Switching the Race of Characters

Cafe Society
141

Keep talking about “art” in high-minded terms all you want. The entire premise of the thread is discussing public reaction to changing the race of broad, commercial properties.

An “artist” can challenge the status quo and question preconceived notions about what a character is all he wants, but those choices will be subject to criticism and will ultimately be tested by the market.

Most of us agree that there are some characters or some types of changes that will be accepted by the market and some that will not. Maybe there’s a definable rule of thumb here, maybe there’s not. That’s the discussion I suppose.

If you think my assessment that a female Bond falls outside of that “rule” we can discuss it I suppose, but if your position is that any change is acceptable because that’s “art’s job”, then discussing it is pointless because we’re having two totally different discussions.

142

Oh, yes, I do understand what he was saying. And my reaction to it absolutely applies.

I’m not talking about art in “high-minded” terms. I’m talking about art in the sense that all these things are art. Popular art is still art, and good art is good whether it’s popular or not.

Nobody knew that Star Wars was going to be the most popular thing ever, until George Lucas made Star Wars. Or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or Star Trek (in fact, people didn’t realize how popular it was until years after it had been cancelled.)

Anybody who thinks that they know for sure what kinds of changes will accepted by the market and what will not is fooling emself. Time after time people have disproved the conventional wisdom about what will travel and what won’t.

Make a good movie, and everyone will forget that a character was portrayed by an actor of the “wrong” race or sex or gender. That’s the only thing there is to know. Taking Fantastic Four for example. That movie was terrible. Had it been good, the race casting wouldn’t have made a difference.

And this is all tied up in the arrogance of the status quo, the prejudices of those currently holding power. And that’s all about racism in society and the racism of the people who have the power to make decisions. Those who think that the race of a character, or the sex or gender, can fundamentally never be changed or that the race of an actor portraying a character is an insurmountable hurdle is doing so from a position of being steeped in a culture of racism and sexism.

(And, of course, white men never suffer when one white man fails while every non-white, non-man is pasted with failure when one non-white, non-male person fails.)

143

Okay, then, I’ll bite: When you say “sameness”, what exactly are you talking about?

144

Strawman.

145

Exactly what he said:

E has set some kind of boundary around the “band of brothers” quality that e is familiar with that requires there to be no female characters. But:

(1) It’s an arbitrary boundary. There’s nothing inherent about it and one could easily draw other boundaries. Why focus on the absence of female characters?

(2) It’s seldom that any two movies have exactly the same “X quality” anyway. Everything moves a bit this way and that way.

(3) So what if it doesn’t have exactly the same quality? With every tick of the clock we’re all experiencing all kinds of different qualities. That old “band of brothers” movie has “X quality.” This next one will have “X +/- (Y * 10 ^ Z)” quality. Meanwhile, we might learn that the “band of brothers” quality is either (1) much more flexible than we thought, or (2) not really all that interesting, or (3) a mistaken category in the first place.

(4) You can go around until the end of time saying that “nothing’s the same if we don’t keep this thing purely X.” It’s just not the same if we start allowing girls in our club. It’s just not the same if we start allowing Jews in our club. It’s just not the same if we start allowing non-whites in our club. It’s just not the same if we start allowing Eastern Europeans and Southern Europeans in our club, or Irish people.

That just becomes a crutch to prevent progress. In the end it serves nothing but to preserve the institutional prejudices of (in this case) the entertainment industry.

Again, the racial issue in the entertainment industry is the systematic exclusion of non-white people from and the over-representation of white men on-camera, and behind-the-camera roles. It’s not because non-white people can’t play certain roles. It’s simply because they’re not being given the opportunity to play them. And any argument that allows that to be perpetuated is disregardable.

It’s all very convenient for the white men who represent the status quo power structure to say, well, if we don’t preserve X, Y, Z exclusivity for white men, then you just won’t get the same feeling from the next band of brothers story.

And they get to ride that argument on the back of people who combine their biases with their failures of imagination to say “oh, believe me, it just won’t work.”

No, actually, there’s no reason to believe you.

A black man just can’t be a leading man. Will Smith leads some fairly successful action films. (But!but!but! Will Smith is the only black leading man who will travel! :dubious:)

A superhero movie can’t be headlined a black man. Black Panther becomes the second highest grossing superhero movies of all time.

A superhero movie can’t be headlined by a woman. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are the 9th and 10th highest grossing superhero movies of all time.

Can’t can’t can’t. Until it can. Oh, that’s an exception. Meanwhile all the bombs that were led by white men somehow are always exceptions.

It’ll be the same thing. You can’t have a black James Bond. You can’t have a woman James Bond. You can’t have a “band of brothers” movie if one of the characters is a woman. Until someone finally is allowed to make one that works.

146

:rolleyes:

147

LOL. All that for a drop of blood.

Still doesn’t change the fact that Shawshank is a period piece ‘band of brothers’ movie. And it doesn’t work if one of Red or Andy are switched to a female role.

Which (Along with ‘theres a certain quality to intentionally female-less films’) is all I said.

148

The thing is, though, that those two girls, for all the difference in their complexions, still share some common features of bone structure that make them actually look related to each other. “Sibling of different races” have that quality, in my experience. Even if the hair/skin/eye colors are different they still share other features.

The casting of Johnny and Sue Storm in that execrable version of Fantastic Four clearly were not biological relations (except in the sense that both actors are human beings). In which case, yes, presenting them as siblings by adoption was more plausible.

Even so, I would have been happier with the unambiguously black actors cast in those roles as full siblings. But then, there was a lot to NOT like about that movie and that casting choice turned out to be one of more minor flaws.

149

In response to your numbered points:

(1) (there is no difference between all-male stories and other types of stories)

Let A = the way men relate to each other in the absence of women
Let B = the way women relate to each other in the absence of men
Let C = the way men and women relate to each other in mixed groups

It is absolutely inherent that all three are different from each other. The fact that you’re essentially arguing that A = B = C is, quite frankly, bizarre. It’s not woke or novel or fighting the power; it’s just plain wrong.

(2) (no two movies are exactly identical)

Tautology.

(3) So what if it doesn’t have exactly the same quality?

This directly concedes the original point you were trying to rebut.

(4) You can go around until the end of time saying that “nothing’s the same if we don’t keep this thing purely X.”

Irrelevant soapbox rant. Bonus points for being a strawman. It’s on-topic for the thread, but has nothing to do with the fact that “band of brothers” stories are inherently changed when you add women, because men relate to women differently than they relate to other men.

It feels weird that I have to explain this.

150

Yeah, I know you can roll your eyes and walk away because you don’t actually have face accountability.

It’s just soooo convenient how all these so-called immutable laws of commerce or art or whatever just happen to support the status quo hierarchy.

I saw how some folks squealed bloody murder when a non-white actor was cast as M.J. in a Spider-Man movie (“Mary Jane is a red-head! Period!”). That movie was pretty successful.

Then I saw people squealing when Miles Morales was written as a new Spider-Man. (It’s just politically correct pandering.). Well that made to the big screen it’s all kinds of Spider-people and it wa successful too.

I don’t think there any reason to take the word of people who just know what the public will accept when it comes to race and casting.

151

Ha! Totally agreed with you there.

I still hold much of the SDMB in contempt for all the outrage that JOHN CONSTANTINE IS BLONDE! when Keanu Reeves played him.

152

Only people I saw bitching about Miles were plebs who didn’t understand it was an Ultimate universe replacement. Not difficult to understand either since the media (go figure) ran with “Peter Parker is dead!!!” as their lead…and then would bury that it was the Ultimate one.

153

Recently I learned that Bette Midler was originally chosen for “Sister Act” instead of Whoopie Goldberg. Midler turned down the role because she didn’t think her fans wanted to see her dressed like a nun.

Now, one could easily argue that Midler was the logical choice for that role. She’s got the pipes and the acting chops, and she was a bigger star than Whoopie back in 1992. Plus, she is white. You can’t go wrong with white! And yeah, the nun that inspired the whole thing is white too.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine anyone but Whoopie playing that role. And despite the fact the character was originally written with a white actress in mind, the Broadway production of “Sister Act” now only casts black women to play the part.

So people who insist that the market must be catered to at all costs, just remember that the market is much more open-minded than is often assumed. People will watch a movie if the material is good enough. And even more will watch if there are big enough names in it. It doesn’t matter if one or two of the “big names” don’t have the right shade of skin color some unimaginative fanboy was expecting. Why? Because most people don’t read the source material in the first place. So they don’t have any expectations.

154

Is it? In A, does it change if all the men are gay, or radical faeries, or feminists? What about in B and C?

There are plenty of depictions of how men relate to each other in the absence of women that have nothing to do with my experiences of the same. I don’t think it’s an inherent quality at all.

That said, there are certain social structures that enforce gender segregation, and there are plenty of interesting stories to be told in those structures. Das Boot would be a profoundly different movie if half the sailors were women, because it’d be clearly set in an alternate universe where Nazi submarine captains allowed women on board. If Sister Act featured a bunch of habit-clad dudes belting out hymns alongside the women, I’d just be confused.

155

I don’t care. Art/theatre/tv/movies/etc will always be copied and subverted. That’s just what people do.

You see Hollywood redoing Japanese movies with American actors, Bollywood redoing Hollywood films with Indian actors, and everything in between. Its an industry that has no problem remaking, rebooting, rehashing anything in anyway. They do so out of artistic direction, necessity, or to cynically increase their audience. Ghostbusters with an all-female cast. Romeo and Juliet as a musical. Ancient Greek historian Xenophon’s historic drama as a campy New York City gangwar film. Dinner for schmucks was originally French, Oldboy was Korean, Vanilla Sky was Spanish, and Disney adapted almost all of their content from the Brother’s Grimm, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Victor Hugo and many more.

Just get used to it…or don’t.

156

Of course, though I don’t see how “or feminists” is relevant. The key is whether or not the group includes people you could want to fuck. Are you implying it doesn’t? And even within that, surely gay-men-only has a different dynamic to hetero-coed and both are in turn different from lesbian-only groups.

I don’t see how your anecdotal experience is relevant; I’m not saying that ALL men-only groups are the same.

And then you freely concede my point in your next paragraph, though you seem to be implying it’s all socialization. I don’t think that’s true. Put any bunch of strangers together and the group dynamic will absolutely be different depending on if they want to fuck each other or not.

157

Jerks are modifying and distributing pirated movies to spread their sexist and racist ideologies.

158

The part of Ripley in Alien was originally written for a man, but nobody gave a damn that a woman was cast, and it launched a genre of action women that didn’t rely on men to rescue them.

Lara Croft in Tomb Raider was originally conceived as a man - gamers wouldn’t want a POV character that’s a girl, right? - but having a woman as the POV in a video game didn’t impair the popularity of the franchise.

Seems thegeneral public, even specialized segments of it, are far more open to change than many suppose.

159

This is it right here. A lot of white dudes (cuz let’s be honest, it’s almost ALWAYS white dudes) quite simply lack the imagination to envision non-white and/or non-male people in roles that have been traditionally reserved for white guys.

Superman:

  • Alien from another planet = disbelief suspended
  • Super strength = disbelief suspended
  • Ability to fly = disbelief suspended
  • Shoot lasers from his eyes = disbelief suspended
  • Invulnerable to damn near everything = disbelief suspended
  • Looks like a black guy = WTF?!?! NO ONE IS EVER GOING TO BELIEVE THAT!!!

The question I really want to ask is this: who are you guys trying to fool, us or yourselves? Because your actions make it pretty damn obvious what your hang ups really are.

160

When classically trained opera singer Robert Guillaume took over for Michael Crawford in the LA production of The Phantom of the Opera, the theatre braced itself for complaints about an African American Phantom in a love story with the (white) Elizabeth Stack as Christine.

They got exactly two complaints.

Theatre people are so classy!