriation. I personally feel that adapters should actually rewrite the originals with regard to cultural elements of the story, as well as the racial make-up of the cast. Otherwise, just distribute the original with subtitles. I would like it very much if major studios in the US would stop trying to milk the most money for the least work out of other people's original ideas. Just saying.
5. Fantasy/science fiction: Omg. I just finished a 2-day argument on a certain social media platform all about whether race matters with regard to elves. Ugh. If the story is not about race, and if the character isn't even a human being, then just stop it, people. Just. Stop.
to be fair with the scarlet johannsan ghost in the shell adaptation. many anime fans are wary of live action adaptations of their favourite shows. And the first thing they saw was a big change that went against the established characters and settings it but a bad taste in their mouth because often these adaptations don’t have respect for the source material and this was the impression they got from that
I disagree whole heartedly. I'm mixed, but I've always just considered myself black. I never related to a character because of their race, and it's never "felt good" to be represented. In fact I was most of the way through season 2 of Apple TVs "See" before I even realized that the main characters are mixed exactly like me.
I felt literally nothing. Still don't.
I watched Martin, Family Matters and Living Single, Sister, Sister,and Hanging with Mister Cooper growing up. I also watched perfect strangers, step by step, saved by the bell and I can honestly say the characters I related to in those shows had nothing to do with their race.
I don't deny that to you it "felt good". I'm saying that it "feeling good" is a sign of something wrong that some people are incapable of only relating to a character who is of a similar race or gender.
How do you not understand how that's a problem, not something to be praised or pursued?
You are literally rooting to internalize supremacy in kids, and then setting the bar so "nobody can understand them, unless they look like them", which fuels division, infighting (light skin vs dark skin), and brings literally nothing good to society.
We should look deeper then skin tone, deeper then sexual preference, because we are all part of the same society and the mindset that is instilled by "representation" is toxic to everyone.
I'm not suggesting you are bad for "feeling good" about representation, but just because something "feels good" doesn't make it the right thing to do, or something you should pursue to no end.
Conflating the two is just flat out dangerous.
Sadly I agree. I do see how a lot of black people and other races can relate more seeing people that look like them on screen. However, i can see myself in a lot of characters that don’t look like me or even have the slightest of the same upbringing. That just goes to show how alike and complex we really are as human beings. Representation is still really important but also is creating new good material and not always doing re makes and relying on good old writing to carry pieces of work. New characters and story lines are much needed.
@@surfinsocal100 100% agreed. I am so sick and tired of having white guys take a white character and make them black and then turn to me like a dog who brought a dead bird into the house.
Like putting used up stuff in front of me should make me bow down to them, instead of demanding they make new characters instead of white people's sloppy seconds. Especially when they do it just to piss off other white people half the time, and who do they get pissed at? Not them...me. I didn't ask them for that, I don't know anyone who did. People want new representation not second hand save baiting.
The audacity to act like they are doing me a favor in the end....ugh
Crazy how similar you are to FD signifier, you both rock.
As a white belgian dude and a huge comic book nerd, I must admit it often feels weird to see a character that I saw as white, for years, suddenly turning black in the movie adaptation, but it doesn't change much, and I guess it's just a matter of how you pictured said character in your head. I realized it felt basically the same when an actor changed for the same character (like Anthony Hopkins and Mads Mikkelsen both playing Hannibal Lecter, in different ways). It's just takes time.
It's more of a problem to me when they change the personality. Best example I have of that is Homecoming, that I truly hated as a Spider-Man fan. Not because of the "blackwashing" or "whitewashing", but because they made new characters and just gave them a name from the comics. Like, come on, MJ is like the opposite of the comic books one. Why? Just for a plot twist that fans of the comics will hate and people who don't know the lore won't care ?
To come back to the subject, a good example someone pointed out for me is theater plays : a lot of them, in French countries, date from 17th and 18th centuries, where all characters (for the mooooost part) were white. Does that mean that no people of color should star in classical play ? That's absurd. And thus, I feel like getting a more diverse approach to casting is good, even though it would feel nice to have more "new" characters, also.
Nah, you’re wrong. MJ sucks in the comics. Zendayas MJ was vastly more interesting.
@@junjiito6298 It's a matter of opinion. But the character would have been as interesting without being a "MJ", don't you think?
In many theater plays and whatever we call them in their countries, all roles were/are played by men. I'm pretty sure if a role is written and played well, we forget the actual person aka the actor and see just the role.
Of course if the race and their uniqness plays a significant role that might be different, like Othello.
@@zorglub105 the movies clearly stated she was a different person, they just happened to have the same nickname for references sake...
@@facelessdrone Which was pretty odd. It's like they _want_ to make it MJ, but it's not _really_ MJ? It's strange. They could have called her anything else, even Liz Thompson if they wanted to adapt a different girl, but it's an alternate universe anyway, so it's not really that big of a deal.
I didn't even recognize you at first, you look completely different with this upgraded camera and lighting. Nice one.
There are really extreme case of blackwashing that are often ignored, especially in historic movies, like black Anne Boleyn for example. Come on, that was poor taste.
Why poor taste?
You just had to stick the Ghost in the Shell opening in my head like that.
The real frustrating bit about the controversy surrounding Scarlett Johansson's casting as major is that the major is explicitly not Asian. Any ethnicity would have been fine to cast as the major because the major lives in a society that is ethnically unidentifiable there are ethnic Japanese people in that society and she is not one of them
I think when a story is made about someone who lived in real life, like an Historic movie, then I think it matters to make sure that you should get the same race as the historic character. If it's a movie from any kind of country or the history from a certain race. I think that then it's important.
Not sure if this has been mentioned in the comments already but there's also the fact that non-white people in western countries were hardly ever in a position in which they could afford to create their own stories and characters as much as white people did. So, for centuries, white people were, in general and disproportionately more able to pursue writing and directing careers, and although one may argue that some white writers struggled to make ends meet in order to pursue that passion, it's also safe to assume that many of them wouldn't have at all if they didn't have some financial safety net that non-white people just didn't have. If people tend to write according to their life experiences and view on the world, then it follows that we got to where we are now with white over-representation and non-white under-representation, and since people were writing in a culture built on discrimination and worse, even the little non-white representation that whites wrote was full of harmful stereotypes. Nothing wrong with a bit of retcon on known stories to make up for past mistakes and to make it worth it to keep retelling them.
You sound american
First off, I love the channel, keep doing what you're doing. I find your material enlightening, educational and entertaining. In response to how things are cast in Hollywood. I actually lived there for 3 years and spend a majority of my time as an actor, generally they ask for people of a specific race, age, height, and other physical traits that match what they are looking for. Not to say there are not open auditions based on talent alone, but, a majority that I've seen were very specific.
Who was the guy doing the Simpsons hypothesis?
if you mean the documentary, it's a comedian named Hari Kondabolu.
Check out the comedy bit, bring back APU. It's better.
Glad someone else remembers that banger of an opening for SAC
So Friends is a really good example of poor representation. But unlikely for the reason you think. They used non-Jewish actors to play a clearly insinuated and stereotypical Jewish family and other people. Never clearly naming it once, bar the Chanukah armadillo. Not all ethnic diversity and minority representation issues are about colour.
Yeah, it's important to remember that American constructions of race/ethnicity are not the only one, and not the natural end point of it.
Otherwise, you will pull a Whoopi.
insert every show adapting the Iliad and not casting Greek actors.
@@Liquidsback Try casting Star Wars. No Earthlings in it.
Ross and Jack Geller ARE played by jewish actors, while Monica and Judy Geller AREN'T, so half-and-half, also they could be a mixed family, so the "only" offender would be Monica not being played by a half-jew (?).
HOWEVER the Gellers were not writen to be jews at the start of the series, they were kinda retconed when David Schwimmer (Ross) started getting involved in the writing around season 7 and he kinda demanded that his jewishness be explicit
@@maximilianosalvador9559 thanks for proving my point.
I'm black and am a huge fan of the Witcher books and games. I have no issue changing the race of characters like Nick Fury and 007 who's race is not central to the character.
While I understand the Witcher takes place in a fictional world, that fictional word is heavily influenced by medieval Poland.... where there aren't a bunch of black and brown women running around so I have a heavy disconnect from the characters the way I imagined them, or they were described and their onscreen depiction. I don't feel a need to interject us into a Polish Fantasy world.
I have many other issues with the Netflix adaptation but that is the most relevant to this topic.
Ironically, the Witcher (especially the games), constantly dances around the topic of race relations between species and how Geralt is treated as one of those subclasses because of his mutations. I'm pretty sure the people who made many of those creative changes had little interest in the themes of the books
Idk, blackwashing CAN actually be dancerous imo, reason being, sadly a lack of education.
When my GF watched "Bridgerton" (dedpite it being fiction) and I saw a little and was like: wtf is this? So we're at a point where apparently there was race equality during this time? Imagine talking to someone that has no education on slavery/race relations about history and their preconception is this?
No idea how people of colour feel about this, just a white dude that thinks history shouldn't be distorted, especially not by "blackwashing" characters to "whitewash" history. Media has power, even greater than education sadly (kinda like every Germans claiming they'd all been like Oskar Schindler after seeing the movie, despite history classes actually hammering home the fact that >50% of people simply just didn't give a f*, with most of the others being actually worse).
This example is very bad because Bridgerton is entirely fiction fiction. What you're saying is like saying that Game of thrones shouldn't have dragons because it's historically false. Also, what is dangerous is believing that black characters should only be portrayed in regards to slavery. That's very malicious.
@@natasharules770 Bridgerton is set in a real time period and a real place, your comparison is false.
@@theyautjawarrior6652
The point that "Natasha Rules" was making is that Bridgerton is not a historical show. It is not "The Crown" or "The Tudors"
It is a fictional with no real historical events or backing. The background and costuming is NOT accurate for the regency era at all. The show is only taking the loose aesthetic of the "real time period & place."
@@Shay45 Do the Crown or the Tudors shoehorn nonwhite characters where historically it would make no sense for them to be there?
Yea Iiterally Bridgerton is some sophisticated smut, it is a FANTASY where they use historical inspiration. Like impressionable young people who don’t know better shouldn’t be watching it because it’s literally like porn.
Like the entire bodice ripping genre has historical elements but it’s as accurate to source material as an omega verse fanfiction (all the characters are made to be gay and in a fake wolf hierarchy and men can get pregnant).
Honestly the problems I had with bridgerton is that they could have gone even further with it, have even darker skin people playing more complex roles we’re not used to seeing (as opposed to the countess who was playing an archetypal mammy role), more gay, more everything. What I found most fun about the setting is that it is like a fun game of dress up with a bunch of sexy time and people speaking fancy.
Omg YES THAT OPENER IS A BANGER HAHAHA 🤣
Honestly, characters are already fine with the race/ethnicity they are. Why change it?
There already is a Japanese Death Note live action movie set in Japan so personally I would find it pretty questionable too if a Hollywood studio said "yeah lets do that exact thing but better"
When I found out the remake of The Little Mermaid was going to star a black Ariel, I wasn't a fan. I'd grown up with this character and as a pasty white kid with red hair living on an island, representation in the media was non-existent for me. Now here comes someone else, who's people are also under represented, and they're replacing my Ariel.
Color washing doesn't solve the underlying problem: lack of GENUINE representation.
In fact, color washing is just as insulting as white washing. If you think about it, rather than create an actual POC character from scratch, actors are given hand me down characters whose portrayals will never appease the masses who are used to their beloved characters looking/sounding a certain way.
Rather than doing the work and creating something new, they rehash old ideas and cast POC actors as a way to throw them a bone or appease the woke masses.
And what do the actors get? They're booed before they even step on set because they're unintentionally "ruining" people's beloved characters by altering them just by merely existing.
The bottom line? Hollywood needs to get its head out of its ass and recognize that America isn't 98% white and 2% "other". POC *are* the majority and deserve fresh, authentic representation.
This has points but it's so incredibly badly worded out
6:12 this is off topic but your point here about remakes is such a good point that I think a lot of people miss, that a remake doesn’t have to beholden to the original as the original still exists and this is a new vision of the same idea. I personally think it is more interesting to see a newer version of a film rather than a faithful remake, take the example of The Thing from Another World (1950) and The Thing (1982), both play on the same themes and ideas.
It's called a double standard
Cast a white actor as Martin Luther King Jr or Frederick Douglass and step back to hear the yowls
I remember Bridgerton getting praise for it's 'colourblind casting' and I was like, but the two main families are still white! There was no reason why the whole Bridgerton family couldn't have been black, or SWANA which would have made a lot of sense given a fair chunk of south west Asia was and still is a part of the British empire. It's just a buzz phrase used by studios to make them seem more progressive than they are.
I just also wish we got more diversity within white casting. We keep getting the same actresses who legitimately look the same. I want to see big thick women, like a live action Luisa from Encanto, or women who aren't conventionally attractive, as well as women from around the world.
Some big women characters in media I've enjoyed recently: Annie and Fran in Shrill (tv), Dina from Superstore (tv), Susan in Spy (2015 movie),
to me living single was highly underrated... never watched friends