Importance of white representation in fiction

[Valka D'Ur]

Unfortunately for you, it's not that obvious. If it was, it wouldn't be the case that virtually every adaptation today feature significant (at least from your perspective) changes, for one reason or another. And they won't be tagged or anything, and you probably won't get alternative versions that are 100% faithful.

You can either reason it out and accept them or continue to be upset and rail at them perpetually.

You realize that I was referring to fanfiction, right? That's material that's either in print form (for stuff originally published up until the late '90s) or on a website (for stuff published after the '90s or earlier material that's been uploaded). It's customary to tag such stories in various ways to let people know that if they don't like same-sex couples, they should avoid them, or if they don't like heterosexual couples they should avoid those (this is actually a point of contention in Harry Potter fandom as there are three general ideas about Sirius Black and Remus Lupin - either they're a couple, aka Wolfstar, or they're not, or the reader doesn't care and will read any story about them as long as it's handled well). There are other reasons to tag a story, including if any characters have been genderswapped or the ethnicity has been changed.

Again, with Harry Potter, there are some stories that feature James Potter as having a white father and Indian mother. I have NO idea where that comes from, as it's not in the novels or the movies, and only appears in Marauders-era stories. How those authors can square this with the descriptions of Harry and his parents in the novels and what we see in the movies, I can't fathom.

 

[Narz]

It is. Care to explain why not?

Not really, you're the one making the positive claim, you explain.

Then maybe you should take a page from your culture and either get on with the times or join the alt-right.

Would rather think for myself than join one of two stupid camps.

 

[Narz]

Its a stereotypical masculine virtue but if both men and women exhibit it there is nothing about it that is actually masculine, rather than just human.

Men traditionally needed it more to goto war & stuff like that & thus it's still deeply part of us. Very few woman would want to date a man who would make them investigate a scary noise late @ night while they stayed under the covers.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Men traditionally needed it more to goto war & stuff like that & thus it's still deeply part of us. Very few woman would want to date a man who would make them investigate a scary noise late @ night while they stayed under the covers.

Huh. I remember one night in August 1993, when my dad was asleep and I investigated the scary noise at 4 am.

It turned out that my cat - the male cat who up to that point had been hopeless as a mouser - had caught his first mouse and the noise I heard was him batting it around the kitchen.

So after making sure it was actually dead, I was about to dispose of it when I realized that my dad would never believe me if I told him that Tomtat had caught a mouse. So I scooped it into a transparent empty jam jar, woke my dad up, and held the dead mouse so he'd see it. When he did (and had the expected "WTF am I seeing 3 inches in front of my nose?!" reaction) I explained, "Tomtat just killed a mouse! Isn't that WONDERFUL?!"

The cats and I dealt with dead mice in the house. My dad was never much of an in-house hunter of lifeforms that should not have been there.

 

[Narz]

I feel like I could say anything and you'd have a cat story to go with it.

 

[lymond]

I expect an adaptation to be faithful to the original content,...

I expect it to be good too

(I am fine with consolidation of characters/story...it just often necessary. I think this WoT did it rather poorly)

 

[AmazonQueen]

Men traditionally needed it more to goto war & stuff like that & thus it's still deeply part of us. Very few woman would want to date a man who would make them investigate a scary noise late @ night while they stayed under the covers.

I'd prefer a man who called the police rather than 1 who tackled an intruder by himself.
Traditionally, in other words its not innate, its culturally indoctrinated.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I feel like I could say anything and you'd have a cat story to go with it.

Based on the age given in your profile, I got my first cat the year before you were born. I've had at least one cat ever since that time, and often multiple cats at once.

That gives me lots of scope for cat stories.

The part of this particular story I didn't mention is that Tomtat's mother, Lightning, was watching him play with his dead prize, but not participating. At one point he flipped the dead mouse over to her, in a "Come on, Mom, it's fun!" gesture.

Lightning was a dainty tuxedo cat, and small like Maddy. She backed away from the mouse, and during the next mouse incident, I realized that she would never be a mouse-killer. She caught one and carried it very carefully from where she'd caught it, and set it down on the floor in front of Tomtat for him to deal with.

The mouse ran away, of course, but Tomtat and I weren't about to let it escape. Since this was in the living room, my grandmother was freaking out: "Catch it, kill it! But don't touch it!".

Lightning, her duty done, hopped up on a chair so as to get away from the icky mouse.

I told my grandmother to bring an empty jar with a lid and the kitchen tongs. Tomtat had the mouse cornered on one side, which gave me the opportunity to grab its tail with the tongs. I lowered the still-alive mouse into the jar and put the lid on.

Tomtat was a bit put out that I didn't let him play with it before I killed it (the idea of putting a still-living mouse into the garbage bothered me - kinda like burying it alive in the jam jar, so I made sure to kill it first). So the next time he caught a mouse, he paused just long enough to show me he'd caught it. Then when I was about to take it away, he grabbed it, gave me a "Not until I'm done playing with it!" look, and took it down to the basement for about ten minutes of squishy-sounding "pawball" as he batted the still-living mouse against the cement walls. When it was dead, then he brought it to me for disposal.

(we had a very bad mouse infestation that summer...)

I expect it to be good too

(I am fine with consolidation of characters/story...it just often necessary. I think this WoT did it rather poorly)

Consolidation of characters is only acceptable if it doesn't significantly mess things up with continuity and common sense.

I have a reaction when I think of the TV series Rome possibly lasting more than the two seasons it had. If they'd been wildly optimistic enough to attempt to make a series of the entire Julio-Claudian emperors, there would have come a point where it would have come to a screeching halt because of one very important idiotic mistake they made in the second season: They eliminated Scribonia, and had Octavian's first wife be Livia.

Historically, Augustus and Livia never had children, and the TV series couldn't make Julia Livia's daughter because Julia's third husband was Livia's son, Tiberius. Cousin marriage was legal and accepted at that time, but sibling marriage was definitely not accepted. Caligula and Nero are descended from Augustus' daughter, Julia, whose mother was Augustus' first wife - Scribonia. So if you eliminate Scribonia, there's nobody to be the female ancestor of two of the first five Roman emperors.

 

[lymond]

Yup, but that's historical drama. Jackin' with real folks is always messed up. And yes, I caught that as well about AC's wives. Octavia's stuff I think was off a bit too, but she did marry Antony. (Interestingly, I just recently rewatched the whole deal - amazed how much I'd forgotten) Fantasy/fiction has far more leeway in that regard, but I certainly get your point.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Yup, but that's historical drama. Jackin' with real folks is always messed up. And yes, I caught that as well about AC's wives. Octavia's stuff I think was off a bit too, but she did marry Antony. (Interestingly, I just recently rewatched the whole deal - amazed how much I'd forgotten) Fantasy/fiction has far more leeway in that regard, but I certainly get your point.

I wouldn't rely on Homer or Shakespeare for historical accuracy.

 

[aelf]

Not really, you're the one making the positive claim, you explain.

As much as "the Earth is round" is a positive claim, and yet those who are denying what is commonly understood are the ones who have to explain why.

Would rather think for myself than join one of two stupid camps.

And I would rather think for myself than "take a page from [my] culture". See, that wasn't hard to understand.

 

[Akka]

Unfortunately for you, it's not that obvious.

It's not obvious that an adaptation should be faithful to the original material unless there is a deliberate artistical alteration applied to it ? You sure have some selective bias on what is obvious.

If it was, it wouldn't be the case that virtually every adaptation today feature significant (at least from your perspective) changes, for one reason or another.

There is not really "one reason or another". There are three reasons for miscast that I've ever encountered :
1) Someone really want a specific person to play a role (nepotism, or market recognition, or it's the guy who is writing the check, and so on).
2) They couldn't get an adequate person to play the role, either because it's actually difficult or they didn't care.
3) They purposely altered the character for political/ideological reasons.
It's the actual subject, not even hidden behind a flimsy veil. Deliberately altering the content to fit political/ideological messages doesn't change in any way that an adaptation should be faithful (which is still obvious), it just show that people are willing to let their agenda take over. They look the other way when such changes fits what they want and focus on it when it doesn't. The exact same people who are pretending that it's no big deal tend to be the exact same ones who are all up in arms at blackfacing and claiming loudly that gay and trans persons should be favored to play a gay or trans character.

It's just double standards and hypocrisy as usual, nothing new here.

You can either reason it out and accept them or continue to be upset and rail at them perpetually.

Nice false dichotomy here, unsurprisingly presented in a way trying to depict the other as unreasonable idiot.

 

[aelf]

It's not obvious that an adaptation should be faithful to the original material unless there is a deliberate artistical alteration applied to it ? You sure have some selective bias on what is obvious.

Usually, when someone says something is obvious that is not to many others, it means the person has certain assumptions not shared by others.

There is not really "one reason or another". There are three reasons for miscast that I've ever encountered :
1) Someone really want a specific person to play a role (nepotism, or market recognition, or it's the guy who is writing the check, and so on).
2) They couldn't get an adequate person to play the role, either because it's actually difficult or they didn't care.
3) They purposely altered the character for political/ideological reasons. It's the actual subject, not even hidden behind a flimsy veil. Deliberately inserting political/ideological agenda doesn't change in any way that an adaptation should be faithful, it just show that people look the other way when such changes fits what they want and focus on it when it doesn't. The exact same people who are pretending that it's no big deal where the exact same ones who are all up in arms at blackfacing and claiming loudly that gay and trans persons should be favored to play a gay or trans character.

It's just double standards and hypocrisy as usual, nothing new here.

You worded it as "miscast", which speaks to the assumptions that you have.

If there is casting that goes against what has been described or what many picture in their heads, there could be another reason for it:

4) It serves the retelling of the story in another medium well. This may be folded into reason 3 by an extremist, but it could be the case that the messages contained within the original work is well-served by casting a specific type of person, even if that person does not match the description of the original character.

Naturally, this might not sit well with an extreme purist or with those who think that works of art are not and should not be political (and are willing to pretend that the original work of art is also devoid of it).

And there's another point worth considering: Actors often do not match the description of their characters 100%. It could be the colour of their eyes, the shade of their hair, or the shape of their nose. Most audiences are willing to accept a general resemblance, but the line is certainly blurry. Many would flip out over a change in skin colour, but there is nothing that says the line has to be drawn there. The cleanest and most coherent stances are to either insist on 100% faithfulness or to ignore all differences that do not affect the story or message.

Nice false dichotomy here, unsurprisingly presented in a way trying to depict the other as unreasonable idiot.

If you're happy to let things be, even if you don't like them, then I have absolutely no issue with that. But I suspect that is not the case.

 

[Yeekim]

There is not really "one reason or another". There are three reasons for miscast that I've ever encountered :
1) Someone really want a specific person to play a role (nepotism, or market recognition, or it's the guy who is writing the check, and so on).
2) They couldn't get an adequate person to play the role, either because it's actually difficult or they didn't care.
3) They purposely altered the character for political/ideological reasons.

This.
How badly it effects the outcome, of course depends.
For example the Witcher series. For whatever mix of the above reasons, some elves and humans (and maybe dwarves, eventually?) are randomly black there.
Since I am not a book reader and thus don't suffer from sticky brains, it doesn't bother me much. It is a fictional, magical universe after all... I can stretch my imagination to suppose that skin color is, in that universe, more akin to hair or eye color - i.e. it varies even within ethnic or racial groups - and as such these differences require no explanation.
This would be a case of author's imagined universe and characters being altered not for storytelling reasons, but for external, real-life reasons.
Since I am not invested in the source material, I don't care - but I can see how someone who is could find it difficult to accept.

 

[Yeekim]

If there is casting that goes against what has been described or what many picture in their heads, there could be another reason for it:

4) It serves the retelling of the story in another medium well.

Considering your avatar, I expect you've seen the Witcher - do you think #4 applies there?

 

[Samez]

IMHO they did well with the WoT series. Not great, but quite well.
I read the first four or five books about 20 years ago and the reason for quiting back then was the overdescriptive and meandering style of writing. The show did well in abridging the story to a reasonable speed of storytelling.
Regarding race and gender in the show:
WoT story was always centered around the conflict of "good female magic" vs "evil male magic" and a guy trying to overcome the "evilness" of beeing a male mage.
If this setting ist already too anoying the show is probably not to your liking.
The race topic confused me at first as I would have expected the two river folk to be of the same race due to beeing secluded from the world (i.e. inbreeding). Once I overcame this confusion I didn't mind anymore, as it was not a point of the show (I don't think skin color was ever mentioned in any dialoge in this context).
I was more confused about the lesbian relationship of one of the characters which I could not remember from the books and it was a bit artificial.

 

[aelf]

Considering your avatar, I expect you've seen the Witcher - do you think #4 applies there?

You're going to have to be more specific.

IMHO they did well with the WoT series. Not great, but quite well.
I read the first four or five books about 20 years ago and the reason for quiting back then was the overdescriptive and meandering style of writing. The show did well in abridging the story to a reasonable speed of storytelling.
Regarding race and gender in the show:
WoT story was always centered around the conflict of "good female magic" vs "evil male magic" and a guy trying to overcome the "evilness" of beeing a male mage.
If this setting ist already too anoying the show is probably not to your liking.
The race topic confused me at first as I would have expected the two river folk to be of the same race due to beeing secluded from the world (i.e. inbreeding). Once I overcame this confusion I didn't mind anymore, as it was not a point of the show (I don't think skin color was ever mentioned in any dialoge in this context).
I was more confused about the lesbian relationship of one of the characters which I could not remember from the books and it was a bit artificial.

The Two River folk are described as being darker than Rand, who is fair-skinned. As for the show, they probably could not realistically do a casting call for 30 exclusively white extras. Unless they're in Estonia or Finland or something.

The lesbian relationship is alluded to in the prequel New Spring. Robert Jordan apparently confirmed it, more or less.

 

[Yeekim]

You're going to have to be more specific.

See my previous post. Essentially I'm referring to the fact that some characters - both human and elven - are played by black actors, seemingly at random.

 

[aelf]

See my previous post. Essentially I'm referring to the fact that some characters - both human and elven - are played by black actors, seemingly at random.

I addressed this in the post above. In the UK and US, it's probably impractical in a few ways to do a casting call for only white people to fill dozens of roles.

 

[Yeekim]

I addressed this in the post above. In the UK and US, it's probably impractical in a few ways to do a casting call for only white people to fill dozens of roles.

So we agree it is a mix of reasons #2 and #3 then - nothing to do with storytelling.