It “kinda sorta” smacks of blackface. There has been an unwritten rule in animation - white actors voice white characters, black actors voice black characters, Latino actors voice Latino characters, and Asian actors voice Asian characters. There are some exceptions (Carl on The Simpsons and Cleveland on The Cleveland Show come to mind), but for the most part, it holds true.
Cross-sexual performances, on the other hand, don’t seem to be as much of a problem, mainly because most young boy characters are voiced by adult women, especially on TV, where if you use boys, you have to replace them as they get older. (Case in point: the series Hey Arnold! went through four Arnolds - and one Helga.)
I didn’t say anybody stole anything. What I want to know is why the outrage is only flowing one way. Cartoons are just a drawing. The best voice actor should get the part, regardless of age, race, sex, religion, or national origin.
Jackie Chan had his own Saturday morning cartoon on the WB. But, presumably because of his accent, a different actor provided the voice of the Jackie character. I’m pretty sure it was the same person who did the voice of Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler in X Men Evolution.
The recurring role of Tohru’s mother (Tohru being a sumo wrestler who started out evil but then turned good) was played by the same woman who was Margaret Cho’s grandma in the sitcom All American Girl, and Laosian Khan Soupinousinphone’s mom in King Of The Hill.
and Jones did a decent job of aping the cultural mores of an evil space wizard
I know you probably didn’t intend it, but the use of “aping” to describe a black actor definitely got a from me.
I agree with your post though - I think it’s commendable that Jenny Slate is stepping aside to give the opportunity to a POC, but I don’t think an apology was really necessary. I am hoping though that POC voice actors will be given more opportunities to voice characters of any sort of background - it’s a nice step that black actors may get a chance to voice black animated characters, but hopefully this trend will not cause casting directors to typecast them into those roles.
A black actor can’t do the role either. The character has both a black and white parent, so the actor who voices it must have the same exact familial background, otherwise racism.
On a tangent, I watched the Netflix teen dramady Alexia & Katie. For the actors playing a non-adopted family, the father is full Korean, the mother full Tiffany Amber Thiessan, the daughter is half Fillipino, and the son is full white. I found it funny that they didn’t make any attempt to make the characters look like they were related to each other.
I think it’s a good decision given that there are plenty of black voice actors that could do the job.
Yes voice actors… um, act. But given the fact that black people are very often overlooked and underpaid and she’s already a wealthy actress… it seems like a solid personal decision.
Virtue signaling isn’t inherently some false front, this seems like a valid virtue to take a stand on if you’re in a position to do so. She was in that position and she did a virtuous thing.
So now, it is the Blacks and the extreme liberals who are championing the cause and enforcing the doctrine of “a single drop”. Boy, I sure didn’t see that comimg when I marched for civil rights in the 60s.
Off the top of your head, how many POC voice actors can you think of that voice white characters? If casting were truly colorblind, then you should be able to find ample examples of this happening. Instead, we only get the “any actor should be able to play any character” pushback when talking about white actors playing POC characters. If there were hundreds of black voice actors making a comfortable living voicing characters of any race, nobody would be pushing back on Jenny Slate voicing this one character.
Eh, not really. I’d say that someone who has one Black parent probably experiences enough of the day-to-day challenges that come from being Black that they’d “count” and, if you have a half-Black character then a Black person is probably approaching that character from a different place than a white person who hasn’t experienced that. The voice actors stepping down or changing roles are recognizing this fact.
If someone out there was saying that we need a 1/8th Black person for this role then “OMG One Drop Rule!” might apply. Just acknowledging that a “full” black person and a “half” Black person have shared experiences that a white person doesn’t have isn’t remotely the same thing.
The whole point of acting is that people pretend to be what they are not. Actors try to create their characters by imagining what the character has experienced and what has shaped them. They are able to do that because our common humanity lets us empathize with others who are different. To say that it is impossible to pretend to be of another race lessens that common humanity. The ability an actor has to create a compelling character is what they should be judged on and not the color of their skin.
To be honest, I don’t really care who voices who. I just don’t buy into the “This is just like the One Drop Rule” nonsense I’ve seen here and elsewhere. No, it’s not.
On the other hand, I also don’t care if a white voice actor feels that it’s problematic for them to voice a Black (or half-, etc) character and decides to step away from the role. I think our common humanity is better served by people being empathetic and concerned about their actions than proving that a white woman can voice a black woman just fine.
Right. As if we didn’t just have a President who was half black and half white and everyone treated him as black (including the racists who kept talking about him being half white, and therefore wasn’t really black).
I applaud this move by Jenny Slate. Having more representation in voicing acting is a good goal. And as @Shalmanese points out you don’t really see the opposite that often (is James Earl Jones in Star Wars the exception that proves the rule - and even then until the end of Empire Strikes Back there was no indication Vader was white).
from me.