Importance of white representation in fiction

[aelf]

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

Yes, and? Where did I say reason 4 is the only possible reason?

 

[Yeekim]

Yes, and? Where did I say reason 4 is the only possible reason?

You didn't.

But if we accept that casting all-white extras in US/UK is "impractical" even where source material would otherwise demand it, this means producers have quite limited freedom of choice here.
Accordingly, changing race of some characters becomes a foregone conclusion, with producers simply stuck with having to fit this change into the story in a way that makes sense... where they may succeed or not.

 

[Narz]

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.

Your cultural opinions are not matters of fact so if you want people to take you seriously maybe you should explain. Or maybe you just want to be heard and not have a discussion in which case perhaps a blog would be a better fit than a forum.

 

[sukritact]

Read all 14 books, though the middle books are a bit of a blur in my head at this point.

They're clearly intentionally diverging from the book canon on quite a few things, so frankly any appeals to the books are completely moot. You can discuss and compare them of course, but it's all fictional, it's all fake. Besides which race isn't much a thing in the books in the first place: there are descriptions that call a character light or dark skinned, but that's basically it. It just isn't a plot point beyond "Oh, Rand has red hair so he's probably Aiel!", so changing the skin tone of a few characters around does basically nothing to their characterization: so anyone complaining about it really is just being racist. This isn't a show set in medieval Germany.

It becomes especially clear in my opinion when you consider what they HAVE changed. Perrin has a wife who he accidentally kills? Nyneave can instinctively bring characters back from death's doorstep? Moiraine is exiled from the White Tower on the Oath Rod? These are massive changes, but you don't see people complaining these things in particular do you? It's the "woke" stuff people really get angry over. The racial diversity, the unexpected lesbian relationship, etc.

 

[RobAnybody]

These are massive changes, but you don't see people complaining these things in particular do you?

I guess it depends on where you're looking. On Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDb, the "legitimate review" articles & sites, that's exactly what people talk about & is the source of most of the poorer reviews.

 

[sukritact]

I guess it depends on where you're looking. On Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDb, the "legitimate review" articles & sites, that's exactly what people talk about & is the source of most of the poorer reviews.

I mean there are always going to be people complaining about deviations from the book.

But my point is more, if such complaints are made, it’s usually a more general “How dare they diverge from the source material significantly!” than “How dare they give Perrin a wife!” (amusingly I did find one that complained about there being a female blacksmith: not about her being a newly created wife for Perrin but about them adding a new character who is a female blacksmith) and this does seem the be the case looking at the sites you mentioned, it’s mostly a general “they diverged from the books and the character development got destroyed”. They don’t mention specific examples.

Conversely, you do get “How dare they make the cast diverse!” like the example posted by the OP.

FWIW I think the show was just alright. A bit over dramatic and too much exposition, I found myself think “get on with it” way too often tbh.

 

[lymond]

Read .......

Well said....

Yup...the show got gradually worse as the season went on to the point I was just "meh" on the last episode. (I've read the first coupla books and on the third...the book series will be a slow process for me)

The diversity of the cast was a complete non-issue for me, although I did not like some casting for other reasons. Pike shoulda been a great Moraine, and she is good, but the show is wasting her talent. The lesbian thing shocked me a bit, since I don't recall running across it in the book. So, I did a bit of googling and found that it is indeed a thing in the series, so cool. Kinda makes sense for the Aes Sedai. The one Lan conversation with the other Warder was stupid.

I do like Nynaeve in the show - actress and character - she is leagues better than the other young no-name cast. Well, the Matt guy is ok, if he had anything to do at all.

 

[RobAnybody]

If we're just sticking to Wheel of Time, it seems the plot divergences from the books were a huge non-starter for a lot of people. Just go to Rotten Tomatoes & read the most recent reviews, on any given day, & you'll see that even from the ones that liked it.

And from the people who didn't read the books who left poor reviews, they couldn't really understand the plot &/or the world. The two criticisms seem to converge on the fact that the show-runners chopped a LOT of stuff out of the books, which granted they needed to - not only to just make it into a TV show, but because the books are bloated AF (although that's more applicable to later books) - but they added a ton of stuff that simply had no need to be added, to the detriment of explaining the story.

IMO, if we're focusing on this one show to discuss this topic, there were dozens of failures by the showrunners before one could even get to "oh, yeah, & also... woke!!" From what I've read, you really have to search for those responses in order to hold them up as emblematic of the criticism of this one show. It was just... poorly done.

 

[Hygro]

I rewatched Return of the King the other day. It was jarring how white everyone was.

but it’s not jarring how white everyone is on a historical show like Vikings.

 

[RobAnybody]

Well, not to dive to deep into it, but Middle Earth was a massive landmass during a time when the primary means of transportation was horses, or maybe Bill the Pony. Foreign populations would not be prevalent, or even present. Pippen & Merry had never even seen an Elf. Gimli wasn't aware of what happened to Balin in Moria. "And they call it a mine!"

Imagine no internet, no telephones even, not even a mail service. News doesn't travel, much less people.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Here are three films telling the same story. The 1954 Japanese original with an all Japanese cast. Six years later an American version and finally a remake in 2016. I bolded some of the big changes made. The 2016 version has the most changes to bring the movie up-to-date for Millennials. They redid all the main characters. The villain no longer a Mexican outlaw, but a nasty industrialist.

The 1960 film just slid the Japanese story into a typical American western setting with guns instead of swords and made the rain go away. The 2016 film rewrote the story and characters to fit post great recession sensibilities. They even worked a strong woman into the story.

The seven samurai in 1954 original Japanese

• Toshiro Mifune as Kikuchiyo (菊千代), a humorous, mercurial and temperamental rogue who lies about being a samurai, but eventually proves his worth and resourcefulness
• Takashi Shimura as Kambei Shimada (島田勘兵衛, Shimada Kanbei), a war-weary but honourable and strategic rōnin, and the leader of the seven
• Daisuke Katō as Shichirōji (七郎次), Kambei's old friend and former lieutenant
• Isao Kimura as Katsushirō Okamoto (岡本勝四郎, Okamoto Katsushirō), the untested son of a wealthy, land-owning samurai, whom Kambei reluctantly takes in as a disciple[11]
• Minoru Chiaki as Heihachi Hayashida (林田平八, Hayashida Heihachi), an amiable though less-skilled fighter, whose charm and wit maintain his comrades' morale in the face of adversity
• Seiji Miyaguchi as Kyūzō (久蔵), a serious, stone-faced and supremely skilled swordsman
• Yoshio Inaba as Gorōbei Katayama (片山五郎兵衛, Katayama Gorōbei), a skilled archer, who acts as Kambei's second-in-command and helps create the master-plan for the village's defense

Villagers

• Yoshio Tsuchiya as Rikichi (利吉), a hotheaded villager
• Bokuzen Hidari as Yohei (与平), a timid old man
• Yukiko Shimazaki as Rikichi's wife
• Kamatari Fujiwara as Manzō (万造), a farmer who disguises his daughter as a boy to try to protect her from the samurai
• Keiko Tsushima as Shino (志乃), Manzō's daughter
• Kokuten Kōdō as Gisaku (儀作), the village patriarch, referred to as "Grandad"
• Yoshio Kosugi as Mosuke, one of the farmers sent to town to hire the samurai

Others

• Shinpei Takagi as the bandit chief[12]

The Magnificent Seven in the 1960 US film All white guy cast saving Mexican village from outlaws

• Yul Brynner as Chris Adams, a Cajun gunslinger, leader of the seven
• Steve McQueen as Vin Tanner, a drifter
• Horst Buchholz as Chico, the young, hot-blooded shootist
• Charles Bronson as Bernardo O'Reilly, the professional in need of money
• Robert Vaughn as Lee, the traumatized veteran (PTSD before it was a thing?)
• Brad Dexter as Harry Luck, the fortune seeker
• James Coburn as Britt, the knife expert
• Others
  • Eli Wallach as Calvera, the Mexican bandit chief White guy playing a Mexican
  • Vladimir Sokoloff as the old man of the village Russian white guy playing a Mexican

The Seven in the 2016 remake Multi ethnic cast saving an American frontier town from an evil capitalist.

• Denzel Washington as Sam Chisholm, a United States Marshal warrant officer from Wichita, Kansas, and the leader of the Seven. He shares similar character traits with the character Chris Adams (portrayed by Yul Brynner) from the 1960 original.
• Chris Pratt as Joshua Faraday, a gambler and rogue with a fondness for explosives and card tricks. He shares similar character traits with the character Vin Tanner (portrayed by Steve McQueen) from the 1960 original.
• Ethan Hawke as Goodnight Robicheaux, a Cajun former Confederate soldier and sharpshooter who suffers from PTSD. He shares similar character traits with the character Lee (portrayed by Robert Vaughn) from the 1960 original.
• Vincent D'Onofrio as Jack Horne, a devoutly religious mountain man and tracker. He shares similar character traits with the character Bernardo O'Reilly (portrayed by Charles Bronson) from the 1960 original.
• Byung-hun Lee as Billy Rocks, a knife-wielding Korean assassin and Robicheaux's travelling companion. He shares similar character traits with the character Britt (portrayed by James Coburn) from the 1960 original.
• Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Vasquez, a Mexican outlaw who has been on the run for several months. He shares similar character traits with the character Harry Luck (portrayed by Brad Dexter) from the 1960 original.
• Martin Sensmeier as Red Harvest, an exiled Comanche warrior and the youngest of the Seven. He shares similar character traits with the character Chico (portrayed by Horst Buchholz) from the 1960 original.

Others

• Peter Sarsgaard as Bartholomew Bogue, a corrupt industrialist. He takes the place of Calvera (played by Eli Wallach) who was the main antagonist of the 1960 original.
• Haley Bennett as Emma Cullen, a young widow who hires the Seven. She takes the place of Hilario (played by Jorge Martínez de Hoyos) who asked Chris Adams to help assemble the seven in the 1960 original.

The first two movies were about storytelling and moving a Japanese story to America. The 2016 remake was all about repackaging a good story into a movie that fit the current political and cultural agenda. The storytelling of the previous films was lost. If you had never seen the earlier movies, then you might think it was a great movie.

 

[Hygro]

Well, not to dive to deep into it, but Middle Earth was a massive landmass during a time when the primary means of transportation was horses, or maybe Bill the Pony. Foreign populations would not be prevalent, or even present. Pippen & Merry had never even seen an Elf. Gimli wasn't aware of what happened to Balin in Moria. "And they call it a mine!"

Imagine no internet, no telephones even, not even a mail service. News doesn't travel, much less people.

I guess it’s just like, I can make a fantasy world and say that too. Since it has no plot bearing and tells no story, upholding the racial aesthetic in the mind of the Dungeon Master author pulls me out of, rather than into, the story.

But I see your point.

 

[RobAnybody]

I mean, I get yours as well, in that if it's fantasy you can do what you want, but if you want to explain how a proto-Europe isolated village has racial diversity, you pretty much gotta explain it somehow.

If your fictional world also relies on horse travel, & the occasional annual trader from outside the village being quite the spectacle to be remarked upon by the inhabitants, as The Wheel of Time & Lord of the Rings both do in the very early chapters, it's a bit jarring to say this remote community is also quite diverse in racial mix. You kinda gotta explain how that happened.

EDIT: Interestingly, to the WoT's credit, the fact that Rand *does not look like everyone else* is an important plot point.

 

[Ajidica]

I guess it’s just like, I can make a fantasy world and say that too. Since it has no plot bearing and tells no story, upholding the racial aesthetic in the mind of the Dungeon Master author pulls me out of, rather than into, the story.

But I see your point.

"Upholding the racial aesthetic"
That's a particularly spicy take.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

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.

Yeah, I hadn't known much about Octavia, since up to that point the only historical drama I'd watched much that dealt with that era of the Caesars was I, Claudius. If memory serves, Octavia only appears in the first episode, and the conversation revolves around who's going to pay for the Games that her son, Marcellus, is organizing (Marcellus was Julia's first husband, and Augustus' intended heir).

The direction that Rome took this historical figure... seemed a bit modern. I doubt a lesbian relationship between two noblewomen would have been winked at, though I'll have to concede that I don't know how authentic Octavia's other actions and reactions would have been (incest with her brother, cutting, running away). Her marriage to Antony is part of history, and Claudius' mother was Antony and Octavia's younger daughter. I seem to recall Suetonius or one of the other Roman historians I read back in college mentioning that Antony abandoning his marriage with Octavia to carry on with Cleopatra was a slap on the honor of both Augustus and his sister, and that could not be allowed to be unavenged.

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

Dunno about others, but I've never actually seen either of Shakespeare's Roman plays. I've seen I, Claudius more times than I can recall over the years, read the two novels numerous times, and the rest of my knowledge of the Caesars comes from reading actual history books - Suetonius, Tacitus, and umpteen others over a period of decades. I also belong to two Roman-centric forums. One focuses on learning Latin, and the other focuses on history.

As for Homer... it left enough clues that Heinrich Schliemann was able to find at least the general area where Troy was. He found a city site where it and many other cities had stood over the centuries and millennia, but not THE Troy of Homer's stories (historian Michael Wood mentioned Schliemann blasting some walls in an effort to dig into a hillside and thinks he might have actually destroyed the very part of the site he'd been looking for - because he misread a map).

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.

Exactly. I have read exactly one Harry Potter story in which Harry was genderswapped and given the name "Violet." Normally I wouldn't have bothered with it, but the plot hook was interesting and written well enough that I stayed with it. It's unfinished, though, and no indication if the author will ever finish it, so it's a case of "oh well, it wasn't a bad story while it lasted, but it wasn't good enough to make me search out other genderswapped HP stories." The story would have worked well enough without the genderswap.

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.

These are the reasons for the genderswap of Liet-Kynes in the latest Dune movie. The director had a specific actress in mind for a role that should have been played by a man (fathers tend to be men, if my high school biology book was telling the truth), so he didn't bother auditioning male actors for the part, and he had an agenda. He claimed that there "weren't enough strong female roles" in the movie, which is utter BS. There is no female character in Dune who is NOT strong, in various ways. Even Wensicia Corrino, in the Children of Dune novel, is strong. She appears weak in the TV miniseries because of bad casting (Susan Sarandon is a wonderful actress, but completely inappropriate and out of her depth in that role - I suspect she was hired for name recognition).

You would not believe the number of people who have tried, with a straight online face, to tell me that it doesn't matter if Liet-Kynes was genderswapped, because "there's no obvious connection between Liet-Kynes and Chani." Well, I guess the line from the novel - which was included verbatim in the Lynch movie - that has Chani informing Paul, "I am Chani, daughter of Liet" just isn't enough.

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

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

Yep. Some of the people who have chastised me for being upset about the Dune casting are the same who express rage over unconventional casting in superhero movies and a trio of female ghostbusters (admittedly I'm not into those franchises or subgenres, so I honestly have no idea what the fuss is about, but unacknowledged hypocrisy annoys me).

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.



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.

Okay, I'm going to admit that modern audiences could be - some people probably would be - upset that the production of The King and I that I worked on back in 1984 should not have cast white actors as Thai characters. We should only have cast Thai actors and actresses.

Well, guess what - we'd never have been able to do the show, then. Not all regions of North America are blessed with enough people of Thai ancestry who can sing, dance, and act to fill all the Thai roles this musical requires. We did try - we had some Korean actresses, and the man who played the King is from India (and his daughter played one of the wife roles). But everyone else had to have heavy makeup.

Did our audience care? Not a bit. They would only have cared if the cast couldn't sing, dance, or act. Fortunately they were all very good, and the show went well. But then we're not a major city here, and I'm guessing that if we had been, there would have been criticism.

That said... none of the roles were genderswapped.

Or take Peter Pan... it's a common thing to cast women or girls in the role of Peter, simply because they have the vocal range to pull off the music. I also suspect it's likely technically easier with female singer/actors due to the requirements of the flying scenes.

Our production also cast a girl in one of the Lost Boys roles. I don't know why they did that - but suspect that it was due to a shortage of suitable children who had a successful audition. However, it wasn't obvious that she was a girl when she was in costume (godawful brat to work with, though...).


What you consider an "extreme purist" is someone with expectations that whoever makes casting or writing decisions for productions that are adaptations of prose work should at least TRY to understand and give a damn about presenting the work they're doing. And don't turn this around on me because of the examples I've just given for the theatrical productions I just mentioned - I was head of the properties crew - and therefore had zero input into casting decisions even though I did attend auditions a time or two. I was there to observe; my actual opinions weren't asked and it would have been inappropriate to offer any.


Actors not matching their descriptions... okay, let's take Harry Potter. It's frequently mentioned in the books and movies that Harry has "[your] mother's eyes." In the novels it's stated that Harry's eyes are green. Actor Daniel Radcliffe has blue eyes. They did try to fit him with green contact lenses, but it turns out that he was unable to wear them. So they cast a blue-eyed actress for the flashback scenes of Lily Potter, and made no reference to their actual eye color.

The other inconsistent HP character is Sirius Black. He's described in the novels as having black hair and silver eyes. Yet the actor who played him had brown hair and blue eyes. Since I saw the movies well before reading the novels, it confused the hell out of me when I saw the descriptions in the fanfiction (most Sirius-centric fanfic conforms to his description in the novel) that described someone who looks nothing like the character portrayed in the movies, other than having long, curly hair. Then I read the novels and wondered why they'd changed the character - not that I don't like how he was portrayed - he did such a good job that Sirius Black is my favorite character in the entire HP franchise. It took watching some of the behind-the-scenes interviews on YT to learn that the character's appearance and costumes were influenced by the actor, Gary Oldman, and the director agreed that they were good choices.

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.

I am completely unfamiliar with Witcher, but will just comment that if any of it was influenced by Dungeons & Dragons, there are some D&D settings that have a black sub-race of Elves. I wouldn't expect them to mix in a D&D-themed movie without a damn good explanation, though, since they and the other elves tend to be implacable enemies.

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.

Impractical, or just Not Done due to accusations of racist casting? There's no shortage of white actors, if that's who you want to cast. You cast whoever shows up to audition, if they fit the roles you want to cast.

It's casting for other races/ethnicities that can be a problem (as I related earlier).

Here are three films telling the same story. The 1954 Japanese original with an all Japanese cast. Six years later an American version and finally a remake in 2016. I bolded some of the big changes made. The 2016 version has the most changes to bring the movie up-to-date for Millennials. They redid all the main characters. The villain no longer a Mexican outlaw, but a nasty industrialist.

The 1960 film just slid the Japanese story into a typical American western setting with guns instead of swords and made the rain go away. The 2016 film rewrote the story and characters to fit post great recession sensibilities. They even worked a strong woman into the story.

The seven samurai in 1954 original Japanese

• Toshiro Mifune as Kikuchiyo (菊千代), a humorous, mercurial and temperamental rogue who lies about being a samurai, but eventually proves his worth and resourcefulness
• Takashi Shimura as Kambei Shimada (島田勘兵衛, Shimada Kanbei), a war-weary but honourable and strategic rōnin, and the leader of the seven
• Daisuke Katō as Shichirōji (七郎次), Kambei's old friend and former lieutenant
• Isao Kimura as Katsushirō Okamoto (岡本勝四郎, Okamoto Katsushirō), the untested son of a wealthy, land-owning samurai, whom Kambei reluctantly takes in as a disciple[11]
• Minoru Chiaki as Heihachi Hayashida (林田平八, Hayashida Heihachi), an amiable though less-skilled fighter, whose charm and wit maintain his comrades' morale in the face of adversity
• Seiji Miyaguchi as Kyūzō (久蔵), a serious, stone-faced and supremely skilled swordsman
• Yoshio Inaba as Gorōbei Katayama (片山五郎兵衛, Katayama Gorōbei), a skilled archer, who acts as Kambei's second-in-command and helps create the master-plan for the village's defense

Villagers

• Yoshio Tsuchiya as Rikichi (利吉), a hotheaded villager
• Bokuzen Hidari as Yohei (与平), a timid old man
• Yukiko Shimazaki as Rikichi's wife
• Kamatari Fujiwara as Manzō (万造), a farmer who disguises his daughter as a boy to try to protect her from the samurai
• Keiko Tsushima as Shino (志乃), Manzō's daughter
• Kokuten Kōdō as Gisaku (儀作), the village patriarch, referred to as "Grandad"
• Yoshio Kosugi as Mosuke, one of the farmers sent to town to hire the samurai

Others

• Shinpei Takagi as the bandit chief[12]

The Magnificent Seven in the 1960 US film All white guy cast saving Mexican village from outlaws

• Yul Brynner as Chris Adams, a Cajun gunslinger, leader of the seven
• Steve McQueen as Vin Tanner, a drifter
• Horst Buchholz as Chico, the young, hot-blooded shootist
• Charles Bronson as Bernardo O'Reilly, the professional in need of money
• Robert Vaughn as Lee, the traumatized veteran (PTSD before it was a thing?)
• Brad Dexter as Harry Luck, the fortune seeker
• James Coburn as Britt, the knife expert
• Others
  • Eli Wallach as Calvera, the Mexican bandit chief White guy playing a Mexican
  • Vladimir Sokoloff as the old man of the village Russian white guy playing a Mexican

The Seven in the 2016 remake Multi ethnic cast saving an American frontier town from an evil capitalist.

• Denzel Washington as Sam Chisholm, a United States Marshal warrant officer from Wichita, Kansas, and the leader of the Seven. He shares similar character traits with the character Chris Adams (portrayed by Yul Brynner) from the 1960 original.
• Chris Pratt as Joshua Faraday, a gambler and rogue with a fondness for explosives and card tricks. He shares similar character traits with the character Vin Tanner (portrayed by Steve McQueen) from the 1960 original.
• Ethan Hawke as Goodnight Robicheaux, a Cajun former Confederate soldier and sharpshooter who suffers from PTSD. He shares similar character traits with the character Lee (portrayed by Robert Vaughn) from the 1960 original.
• Vincent D'Onofrio as Jack Horne, a devoutly religious mountain man and tracker. He shares similar character traits with the character Bernardo O'Reilly (portrayed by Charles Bronson) from the 1960 original.
• Byung-hun Lee as Billy Rocks, a knife-wielding Korean assassin and Robicheaux's travelling companion. He shares similar character traits with the character Britt (portrayed by James Coburn) from the 1960 original.
• Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Vasquez, a Mexican outlaw who has been on the run for several months. He shares similar character traits with the character Harry Luck (portrayed by Brad Dexter) from the 1960 original.
• Martin Sensmeier as Red Harvest, an exiled Comanche warrior and the youngest of the Seven. He shares similar character traits with the character Chico (portrayed by Horst Buchholz) from the 1960 original.

Others

• Peter Sarsgaard as Bartholomew Bogue, a corrupt industrialist. He takes the place of Calvera (played by Eli Wallach) who was the main antagonist of the 1960 original.
• Haley Bennett as Emma Cullen, a young widow who hires the Seven. She takes the place of Hilario (played by Jorge Martínez de Hoyos) who asked Chris Adams to help assemble the seven in the 1960 original.

The first two movies were about storytelling and moving a Japanese story to America. The 2016 remake was all about repackaging a good story into a movie that fit the current political and cultural agenda. The storytelling of the previous films was lost. If you had never seen the earlier movies, then you might think it was a great movie.

I haven't seen these, although I'm familiar with the general concept. Actually, both Xena: Warrior Princess and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did their own versions (with Ferengi, in the case of DS9).

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Valka D'Ur
Japanese version: Spectacular
first US version 8/10

 

[Sommerswerd]

I was just arguing with an old white man who complained that the Wheel of Time TV series is "less white less manly" compared to the books and is therefore "woke crap".

Aside from the fact that this assertion is based off of an idea of masculinity as outdated as he is (stoic, non-verbal and never sheds a tear), the world in the books doesn't seem to be split along racial lines like our world is. He cited a character that is described as having "milky white" legs in the text but is played by a non-white actor, and I pointed out that non-white people like Asians in our world can have milky white skin too. Also, another character from the same nation is described as being "dark-skinned" in the text. Clearly, our assumptions about race and nation-states in our world (i.e. broad homoegeneity and having real-world racial markers) don't apply to this fictional universe.

But I'm curious whether this comes from a place other than plain racism and sexism. I want to hear from the gatekeepers here why it matters if a character in a fictional universe deemed as 'white' is played by a white actor or not. Same with gender. Does a male character have to be male in adaptations? And do they have to be the same type of male? What are your reasons for gatekeeping here?

Thanks Aelf for the thought exercise.

Thinking about it... I think my attitude is that made-up characters have no claim whatsoever to race, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else. They are made up. They can be anything. Luke Skywalker can be played by Idris Elba, T'Challa can be played by Brad Pitt. Superman can be a redhead. Mary Jane can have purple hair. It's all effing make believe. Characters can certainly have cultural value, or significance that is based, in part in their attributes, but ultimately, flexibility has value. Zeus does not have to have a long white mane and beard, in perpetuity. .. He can be a brunette with a short beard... or a black dude... or an Asian female. We can enjoy the made up character in other "skins". Its all made up.

Now with actual historical characters, there is more of a claim that adherence to their actual "accurate" historical race, ethnicity, gender, appearance, whatever, is important and or has value... but even then, bending the representation of the historical character can have real artistic value. A blonde haired, blue-eyed kid playing Martin Luther King in the school play with nothing but a suit, tie, and taped-on mustache, is fine. A Hispanic actor playing Abraham Lincoln is fine... it all depends on the context, and what the artist and/of piece of art is trying to convey/accomplish.

As for characters/tropes being obsolete... meh... the "stoic" man is not obsolete. We've only just begun to recognize/acknowledge tropes and themes and unpack/dissect them. And even to the extent that a particular trope is arguably toxic... if we start dismissing tropes before we've taken the time to examine and appreciate them and what their role is... we risk just repeating societally damaging tropes, because we didn't take the time to really flesh out why they are limiting and/or harmful.

That's my initial, nightcap-enhanced, reaction. However, as always, I am very interested to hear what others have to say.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, I hadn't known much about Octavia, since up to that point the only historical drama I'd watched much that dealt with that era of the Caesars was I, Claudius. If memory serves, Octavia only appears in the first episode, and the conversation revolves around who's going to pay for the Games that her son, Marcellus, is organizing (Marcellus was Julia's first husband, and Augustus' intended heir).

The direction that Rome took this historical figure... seemed a bit modern. I doubt a lesbian relationship between two noblewomen would have been winked at, though I'll have to concede that I don't know how authentic Octavia's other actions and reactions would have been (incest with her brother, cutting, running away). Her marriage to Antony is part of history, and Claudius' mother was Antony and Octavia's younger daughter. I seem to recall Suetonius or one of the other Roman historians I read back in college mentioning that Antony abandoning his marriage with Octavia to carry on with Cleopatra was a slap on the honor of both Augustus and his sister, and that could not be allowed to be unavenged.


Dunno about others, but I've never actually seen either of Shakespeare's Roman plays. I've seen I, Claudius more times than I can recall over the years, read the two novels numerous times, and the rest of my knowledge of the Caesars comes from reading actual history books - Suetonius, Tacitus, and umpteen others over a period of decades. I also belong to two Roman-centric forums. One focuses on learning Latin, and the other focuses on history.

As for Homer... it left enough clues that Heinrich Schliemann was able to find at least the general area where Troy was. He found a city site where it and many other cities had stood over the centuries and millennia, but not THE Troy of Homer's stories (historian Michael Wood mentioned Schliemann blasting some walls in an effort to dig into a hillside and thinks he might have actually destroyed the very part of the site he'd been looking for - because he misread a map).


Exactly. I have read exactly one Harry Potter story in which Harry was genderswapped and given the name "Violet." Normally I wouldn't have bothered with it, but the plot hook was interesting and written well enough that I stayed with it. It's unfinished, though, and no indication if the author will ever finish it, so it's a case of "oh well, it wasn't a bad story while it lasted, but it wasn't good enough to make me search out other genderswapped HP stories." The story would have worked well enough without the genderswap.


These are the reasons for the genderswap of Liet-Kynes in the latest Dune movie. The director had a specific actress in mind for a role that should have been played by a man (fathers tend to be men, if my high school biology book was telling the truth), so he didn't bother auditioning male actors for the part, and he had an agenda. He claimed that there "weren't enough strong female roles" in the movie, which is utter BS. There is no female character in Dune who is NOT strong, in various ways. Even Wensicia Corrino, in the Children of Dune novel, is strong. She appears weak in the TV miniseries because of bad casting (Susan Sarandon is a wonderful actress, but completely inappropriate and out of her depth in that role - I suspect she was hired for name recognition).

You would not believe the number of people who have tried, with a straight online face, to tell me that it doesn't matter if Liet-Kynes was genderswapped, because "there's no obvious connection between Liet-Kynes and Chani." Well, I guess the line from the novel - which was included verbatim in the Lynch movie - that has Chani informing Paul, "I am Chani, daughter of Liet" just isn't enough.


Yep. Some of the people who have chastised me for being upset about the Dune casting are the same who express rage over unconventional casting in superhero movies and a trio of female ghostbusters (admittedly I'm not into those franchises or subgenres, so I honestly have no idea what the fuss is about, but unacknowledged hypocrisy annoys me).


Okay, I'm going to admit that modern audiences could be - some people probably would be - upset that the production of The King and I that I worked on back in 1984 should not have cast white actors as Thai characters. We should only have cast Thai actors and actresses.

Well, guess what - we'd never have been able to do the show, then. Not all regions of North America are blessed with enough people of Thai ancestry who can sing, dance, and act to fill all the Thai roles this musical requires. We did try - we had some Korean actresses, and the man who played the King is from India (and his daughter played one of the wife roles). But everyone else had to have heavy makeup.

Did our audience care? Not a bit. They would only have cared if the cast couldn't sing, dance, or act. Fortunately they were all very good, and the show went well. But then we're not a major city here, and I'm guessing that if we had been, there would have been criticism.

That said... none of the roles were genderswapped.

Or take Peter Pan... it's a common thing to cast women or girls in the role of Peter, simply because they have the vocal range to pull off the music. I also suspect it's likely technically easier with female singer/actors due to the requirements of the flying scenes.

Our production also cast a girl in one of the Lost Boys roles. I don't know why they did that - but suspect that it was due to a shortage of suitable children who had a successful audition. However, it wasn't obvious that she was a girl when she was in costume (godawful brat to work with, though...).


What you consider an "extreme purist" is someone with expectations that whoever makes casting or writing decisions for productions that are adaptations of prose work should at least TRY to understand and give a damn about presenting the work they're doing. And don't turn this around on me because of the examples I've just given for the theatrical productions I just mentioned - I was head of the properties crew - and therefore had zero input into casting decisions even though I did attend auditions a time or two. I was there to observe; my actual opinions weren't asked and it would have been inappropriate to offer any.


Actors not matching their descriptions... okay, let's take Harry Potter. It's frequently mentioned in the books and movies that Harry has "[your] mother's eyes." In the novels it's stated that Harry's eyes are green. Actor Daniel Radcliffe has blue eyes. They did try to fit him with green contact lenses, but it turns out that he was unable to wear them. So they cast a blue-eyed actress for the flashback scenes of Lily Potter, and made no reference to their actual eye color.

The other inconsistent HP character is Sirius Black. He's described in the novels as having black hair and silver eyes. Yet the actor who played him had brown hair and blue eyes. Since I saw the movies well before reading the novels, it confused the hell out of me when I saw the descriptions in the fanfiction (most Sirius-centric fanfic conforms to his description in the novel) that described someone who looks nothing like the character portrayed in the movies, other than having long, curly hair. Then I read the novels and wondered why they'd changed the character - not that I don't like how he was portrayed - he did such a good job that Sirius Black is my favorite character in the entire HP franchise. It took watching some of the behind-the-scenes interviews on YT to learn that the character's appearance and costumes were influenced by the actor, Gary Oldman, and the director agreed that they were good choices.


I am completely unfamiliar with Witcher, but will just comment that if any of it was influenced by Dungeons & Dragons, there are some D&D settings that have a black sub-race of Elves. I wouldn't expect them to mix in a D&D-themed movie without a damn good explanation, though, since they and the other elves tend to be implacable enemies.


Impractical, or just Not Done due to accusations of racist casting? There's no shortage of white actors, if that's who you want to cast. You cast whoever shows up to audition, if they fit the roles you want to cast.

It's casting for other races/ethnicities that can be a problem (as I related earlier).

I haven't seen these, although I'm familiar with the general concept. Actually, both Xena: Warrior Princess and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did their own versions (with Ferengi, in the case of DS9).

I didn't mind Liet being gender swapped. Would prefer they don't do it but not 100% opposed to it. I've seen women in plays dressed as men big Woop.

Doesn't bother me either that you care not gonna lecture you over it shrugs.

 

[Hygro]

I mean, I get yours as well, in that if it's fantasy you can do what you want, but if you want to explain how a proto-Europe isolated village has racial diversity, you pretty much gotta explain it somehow.

If your fictional world also relies on horse travel, & the occasional annual trader from outside the village being quite the spectacle to be remarked upon by the inhabitants, as The Wheel of Time & Lord of the Rings both do in the very early chapters, it's a bit jarring to say this remote community is also quite diverse in racial mix. You kinda gotta explain how that happened.

EDIT: Interestingly, to the WoT's credit, the fact that Rand *does not look like everyone else* is an important plot point.

I think in a world where humans spawned at the whim of a god, assuming biology instead of divine life is the stretch.

 

[Yeekim]

Thinking about it... I think my attitude is that made-up characters have no claim whatsoever to race, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else. They are made up. They can be anything. Luke Skywalker can be played by Idris Elba, T'Challa can be played by Brad Pitt. Superman can be a redhead. Mary Jane can have purple hair. It's all effing make believe. Characters can certainly have cultural value, or significance that is based, in part in their attributes, but ultimately, flexibility has value. Zeus does not have to have a long white mane and beard, in perpetuity. .. He can be a brunette with a short beard... or a black dude... or an Asian female. We can enjoy the made up character in other "skins". Its all made up.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130418-why-does-music-make-us-feel-good

We now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.

This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

I suspect the same general cause and effect applies here. People are satisfied when characters fit with how they have previously imagined them, but feel anger and disappointment when their expectations are made to fail.

It is one thing to, say, tell the story of don Quijote, but make it take place in modern Japan, with a female lead obsessed with Samurai past - this might be a really clever adaptation with enough forewarning that no-one is taken by unpleasant surprise.
Quite another to keep the original time and location in medieval La Mancha, but randomly make the hidalgo Japanese, so that every time he appears on screen, viewer experiences a "WTH, how?" moment.