Well, I don’t see why a white actor couldn’t play Othello, though obviously blackface is out. It then takes understanding by the audience that the character is a dark-skinned Moor while the actor obviously isn’t, but obviously the dialogue also doesn’t change.
What I really don’t understand is the arguments over voice acting. Voice acting used to be a very niche field with the same actors doing anything and everything because there wasn’t much money in it (for them or the stuff being made) until first Disney and then definitely Pixar brought in the celebrity actor change with Robin Williams in Aladdin and then Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in Toy Story. Good voice acting is hard, especially on low-budget animation where the actors are expected to portray multiple characters.
Note my previous caveat “But when your portrayal is supposedly straightforward realism”. Game of Thrones isn’t anybody’s idea of “straightforward realism”.
Everybody’s pretty well aware that audience suspension of disbelief in the case of fantasy or other “imaginative” genres, as well as in the sort of “innovative counterhistorical” variants I mentioned, is somewhat different from its counterpart in works that are intended to come across as mundanely realistic.
Nobody’s declaring that only “x” can play “x”. The point is that actors who really don’t look like “x” visually undercut the audience’s perception of “x”.
If you disagree, then would you be just fine with my example of platoons of short female actors playing tall burly male soldiers in purportedly realistic historical war movies? That wouldn’t come across as odd to you or take you out of the viewing experience at all? Yeah, right.
What I find disingenuous is this sort of strawman argument, typically trotted out only in defense of the casting of white actors as (same-gender) nonwhite characters, that theatrical art requires us to accept anybody playing anything because it’s “acting”.
You don’t even believe that yourself, as per your remark a couple of years ago to the effect that movie technology would allow the production of new Sean Connery Bond films with a (still living at the time) “de aged” Connery as Bond.
According to your supposed rationale, why would an elderly Sean Connery (assuming he were still alive) need to be technologically “de aged” to play a 40-year-old Bond? As long as he’s got the “acting ability” to portray the character, why does he have to look as young as the character?
Nah, you don’t really have a logically consistent position on this issue. And of course the resemblance criteria for lead actors portraying a known individual protagonist, such as Hopkins playing Nixon, are different from those for actors portraying characters whose only salient visual characteristics are general gender/size/race/ethnicity.
Do you think it’s appropriate that someone making a movie about, say, Navajo code-talkers use white people or black people or Koreans to play the actual code-talkers?
I’m curious about straight actors in gay roles, particularly when there are sex scenes. Ledger and Gyllenhaal were convincing (to straight cis me, anyway) in Brokeback Mountain, but would they be cast today?
(Might not be the best example, since their characters lived mostly as straight men.)
(Connery hadn’t died then).
I am talking about de-aging actors in film. I proffer no opinion in that post about whether it’s a good idea.
(Remember this was a topic at the time after The Irishman came out).
And to answer your question, and what is asked below:
…a good actor can play it well enough that the suspension of disbelief can be maintained. In the original cast of Hamilton most of the character were played by black or mixed race people and they were good enough to make it work.
In another recent movie, the Laundromat, Meryl Streep plays Latino woman. Amazingly well.
Certainly some situations will present a challenge, perhaps a insurmountable one.
What?! Hamilton is one of the examples of “innovative counterhistorical versions”, as opposed to “straightforward realism”, that I literally mentioned by name back in post #32.
The whole point of Hamilton casting was that audiences were supposed to see the actor’s/character’s race as contradicting the corresponding historical reality. It was a counterfactual reclaiming of “Founding Fathers” narratives from the perspective of people who usually get left out of them.
The characterization and acting in Hamilton were also skilled enough to convey interactions and emotions inspired by the historically attested figures and events. But no fucking way was Hamilton intended or perceived as any kind of “straightforward realism”. (As you can also tell from dialogue like “when push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love” attributed to King George III. FFS.)
So the success of the against-type casting of Hamilton was not at all merely that the actors “were good enough to make it work”, but rather that what they were trying to accomplish was fundamentally different from straightforward theatrical realism.
Again, a key point of the movie is that the Latina character Elena is intended to be a sort of counterpart to Streep’s main (and very Anglo-American appearing) character Ellen Martin. Which is why they’re played by the same actor, who goes through an explicit transformation scene from one to the other at the end of the film. As the director himself said about Streep’s Elena role, “she has to play the part, she has to be disguised. There has to be something a little off about her. You have to do that to pay off the last shot.”
So your examples are pretty much 0 for 2 there in actually supporting the point you’re trying to make.
I presume that’s your way of conceding that yes, you would find it distractingly unrealistic to watch, e.g., platoons of short female actors playing tall burly male soldiers in purportedly realistic historical war movies.
Al Jolson, Mapplethorpe, Serrano, de Sade. All controversial. None should be banned. Art can be about getting in peoples face. It depends on how the art is portrayed.
This clip is Petey Greene and Howard Stern in 1981. On the surface this seems to be highly offensive. But Green and Stern use it to have a constructive discussion on race. Sometimes an over the top approach can lead to meaningful dialog.
The distinction between not allowing such casting and banning it is insignificant. But the casting debate is really a smokescreen for the real issues of censorship and artistic freedom. Consolidation of media has been a disaster for filmmakers because it allows a few players to have an oversized influence on the industry.
(https://pen.org/report/made-in-hollywood-censored-by-beijing/#)
I mean, she’s right that it’s not great for non-Jewish actors to portray Jewish characters primarily by emphasizing stereotypically Jewish characteristics like big noses and “New York” accents. But then, it’s not great for Jewish actors to portray Jewish characters primarily by emphasizing stereotypically Jewish characteristics either. ISTM that that problem is more with how the character is being presented and written than with who’s playing them.
The term “blackface” refers to people actually making physical changes to appear black. Yellowface may or may not not involve skin color changes, but it still has physical changes. Thus I don’t think the term “Jewface” makes sense unless you are specifically talking about making actual modifications, like with makeup or prosthetics or clothing or something.
I’m not saying I can’t understand having an issue with a character whose Jewishness is an essential part of the role being played by a non-Jewish person. I just think that terms like “Jewface” might create an additional barrier in getting people to accept the idea. It sounds like it’s saying, “This is just as bad as blackface minstrel shows!”
I suspect Silverman used the term deliberately to make headlines, in her typical provocateur manner. I don’t entirely fault her for that, as that can be necessary to get people to pay attention. But I do think it’s not a term that we need to cling to or allow to become the divisive issue.
Now, if they give Mrs. Maisel a crooked nose? That’s Jewface.
The reverse, though, gives me pause. Consider, say, Peter Falk as Columbo, talking about his family being Italian and conversing in Italian with people of Italian ancestry and thus and such; you could say he’s like unto James Caan as Santino Corleone — or like Jon Bernthal having played Al Capone and Lee Iacocca before moving on, at present, to appearing as Johnny Soprano (which is to say: with Corey Stoll as, y’know, Junior Soprano).
If I were to wholeheartedly sign on for Silverman’s point, then, what, exactly, would I have to agree to when things would be the other way around?
None of the main characters in the 1988 movie Smoke Signals were from the Coeur d’Alene tribe. The movie was made by and with Native Americans. Now whether this was because they couldn’t find any members of the tribe willing to act in or not, I don’t know. But clearly casting fellow Native Americans was important.
I was, of course, referring to the role rather than the actor playing the role. Gozer was full on supernatural. Vigo, while originally a human hundreds of years before the movie, was implied to have supernatural powers even back when he was a living human. In the reboot we got a bog standard human who wanted supernatural powers to get back against the world because he felt bullied. IMHO that isn’t what Ghostbusters should be about.
