For UltraVires - The component that you seem to be missing is the different experiences of those in power and privilege vs. those not in power and privilege.
So, in a very rough reading of the rules:
White actors shouldn’t portray other races, but other races can portray traditionally white characters or historical figures (Hamilton).
From your discussion, religion is not (quite yet) as hard-stop as race in terms of actors and portrayals. The example of Tony Shalhoub, who is Arabic, playing Jewish in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Gender and sexuality are trending in the direction of exclusivity in casting, but aren’t there yet. We will still see straight actors playing LGBTQ character.
In these scenarios, can you pick out which side is considered in power and privilege vs. which side is not? I bet you can.
Except that much of what I see in the OP and many of the responses is skepticism that there actually is anything wrong with it, and that the reasons given by Jenny Slate are valid.
I just think we fundamentally disagree on how embarrassing this is. I’m glad she did and I’m glad she spoke out about it. She started a conversation on it and a lot of people of color have been happy that has happened. Simply privately quitting and the show saying she left without specifying why doesn’t allow that to happen. A lot of black publications have said it’s a good step, and hopefully it brings further into focus the conversation that black voice actors don’t get the opportunities they should. It could be something to kick some production companies to think about these things. Good for Slate and Bell.
From theGrio:
So this includes the argument that Slate is slightly short-sighted, but they appreciate what she’s done here and advanced the conversation.
I think a fair amount of people are more comfortable with gay characters if they know the actor is actually straight. I’m not sure Will and Grace with 2 gay guys would have gone over as well.
I’m a white guy, so I’m guessing here, but I’m going to say that while having a black voice actor be given a role previously held by a white actor would be nice, most black people would prefer that the police stop murdering black people in their beds and in the streets. In fact, they’d probably prefer that to getting a Juneteenth Holiday. Why is that so fucking hard to understand? They want to people to stop murdering them, and they get offered Juneteenth mattress sales and a role change in an admittedly highly watched cable show.
…Ultravires asked “Could someone humor me and tell me why this is bad?” People have been explaining why they “think that it is bad” throughout the thread. That people have been mocking and disagreeing with those reasons as well throughout the thread doesn’t take away those explanations.
You use Arabic and Jewish as though they are mutually exclusive. They are not. Tons of Sephardic Jews are Arabs. Ye, people usually use the word Arab to refer to Christian and Muslim Arabs, but there is nothing inherent in the term that means that. As Peter Griffin has said ‘Take off the funny hats, and I can’t tell you apart.’
I don’t really get the complaint. It’s not as though Slate’s decision is slowing down police reform. It’s not a question of picking one or the other. Her decision does potentially shed more light on the BLM movement and make people more aware of systemic racial issues in American society. No one is presenting this as “Well, guess we’re all done now” and unlike a mattress sale, this decision will have a tangible impact on at least one Black actor (ignoring any additional awareness or effects).
There’s also nothing inherently different between Serbs and Croats, Russians and Ukrainians, Indians and Pakistanis, or Greeks and Turks, and yet, I wouldn’t recommend confusing one with the other. At least, not to their faces.
Mr. Willis is not, however, pretending to be black.
As I understand it, you have two core issues. The first being that minorities are underrepresented in “Hollywood” in general and a white person taking a Black role is only making that underrepresentation worse. The other being tied to the idea of white people “wearing” a race or culture for fun with the privilege of taking it off when they are done and reclaiming their white identity and life. Black people (for purposes of this thread) may take offense at the idea of actors playing Black for fun and profit when convenient while disregarding and being unsaddled by the trials that come with being Black in America.
Religion, unlike race, is something you have control over. If you dislike being Christian or the nominal issues that come from it, you have the option to stop being Christian. You do not have the option to stop being Black. Being Jewish presents a dilemma since religion and ethnicity are tied together but that shouldn’t have much to do with the Black/white actor issue.
Robin Williams is not playing a woman in Mrs Doubtfire. He is playing a cisgender straight man who disguises himself as a woman.
Cleveland being animated doesn’t really change the issues of representation or a white person wearing the role of a Black person for convenience.
No, because the power disparity isn’t there. When a Black dude pretends to be Thomas Jefferson on stage, he’s still a Black dude at the end of the evening with all the burdens that entails in America.
If you can perform the task competently then being Asian, black, white, whatever is irrelevant. Viewing everything through the lens of identity politics, often for selfish reasons, is not productive.
Being empathetic and desiring to assist other people, however, is productive. Slate’s move seems to fall more under this category than “OMG identity politics”.
So he can pretend to be anything in the world except black?
Blacks are underrepresented in a lot of things and that is a separate issue. Should a white person not be a doctor because the white person is taking a job away from a black person? That seems silly. Plus it would run afoul of federal law. Yes, there are BFOQs and if I had a play where I portrayed MLK, I could probably say that hiring a black dude was a BFOQ, but a voice? A white guy can do a voice, but I am discriminating based upon race?
The plight of blacks in America is also a separate issue that is neither furthered nor hindered by a person pretending.
We’ve discussed this in other threads, but no, if you sincerely believe that your religion is the one single true way to eternal life and any other way does not, you simply cannot just discard that like an old T-shirt. It’s pretty intrinsic.
The irony here is pretty thick. He is pretending to be a woman in the movie and pretending openly for the entertainment of the viewers. Isn’t that worse than pretending behind the scenes?
Sure it does. There is no representation. Cleveland is pixels in a computer. He is not black; he is an animation. He has no flesh, blood, or soul to be usurped.
I appreciate the entirety of your thoughtful reply, but this same old trope simply does not sell with most people and certainly not me. If we are ever going to get past these racial disparities, then it simply cannot be that if a white person does X it is wrong but if a black person does X it is okay because of racial injustice. That’s a surefire way to get poor whites angry about stuff and it is counterproductive.