Agreed. Period pieces typically aren’t faithful to reality except in the ways that are important to the story. The cast is often more attractive with better skin and teeth than the people of the period. Women are often treated more equally and abused less. Likewise for servants. The streets aren’t lined with emptied bedpans. The woman aren’t in terrible pain from their clothes. On average the cast is just plain heavier than they would have been in period.
I think the discrepancies in the race of the cast is of the same order of magnitude as many of these anachronisms that we frequently tolerate.
This is a great point. Diversity in casting is good, but we also need more diversity in storytelling.
As an audience, why should we care any more about the historical accuracy of ethnicity than we do about the language they are speaking? I hope the trend continues to the point that we don’t notice the incongruity of an Asian George Washington any more than we do of an English speaking Genghis Kahn.
If you had characters speaking with an obviously out-of-place and historically inaccurate accent, I think a lot of people would be bothered.
We might accept Genghis Kahn speaking English, but would we accept him speaking English with an Alabama drawl?
(Also, in most English-language movies, if everyone speaks a different language, that language is usually rendered in English for the benefit of the audience, but if one character or one line is in a different language, we hear it in that language, sometimes with subtitles. Genghis Kahn didn’t speak English in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.)
This is correct. I haven’t watched the show but I’ve seen a clip in which IIRC some of the non-white characters mentioned the alternate-historical events of some European ruler falling in love with and marrying a Black person, resulting in the abolition of Black slavery and the racial integration of European societies and so forth.
Exactly. Hamilton is a similar sort of quasi-alternate-history, inviting viewers to look at the events of the founding of the (heavily white-supremacist) American nation through the lens of modern ideals of diversity and racial equality. (As well as listening to them through the, um, speakers? of modern musical and spoken-word poetry styles.)
I mean, if the drama is being presented as a realistic documentary, then sure it could? Presenting a completely fabricated acceptance of racial diversity in an attempt to erase the realities of historical racism and discrimination and so on and so forth etc. etc.
But as Cervaise and CaveMike and others have noted, most viewers aren’t confusing period dramas with realistic documentaries, and most producers aren’t trying to sell period dramas as realistic documentaries either.
Nitpick: Historically, realistically, most women weren’t in terrible pain from their clothes. Even the much maligned corset wasn’t actually a constant source of physical agony.
What women’s clothes were, especially among middle and upper classes, was restrictive. (And consequently often dangerous.) Sweeping skirts, flowing sleeves, boned bodices, multiple petticoats, elaborate hairstyles, etc., meant that women had to limit their movements in order to appear graceful and avoid getting their garments soiled or entangled with furnishings (or caught on fire). But the mere act of wearing the clothes wasn’t typically painful.
What if the viewer is from Alabama? How is the accent relevant? A Roman Gladiator speaking like Leghorn Foghorn is no more historically inaccurate than one speaking BBC English.
Along with the John Wayne “interpretation,” there was also the 1965 biopic where Khan spoke with an Egyptian accent in the form of Omar Sharif. This version was also notable for the appearances of two highly respected performers of Asian roles, James Mason (not even trying to do an accent) and Robert Morley (as the Emperor of China!) Adding to the “verisimilitude,” the film was shot in Yugoslavia.
It’s unfortunate that the marketplace doesn’t seem to leave enough room for authentically-cast versions of historical events or novels alongside ones with far more marketable big stars. Nevertheless, as a (partial) corrective, diverse multi-casting for its own sake can be distracting by calling attention to itself.
In general, I don’t have a problem with movies (or any art form) changing historical details. Art should take chances like that, but whether such changes are successful or not, I take it for granted the viewer will be misinformed about the period, people and events depicted because of the demands of entertainment. Still, in cases where art acts as a spur to investigate more fact-based accounts, it possesses value transcending entertainment.
Heck, for the 19th century, people should consider the case of Alexandre Dumas (pere et fils). I think the background of the author of the Three Musketeers and how he was treated in upper class French society, much less the popularity of his son, would probably shock many modern Americans.
People don’t seem to mind Shakespeare done in the RADA accent, in fact it’s expected, even though it’s horribly historically inaccurate and an American accent might be closer to the truth.
As I point out above thats an interesting case, as the concept of racism as we know it (as in the dichotomy of dividing all humanity into “white people” who are “good” and “black people” who are “bad”) actually took hold during the senior Dumas’ lifetime. Early on his life he was treated like any illegitimate son of a nobleman, without any obvious prejudice because of his race, by the end of his life (during which he rose to the rank of general in the republican army and performed incredible acts of heroism on the battlefield) that was no longer the case and he did suffer prejudice (and suffered because of it).
The rise of rational scientific thought in the rich elites of Europe in the 18th century didn’t lead to a reduction of racism, it led directly to the invention of racism as we know it.
Not that I’m confident that hollywood will cover that particular aspect of his story if they do ever get around to telling it.