Why can't Frankenstein's monster be black?

Cafe Society
1

Any reason? What about Juliet, can she be Asian? Does it matter? We all have either images in our minds or real images of what fictional characters look like. Is it allowed to cast roles on the basis of the actor’s ability, and not solely on what the character’s pre-existing physical description and where’s the line end?

Does Juilet have to be a teenaged girl? Can she be a boy? Do I still get to call the movie Romeo and Juliet? What about a 40 year old woman or must the character look exactly as it was created…forever? Is the story, just about white two teenagers in love who die? What about Our Town or the Music Man? Death of a salesman, a Rasin in the Sun, Superman, James Bond, Wuthering Heights…Wonder Woman? What can change? What’s more important, the message or the messenger?

What gets to be ‘protected’ and why? Is saying, “That’s the way the character has been portrayed X number of years”, enough? Dean Cain was not my image of Superman, but the show did well for a number of years. Does a character’s image become less important, the further away it comes from it’s ‘core’ group?

I have three images of Thor. One is the traditional version, the other Marvel’s Blonde version. Both are white, they are after; all Norse Gods. But and this is the interesting thing, I have a third image of Thor formed when I was kid. Thor could be Black, White, Asian, a Woman, even an Alien. This multi-cultural image comes from the inscription on Mjolnir (Thor’s Hammer) which reads “Whomsoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” It seemed clear to me, anyone worthy, can be a version of Thor. Am I out of luck, my movie a failure, because my Thor doesn’t resemble people’s image of what a Norse God should look like? Should I only limit my search to Blondes because that’s the image that many people have of Thor, even though he was really a Redhead?

Does it flow in only one direction? DC Vixen gets her power from a mystic amulet. Cleary anyone “worthy” should be able to be vixen, do I cast only an African woman for the role? If so then, why? Do I have a responsibility to protect the few non-white role models, while at the same time expand the market which may require altering the white ones? Is that fair or am I being ‘PC’?

Just to nip this in the bud, I’m not advocating hiring for the sake of diversity per se, but allowing whomever is the best qualified take the position, when there’s enough wiggle room. In other words the discussion isn’t Hire because of Race, but NOT to use race as a reason NOT to hire.(or weight or height or disability) when possible. Sometimes it’s not possible; but I submit, most times it is?

My question is I guess, what constitutes wiggle room? Note: This Does nothave to be about comics, it was a comic thread that got me thinking and I’m still in that mode. It’s really about pop culture and when it’s acceptable to allow modern culture to influence and alter pre-existing images.

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well there are many instances of movies that haven’t followed the preconcieved notions of characters. Both the Leonardo Dicaprio version of Romeo and Juliet and the remake of Titus with Anthony Hopkins had multiple cultures represented. Dogma protrayed god as a woman. James Bond is a british character who is most popularly remembered being played by a scot. I don’t recall catwoman being black in my imagination, but Halle Barrey seemed to pull it off (badly, but I don’t think thats a result of her race).

I guess my answer is yes, in this day and age you can cast a qualified actor to be whatever race/character you want.

As far as weigh/height, to a limited extent you can still substitute. Tom Cruise is barely over 5 foot, but he seems to pull off a pretty convincing alpha male onscreen. I can see your point that there’s no reason Juliet couldn’t be big and beautiful. But cat woman had better be a curvaceous, buxom, vixen or I aint buying it.

3

The Batman Catwoman was black once in the Adam West series, when played by Eartha Kitt.

I know the Halle Berry Catwoman wasn’t Selina Kyle but was there any Batman connection at all in the movie? I got the impression that HB’s CW was one Catwoman of many, an unofficial order of which Selina Kyle was a member.
No, I didn’t see the film.

4

There is such a thing as suspension of disbelief. After all, a 16th-century Asian girl called “Juliet” requires a hell of a lot of backstory to be believeable. Same thing for a 40-year old man.

But besides that, yeah, sure, every work of art - including “adaptations” - is independent and owes nothing to any other work of art, including its so-called source. As long as your story has some sort of internal consistancy and internal logic then I guess it’s cool.

5

Oh- and to address the actual point…

it depends on what the artist-writer wants to accomplish. If you want to do an authentic production of Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, you gotta be honest that there weren’t a lot of non-whites in 18th-Century Geneva. If you’re doing a school play of FRANKENSTEIN and a black guy gives the best audition as the Monster, then I see no problem casting as such. (Of course, SOMEONE will protest “Why is the Monster black? Are you saying blacks are monsters?”) If you’re doing an artsy-fartsy avante-gard production then all bets are off.

If Thor’s spirit can be invoked by any worthy soul who holds the Hammer, then yeah- it can be someone of any race or gender, doesn’t have to be a Caucasian male

6

Meant to add…

but you probably should actually have a Nordic male Thor spirit appear to invest the other person with his Thor-ness.
heh heh… I said “invest with his Thor-ness”.

7

It would be sort of cool to have a production of Frankenstein where, say, the monster’s right arm was from a black guy’s body, his left from an white guy, etc…

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Some of it depends on the story, of course. A Raisin in the Sun has some pretty race and era specific themes and dialogue to it. *Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner *pretty much requires a minority of some sort, although I could easily see it working today with a middle eastern man. The stories hold as themes big issues of being a minority, and to cast them with culturally elite faces - I don’t think I could buy it.

Romeo and Juliet have often been cast young because it’s seen as “about” the crazy, passionate, blind-to-everything-else love which we associate with adolescence. Do 70 year olds feel this same sort of passion? (I hope so, but I’m only 30, so what do I know?) If your actors can convice me they can, then I’ll watch a geriatric R+J. “A plague on both your nursing homes!” :smiley:

I think you run into a different problem with comics, which is that so many people develop their ideas A. from a drawing and B. at an early age. People get very loyal to childhood images. If Rogue is drawn as 35 and you grow up with that image of her in your head, it’s difficult to change your internal image of her to a 16 year old girl. But, in the end, it proved to not be impossible. That’s because Anna Paquin gave a kick-ass performance. Halle Berry, on the other hand, did not succeed in convincing me that Storm was a skinny short chick. Storm in my mind was stronger than Storm on the screen, and I still wanted my beautiful, tall, strong Amazonian Storm (Gina Torres). And I quite like Halle Berry - I just didn’t buy her as this character.

In the end, I think it comes down to theme and performance. If being a minority (or fat, or disabled or whatever) is integral to the theme of the piece, then casting should reflect that. If it’s not, or your actor can convince me that it’s not, then by all means, cast away. (Uh, that doesn’t sound quite right…)

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I’ve never thought about it before, but having Romeo & Juliet of today be of the same sex would probably be truer to the original premise of forbidden love than just having them be teenagers.

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I think you could do a version of guess who’s coming to dinner that had a white person. set the story in india, and make the elite the indian elite. I think you could do a similar thing with the japanese elite. It would certainly be possible. The themes in the story are fairly universal.

11

Absolutely. Whatever the Dr. John Wade Prentice character is or represents, it needs to be different enough from the rest of the cast to warrant the shock of the question in the title. In an Indian or Asian version, the minority face (at least the minority of the stage) could certainly be white. “A minority” (or, more specifically, “a person culturally not appropriate for my daughter”) is more integral to the theme than “black”.

If you aired an Indian or Japanese version here in the states, we’d intellectually get it, but it wouldn’t have the same emotional punch that the original had in the time that it had. We’d have to constantly keep in mind that this relationship is “equivalent” to a mixed race couple in 1967 America. Frankly, I don’t think even those of us born after 1970 in America “get” the Poitier version with the same emotional resonance it had for our parents - we can only intellectually understand why it was such a big deal.

Which is why I mentioned casting a middle eastern man today. Preferably with a good thick accent and a “scary” looking headscarf. We’re stupidly afraid of middle eastern men right now, in much the same way we were stupidly afraid of black men in 1967. A young, niave white woman falling in love with a middle eastern man could very well make her parents very concerned for her future. 24 made it into a plot point their first season.

12

On TV several years ago, I remember watching an up-to-date version of “Cinderalla”. The main character was played by Brandy. The stepmother was a white woman, and her stepsisters were white and black. The prince was Latino, and his parents were Jason Alexander (Costanza from “Seinfield”) and Whoopie Goldberg. And the fairy god mother was Whitney Houston.

I thought it was kinda cool.

I think theatrical productions can get away with having diverse casts better than movies, for some reason.

Speaking of “A Raisin in the Sun”, I recall watching a episode of “Strangers with Candy” in which Candy was in an all-white production of that play. It was hilarious.

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Bear in mind that the part of Juliet, while intended as a girl, was originally played by a boy.

14

And in the movie China Girl, “Juliet” was an Asian. Instead of the conflict being between two rival families or the Sharks vs the Jets, James Russo and Sari Chang played young lovers in contemporary Manhattan who were driven apart because he was Italian and she was Chinese.

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So? All roles of women were played by men then. That didn’t make the role an allegory for homosexuality. Once the play started, it was a woman on stage, not a man playing a woman’s role.

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Right, but I’m not really questioning the ability to ‘modernize’ a story, but the ability to simply change the character’s external apperance from what’s been traditionally been given.

Do I HAVE to remake Romero and Juliet into West Side Story in order to have a Latina play Juilet? Is it too much of a suspension of reality, to simply hire the best person for the role, regardless of her appearance? If not, do I still get to make a ‘traditional’ version of Romeo and Juliet, even though I have casted non traditionally? Is it still Romeo and Juliet or something else?

Does it matter what the ‘purists’ think, or the population for which I am trying to include in my production?

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Sean Factotum:

Their love wasn’t forbidden because they were teenagers, it was forbidden because their families hated one another. That’s certainly believeable enough without the added wrinkle of homosexuality (which is not to say that adding that wrinkle would be wrong, just that it’s not uneblievable as is).

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Not Romero, cause that would mean he eats Juliet. Well, you know what I mean… Right?

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Yeah. That’s the important part. Some characters have their ethnicity as a central part of their characters. Most modern works with racial themes, for example. Kunta Kinte *has * to be black. The stories are (at least in great part) about the time place and circumstances of the characters.

Others don’t. Romeo can be white, or Asian, or whatever. The play isn’t really about medieval/renaissance Verona (after all, its adapted from a Roman work about persons), but about forbidden love. That’s not to say one culdn’t make a version that explored period Italian society (and thus used actors that could at least pass as noble Veronans), but you don’t have to. I would say they have to young. Youthful impetuousness and foolishness is a central theme to R&J’s characters.

An exception in Shakespeare is Othello. Othello has to be black, or, if your getting funkier, an ethnic other as compared to Iago and Desdemona. Now, in the past white actors have played him using blackface, but that’s no longer a good idea.

20

Well, if you’re talking pure legality, what I vaguely remember from my theater days is that if it’s a show you’re paying royaltys for, you may not change more than X% (I think it was 20%) of the script and still maintain the temporary rights. If you change 25% of a royalty script and don’t pay for it, you’re likely to be hit with a plagarism suit. Nothing’s said about casting, IIRC.

There are dozens of ways people get around changing story from novel or story to script: “Based on”, “Insipired by”, “Suggested by” and the like. Whether or not the original author or author’s estate will let you use their title or character’s names is up to your lawyers and agents to wrangle out.

Casting is legally entirely up to you. Whether or not your production will be successful is another story. Bad press from the purists can ruin you (or, in the case of I, Robot, not.) If the population which you’re trying to attract won’t accept your casting ideas, you’ll simply have a flop on your hands.