Importance of white representation in fiction

[Birdjaguar]

And just in time we have a 2020 adaptation of Jules Verne's 1872 novel and some notes on its 1950s film version.

An Adventure in Self-Discovery
BY JOHN ANDERSON

When a classic is remade, the most frequent and frequently irrelevant question concerns how much has been changed from the original. The happy answer regarding the PBS “Masterpiece” presentation of “Around the World in 80 Days”: Much.

You can probably still spend 80 days going around the world if you book on certain U.S. airlines, but in the days of Jules Verne—the grandfather of fantasy fiction, who published his most famous novel in 1872—such a trip was considered not just impossibly fast but beyond belief. As the eight-part series commences in London, an article in the Daily Telegraph is expressing the theory that such a journey is possible. At the luxe Reform Club of London, where the musty all-male membership dines on gelatinous brown soup and boiled beef, the report is dismissed by most members as twaddle. Piffle. Bosh.

Still, “if a man was very well organized and was of a resilient and indefatigable nature and took advantages of recent technological advances,” he could do it, pronounces Phileas Fogg (David Tennant), who has never exhibited any of the qualities he’s just cataloged but allows himself to be baited into making the trip. One motivation is the obnoxious Nyle Bellamy (the marvelous Peter Sullivan), Fogg’s former schoolmate, fellow Reform Club member, and bully. Another is the £20,000 wager he suddenly has with Bellamy that he can, in fact, circle the planet and be back to the club by Christmas Eve. A third— well, there are myriad reasons Fogg needs to do it for himself, including the postcard he’s received that morning, bearing a one-word message: “Coward.”

In some ways, this “Around the World in 80 Days,” created by Ashley Pharoah and Caleb Ranson, is a coming-of-age tale, except that the person coming of age is a 50-year-old man. Fogg’s companions, in contrast, are fully realized characters: His well-traveled valet and occasional savior, Passepartout (Ibrahim Koma), has been many things, including a thief and burglar; Abigail Fix Fortescue (Leonie Benesch) is a firecracker wannabe journalist whose father, Bernard (Jason Watkins)—another school chum of Fogg’s—owns the Telegraph and doesn’t want his daughter mixed up in this harebrained trip around the world. She goes anyway. And reports back. (Abigail, a Pharoah-Ranson creation, is something of an amalgam—of Fix the detective, who pursues Fogg through the novel, and the celebrated Nellie Bly, whose 1890 book “Around the World in Seventy-Two Days” chronicled the Fogg-beating trip she undertook for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1889, and during which she met Jules Verne.)

Fogg, conversely, is an amorphous creature, good of soul, short of experience, a product of his environment, culture and class: He is a privileged man of his times, who presumes superiority over others until educated otherwise. His just-hatched quality provides considerable comedy, as he learns that the world isn’t upper-class London (although it’s made clear that upper-class London controls much of the world). Mr. Tennant makes him representative of everything the eight-part series seems inclined to be against, and at the same time the most sympathetic of men. The performance is complex, multilayered, internalized to a remarkable degree but also brilliantly theatrical: During the trio’s journey through India, Fogg rescues a young man from the punishments of the British army with a speech about love that seems to arise from nowhere but is one of the more remarkable soliloquies on the subject one is likely to see short of Shakespeare.

Thanks to Mr. Tennant, Fogg is above all else endearing, despite his fastidious, punctilious, quavering anxieties.

The most famous adaptation of “Around the World in 80 days” is the 1956 film starring the British David Niven and the Mexican comedian Cantinflas, which won five Oscars (including Best Picture). It’s the kind of bloated extravaganza Hollywood liked to vote for, especially in the ’50s; it’s hard to believe anyone watches it now. The new version is far less about spectacle, though it is quite beautiful in the way it captures the physical world, from post-Commune Paris to the Yemeni desert to Raj-era India to, eventually, the U.S., where a meeting with the legendary lawman Bass Reeves (Gary Beadle) leads to a gun-slinging romp through Reconstruction Era America that borders on the preposterous but is highly exciting. Likewise, a sequence in which the trio and a trainload of passengers traverse Italy, until a trestle very close to collapse interrupts their journey. The bridge is inspected by Fogg, who is not, to our knowledge, a structural engineer but who declares, “We can make it.”

Can they? It’s a frequent question in an exhilarating series. Our intrepid travelers are often on the edge of disaster and their viewers on the edge of their seats. For those who really can’t stand the tension, it may be some relief to know that the go-ahead has already been given for a season 2.

Around the World in 80 Days
Begins Sunday, 8 p.m., PBS
David Tennant stars in a new take on Jules Verne’s famed novel from PBS ‘Masterpiece.’

Ibrahim Koma, David Tennant and Leonie Benesch, above; a scene from PBS’s new eight-part series ‘Around the World in 80 Days,’

The cast in the 1872 book: White male Londoner; French valet, white London detective, Indian princess
In the first movie 1950s: white male Londoner. Mexican comedian as the valet, white male detective, Shirley MacLaine as the Indian princess
In the 1989 mini series: all white cast including a white actress playing and Indian princess
In the 2020 series: white male lead, black man as the valet, fictional woman replaces detective, an Indian woman plays the princess

 

[aelf]

So where do you draw the line in who is fit for what roles? I think we can all agree that, however skilled an actor he is, Idris Elba would not be a good fit to play the Emperor in a film set in fantasy China. As much as I liked Simu Liu in the Shang-Li film, he isn't a good fit for the lead role in a Braveheart remake.

I'm comfortable with sticking to faitfhful representation of ethnicity for a historical setting, unless the historical setting is not that important (e.g. Shakespeare's works). At the same time, I don't like it if other ethnicities are denied opportunities for representation due to 'white-washing'.

As mentioned earlier, there is more than enough white representation right now.

 

[Farm Boy]

So where do you draw the line in who is fit for what roles? I think we can all agree that, however skilled an actor he is, Idris Elba would not be a good fit to play the Emperor in a film set in fantasy China. As much as I liked Simu Liu in the Shang-Li film, he isn't a good fit for the lead role in a Braveheart remake.

SNL still hits it every now and then.

 

[Sommerswerd]

That's exactly like telling me "I don't see the problem with putting people in Nikes and blue jeans has any bearing on the settings being medieval". It doesn't fit the setting, and it gives it a different atmosphere.

This comment reminded me of this (10 seconds)

 

[Sommerswerd]

I think it's kinda the opposite. That man is going to go viral & get laughed at across the internet. He's going to be ridiculed from social media, to talk shows, to personal gatherings ("Did you see Target Guy? OMG!").

But if that's the case, it strengthens the point about the enduring expectation/relevance/value of stoicism doesn't it? Why would people care enough about the lack of it to meme it, if they didn't find it unusual? Why would people disdain it enough to condescend or ridicule it if they didn't find it worthy of condescension/ridicule?

 

[Angst]

I'm lumping these quotes together because I realised something that seems to tie them together. We might necessarily understand the world through certain frameworks or lenses, but then we can go on to ask what specific frameworks we are using and whether we should continue to use them.

I realised that a common subtext in this thread is how frameworks created by dead old white men are still dominant in our pysche. I brought up earlier the fact that we're so used to the genre of fantasy taking place in a white European medieval setting, that we automatically assume people coming from a rural area in a fantasy world must be white or close to it (hence the default white hobbits or Two Rivers folk). Sure, city people might be mixed, but not the idllyic rural setting untouched by 'impure' influences.

And when we think about heroic male figures, we tend to assume they're stoic. Or, rather, we have a certain way of looking at stoicity - for example, not just being able to bear hardship without complaint but also refraining from mourning publicly (public mourning was the thing that made people think Lan is less manly in the show).

These assumptions can and should be questioned, but people tend to get testy when they're invited to do so. And this isn't just about aesthetics, art or communication. I saw how people like @Quintillus assume that any mention of history must be coming from a Whiggish view of historical progression. I suppose the grandfather stories are true - some things are culturally or socially ingrained in us. And our first reaction is to reject anything that runs counter to those. To rise above that takes some learning and getting used to it, which doesn't happen when people deflect or refuse to tackle the origins of their assumptions.

Small sidenote, Frow's theory is descriptive rather than prescriptive, it doesn't really have any ambition beyond explaining how succesful communication/artfulness is achieved. It does however note that genres change, using the elegy as an example, earlier being strictly in accordance to stringent form and later becoming more loose formally but still being, well, an elegy. Genres change. Infact I think it touches upon how LotR works today. It's a great story but I'm unsure it'd be as succesful if released today. Modern fantasy audiences generally expect more complexity in the moral cosmos than what was done in LotR, and as such fantasy has to abide to different material qualities in order to be succesful. This doesn't even have to go to the point of what is morally OK or not, but rather, on a more fundamental level, what works the best with concurrent audiences. Of course reframing genre structures to be more socially accountible is good but even beyond that I'd argue there is tremendous value in pure enjoyment from having material being more complex than Crusade larping. And I think fantasy has generally changed in this direction.

 

[Sommerswerd]

So where do you draw the line in who is fit for what roles? I think we can all agree that, however skilled an actor he is, Idris Elba would not be a good fit to play the Emperor in a film set in fantasy China. As much as I liked Simu Liu in the Shang-Li film, he isn't a good fit for the lead role in a Braveheart remake.

I don't think we can "all agree" on that point. There is no "line", really. This character, originally depicted as an old Asian man with a white moustache and beard:

was played in the MCU... and well played I will add... by this actress... without any gender change, without any facial hair and without yellowface.

Line? What line? There is no line, except in the minds of individual viewers/consumers. @Valka D'Ur 's point about preferring that source material is respected/followed is perfectly valid, but I hope Valka would agree that this is an expression of her individual preference, rather than an expression of any objectively "correct" way to tell a story. Fan fiction/art often takes source material and bends/changes it according to the goals of the particular artist. Different people will enjoy different degrees of stretching, changing, adapting, etc., of the source material.

People's "lines" about who can play what are just as made up as the characters being depicted. Again... with actual living or dead historical figures, some stronger arguments can be made in favor of the value of staying ethnically/aesthetically accurate, but even then, I think artistic license and/or necessity can also play a valuable role in casting. IIRC there was even a scene in Dr. Strange where the expectation subversion of Swinton's casting in this role was addressed directly, whereby Strange did not recognize that she was the leader, ostensibly because she was white, female and relatively youthful in appearance.

@Ajidica - That video is funny BTW , thanks for that.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Not sure what exactly you deem as obvious here.

Let's try to dig deeper. Do you believe that works of art should not be political? If you don't, what's the issue with a show having the political agenda of representation?

Some of the greatest works of art (or at least well-known, even if the quality isn't superduperfantastic) ever created were done for a political reason. It was a ruler's way of saying, "Look at how great I am/my family is, don't even think of supporting my rivals/enemies."

But other works of art? I have numerous works of art in my home, created by my grandmother and dad. None of them were for any political reason. They were created to have another way to enjoy memories of where our family has traveled in Alberta and British Columbia.

I suppose they could be used for a political purpose as a reminder to the provincial government of what a pristine ecosystem looked like decades ago, as opposed to the mess it's in now. My grandmother worked from photos and my dad's descriptions, and he worked from what he saw himself (carving and painting a snowy owl, or a carving of my cat).

There were a couple of times when the plays I participated in had a slight political aspect to them. They were plays that had a scene where violence was committed to a female character (Anita in West Side Story and Aldonza in Man of LaMancha). The theatre company decided that part of the proceeds would be donated to the local women's shelter, and made this known to the public.

An adaptation is a new performance and that new performance takes place in the present time and culture.

O-kay... During my time in the SCA, I was comfortable in my medieval costumes and had no problem at all wandering around downtown or at the farmer's market or shopping or going out for a quick meal, if I had my persona on (for reasons that we were doing a demo or I was at a science fiction convention and it was too much bother to change into mundane clothes just for a quick trip somewhere).

But let's take the 1968 Zeffirelli movie adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

The clothing in this video would not be out of place in an SCA royal court (a bit too fancy for our local Shire, though I do have a costume that somewhat resembles the dresses worn by Juliet and her mother - the main part, anyway).

But outside of the SCA or in visual representations of this play or this general time period/place, I have never seen anyone wearing clothes like these in the 20th/21st centuries. Go to the average house party even among wealthy people (as the Capulets were), and you're not going to see men in tights and codpieces. You're not going to dance like this, or hear this type of music. At least not unless it's a costume party and even then... I'd venture to say that most modern audiences just aren't into this sort of thing anymore. Shakespeare was once considered low-brow entertainment for the lower classes. Now it's considered entertainment for a different general class of people - the sort who wear formal evening wear to a play (I remember getting a few looks when I turned up in a shirt and jeans to a performance of "Twelfth Night", but stuff those people; if they'd rather look down their noses at what I was wearing instead of appreciate the costumes worn by the actors, that's their problem).

There's an episode of FAME where this play is discussed. Most of Miss Sherwood's class isn't into Shakespeare until they're told to interpret it in relation to their own lives. The conclusion was that the parents were unfair (that's how uppercrust society was back then - you marry whom your parents say, and you don't have dalliances beforehand, especially with a member of a rival family).

West Side Story is the only modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that I enjoy. The other thing, that movie thing with Leonardo diCaprio... was unwatchable crap.

The best telling of 12th century Verona involved automobiles and automatic guns.

Nope.

BTW, wanna try for 14th-15th century?

And just in time we have a 2020 adaptation of Jules Verne's 1872 novel and some notes on its 1950s film version.

An Adventure in Self-Discovery
BY JOHN ANDERSON

When a classic is remade, the most frequent and frequently irrelevant question concerns how much has been changed from the original. The happy answer regarding the PBS “Masterpiece” presentation of “Around the World in 80 Days”: Much.


The cast in the 1872 book: White male Londoner; French valet, white London detective, Indian princess
In the first movie 1950s: white male Londoner. Mexican comedian as the valet, white male detective, Shirley MacLaine as the Indian princess
In the 1989 mini series: all white cast including a white actress playing and Indian princess
In the 2020 series: white male lead, black man as the valet, fictional woman replaces detective, an Indian woman plays the princess

Okay, I'd watch this. Is it an old or current article?

Why would I watch it? Because I like David Tennant and I played a computer game based on the story.

Could it not be argued that an adaptation is a new piece of work? You're probably already going to have to get creative in some ways. If the original creator disagrees with the change in direction, you might have a more legitimate claim that it's piggybacking unethically on their work. But if the creator gives it their blessing, then I can't imagine why it'd be a problem. It's not your work so you don't really have a say in it.

Some "adaptations" are so far from the source material that they really should be called something else, rather than piggybacking on the source name for marketing purposes.

The problem with faithful adaptations, btw, is why Robert Silverberg has never allowed anyone to option his novel Lord Valentine's Castle. He doesn't have confidence that Hollywood would do justice to it, especially with regard to his alien characters.

It's a shame. That book has too much in it to cram into a 2-hour movie. It really deserves a miniseries, or at least I know where I'd end the first part of a two-part movie.

I can understand your point as well. Still, this is miles away from people complaining about why they can't have all white actors in a fantasy village on screen.

It depends on how much travel most common people did in whatever the setting is, why they travel, and what method they use.

Lots of easy travel is likely to produce a more varied populace, since people go places and sometimes settle there.

I'm comfortable with sticking to faitfhful representation of ethnicity for a historical setting, unless the historical setting is not that important (e.g. Shakespeare's works). At the same time, I don't like it if other ethnicities are denied opportunities for representation due to 'white-washing'.

As mentioned earlier, there is more than enough white representation right now.

So even though most of Shakespeare's characters were white Europeans, you'd be happy if the plays were set just anywhere, any time, and the casting was irrelevant?

Some plays would work like that. Romeo and Juliet works, translated to 1950s New York, with period-appropriate dialogue. Modern-era Shakespeare, with Shakespeare's dialogue, though... is ridiculous.

And if you're going to put on Henry V or any other historical play, you'd best set it in the appropriate historical era.

I remember being excited to hear that Kenneth Branagh had done Hamlet, since I loved his version of Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing. But his Hamlet was a time/place-inappropriate setting, with none of the crisp delivery of lines he did in his other performances. His Hamlet was so awful that the second tape of that 2-part VHS movie has gone unwatched.

Mel Gibson's Hamlet, on the other hand was very well done. The only real quibble anyone in our SCA group had was with the casting of Glenn Close as Gertrude. They thought it bad casting given that Gibson and Close are not that far apart in age to make it believable.

I don't even want to think about how a modern-era Hamlet would be presented.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Okay, I'd watch this. Is it an old or current article?

The article is from today.
Around the World in 80 Days
Begins Sunday, 8 p.m., PBS

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The article is from today.
Around the World in 80 Days
Begins Sunday, 8 p.m., PBS

I will check my schedule!

 

[Senethro]

O-kay... During my time in the SCA, I was comfortable in my medieval costumes and had no problem at all wandering around downtown or at the farmer's market or shopping or going out for a quick meal, if I had my persona on (for reasons that we were doing a demo or I was at a science fiction convention and it was too much bother to change into mundane clothes just for a quick trip somewhere).

You're being way too literal here. Like I said, the performance is not the fiction. Even assuming you could somehow perfectly replicate an original Shakespeare performance (perfect fiction replication) it would be different because the performers and audience are different.

Hell, take an early recording of something factual like a political speech from the early 20th century and play that to a modern audience. Even a few decades hindsight changes the intended meaning, so even recording are not immune to drift and shift.

The point: Therefore, people who have OPINIONS about the ethnicity of the performers are having opinions about the performance (the present), not the fiction.

 

[PhroX]

I saw a performance of Henry V, I think it was by the RSC, in which they were dressed entirely in modern clothing, mainly military uniforms. At least one of the main actors was black - I think it was actually the titular character, but I can't remember for certain, it was probably 15 years or so ago. And you know what? It was damn good.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Hell, take an early recording of something factual like a political speech from the early 20th century and play that to a modern audience. Even a few decades hindsight changes the intended meaning, so even recording are not immune to drift and shift.

I don't agree.

Hindsight may change the interpretation and the received meaning, but the intended meaning was fixed.

 

[Sommerswerd]

IThe settings in which the events take place is supposed to give a vibe of (mythical) northern Europe. You are telling me that you don't see how throwing in people whose appearance give vibes of completely different places has no bearing on the feeling of the settings ?

I didn't want to put my reaction to this in the same post as the one with the video, because that was just for fun rather than feedback on your position. I for one get what you're saying about Tolkien. And FWIW I think the LotR trilogy was an absolute masterpiece, quite worthy of, and true to, the source material.

I also think that you are a little off in your view here, not about LotR per se, but more in general. Bridgerton is one example. People love that show, despite the fact that it features actors who don't appear as you would traditionally expect given the location and time period depicted. Another obvious example is of course Hamilton. One aspect of the play that was even more delightful, given the blatant goal of expectation bending in the casting, was the portrayal of King George, one of the best characters in the show.

 

[Gorbles]

You can certainly add a few background character where they fit (not in the Shire or in Bree, which are explicitely remote locations wary of strangers where even someone from a few miles away is perceived as "queer", but certainly in Gondor for example). But the main cast is pretty well described, so you would just purposely miscast someone just for diversity sake ?

Casting someone who looks different to what is described in the books is a different argument to one we were having about accuracy in historical representation of the period. I'm not being trite, they are important differences. Some objections in adaptations are to do with a specific character not looking how the source material describes (and then there is wiggle room when characters are not described explicitly), and some are to do with the setting itself having any deviance. Be it cultural, economic, etc.

With that in mind, I think a lot of the space between our respective positions belongs to the second half of this post, below.

Yeah, no, precisely. If you want to change the setting, don't make an adaptation, make a new story. Or make an adaptation where the twist is precisely that it's cast in a new setting.
No point in morphing the setting and losing the flavour just because some people have an obsession with inserting their current political pet peeve into works that existed without it.

What flavour is being lost, for you, if they (hypothetically) made the Fellowship more diverse?

I personally can't see any difference in (for example) Frodo's character, because his defining characteristics were his relative youth, his proximity to Bilbo (who was seen as a hobbit who had gone a bit wrong, doing adventures and other stuff) and . . . from memory, his association to Gandalf and I think elves too? Tolkien didn't really focus on things like skin colour, with the exception of those bad dudes over that way (Harad). Which is perhaps a tangent for another time And while gender was sometimes very important, it wasn't always. It was for Eowyn, but to go back to Frodo, it really wasn't there. I could be misremembering, but other than Tolkien making him a guy, I can't think of any reason why that was actually important. Sam and Frodo's relationship would be pretty straightforward to write either way, for example.

In general, I think we simply disagree about adaptations. Neither of us are alone in this thread in either case. I like Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Maybe you do too - maybe it fulfills the transplant of a setting (though it keeps all the language, which I think somebody already raised).

Or let's take Dune, which has had two pretty different adaptations (with possibly a third? I'm not really up on Dune). Or again, The Witcher. I don't see what difference Fringilla being black matters (and the writers certainly take a lot more liberties with the actual plot and behaviour of specific characters in a lot of other cases. I can definitely say it's not necessarily "woke" nor overtly political at times).

To me, and I don't expect you to agree here, I believe that if changing a cast or setting to be more diverse than it may have perhaps been in the source material is a political stance . . . then the reverse is also true. Nothing is apolitical - everything created by someone with their own political (and cultural) pet peeves, however implicit they may be. I don't see why those are immune to change, especially if changing them doesn't detract from the adaptation. Ultimately, we're each the judge of our own enjoyment. You don't have to like the things I don't like, and vice versa. Obviously if someone doesn't like Fringilla because she's black, that's an entirely different problem. But if you're simply more of a purist when it comes to adapting source material, it's your life.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You're being way too literal here. Like I said, the performance is not the fiction. Even assuming you could somehow perfectly replicate an original Shakespeare performance (perfect fiction replication) it would be different because the performers and audience are different.

To perfectly replicate an original Shakespeare performance, you'd need the Globe Theatre, the original stage, original casting conventions (no women playing female roles), the actors would have to be prepared to have all sorts of stuff thrown at them if the audience disliked the show, and nobody would be speaking in a dialect we use in modern times. That's part of the reason why some people have trouble getting into these plays - some of the rhymes and jokes don't work with modern English dialects.

Hell, take an early recording of something factual like a political speech from the early 20th century and play that to a modern audience. Even a few decades hindsight changes the intended meaning, so even recording are not immune to drift and shift.

One of the things about early 20th century political speeches is that they weren't televised (I'm thinking of pre-TV times). That would enable a politician to give "whistle stop" speeches - say one thing in one town to please the people who live there, while possibly saying the opposite in another town 20 miles later. It's not likely that anyone in the two towns will compare notes quickly enough to make much immediate difference.

Some modern politicians seem to forget that the moment they stop speaking, their speech has been shared across the province, the country, and the world. Both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau appear to have forgotten that what they said in Quebec, in French, no longer stays in Quebec, in French. They've both been caught with their linguistic pants down, saying one thing in French and a different thing in English, assuming that the people in Quebec don't care what they say outside that province and that the ROC (Rest of Canada) never pays attention to French-language news conferences. So that's the modern attempt at a "whistle stop" - and it no longer works.

The point: Therefore, people who have OPINIONS about the ethnicity of the performers are having opinions about the performance (the present), not the fiction.

If they had no opinions about the source material, what would be the point of having opinions about the ethnicity of the performers?

I saw a performance of Henry V, I think it was by the RSC, in which they were dressed entirely in modern clothing, mainly military uniforms. At least one of the main actors was black - I think it was actually the titular character, but I can't remember for certain, it was probably 15 years or so ago. And you know what? It was damn good.

There was a movie adaptation of Richard III that was set in the 20th century.

I'm not into that sort of thing. Shakespeare, at least the historical plays, should be true to the source material (with the caveat that female roles are played by women).

Take Henry V, for instance. I saw the Branagh movie in the theatre, and later acquired it on VHS (don't recall offhand if I bought it or recorded it from PBS).

Back then, my grandmother usually invited her friend over once a week for coffee, cake, and she'd ask me to find them a movie to watch from my video collection. She asked what Henry V was about, and I told her it was about an English king who got into a war with the French and it took place about 600 years ago... and it was adapted from a Shakespeare play, so the people would talk a bit weird.

She was interested enough to ask me to put it in for them to watch... and they loved it. I very much doubt they would have loved a modernized version of it.

Or let's take Dune, which has had two pretty different adaptations (with possibly a third? I'm not really up on Dune).

Dune was adapted in 1984, by David Lynch. Then, in 2000/2003, it and the next two novels, were adapted into TV miniseries (encompassing Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune). The latest adaptation is directed by Denis Villeneuve, who decided for reasons that make sense only to himself to genderswap a character who cannot be genderswapped and have the movie be considered a faithful adaptation - at least to those of us sufficiently familiar with the source material.

There were some people complaining on one of the YT channels that the cast of the Lynch movie was "too white."

If you interpret the Fremen history of the Zensunni Wanderers as meaning that every last one of them is descended from Middle Eastern people on Earth... I suppose. But consider this: Not all of the Fremen are descended from Middle Eastern people on Earth, and not all of the Zensunni Wanderers lived on planets with harsh desert conditions during their millennia-long journey. Dune takes place approximately 20,000 years from now. That's long enough to even out some ethnic traits. The point I make about the casting of the Lynch movie is that Lynch got most of the major characters right. He missed with Duncan Idaho (Richard Jordan was too old to play a convincing Duncan who resembled the character described in the novel). Patrick Stewart is a good actor, but not right for Gurney Halleck. And there was no family dog in the novel. That friggin' pug... cute, but there's no way that dog should have been alive past the night that Arrakeen fell to the Harkonnen attack.

 

[aelf]

So even though most of Shakespeare's characters were white Europeans, you'd be happy if the plays were set just anywhere, any time, and the casting was irrelevant?

Yes.

This happens a lot, btw. On stage and on screen.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yes.

This happens a lot, btw. On stage and on screen.

Yes, I'm aware. Thankfully there are other productions I can watch that are more faithful to the source material.

 

[Gorbles]

But consider this: Not all of the Fremen are descended from Middle Eastern people on Earth, and not all of the Zensunni Wanderers lived on planets with harsh desert conditions during their millennia-long journey. Dune takes place approximately 20,000 years from now. That's long enough to even out some ethnic traits.

Sure, but this is your interpretation. That doesn't make the casting inherently correct. It just means you've found a reason that satisfies your own threshold of tolerance in an adaptation.

I think a lot of this ultimately comes down to preference, rather than "right" or "wrong". You seem to prefer adaptations to be as accurate as possible (like Akka, I believe).

We're going to see that happen less over time, as casting calls get more diverse simply as a reflection of society. It doesn't have to be anything political, or some kind of social commentary. Of course, it can be, and the difference in our opinions will be our tolerance for that, generally.

 

[emzie]

Sure, but this is your interpretation. That doesn't make the casting inherently correct. It just means you've found a reason that satisfies your own threshold of tolerance in an adaptation.

I think a lot of this ultimately comes down to preference, rather than "right" or "wrong". You seem to prefer adaptations to be as accurate as possible (like Akka, I believe).

We're going to see that happen less over time, as casting calls get more diverse simply as a reflection of society. It doesn't have to be anything political, or some kind of social commentary. Of course, it can be, and the difference in our opinions will be our tolerance for that, generally.

Personal aesthetic preferences can be neither right nor wrong. This thread is a lot of people talking about how they like things to be, which is fine, without a lot of acknowledgement that different strokes work for different folks.