And the theatre world is bussing about this one~
Seyi Omooba Exits U.K.’s Upcoming The Color Purple Following Social Media Controversy
Omooba expressed these views four years ago, but has never apologized or retracted the statements.
They should be allowed to play a homosexual character, and the intended audience should be allowed to boycott their performance. TaDa!!
Allowed? I think it should be required.
I have no problem with that. If I like the actor I may or may not attend, porbably not, but people are too touchy these days. Let the audience decide.
As the late, great, Sir John Gielgud said, I am an actor. Of course I can play a heterosexual!
Sure. If anything, it may help said actor to change his views.
It is a shame that there are no gay actors to take these parts.
That’s correct. But of course people surely would boycott this play, and for that reason she needs to be replaced. It is a business after all.
…because no actor should ever portray something or someone they are not?
mmm
Actors pretend to be other people. Militarists may play pacifists, the tolerant may play bigots, atheists may play priests, etc. And I think that means that bigots - if they’re good enough at acting - may portray the victims of their bigotry.
But, if enough people find a given actor sufficiently distasteful a person to be worth avoiding on those grounds, the performance will not be successful.
Do you feel the same way about white washing?
This would be my thinking.
Allowed by whom?
I hate these kinds of questions, as if the accumulated opinion of millions of uninformed idiots on the internet should hold sway about stuff that is none of their business. The question could be phrased more sensibly as “Should a homosexual character be played by a homophobic actor?” or “Would you go to see a play with a homosexual character played by a homophobic actor?” You could also ask “What would you do if you were the producer of the play in this situation?” These questions make sense for anyone to think about and answer, and might lead to thoughtful discussions.
Go to the play/watch the movie/listen to the music, or don’t. Make your individual choice, and tell everyone who will listen why you made that choice if you want, but don’t delude yourself that you’ve “allowed” or disallowed anything.
Of course they should be allowed. They are, in fact, allowed. And producers are allowed to replace an actor they think will affect their box office negatively. With months to go before opening night, I’da canned her ass, too. It’s business.
So then only straight actors can play straight characters? :dubious:
Would we have similar expectations of Bruno Ganz in Downfall?
I’m still annoyed they couldn’t find a real scientists who had shrunk his kids, and the actor they chose thought that it would in fact be ‘upsetting’ if it really took place.
If I understand your meaning of the term, yes.
mmm
I’m upset that these two sentences are not describing the same film.
You’re kind of missing an avenue of oppression here. It happens quite a bit where minorities get soft-erased where based on a true story films have white people cast to play someone who was originally another race. In other cases, you get cis men playing trans women (or cis women playing trans men), despite the fact that there are a number of trans actors who would love to have a big role in some of these films (not to mention it reinforces a bunch of gross stereotypes).
The situation isn’t quite as dire for gay and lesbian actors as, say, trans actors, but despite the stereotype acting as a field can be fairly conservative in some areas and that often reflects in hiring decisions.
Now, it’s not that you can’t play across type – gay actors in fact complain about not being able to act in any role that’s not BIG NEON LIGHTS GAY CHARACTER after they come out. But the fact is, straight people, white people, cis people, and so on aren’t exactly as underrepresented as their minority counterparts, and not allowing aspiring minority actors to take roles that represent contributes to minorities not getting roles that portray their group, and then they also often get typecast out of roles that don’t represent their group, effectively cutting them out.
In some perfect world where everyone is equal, no, straight people playing gay people or vice versa isn’t a problem. The presence of a power dynamic, as well as the volume of representation in each case, in the current cultural context does mean that if you want to fight bias in industry casting, it’s unfortunately going to be more okay to cast a gay actor as straight than a straight actor as gay (or represent a character based on a white historical figure with an actor of color, or have a trans woman play a cis woman, or whatever).
Adding the homophobia into this just exacerbates the problem because not only is a gay actor not getting a role, they’re just straight up giving it to someone who hates them instead. Not to mention the natural concern that raises about how accurate or kind that portrayal is going to be. Especially if you’re not sure they have any homosexual people with any power on set to call anyone on their shit.
The idea that “gay people should play gay parts” (or whatever) does continue to lend validity to the idea that being gay, being straight, being black, being whatever need to exist. The categories have been created by history, but they don’t need to mean anything. Obviously the ultimate goal should be that “being gay” is as pointless a distinction as “being tall and liking unbuttered toast”: there will still be tall eaters of plain toast, sure, but distinguishing them from “normal height, normal toast-butterers” won’t serve anyone’s purpose. Wouldn’t it be nicer to be able to see skin colour as no different from hair colour or shoe size? Sexuality as just “having a type”?
So to say “trans actors should play trans characters” (etc.) comes from a good place, from a position of trying to end marginalisation…but it runs the risk of cementing the notion of human categories, rather than laughing at how silly humanity was to think they were needed. And where there are categories, there can be “normal” and “other”, there can be “greater” or “lesser”.
So ABSOLUTELY, I get that it’s distasteful for someone who’s publicly homophobic to play a gay part, but I’d like to play an idealistic devil’s advocate and take the position that not only is the person wrong, but they’re wrong because the distinction isn’t even really a distinction, let alone a negative one. “Huh, so what?” is ultimately a more powerful put down then giving their argument any recognition, even by opposing it.
I wholly disagree with this dumb-ass notion that we have to cast people of a certain minority, orientation or whatever to play others of that same minority, orientation or whatever. If they’re good actors and right for the role, let gay men play straight men, and vice-versa. Let transwomen play straight women, and vice-versa. But based on their acting chops, and not anything else. Obviously this would be tempered with the idea that we don’t want to gin up offensive stereotypes by painting people in some kind of “-face” for people of the wrong ethnic background.
But I think I see where the OP might have been going; if you were to cast a really good homophobic straight actor as a gay person, you could conceivably have them playing their role in a way that is more negative than if it was portrayed by a non-homophobic person. For example, they might play up the more stereotypically gay mannerisms, even if they’re not part of story being told. And if the director isn’t 100% on watch for that sort of thing, or aware of that sort of thing, it could slide right on by. Or worse, if it makes the story “better”, they might let it slide intentionally.