diversity casting

Fandango’s Provocative Question #183

Fandango39 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

This week’s provocative question stems from some articles I’ve recently read about two new adaptations, one of The Lord of the Rings and the other of The Little Mermaid, which seem to be prompting deep outrage and indignation among fans who are arguing that the projects’ increased diversity has weakened their faithfulness to the original stories.

Amazon Prime’s new The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power series first drew widespread anger from some fans because it casts black and Asian actors as characters across the spectrum of fictional Middle Earth races. Their chief complaint was that the decision to include non-white characters had ruined the authenticity of Tolkien’s world.

When Disney released the first trailer for its live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, featuring Halle Bailey as Ariel (above), thousands of YouTube users went nuts, leaving more than 2 million dislikes and countless derogatory comments on the trailer, and creating memes ridiculing the film for casting Bailey and mocking all of its supporters.

But wait. Hobbits, elves, orcs, and mermaids aren’t real, so should it matter what race they are? Is casting non-white actors in movies made from books or stories where the characters were presumed to be white disrespectful to the source material? Or is this backlash transparently racist.

So, with that as the background, here’s today’s provocative question for you.

Does diversity casting in TV shows or movies, where fictional characters who were presumed to be white in the source material are portrayed by non-white actors, concern or bother you? Why do you feel that way?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Truthful Tuesday — A Day Late

FandangoLeave a comment

Frank, aka PCGuy, has published another one of his Truthful Tuesday posts. Frank apparently got sidetracked this weekend and he forgot to schedule his Truthful Tuesday post, so it didn’t get published until almost Wednesday. We forgive you, Frank. Anyway, here’s what Frank wants to know…

1. What are your thoughts on white-washing in movies and TV shows? (If you aren’t aware, it’s having a white actor play a role of a non-white character. Think of Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, or Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in Dr. Strange.)

2. What are your thoughts on changing the race, gender, orientation, or other facet of an established character for the sake of diversity? For recent examples, casting Liet Kynes as a woman in the newest movie adaptation of Dune when the source material clearly indicates Kynes is a man, casting a black man (specifically Samuel L. Jackson) as Nick Fury, who was originally a white character, in the Marvel movies, or making Lt. Sulu gay in the most recent Star Trek movies with Chris Pine as Captain Kirk.

To be honest, I really haven’t given either of these questions a whole lot of thought. That said, with respect to the first question, using white actors to portray Asian, Hispanic, or native American characters used to happen all the time. But I think it’s happening much less these days. I would hope that today’s movie and television producers are more inclusive now than they were back in the day and would hire actors of the same race and nationality as the characters they are portraying.

As to the second question, if I haven’t read the book upon which the movie or TV show is based, I probably won’t even know that the character on screen is a different race, gender, or whatever from the character in the source material. If I am familiar with the original source from which the onscreen character was taken, I probably wouldn’t mind as long as the “diversity casting” doesn’t significantly change the intrinsic nature of the character being portrayed.

But as I said earlier, of all the things going on in the world these days, matters such as these barely scratch the surface of my consciousness.