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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41080906

We've discussed this before in regards to Scarlett Johanssen in the remake of Ghost in the Shell.

The point here is that the character of Major Daimyo in Hellboy is a Japanese-American. Ed Skrein was unaware of this (so was I, in fact) and pulled out when he came to understand the situation.

Now, in my view, there are two opposing principles at stake. The first is that ethnic minorities should not be denied their fair chance of screen time when depicting ethnic minorities. The second is that a character should not be defined by his/her "race", which most people understand to be a relatively superficial surface characteristic. It's cultural background that has a much more important effect in forming and defining a character.

In that respect, I have no idea if Major Daimyo's key defining characteristic is his Japanese cultural heritage or his "slitty eyes".

That said, the role of actors is to pretend to be people they aren't. Why shouldn't a white man play an oriental man, or a black woman play a white woman?



On balance, my opinion is that the "race" of the actor is not all that relevant to the "race "of the role, and the primary concern must be that everyone of every "race" should have a fair chance of playing any role.

The problem is that it is rarely a "fair chance" when it comes to Hollywood producers. There isn't some cabal of bigwigs twirling their mustaches about whitewashing, it is a systematic, bottom-line kind of thing. You make more money with a white actor than not, they are more recognizable in the US, therefore they are picked.

From what I remember of the comics, other than certain stoicism to his character, I don't think his Japanese heritage was much of an issue.
And while I agree that in general race should not matter for who gets a role, I do think common sense needs to be involved lest we get silly things like black Heimdal.
(Don't get me wrong, I love Idris Elba - he's a fantastic actor who brings the gravitas the role needs. I still think it's silly.)

So a guy decided to give up a job because he was scared of the SJW mob, because he was white?

Hmm, funny. I wonder how people would react if a black actress felt pressured into giving up her job because she was black?

Where was the outrage when white characters were replaced with black actors? Anyone?

curran12 wrote:The problem is that it is rarely a "fair chance" when it comes to Hollywood producers. There isn't some cabal of bigwigs twirling their mustaches about whitewashing, it is a systematic, bottom-line kind of thing. You make more money with a white actor than not, they are more recognizable in the US, therefore they are picked.

It's not even a "systematic, bottom-line kind of thing" its a systematic, bottom-line make believe thing. They were all also very sure that women as the main protagonist just weren't what the audience wanted and then Jennifer Lawrence made a few Hunger Games movies (and now also Wonder Woman). Somehow women can act and be the protagonist. Who would have thought? If I remember correctly comic book movies were apparently not that big of a deal and played out a few years ago and today everybody tries to make one because Marvel's cinematic universe worked out somehow.

You are correct that there often no moustache twirling villain involved but unconscious biases and all kinds of misinformed believes lead to these proclamations of "bottom-line thinking". If data were really what drove these decisions then having decades of random hits or misses would have already shown that a white dude on the cover is not the big money driver. Some white dude may drive ticket sales but that has more to do with that dude being widely know as a star and not much with him being a him or white (or talented).

And I would be really careful about that US focus. There's a reason why all kinds of recent blockbuster also have a few scenes in Asia or China (or why Tibetan characters got whitewashed) and the reason is because China is buying a lot of tickets and due to the same type of "bottom line thinking" they add three minutes in China. Here's a example of how things are changing: Transformers:The Last Knight, I haven't seen it but here are the numbers according to boxofficemojo:

Domestic: $130,168,683 21.6%
Foreign: $473,800,000 78.4%
and China alone: $$228,842,508

Does anybody really think that a few minutes in Asia are what makes people choose that movie over something else?

 BaconCatBug wrote:
So a guy decided to give up a job because he was scared of the SJW mob, because he was white?

Hmm, funny. I wonder how people would react if a black actress felt pressured into giving up her job because she was black?

Where was the outrage when white characters were replaced with black actors? Anyone?

It's almost like the underlying issues are completely different...



Although you clearly weren't following the movie news feeds when the casting was announced for the Dark Tower movie.

Bran Dawri wrote:
...lest we get silly things like black Heimdal.
(Don't get me wrong, I love Idris Elba - he's a fantastic actor who brings the gravitas the role needs. I still think it's silly.)

He's an alien being who guards a magical portal. I'm not really seeing a problem with his skin colour, to be honest.


Ultimately, the ethnicity of an actor should only be relevant when that ethnicity is an actual aspect of the story being told. That being said, there is a current push to err on the side of caution simply because white actors have always been over-represented. We'll eventually reach a point where it stops being an issue either way... but there's a ways to go there yet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mario wrote:

Does anybody really think that a few minutes in Asia are what makes people choose that movie over something else?

It's not the footage specifically that gets bums on seats, but the fact that it (hopefully) engenders positive thoughts about the movie, because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy when we see something familiar in a movie.

 insaniak wrote:
He's an alien being who guards a magical portal. I'm not really seeing a problem with his skin colour, to be honest.

Especially when the real outrage is that Heimdall has always traditionally been depicted with horns on his helmet that go straight out, horizontally, and Idris Elba's horns go straight up... vertically.








Thanks, liberals! *shakes fist at the sky*

Doesn't the same film have a black actress playing a white character?

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Doesn't the same film have a black actress playing a white character?

Don't be silly, that's not a problem because only whites can be racist!

Hrm.

To be honest, I like the idea that some movies feature scenes shot in locations that have not appeared before. I like new takes on traditional characters that present them in new ways.

Done right, it really adds to a movie. Done wrong, we get characters like this:

http://ironman.wikia.com/wiki/Dr._Wu

I would like it if the politics of casting / location were less of an issue and people were encouraged to make decisions based on what works for the story. This would mean Hollywood would need to reduce the overall budgets for films, because what drives most decisions is the bottom line.

Many of the movies I love the most that are considered mainstream were shot on minimal budgets and not expected to be box office successes. In most cases, they had very diverse casts in genuine, authentic roles people could relate to.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Doesn't the same film have a black actress playing a white character?

A white-as-the-driven-snow fire-headed Irishwoman, IIRC.

But that's fine because... uhh... diversity... or something?

Bran Dawri wrote:
From what I remember of the comics, other than certain stoicism to his character, I don't think his Japanese heritage was much of an issue.

Being vague to avoid spoilers - it depends how much of his personal story we're going to see. Being part-Asian and having an Imperial Japanese super-spy/secret agent/superhero for a grandparent is a big part of his story in the comics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, 8 Superhero Race Changes Which Outraged The Fans

Reeks of 'PR stunt' to me, grump ends

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
A white-as-the-driven-snow fire-headed Irishwoman, IIRC.

But that's fine because... uhh... diversity... or something?

For years minorities were depicted in Hollywood as subhuman caricatures. To pretend that the few small inroads nonwhites have made into fair representation (in an industry that is still overwhelmingly white dominated) is an equal grievance smacks of feigned obtuseness.

Alternately, here is a pictorial explanation.

beast_gts wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
From what I remember of the comics, other than certain stoicism to his character, I don't think his Japanese heritage was much of an issue.

Being vague to avoid spoilers - it depends how much of his personal story we're going to see. Being part-Asian and having an Imperial Japanese super-spy/secret agent/superhero for a grandparent is a big part of his story in the comics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, 8 Superhero Race Changes Which Outraged The Fans

The MJ and Johnny Storm issues were the two that bothered me the most. I was cautious about the Ancient One...but Swinton did a good job with the role. Iron Man 3 felt like a big ball of poo from start to finish, which included a British guy playing an Asian role (although the reason of switching AWAY from the racist role makes me more okay with it). Don't care about the other ones; they didn't bother me, but I also don't give a flip about DBZ.

Wait there's another Hellboy after the Golden Horde movie? Why???

 Frazzled wrote:
Wait there's another Hellboy after the Golden Horde movie? Why???

Of course not this whole thing is a sham to try and dissuade us from excellent Hellboy movies.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Don't care about the other ones; they didn't bother me, but I also don't give a flip about DBZ.

The thing about that one in particular is that Son Goku's family is from ANOTHER PLANET...not Asia. So.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41080906

That said, the role of actors is to pretend to be people they aren't. Why shouldn't a white man play an oriental man, or a black woman play a white woman?

On balance, my opinion is that the "race" of the actor is not all that relevant to the "race "of the role, and the primary concern must be that everyone of every "race" should have a fair chance of playing any role.

No. A character in a play, movie, novel, story, whatever, is constructed of certain characteristics and traits, which can be very important to both the character and the story. Ethnicity can be a key physical characteristic to the character and the story. Acting isn't just a straight up meritocracy, simply being a good or great actor doesn't mean that you're a good fit for a given role.

Look at GoT, it's taken some heat for having all of the primary characters played by white actors. Some of that is due to casting preference but some of it is also a cascading effect due to the demands of the story. GoT, is a reflection of somebody's vision of what GRRM's novels would look like, it's not necessarily exactly what GRRM envisioned when he wrote them but the show has to conform to an internally consistent visual representation of the novels. Take the Lannisters for example: Jaime and Cersei are brother and sister, which doesn't require a certain ethnicity but it does require that the actors look like they could be siblings. You could cast Denzel Washington as Tywin Lannister and Idris Elba as Jaime and Halle Berry as Cersei and that would be fine but you couldn't cast Lucy Liu as Cersei and have Jaime played by Idris Elba because then the audience would never believe that the two characters are siblings with the same parents regardless of the quality of the acting. Likewise, the character of Tyrion Lannister could be played by an actor of any ethnicity as long as that actor's physical characteristics made it plausible for him to be a sibling to Jaime and Cersei and that he was a little person. You couldn't have an actor who is 6 feet tall play Tyrion Lannister because being a little person is an integral part of that character and the story the show is trying to tell wouldn't work if that key physical characteristic wasn't present.

You can't cast shows/movies/plays in a vacuum. Casting has to be done in a way that doesn't interfere with the story being told because the whole point of a show/movie/play is to tell a specific story to the audience and anything that detracts from the audience's ability to understand the story you're trying to tell is bad.

All I can argue in reply is that Shakespeare's plays are still after 400 years regarded as one of the pinnacles of world literature, yet, all of his women characters were played by men and no-one thought anything of it.

If it was good enough for Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth and the population of London, why is it wrong for the modern Marvel Superhero fanboi that a fictional alien god be played by someone with a dark skin tone?

It generally...isn't?

 BaconCatBug wrote:
So a guy decided to give up a job because he was scared of the SJW mob, because he was white?

Hmm, funny. I wonder how people would react if a black actress felt pressured into giving up her job because she was black?

Where was the outrage when white characters were replaced with black actors? Anyone?

.... oh wait. You are serious????



and


I need a breathe.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
All I can argue in reply is that Shakespeare's plays are still after 400 years regarded as one of the pinnacles of world literature, yet, all of his women characters were played by men and no-one thought anything of it.

If it was good enough for Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth and the population of London, why is it wrong for the modern Marvel Superhero fanboi that a fictional alien god be played by someone with a dark skin tone?

Nobody has argued that having men play woman characters in Shakespearean plays in Elizabethean England was bad.

Two points to note regarding male actors playing female roles in Shakespeare's time:

1. It was socially acceptable for women to be actors at that time so there were no female actors in the acting troupes, they were all male so casting women wasn't an option.
2. The men playing those characters wore costumes that made them look like women to make it easier for the audience to accept that the character being portrayed was a woman.

Idris Elba's portrayal of Heimdal isn't any different from having Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau portray Egyptian gods. Conventional wisdom would have you believe that the people in the culture that created the pantheon of gods in their religion would have envisioned those deities to physically resemble the people worshiping them but that doesn't mean that you can't have actors of different ethnicities of the people who created the mythological beings portray them in a given director's/studio's version of story about them. They're both made up stories about made up beings, the only drawback would be if there was a negative impact to the internal consistency of the story itself that was objectively noticeable.

It helps that the Asgardians are no longer really considered "gods" but rather just extraterrestrials with godlike abilities.

Which kind of renders the whole "black dude played a Norse god!" argument pointless.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It helps that the Asgardians are no longer really considered "gods" but rather just extraterrestrials with godlike abilities.

Which kind of renders the whole "black dude played a Norse god!" argument pointless.

And yet they influenced Earth and Norse Mythology. How many black guys are there in Norse Mythology?

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
It helps that the Asgardians are no longer really considered "gods" but rather just extraterrestrials with godlike abilities.

Which kind of renders the whole "black dude played a Norse god!" argument pointless.

And yet they influenced Earth and Norse Mythology. How many black guys are there in Norse Mythology?

What exactly is your point?
A vocal number of Christians think that Jesus is a white guy, despite being born in the Middle East.

History and myth rarely align perfectly.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
It helps that the Asgardians are no longer really considered "gods" but rather just extraterrestrials with godlike abilities.

Which kind of renders the whole "black dude played a Norse god!" argument pointless.

And yet they influenced Earth and Norse Mythology. How many black guys are there in Norse Mythology?

What exactly is your point?
A vocal number of Christians think that Jesus is a white guy, despite being born in the Middle East.

History and myth rarely align perfectly.

What are you even trying to say here?

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
It helps that the Asgardians are no longer really considered "gods" but rather just extraterrestrials with godlike abilities.

Which kind of renders the whole "black dude played a Norse god!" argument pointless.

And yet they influenced Earth and Norse Mythology. How many black guys are there in Norse Mythology?

What exactly is your point?
A vocal number of Christians think that Jesus is a white guy, despite being born in the Middle East.

History and myth rarely align perfectly.

What are you even trying to say here?

You know precisely what is being said.

I pointed out that the Asgardians are no longer "gods" in the sense that they used to be for the Marvel universe. They're extraterrestrials with godlike abilities certainly, with cosmic powers yadda yadda yadda...

You fired back with your commentary about how because of there being no black guys in the Norse mythology, it means Heimdall has to be white.

I replied with a snarky remark about how there are a vocal number of Christians who believe that Jesus was a white man(i.e. looks like your everyday Joe Schmoe from Nebraska or Kentucky or wherever in the US/England/Canada/Europe at large) despite being born in the Middle East.

I thought the point would be self-evident given that my closing statement is that "history and myth rarely align perfectly", but I guess I need to explain it further:

The caretakers of mythology are not generally those who are the caretakers of history. The reason why we have people who think Jesus was a white man is because the artistic depictions of him were done to match the artists, not the subject material.

So even if Heimdall had stepped through the Rainbow Bridge one day looking like Idris Elba, there is no guarantee that beyond living memory anyone would have known him to be black.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It helps that the Asgardians are no longer really considered "gods" but rather just extraterrestrials with godlike abilities.

Which kind of renders the whole "black dude played a Norse god!" argument pointless.

The argument against Elba being Heimdal was always pointless. It's not meant to be a historically accurate depiction of what the ancient Norse people believed Heimdal looked like. It's a movie loosely based on a comic book that was loosely based on Norse mythology. The only objection to Elba wasn't historical accuracy but that it wasn't true to the depiction of Heimdal in the comics.

Having Samuel L Jackson be Nick Fury was a bigger deal because it required the character's backstory to be retconned because you couldn't have a black Nick Fury leading a unit of US commandos in WWII. I personally didn't mind because I think Jackson does a good job in the movies but that is an instance where changing the ethnicity of a character had greater ramifications than just appearance.

Prestor Jon wrote:

Having Samuel L Jackson be Nick Fury was a bigger deal because it required the character's backstory to be retconned because you couldn't have a black Nick Fury leading a unit of US commandos in WWII. I personally didn't mind because I think Jackson does a good job in the movies but that is an instance where changing the ethnicity of a character had greater ramifications than just appearance.

It wasn't much of a retcon, given that Fury had already been depicted as black (and bearing a rather strong resemblance to Samuel L Jackson) in some comics prior to the first of the Avengers-verse movies.