Race & Ethnicity On TV

[Irlandesa]

2 hours ago, Neurochick said:

Question.  Should Netflix be called out for showing what exists?  

No but I will say that I sometimes felt the show would focus on a certain aspect to sort of "side eye" the characters--Aparna especially.

The fair skinned comments just sort of breezed by as if the show didn't realize the implications of those comments.

[ursula]

1 hour ago, DearEvette said:

Netflix seems to be on the cusp of changing this.  They did a good job with The Virgin River And Sweet Magnolia series (a several characters were race bent) and Shonda Rhimes is adapting the Bridgerton romance series (race-bending some characters as well ) for Netflix.

Well racebending is all very well and good... but when we have original source content like Alyssa Cole's impressive bibliography that star multi racial, multi ethnicity main characters, I'm left wondering why? 

[Minneapple]

2 hours ago, Irlandesa said:

The fair skinned comments just sort of breezed by as if the show didn't realize the implications of those comments.

And I think that's where the show fails. It would have been better if, rather than just as a trashy reality show type, it had actually made some kind of social comment on the insistence for fair skin and to stick to your own caste. If it made some kind of comment about the pressure for women to get married early in their 20s and have children. That kind of thing.

[aradia22]

I've already said that I don't expect great things from the Bridgerton series. I know everyone is constantly having sex (which wouldn't make it that different from the early seasons of How to Get Away with Murder) but it also needs to work as a period piece. Also, I just don't have a lot of faith in them weaving multiple books together. Romance novels usually work on the strength of the main couple. Not 5 or 6 simultaneous romances. Even in a series of interconnected books.

I haven't read Alyssa Cole. I've read Courtney Milan but not the newer books where she's made an effort to diversify in terms of race, age, sexuality, etc. Tbh, they seem a little cringey from the blurbs. Like newer Tessa Dare. Tessa hasn't made any attempt to diversify her books but someone apparently told her she was hilarious because now she thinks she's a comedian and her books are a nightmare. I'm not saying that older authors can't be woke or slip in ideas they've been reading about online. And most of these women are around 40 and not in their 60's like some of the Harlequin writers still trying to write 20-something virgins. But, you know, some of it is cringe. 

I really like Tara Pammi's books. She writes Harlequin Presents. To my knowledge, she hasn't written any Indian characters or even those sheikhs from made up countries. Even though Courtney is a POC, I do think she's a little... tentative in writing POC characters in the stories that I've already read. Not saying that everyone has to write to their own specific ethnic background but sometimes yeah, it does make a difference. 

[Neurochick]

41 minutes ago, Minneapple said:

And I think that's where the show fails. It would have been better if, rather than just as a trashy reality show type, it had actually made some kind of social comment on the insistence for fair skin and to stick to your own caste. If it made some kind of comment about the pressure for women to get married early in their 20s and have children. That kind of thing.

I agree, but I don't think the movie was supposed to be a social commentary.  Sometimes a person just wants to see what is and come to their own conclusions.  

I don't think it's my business who a person wants to marry or have children with.  

[Irlandesa]

40 minutes ago, aradia22 said:

I've already said that I don't expect great things from the Bridgerton series. I know everyone is constantly having sex (which wouldn't make it that different from the early seasons of How to Get Away with Murder) but it also needs to work as a period piece. Also, I just don't have a lot of faith in them weaving multiple books together. Romance novels usually work on the strength of the main couple. Not 5 or 6 simultaneous romances. Even in a series of interconnected books.

Somewhat off topic but I don't think that's the way they're doing the Bridgerton series.  Based on the casting, it really looks like the focus will be on the first book as most of the love interests from later books aren't in this first season.  They'll have to add stories to make a series out of a rather thin plot but I don't think they'll necessarily be the stories from later books. 

50 minutes ago, aradia22 said:

Not saying that everyone has to write to their own specific ethnic background but sometimes yeah, it does make a difference. 

Even if this is the case (I haven't read her books), a lot of the issues can be finessed by having a diverse writing staff because an adaptation is going to give the writers room some space to grow out the world a bit.

2 hours ago, ursula said:

Well racebending is all very well and good... but when we have original source content like Alyssa Cole's impressive bibliography that star multi racial, multi ethnicity main characters, I'm left wondering why?

Yeah. I don't read much romance but I did check out a few of the Bridgerton books when I heard Netflix was doing this.  I'm still looking forward to it but damn that first book felt like it was about not much of anything beyond a trope. (And I love tropes but I need it to develop).  The Alyssa Cole book I read was better.  I hope someone comes a knocking. 

[DearEvette]

2 hours ago, ursula said:

Well racebending is all very well and good... but when we have original source content like Alyssa Cole's impressive bibliography that star multi racial, multi ethnicity main characters, I'm left wondering why? 

In romance book to tv adaptations  I think Jane Austen is the Tolkein cognate.  I mean, y'all how many versions of Pride and Prejudice and Emma have been adapted to tv and movies.  And how many modern "re-tellings" are greenlit all the time?

And as I mention upthread wrt to fantasy, romance is in some ways as guilty of fantasy of being a victim of selection bias. Worse actually.  At least in SFF there are published black writers who were allowed to write and publish with black characters in the as far back as the 60s.  AA romance novelists couldn't get published at all and if they did they had  to write white characters.  The first romance novel published by and about AA was in 1980.  The next one wasn't til 1984 and it wasn't til 1994 that more than a handful of AA authors even got publishing contracts.

And given what we know about how shows get greenlit, the dearth BIPOC writers in writers rooms, the lack of opportunity and advancement, I am just not surprised with how this is all playing out. 

 

23 minutes ago, aradia22 said:

've already said that I don't expect great things from the Bridgerton series. I know everyone is constantly having sex (which wouldn't make it that different from the early seasons of How to Get Away with Murder) but it also needs to work as a period piece. Also, I just don't have a lot of faith in them weaving multiple books together. Romance novels usually work on the strength of the main couple. Not 5 or 6 simultaneous romances. Even in a series of interconnected books.

 I think this is just supposed to be the first book.  I am very curious about it.  I don't necessarily expect great things, but I hope to be pleasantly surprised if it is done well.

[Ohiopirate02]

As much as I would watch the hell out of an Alyssa Cole adaptation, I really want someone to adapt some Beverly Jenkins's historicals starting with Indigo.  

[aradia22]

Quote

In romance book to tv adaptations  I think Jane Austen is the Tolkein cognate.  I mean, y'all how many versions of Pride and Prejudice and Emma have been adapted to tv and movies.  And how many modern "re-tellings" are greenlit all the time?

I think it depends what you count as romance. Like, even more than Jane Austen, romance novelists love to do twists on Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella. So tell me why movies and TV shows rarely cast actors who are not white or white passing for these adaptations?

The exceptions I can think of are Vanessa Hudgens (half Filipina) in Beastly, Selena Gomez (half Mexican) in Another Cinderella Story, and Kristin Kreuk (half Chinese) in the Beauty and the Beast TV series. If you want to make the argument, there are Cinderella-inspired stories with a poor girl and a rich guy that do have more diverse casting... like Ugly Betty, but there are plenty of other examples of Cinderella and B&TB being told over and over in a straightforward way where they just cast white actors because... reasons.

Also, Bride and Prejudice. The Darcy is one of the worst actors I've ever seen but I still love that movie. 

Edited July 28, 2020 by aradia22

[Silver Raven]

4 minutes ago, aradia22 said:

Kristin Kreuk (half Chinese) in the Beauty and the Beast TV series

They even gave her a Chinese mother in Beauty and the Beast so as to not try to whitewash the character.

 

[Anduin]

5 hours ago, DearEvette said:

And 2) even when there are other/different works by more diverse writers,  TV execs will ignore those and still choose to adapt the same type of works because of their own selective bias and some idea that nothing else will sell.  I mean, seriously, LOTR and The Hobbit have already been adapted for the screen and have been wildly successful.  Out of all the hundreds of thousands of fantasy and sci-fi work that could have been chosen, was it really necessary to adapt it again for tv? 

Yes. I desperately want LOTR. WOT I'm fine with, but LOTR is the big one.

[Luckylyn]

Interracial Romance Onscreen

 

I am really hoping to see Alyssa Cole’s Loyal League or Off the Grid series gets adapted someday.

Another author featuring diversity in romance is Talia Hibbert.  I recommend her Brown Sisters series or her Ravenswood series of books.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Luckylyn

[aradia22]

Aw, I wish it was a video they handed off to another narrator. For a long time, I was worried about The Take handling racial issues. But they've done a pretty good job working with other people on those videos. 

[Trini]

Noting the diversity of this year's Emmy nominees: https://deadline.com/2020/07/emmys-2020-nominations-diversity-inclusion-representation-emmy-awards-1202995889/

excerpt:

Quote

That said, as the fight for authentic representation in Hollywood continues, this morning’s nominations showed an uptick for people of color and the LGTBQ community in the major acting and hosting categories.

On the acting side, there were 36 actors of color nominated, while actors who have openly identified as members of the LGBTQ+ community took in 11 nominations. On the hosting side, six people of color were nominated while seven people who identified as LGBTQ+ received nods.

Of all the nominees from underrepresented voices, 15 were first-time nominees. It also should be noted that Maya Rudolph received two nominations in the Outstanding Guest Actress In A Comedy Series category while Sterling K. Brown received a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama and another for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy. Giancarlo Esposito scored two Emmy nominations in two different categories: one for Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series and another for Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama Series.

This is a major improvement from last year’s disappointing numbers which only saw 24 acting nominations for people of color and two reality show hosts of color that were nominated, which brought the total to 26. The tally for last year was a considerable stumble from 2018’s record-breaking 38 nominees, which 2020 has nearly matched on the acting side and surpassed in total.

....

 

[Minneapple]

5 hours ago, aradia22 said:

Also, Bride and Prejudice. The Darcy is one of the worst actors I've ever seen but I still love that movie. 

Martin Henderson has got to be one of the worst Darcys ever. Seriously, that's the guy you pair with Aishwarya? Milquetoast is the best word I could use to describe him.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Neurochick said:

I agree, but I don't think the movie was supposed to be a social commentary.  Sometimes a person just wants to see what is and come to their own conclusions.  

I don't think it's my business who a person wants to marry or have children with.  

I think the show does intend to be a social commentary to some degree. Otherwise the clients wants list would have been much less sarcastic. 

I agree that it is no one’s business who a person wants to marry but the people the show chose to feature could have been more diverse. They picked the matchmaker and the clients so to me that’s a fair point to criticize. 

Edited July 29, 2020 by Guest

[ouinason]

I was reading an earlier post about "The Old Guard" changing the race of a character from the comic to better fit the actress that was cast and it reminded me of something that probably bothers me more than it should.  I think that a lot of people in the entertainment industry think that Asians are interchangeable.  A quick example is that Fresh off the Boat cast a Korean descended actor as a Chinese man.  I mean, I'm a white woman and I noticed right away that Randal Park (besides having a Korean family name) wasn't Chinese.  I have no idea why this has continued to bug me for so long, I just feel like there are HUGE cultural and even some physical differences between Asians and you can NOT cast Vietnamese people as Japanese and you also can NOT cast a Philippine as Thai.  These are very different people.  It's like casting someone Italian as Swedish and expecting it to be "close enough". 

 

Either cast people that are actually ethnically similar as these characters, or don't make the character so ethnically distinctive.  

 

Obviously Louis on FOTB is based on a real person.  So, you know, cast a Chinese actor.

[andromeda331]

8 hours ago, aradia22 said:

I think it depends what you count as romance. Like, even more than Jane Austen, romance novelists love to do twists on Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella. So tell me why movies and TV shows rarely cast actors who are not white or white passing for these adaptations?

The exceptions I can think of are Vanessa Hudgens (half Filipina) in Beastly, Selena Gomez (half Mexican) in Another Cinderella Story, and Kristin Kreuk (half Chinese) in the Beauty and the Beast TV series. If you want to make the argument, there are Cinderella-inspired stories with a poor girl and a rich guy that do have more diverse casting... like Ugly Betty, but there are plenty of other examples of Cinderella and B&TB being told over and over in a straightforward way where they just cast white actors because... reasons.

Also, Bride and Prejudice. The Darcy is one of the worst actors I've ever seen but I still love that movie. 

That's a good point. Cinderella is almost always cast white. Why? She doesn't need to be. Nor does Belle. Their stories. They can be any race. I'd even through Pride and Prejudice into the mix. I liked Bride and Prejudice except for Darcy because it was great to see another version of the story set in India with characters who were Indian! It was great. I love that Lydia/Lakhi found out that Wickham was a crappy person and slapped him. Yea! I don't care if Lizzy's Indian, African-American, Chinese, etc. she just needs to be Lizzy. The Netflix reboot of the Babysitters Club changed two of the club members from white to biracial and Latinx. Mary Anne is now biracial and the actress that plays her does a great job playing Mary Anne. From the braids, to the uncertainty, and shy BSC member raised by her very overprotective widowed father she's still Mary Anne. Same with Dawn who's now Latinx. They did a great job.  Unless its a real person characters don't have to be white. 

[aradia22]

I get it if the goal is to do a historically accurate version of a story set in the distant past and you don't want to do colorblind casting. But if you're doing a contemporary/modern update then the insistence on rehashing the story with white character is just... boring. Also, it then feels inaccurate when you make the setting a big city. It's like how as they keep doing more remakes of Spiderman, the Miles Morales argument becomes more persuasive.

Also, The Princess and the Frog. Just take the same story and update the setting. Boom. Done. Actually, basically what I'm saying is this... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happily_Ever_After:_Fairy_Tales_for_Every_Child

[Llywela]

I thought this thread might be interested to learn about a new cartoon that just started its run on the BBC's pre-school channel, Cbeebies: JoJo and Gran Gran, which is the first British animation to be centred around a Black family, featuring a little girl who spends each day with her Windrush-generation grandmother while her parents are at work. The show is based on books written by Laura Henry-Allain, herself a Black Londoner of West Indian descent, with the character of Gran Gran inspired by her own St Lucian grandmother. It's been on for a couple of months now and our (white) 4-year-old absolutely adores it.

[phoenics]

On 7/21/2020 at 5:13 PM, Neurochick said:

But I've seen black people with two black parents with those same features.

 

THIS!  I have two black parents and I have lose hair too.  Hollywood using biracial actresses so much really skews our perspective.  The Diaspora has all shades - and that's even with two black parents.  I have black cousins who have black parents, but they look biracial.  They aren't.

All ADOS tend to have a mixture of races, etc., just because of the legacy of slavery, but this Hollywood habit of casting only biracial people creates this weird idea that only biracial people look a certain way and that they don't look like "regular black folks" ever.

[DearEvette]

I remembered I have a instagram account that I haven't looked at in over a year and decided to look at it yesterday.  One of the very first posts I saw was from Dawn-Lyen Gardner who plays Charley Bordelon on Queen Sugar.  She was writing a post about how to pronounce her first name, it is Dawn "Lee-en".  And she goes on to speak about the etymology of her name that translates from Chinese as 'Peony-Lotus'.  It is a lovely post, but reading it I learned that she has a Chinese mother and a black father.  I was very surprised I never knew this.  On the show he character Charley is  biracial, but her mother is white and the show has shown there was some resentment toward her for her light skinned privilege by her darker skinned sister (different mothers).  I just assumed the actress was also biracial (white/black) but now that I know that she is half Chinese I look at her and go " Well, Duh!"  LOL.

[phoenics]

On 7/22/2020 at 6:27 PM, Trini said:

Ugh - 'Will this job ruin my hair?' isn't something that actors should have to worry about! Especially in show business where one's appearance is part of the job.

One of my first concerns about the new (Black) Batwoman was about how they'll handle her hair; because the hairstylist situation is not great in Vancouver (where they film) by many accounts.

They need to go talk to the Charmed producers - because they have really stepped it up in S2.  Madeleine Mantauk (sp?) who played Macy, has amazing hair styles in S2 of Charmed.  And not just great out and full hairstyles, but also updos, braids, etc..  In the first season, her hair was often left in the same hairstyle.  In S2, you can see her hair has dramatically improved on all fronts.  There was one style I remember that had a thin cornrow down her center part and then the rest was slicked back with a ponytail (with kinky curly hair added for that).  Her hair singlehandedly drove me back to using Kinky Curly products (what MM uses) for my own hair - I forgot how good that stuff is, lol.

[phoenics]

On 7/24/2020 at 10:36 PM, In2You said:

How many of those people are highly mixed? You and I both know those features are not the feature the majority of Black people you see have. Every time the issue is brought up about lack of casting dark skinned Black women someone light skinned wants to bring out the all shades argument instead of just acknowledging casting directors like to cast biracial women because they are closer to whiteness.

Hmmm... the reason I mentioned it was because I didn't understand why Hollywood was casting biracial women who look like black women I know (Kylie Bunbury, especially) who are brown-skinned.  They could have cast black women who looked that way.  This is in addition to the issue of them not casting darker skinned black women in general.

I definitely wasn't arguing for just that skintone to be used.

And this idea that most black people look a certain way?  I just don't agree?  I went to an all-women's college - the #1 HBCU in the country - and the range of shades and "looks" was so diverse.  I just want Hollywood to reflect that diversity - and not to just cast biracial black women in everything that calls for a "black" woman.  It erases brown and dark skinned black women.

[phoenics]

On 7/26/2020 at 11:35 PM, Fukui San said:

Making the Twitter rounds:

 

WTF.  Wow.

[phoenics]

On 7/28/2020 at 9:08 AM, Neurochick said:

Question.  Should Netflix be called out for showing what exists?  

All Netflix did was to hold up a mirror really.  Was it their job to say, "OMG, this is bad!"  If they did that, they'd be criticized for being hypocrites.  

 

Think of a company that holds certain values.  When it hires subcontractors, they usually make the subcontractors uphold those values.  Netflix's "subcontractors" are the content producers it uses.  If Netflix is all about promoting diversity, etc., then it can't really have content that flies in the face of that.

Unless the content is only available in the region that espouses that value.

I dunno - this is a complex issue. 

[aradia22]

Quote

Think of a company that holds certain values.  When it hires subcontractors, they usually make the subcontractors uphold those values.  Netflix's "subcontractors" are the content producers it uses.  If Netflix is all about promoting diversity, etc., then it can't really have content that flies in the face of that.

I mean, Netflix gonna Netflix. The stand up section is full of terrible men with terrible opinions.

[Neurochick]

The decision of Plessy v. Ferguson which has never been overturned, stated that no matter how much "white blood" a black person had, they still would be subject to Jim Crow laws.  

Today casting directors and showrunners are using that decision to cast lighter skinned and biracial looking actresses as black women, and I think that's the issue.  

[Fukui San]

Peter Shinkoda has further revealed that he and the other Asian Daredevil actress were not invited to the Season 2 premiere.

They found out about the event as it was being live streamed.

[GHScorpiosRule]

31 minutes ago, phoenics said:

WTF.  Wow.

DAMN. And I used to be a fan because Loeb wrote one of my favorite stories when he was at DC: Public Enemies; Batman and Superman.

Sorry, I'm a technoturd and don't know how to quote the embedded tweet about Shinkoda.

And to jump back to the discussion of Fair & Lovely face cream? Guilty! As a kid, I used it because I loved the scent. Never knew that it was meant to "try and make you more fair" or whiter. My mum is already fair and it was part of her routine when she did her make-up; Fair & Lovely, followed by foundation, and then dust powder. I just loved watching my Mum put herself together!

Plus, it did jack shit. I'm medium/tannish complexion. Maybe I should try it again as an adult to see if it will get rid of these DARKASS circles that aren't just under my eyes, but surround my orbs and make it seem as if someone punched me in my eyes! I suspect this is an after effect/result from my chemo. But, I digress.

I hate reality shows. So I only watched the promo for Indian Matchmaking. Pfft. Typical arranged marriages have the parents doing the arranging with no "matchmaker expert" involved. It's like word of mouth and via classified for the middle class; for the more poor and poverty stricken, the women/girls involved have no choice but to marry the man that's been chosen, or they've been sold to.

Not to get too off topic, but my parents and everyone in my family had arranged marriages. Now my parents weren't total strangers--they had met once before, but, for the most part, in their generation and in the '70s to '80s, parents chose the boy/man and the daughters did as the parents wanted/decided.

And really, it's 2020, and there are more unarranged marriages among the middle to upper middle class than arranged. 

[Neurochick]

I just watched "Four More Shots, Please" on Amazon Prime, which billed itself as an Indian Sex and the City.  Don't bother.  The first season was fine, the second, GARBAGE.  I'm sorry I talked it up, should have watched season 2 first.  👎

[Irlandesa]

1 hour ago, Neurochick said:

I just watched "Four More Shots, Please" on Amazon Prime, which billed itself as an Indian Sex and the City.  Don't bother.  The first season was fine, the second, GARBAGE.  I'm sorry I talked it up, should have watched season 2 first.  👎

I was about to watch so I guess now I won't.

[Neurochick]

23 minutes ago, Irlandesa said:

I was about to watch so I guess now I won't.

It was so predictable that by the time I got to the last episode of season 2, I knew exactly what was going to happen, and I was right!

 

[angora]

20 hours ago, ouinason said:

I was reading an earlier post about "The Old Guard" changing the race of a character from the comic to better fit the actress that was cast and it reminded me of something that probably bothers me more than it should.  I think that a lot of people in the entertainment industry think that Asians are interchangeable.  A quick example is that Fresh off the Boat cast a Korean descended actor as a Chinese man.  I mean, I'm a white woman and I noticed right away that Randal Park (besides having a Korean family name) wasn't Chinese.  I have no idea why this has continued to bug me for so long, I just feel like there are HUGE cultural and even some physical differences between Asians and you can NOT cast Vietnamese people as Japanese and you also can NOT cast a Philippine as Thai.  These are very different people.  It's like casting someone Italian as Swedish and expecting it to be "close enough". 

 

Either cast people that are actually ethnically similar as these characters, or don't make the character so ethnically distinctive.  

 

Obviously Louis on FOTB is based on a real person.  So, you know, cast a Chinese actor.

I think this is a complicated issue, especially when it comes to Asian American actors. Because so few roles are open to Asian American actors, it'd be that much harder if, instead of being considered mostly just for roles that are already explicitly Asian or Asian American, you could then only be considered mostly just for roles that are Korean, Thai, Japanese, Hmong, etc. I appreciate seeing when Asian American characters are cast with actors from the same culture, or when a character's ethnicity is changed to match the actor's in situations where the original ethnicity isn't relevant to the story, but I also understand actors who don't want a large portion of an already-limited pool of available roles to be closed to them. I DO think it makes a bigger difference if the specific cultural heritage is very essential to the show/film, especially when we're dealing with Asian characters from Asia rather than Asian Americans (ex: given the importance of the story of Mulan in China, I'm glad that they didn't cast, say, a Vietnamese American actress as Mulan.) The natural solution would be a combination of having a lot more stories featuring characters of a variety of Asian American backgrounds (to widen that original pool) and being more open to casting Asian American actors in roles that aren't racially-specified to begin with.

BTW, I couldn't think of a Italian-->Swedish example off the top of my head, but the first thing that came to mind was Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones - since Westeros isn't a real place, it doesn't have any real ethnicities, but Dinklage is FAR from a blond Lannister.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, angora said:

I think this is a complicated issue, especially when it comes to Asian American actors. Because so few roles are open to Asian American actors, it'd be that much harder if, instead of being considered mostly just for roles that are already explicitly Asian or Asian American, you could then only be considered mostly just for roles that are Korean, Thai, Japanese, Hmong, etc. I appreciate seeing when Asian American characters are cast with actors from the same culture, or when a character's ethnicity is changed to match the actor's in situations where the original ethnicity isn't relevant to the story, but I also understand actors who don't want a large portion of an already-limited pool of available roles to be closed to them. I DO think it makes a bigger difference if the specific cultural heritage is very essential to the show/film, especially when we're dealing with Asian characters from Asia rather than Asian Americans (ex: given the importance of the story of Mulan in China, I'm glad that they didn't cast, say, a Vietnamese American actress as Mulan.) The natural solution would be a combination of having a lot more stories featuring characters of a variety of Asian American backgrounds (to widen that original pool) and being more open to casting Asian American actors in roles that aren't racially-specified to begin with.

I completely agree with you. I’d like to get to the point where it would bother me that a Chinese or Korean actress is playing a Japanese character but I’m just glad that the role didn’t go to Scarlett Johansson. 

Edited July 30, 2020 by Guest

[Kel Varnsen]

On 7/26/2020 at 11:35 PM, Fukui San said:

Making the Twitter rounds:

 

It has been awhile since I watched Daredevil but considering that Nobu was kind of a secondary villian in a show with 13 episode seasons how much of a backstory was he expecting? Season 1 was DD vs Kingpin and the focus of Season 2 was really Daredevil vs Elektra and Punisher. It also wasn't clear if his "nobody cares" comments were actual direct quotes or just his interpretation.

[DearEvette]

3 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

It has been awhile since I watched Daredevil but considering that Nobu was kind of a secondary villian in a show with 13 episode seasons how much of a backstory was he expecting? Season 1 was DD vs Kingpin and the focus of Season 2 was really Daredevil vs Elektra and Punisher. It also wasn't clear if his "nobody cares" comments were actual direct quotes or just his interpretation.

I think regardless of how much screen-time he was slated to get, he is an actor who was made to feel less than and devalued  because of his race by his employer and superior.  And even if those weren't the exact words  -- I am inclined to believe they were because there is a specificity to how he is saying this -- they obviously conveyed that exact meaning.  If the showrunner had said something like "Dude, I am sorry but we had to cut a lot of the work we would have done on your character because the story really needs to focus on such-and such's character and we feel that  that is the more compelling story we need to tell."  Conveys that they are not gonna write for the character without making the actor feel less than or denigrating his race.

[Raja]

I I guess that Cliff Curtis career is about to take a massive hit as he can only play ethnically ambiguous roles with the odd Maori in the future 

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

It has been awhile since I watched Daredevil but considering that Nobu was kind of a secondary villian in a show with 13 episode seasons how much of a backstory was he expecting? Season 1 was DD vs Kingpin and the focus of Season 2 was really Daredevil vs Elektra and Punisher. It also wasn't clear if his "nobody cares" comments were actual direct quotes or just his interpretation.

It’s not like he is just angry he wasn’t given a backstory. The writers wanted to write him a backstory and they were forced to abandon it because of Leob. Also I wouldn’t call the Hand a secondary villain. Gao was being setup to be a huge factor of the Netflix shows and then it fizzled into nothing.  

Whether it was a direct quote or not the show’s no Asian stories shift was apparent in the writing as it went on. 

It’s not included in that clip but the other actors added that there were amazing ideas for Iron Fist being part Asian that were also blocked. 

Edited July 30, 2020 by Guest

[janie jones]

On 7/28/2020 at 10:27 PM, ouinason said:

I was reading an earlier post about "The Old Guard" changing the race of a character from the comic to better fit the actress that was cast and it reminded me of something that probably bothers me more than it should.  I think that a lot of people in the entertainment industry think that Asians are interchangeable.  A quick example is that Fresh off the Boat cast a Korean descended actor as a Chinese man.  I mean, I'm a white woman and I noticed right away that Randal Park (besides having a Korean family name) wasn't Chinese.  I have no idea why this has continued to bug me for so long, I just feel like there are HUGE cultural and even some physical differences between Asians and you can NOT cast Vietnamese people as Japanese and you also can NOT cast a Philippine as Thai.  These are very different people.  It's like casting someone Italian as Swedish and expecting it to be "close enough".

Either cast people that are actually ethnically similar as these characters, or don't make the character so ethnically distinctive. 

To be honest, I don't think people can tell each other's ethnicities apart as well as we think we can, and/or the differences aren't always as great as we think they are. Sometimes you can easily tell and sometimes you can't, and sometimes when one person can easily tell, another can't. Sometimes you can tell only because you know -- the old "Now that you say that, I can totally see it!" syndrome. Speaking of casting a Filipino as Thai, I'm white and Filipino, and I've had Thai people think I was Thai. (I've also had Hispanic people think I'm Hispanic.) (And I've been mistaken for Native American millions of times, so Lou Diamond Phillips and I should get together to play a Native American family.) I teach international students from all over the world, and they are sometimes surprised to learn classmates are from the same country as them (i.e., the same ethnicity) and they're sometimes surprised to learn classmates are not.

I don't want to say that all Asian people are interchangeable, because I don't think that's true. But I also think enough variation exists within groups that like...my problem with Amy Hill playing a Filipino on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is with the fact that there aren't enough Filipino actresses in Hollywood (or that they didn't look hard enough to find one), not that she doesn't conceivably look Filipino.

[Raja]

7 minutes ago, janie jones said:

To be honest, I don't think people can tell each other's ethnicities apart as well as we think we can, and/or the differences aren't always as great as we think they are. Sometimes you can easily tell and sometimes you can't, and sometimes when one person can easily tell, another can't. Sometimes you can tell only because you know -- the old "Now that you say that, I can totally see it!" syndrome. Speaking of casting a Filipino as Thai, I'm white and Filipino, and I've had Thai people think I was Thai. (I've also had Hispanic people think I'm Hispanic.) (And I've been mistaken for Native American millions of times, so Lou Diamond Phillips and I should get together to play a Native American family.) I teach international students from all over the world, and they are sometimes surprised to learn classmates are from the same country as them (i.e., the same ethnicity) and they're sometimes surprised to learn classmates are not.

I don't want to say that all Asian people are interchangeable, because I don't think that's true. But I also think enough variation exists within groups that like...my problem with Amy Hill playing a Filipino on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is with the fact that there aren't enough Filipino actresses in Hollywood (or that they didn't look hard enough to find one), not that she doesn't conceivably look Filipino.

I remember 10 years ago in Hawaii 5-0's first season the cultural gnashing of teeth occurred because Chinese Canadian Patrick Gallagher played a Filipino rebel leader. Which to me if were  just checking DNA then it would be like casting an African American from north of the boarder as an African American.

[ursula]

8 hours ago, Raja said:

African American from north of the boarder

What border? Do you mean Black Canadian?

[ursula]

On 7/29/2020 at 8:33 PM, angora said:

BTW, I couldn't think of a Italian-->Swedish example off the top of my head

There are so many examples of White actors from other nationalities that have to erase/modify their accents to get Hollywood roles. From Australian Hemsworths, South African Charlize Theron, Scottish James MacAvoy, and so many, many, many more. And not just when taking American roles - eg you have Irish Liam Neeson playing Oskar Schindler. It’s only seems to be a problem for the audience when the actor is clearly struggling with the accent. 

[Raja]

15 hours ago, Raja said:

I remember 10 years ago in Hawaii 5-0's first season the cultural gnashing of teeth occurred because Chinese Canadian Patrick Gallagher played a Filipino rebel leader. Which to me if were  just checking DNA then it would be like casting an African American from north of the boarder as an African American.

 

6 hours ago, ursula said:

What border? Do you mean Black Canadian?

Yes casting the US/Canadian but any international border if we are tracking race by DNA. Patrick Gallagher to play a Filipino rebel is no different than casting Drake, Roger Cross, Idris Elba, or Lennie James... to play an American. You might be part of a racial minority group but still you are Filipino, or American.

[Neurochick]

5 hours ago, Raja said:

 

Yes casting the US/Canadian but any international border if we are tracking race by DNA. Patrick Gallagher to play a Filipino rebel is no different than casting Drake, Roger Cross, Idris Elba, or Lennie James... to play an American. You might be part of a racial minority group but still you are Filipino, or American.

True, Idris Elba got famous by playing Stringer Bell on 'The Wire.'  Also Eamonn Walker, who is British plays the chief in 'Chicago Fire.'

[ursula]

12 hours ago, ursula said:

There are so many examples of White actors from other nationalities that have to erase/modify their accents to get Hollywood roles. From Australian Hemsworths, South African Charlize Theron, Scottish James MacAvoy, and so many, many, many more. And not just when taking American roles - eg you have Irish Liam Neeson playing Oskar Schindler. It’s only seems to be a problem for the audience when the actor is clearly struggling with the accent. 

Continuing from this, in Nollywood (and the general Nigerian media industry), many actors play roles that are different from their ethnicity and again, this is only a problem when it’s a role that requires the actor to speak the ethnic language or speak with an ethnic accent and they struggle with it. In fact, actors who are versatile - can play different ethnicities flawlessly - are praised and admired by a lot of the viewing audience.
 

On the other hand, I know African American actors have a problem with British and non-American actors of African descent being cast to play AA roles.
 

So the more I think about it and the similarities between White Hollywood and Nollywood, the more I feel that it’s a question of, well, privilege, authority and opportunity. Who decides who gets a role? Does everyone get the same chance based on merit or are some people given some form of privilege? Are there enough roles to go around or is a huge pool of actors fighting for a few tokens?

Edited July 31, 2020 by ursula

[Neurochick]

1 hour ago, ursula said:

On the other hand, I know African American actors have a problem with British and non-American actors of African descent being cast to play AA roles.

True.  Samuel L. Jackson commented about the casting for 'Get Out.'  That the movie would have been better if an African American actor played the lead role.  

I'm still pissed that two British actors played Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King in 'Selma.'  I can't believe they could not have found two African American actors to play those roles.  

[aradia22]

I watched The Edge of Seventeen today. It's a muddled script so I don't want to read a ton into it. But I did find it interesting that there's specifically a joke about white passing Hailee Steinfeld hoping that what she said to a Korean character didn't sound racist. That is, in the movie, Hailee's character is 100% white even though in real life, the actress is not and has on occasion spoken about that. Also, she does 

Spoiler

end up romantically involved with that character even though she spends the rest of the movie friend-zoning him hard and stringing him along while pining for the bad boy who went to juvie (but is white). 

Again, the movie feels a little off in general so I don't know if this was particularly weird or just another weird thing in the middle of this weird movie.

[krankydoodle]

2 hours ago, Neurochick said:

True.  Samuel L. Jackson commented about the casting for 'Get Out.'  That the movie would have been better if an African American actor played the lead role.  

I missed it if this has already been posted, but Vulture published an interesting article about that at the time: What the Debate Around Black American and British Actors Gets Wrong

Edited July 31, 2020 by krankydoodle

[Hiyo]

Hey, Rami Malek is Egyptian/Arab American originally and won an Oscar for playing someone Parsi-Britsh, so...it can work sometimes?

For years we have seen lots of Arab characters played by non-Arabs (*cough*Saeed*cough*Lost*cough), though it does seem to be getting better these days.

Quote

True.  Samuel L. Jackson commented about the casting for 'Get Out.'  That the movie would have been better if an African American actor played the lead role.  

I'm still pissed that two British actors played Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King in 'Selma.'  I can't believe they could not have found two African American actors to play those roles.  

Better in what sense?

For me I don't mind characters of the same race/ethnicity playing the role of a different nationality as long as they get the accent right and deliver a good performance. I mean, most people seem ok with Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones, and can't picture anyone else but her in the role. Were the Brits ok with her accent? On the other hand, as much as I admire Kate Winslet as an actress, her American accent can be very grating to me at times.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Hiyo