‘Romeo & Juliet’ Play Starring Tom Holland and Francesca Amewaduh-Rivers Faces ‘Barrage of Racial Abuse,’ Producer Says ‘This Must Stop’

The Jamie Lloyd Company has hit back after its production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” has been the subject of what they call a “barrage of deplorable racial abuse” aimed at an unnamed cast member.

The play, directed by Jamie Lloyd (“Sunset Boulevard”), stars “Spider-Man: No Way Home” star Tom Holland as Romeo and Francesca Amewaduh-Rivers (“Sex Education”) as Juliet.

On Friday, the Jamie Lloyd Company issued a statement, saying: “Following the announcement of our ‘Romeo & Juliet’ cast, there has been a barrage of deplorable racial abuse online directed towards a member of our company. This must stop.”

ArugulaZ,
ArugulaZ avatar

Honestly, we do see a lot of this casting in the 21st century. A familiar character becomes black, whether it's Annie or The Little Mermaid, and it leaves me ambivalent. However, in the case of Romeo and Juliet, it actually makes sense to have a racial component injected into the story. They are from warring families, correct? Race could be another point of conflict for them.

(Besides, Shakespeare has been famously open to interpretation. Is Shylock a villain, comic relief, or a tragic victim of prejudice in his own time? That's up to the director of the play, or the film.)

feedum_sneedson,

They should at least have used a pretty person though, that would make it more realistic.

elbarto777,

Do you feel equally uneasy when you watch old movies in which white actors portray non-white characters?

Or what about fiction, like “The Hunger Games,” in which Katniss is described as “olive-skninned” in the book, but was played by Jennifer Lawrence?

Have you ever expressed your discomfort at the portrayals of Jesus as a white dude with blue eyes all over the place?

I’m not addressing you personally. But those who are vocal about stuff like this are sheer hypocrites.

TopRamenBinLaden,

Do you feel equally uneasy when you watch old movies in which white actors portray non-white characters?

I am not aware of anyone close to my age bracket that watches old movies like that, and I am not young. I would imagine a good chunk of us would avoid them all together, considering that we know that the movies were racist. I know I do, at least.

Like, I don’t care if anyone says Othello is worth watching, I would simply refuse to give it a chance.

dudinax,

In the Earthsea miniseries almost every character is played by a white actor while all but one in the book are black.

The one white character, Tenar, is played by a half-chinese actress.

ArugulaZ,
ArugulaZ avatar

I see your point, but it is also a little weird when a previously established black character is made white, or at least less black, in the casting. Apparently during TMNT's grimdark period, before the cartoon, their April O'Neil was bi-racial. Baxter Stockman was black, but when the TMNT cartoon came out in 1987, both were white.

I wasn't familiar with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles until the very kid-friendly cartoon, so it didn't bother me. I mean, this was my first introduction to these characters, right? I had no idea. But fast forward to now, when it's very strongly canon that Baxter Stockman is black, and the 1987 Baxter Stockman, who's a hybrid of Dr. Brown from Back to the Future and Jeff Goldblum's bug in The Fly, does seem a little... off.

elbarto777,

I hear you, man. In the end, works of fiction are just that. Something somebody came up with. Imagine a five year old telling you a story, something completely made up. Would you pay too much attention to that? What’s the difference between a kid and an adult coming up with something they pulled out of their imagination?

Not too different, really. And yes, I know the adult has studied and have way more experience. But ultimately, he or she wrote down something they made up.

So what does it matter if a character is black, red or white?

MossyFeathers,

Personally,

Do you feel equally uneasy when you watch old movies in which white actors portray non-white characters?

Holy shit, yes. I don’t always notice it, but when I do, it absolutely makes me uncomfortable.

Or what about fiction, like “The Hunger Games,” in which Katniss is described as “olive-skninned” in the book, but was played by Jennifer Lawrence?

I’ve always understood “olive-skinned” to refer to people from the European Mediterranean area, which, from an American perspective, are often considered white. As such, it doesn’t really bother me that much. However, if the author meant for her to be middle-eastern or northern African, then yeah, that does kinda make me a bit uncomfortable.

Have you ever expressed your discomfort at the portrayals of Jesus as a white dude with blue eyes all over the place?

I grew up with blue-eyed Jesus so it doesn’t bother me because I’m used to it. If I was used to seeing black or middle-eastern Jesus, then yeah, I’d be uncomfortable with it. As it is, I’m more amused by the fact that Christians can’t get it right than I am uncomfortable with it.

Tbh when it comes to this specific example, I don’t really care. I generally think it’s better to cast characters as they were originally intended (black characters should be black people, queer characters should be queer people, etc), though I also understand that sometimes exceptions have to be made. I’m mainly replying because I wanted to chime in and say, “hey, not everyone who thinks characters should be cast in accordance with their original race, sex, gender, etc, is a bigot.”

Or at least I don’t think of myself as one. Maybe I still have things to work on though.

Edit: tbh I think a lot of these kinds of casting choices are rage-bait. They’re not doing it because they want to give minorities more opportunities to perform, they’re doing it because it generates free advertising. Because of that, I honestly wonder if it’s doing more harm than good.

ABCDE,

I generally think it’s better to cast characters as they were originally intende

The little mermaid wasn’t written as a particular race from what I know.

OutlierBlue,

She’s HALF FISH. The human part could be whatever colour you want.

Passerby6497,

Yeah, but in MY HEAD she’s WHITE and my FRAGILE EGO can’t handle it otherwise.

ArugulaZ,
ArugulaZ avatar

I mean, I would suggest she'd be like green or blue or something, like regular fish. You know, camouflage for being underwater. Something down there in the briny deep has got to have a taste for mermaids.

(For top accuracy, all Little Mermaids from this point forward must have a strong resemblance to a manatee. Is Kathy Bates from Misery available?)

ABCDE,

No! Only white and Danish!

ArugulaZ,
ArugulaZ avatar

Mm, white danish. That's the one with the white cheesecake goo on the top, right?

elbarto777,

You’re alright. We’re not all-evil or all-saints. I’m not perfect either.

One thing about “casting as rage-bait,” hmmm, I think it’s a bit more positive than that. It’s probably a “what-if” scenario, rather than “let’s generate some rage!”

Like that time they did Ghostbusters with an all-female cast, or when they kill Hitler in movies.

Grandwolf319,

tbh I think a lot of these kinds of casting choices are rage-bait. They’re not doing it because they want to give minorities more opportunities to perform, they’re doing it because it generates free advertising. Because of that, I honestly wonder if it’s doing more harm than good.

Yep, it’s sad to see how people fall for it. At least don’t go see any play or movie if it’s bad, regardless of controversy.

snooggums,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Edit: tbh I think a lot of these kinds of casting choices are rage-bait. They’re not doing it because they want to give minorities more opportunities to perform, they’re doing it because it generates free advertising. Because of that, I honestly wonder if it’s doing more harm than good.

Intentionally doing it because of race is far more likely to be a positive thing than fishing for rage bait, even if the positive thing is getting more money because people like the increased diversity. Fishing for rage bait is way too risky for Hollywood.

ArcoIris,

People like increased diversity when it’s tasteful and meaningful and adds value to the finished product. Unfortunately, I keep seeing examples of people associated with movies continually adding distasteful and meaningless pandering instead, continually dangling rage bait by insulting men (especially white men) on camera, then continually acting surprised when their movies continually make no money because people won’t watch a movie if you continually tell them it’s “not for them”. So no, I would argue that it’s not “too risky”, because if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t keep doing it.

njm1314,

You are thinking way too hard about this. The character isn’t becoming black. The characters the same, she’s just played by a black actress. That doesn’t change the character. That’s why we call it acting. She’s just playing a role. Tom Holland isn’t Italian, but I noticed you didn’t bring up him changing the character.

hessenjunge,

Honestly, I think the play would gain if they added racism as additional reason for the enmity between the 2 families. I’d be astonished if this hasn’t happened before.

njm1314,

That’s just West Side Story.

hessenjunge,

I’d be astonished if this hasn’t happened before.

I’d be even more astonished if that was the only piece inspired by Romeo & Juliet.

Also I would be totally floored if the story of Romeo & Juliet was inspired by an older predecessor or predecessors going back at least to Ancient Greece.

rab,

Lol didn’t they even try casting James Bond as a black woman

Zahille7,

No? You’re thinking of No Time To Die where they replace Bond with someone else (who happens to be a black woman) in the movie. She’s not Bond, but she’s the new 007.

Or you could be thinking of when they were considering recasting the role with Idris Elba?

Either way you’re wrong.

rab, (edited )

I was thinking of this harpersbazaar.com/…/lashana-lynch-black-female-00…

But I’ve never seen a 007 movie so I’m probably wrong

Zahille7,

That’s the actress who plays the replacement 007 in NTtD. I’d highly recommend watching the Daniel Craig series.

Breezy,

The little mermaid one didn’t make sense to me, they’re under water probably 95% of their lives getting no sun. They all were definitely pale.

ABCDE,

Do black people lose their pigmentation completely if they stay indoors?

leftzero,

Existing circumstancial evidence suggests that if you give them somewhat around forty to eighty thousand years they might lose at least some of it, depending on how much exposure to solar radiation they get… though interbreeding with Neanderthals and/or Denisovans might also help, too.

Breezy,

I read somewhere else that a Japanese study suggests 500 years is enough for skin tone to change.

feedum_sneedson,

I would question the validity of that research; the Japanese still have a lot invested in the idea they are somehow different from other people, nearby East Asians particularly. They literally think they have a lower body temperature, for example.

Breezy,

To my understanding, the study only focused on the natives of Japan that stayed secular in comparison to the rest of their population. I do not remember their name, but the Japanese version of native americans.

feedum_sneedson,

A… shit I’ve forgotten too! Ainu! I think?

Breezy,

I mean given enough time and generations, yes.

elbarto777,

The “underwater therefore white” doesn’t hold much water, in my opinion.

What about all those dark-colored creatures? Tuna, whales, squids?

Breezy,

Fish colors have nothing to do with melanin which determines human skin tone.

elbarto777,

So what?

Bro, we’re talking about a fictional creature.

Plus “fish color” is just one attribute. I also mentioned whales and squids.

And we don’t even know how humans would evolve to live underwater.

Passerby6497,

Why do mermaids have to follow human skin tone rules instead of other aquatic mammals? Even if they’re humans who evolved a fish tail, they’ve been underwater long enough for melanin to not be the deciding color…

partial_accumen,

they’re under water probably 95% of their lives getting no sun. They all were definitely pale.

You’re applying scientific principles to human skin and UV exposure response with regards to evolution and calling into question the scientific accuracy of the portrayal in the mermaid, and that leads you to disagreeing with the skin color of the actor.

With your scientific explanation you missed a couple key points if your goal is accuracy to the biological world:

  • Why does she have a full head of hair? Scientifically, hair’s purpose is thermal regulation. There would be no need for hair when the entire mermaid body is immersed in water all the time.
  • How the hell is Ariel breathing underwater? Fish do this by having gills for the gas exchange in the water. Whales and dolphins are air breathers, but have to go to the surface to get a breath. We don’t see Ariel going to the surface to do this.

You didn’t call either of these out as scientifically inaccurate.

Can I ask why your scientific explanation of the mermaid was only skin color?

ech,

They weren’t “definitely” anything. They’re fictional creatures.

Smoogs,

what is it their first day on the internet? Did their grandma write this article? Yeah no shit it must stop. So should the death threats for just existing as a woman and LBGTQ2+. have they tried reporting it to the mods? That’s essentially what the only recourse that has been suggested the past two decades for the rest of us.

Crampon,

Ok sure. But is it a lot of people, or is it some randoms on Twitter? And they use it as publicity.

Honestly. Who gives a fuck about a new Romeo and Juliet play anyways?

My bet is this is a publicity campaign to boost the interest for the film.

Stopthatgirl7,
@Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world avatar

Boost interest for what film?

Crampon,

Ok w/e. Didn’t know if it was a film of the play or only a play. Doesn’t matter really.

I highly doubt many people have strong feelings about it. Maybe a couple of ass hats.

barsoap,

Romeo+Juliet is the perfect story for a mixed-race couple, given that the story is about the original is about how their relationship isn’t accepted by their families. Also for any other kind of relationship dipshit assclowns hate.

catsarebadpeople,

Nice job Vanity Fair. There are some racists who are whining about interracial Romeo and Juliet. Fuck them for sure. But not only is this rag trying to turn it into a scandal that it’s not, they can’t even get Francesca’s acting credit right. Sex Education and Bad Education are incredibly different shows. There are black female actors in Sex Education but Vanity Fair sure can’t tell the difference between them and her.

Jarix,

Article written by AI and not edited? Thats my bingo guess

chloyster,

Not really a big deal but it’s funny that this variety article and all the other people reporting on this are using the same line of Francesca being from sex education when she’s not lol. She’s from bad education. It seems like so many websites are just copying from the same source and so they all have the same mistake

BleatingZombie,

A story about a grown man loving a little girl? That’s fine. Make one of them have a different skin color than me and hoo boy do we have a problem (/s)

ours,

Sounds about right for conservatives.

hessenjunge,

Do you have any source whatsoever backing your claim Shakespeares Romeo was not of similar age as Juliet?

desconectado, (edited )

I thought Romeo was a teenager too? I mean, the difference in age should be around 3 years they are supposed to be 13 and 16, although the age of Romeo is really never specified, I wouldn’t say it’s that problematic.

I find Anakin and Padme, or Bella and Edward more problematic, and there’s not much outrage for those.

hessenjunge,

I took the time to google the claim and it’s bullshit.

One of the source materials of Shakespeare mentions his soft skin and lack of facial hair which would mean he’s younger than 15.

I would stick with the original play: Shakespeare died not mention his age but he is acting less mature than Juliet.

RatBin,

They’re both young. Aa for his acting, it is the one of a lovesick person, it doesn’t mean lack of maturity.

hessenjunge,

This thread is about the literary Romeo, not a specific actor.

RatBin,

By the way, I have seen this eternal love story portrayed ny gnomes (Gnomeo and Juliet or something like this - good movie BTW) so as far as the roles are respected, we could have this portrayed by ants.

Gabu,

Padme is 6 years older than Anakin, and only just. I suppose the image of Episode I stuck in people’s mind, but they only started dating when Anakin was in his late teens.

tacosanonymous,

Is it bc they got that goofy lil cracker to be Romeo?

ILikeBoobies,

Maybe, the cast member was unnamed

Italians tend to be darker than the English

Zahille7,

The fuck?

S_204,

Should have cast a male to play Juliet like the original. Wonder what the response would have been then?

meathorse,

A woman’s role in theatre played by an actual woman!? What a load of woke agenda BS!

/S

lath,

“Sounds gay. I’m in!”

BleatingZombie,

Or a 13 year old girl to play Juliet and a grown ass man to play Romeo

S_204,

The lineup for tickets would be around the block.

hessenjunge,

You keep repeating the claim that Romeo was not of similar age as Juliet yet there is no evidence for it.

Crashumbc,

Evidence? No, but given the time period the play is set in. It is more than feasible given their supposed social class.

Son_of_dad,

Honestly watching Shakespeare in the cross dressing way really made me like it. They teach you Shakespeare in school by reading it, that’s stupid. That’s like studying the godfather and only reading the script and never watching the film. I hated it. Then one day I saw the actual play, done in drag and it really made the humor pop and made me finally understand what the fuck they were talking about in that script

funkless_eck,

Plenty of people have read The Godfather to study it.

You’re never going to get the full authentic Shakespeare experience watching a play

a) inside

b) in the evening

c) while the audience is quiet

d) without people heckling

e) without bear baiting, gambling, and bawdy folk songs before and after

g) without people plying sex trade during the show

leraje,
@leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Unless a characters race or gender or ethnicity or (dis)ability is a key component of either their arc or the story as whole (e.g. the plot depends on it), who the fuck cares who’s playing who? I saw the same thing happen when the Dune movie had the Liet-Kynes character portrayed by a black woman. It makes absolutely zero difference to the story what gender or race Liet-Kynes was and she was really good anyway.

dudinax,

Even if race is an important component, we don’t have to repeat everything exactly. Let an artist twist it and see what happens.

snooggums, (edited )
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

As long as it is white -> something else since we have way too many decades of minority characters being played by white people because of racism.

Edit: not really surprised by how many people are ignorant of racist casting in Hollywood.

ArcoIris,

Care to name any examples? Because redhead characters being played by black actors is so prevalent it has its own hashtag, so if there are really decades of it, I feel like I should know.

Also, because I feel it might be necessary, this is a reminder to anyone reading this that A) racism is not solved with more racism, and B) you can, in fact, be racist against white people. Patricia Bidol-Padva’s personal opinion does not control the English language, and discrimination does not become okay just because it’s against a group you personally don’t like.

snooggums,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Care to name any examples?

Two I could think of off the top of my head were the racist Chinese character played by a white guy in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and what’s her name from Aliens 2 that was a Hispanic character played by a white lady. Here’s a longer list that also includes more recent movies too: huffpost.com/…/26-times-white-actors-played-peopl…

Choosing redhead characters to be switched to another race is actually just switching a character that stands out as ‘different’ for a different race. Bit of a lazy choice to be honest.

One big thing to keep in mind is that because of racism most stories are already focused on white characters, so switching from the vast majority is a positive while switching from a minority of characters to the majority cast race is not. That is why switching from the overrepresented white characters is fine, but the reverse is not. One specific stereotype from movies is that cowboys are white because that was the characters written when cowboy books and movies were popular, despite a large portion of cowboys being black and/or Hispanic.

ArcoIris,

Okay, that Breakfast at Tiffany’s example is definitely in bad taste. Thankfully, as far as I’m aware, that sort of thing doesn’t happen in movies anymore.

That being said, to say it’s “a positive” to outright replace white people in movies is also in bad taste. More specifically, it runs counter to your message, as it not only implies the “great replacement” conspiracy theory to be true (thus causing racists to feel vindicated), it also reads as racist toward non-white people by implying that the best they can hope for is white actors’ sloppy seconds instead of their own stories. Media is not a zero-sum game. There don’t need to be fewer white cowboys for there to be more black ones.

snooggums,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

There don’t need to be fewer white cowboys for there to be more black ones.

When remaking a popular movie that originally had an all white cast it is. Why should minorities be excluded from remakes of all of the older movies that had all white casts because of racism?

ArcoIris,

On that point we are in perfect agreement. If it makes sense for the story and the actors are being picked based on merit, diversity will only serve to improve the end product. I personally would prefer more original films and fewer remakes, but I doubt I’m alone in that statement. 🤷‍♂️

bostonbananarama,

That being said, to say it’s “a positive” to outright replace white people in movies is also in bad taste.

Here’s the issue though, as I see it. If we assume that Hollywood was racist for many years in the past, then most actors would be white. So now if you say you can’t change the characters race, you’re perpetuating past racism by locking down characters as white in stories that don’t require it.

I don’t care if Annie or the Little Mermaid is black, make the story intriguing. Pull me into the plot with believable and relatable characters and I’ll never question why they’re the race/gender/sexual orientation they are.

ArcoIris,

Pull me into the plot with believable and relatable characters and I’ll never question why they’re the race/gender/sexual orientation they are.

That’s the right attitude to have about it. 👍 Audiences love closure and they love verisimilitude. If I’m watching a movie and I’m shown how (or can reasonably assume from context that) a character having certain traits makes sense, it doesn’t strain suspension of disbelief at all and can turn a great movie into an outstanding one. And I think that’s something that screenwriters need to pay heavy attention to, because there are no bad ideas, there’s only bad execution.

In fact, just for fun, let’s take the two movies you mentioned as examples. I haven’t watched either of them and know little about them. If you were to tell me “write scripts for adaptations of these two stories where the main characters are black”, it would be lazy, disrespectful to the viewer, and arguably even racist to just do that without giving it any forethought - they’d be as out of place as a white man in Wakanda. But if you put down, for example, “this adaptation of Annie takes place in the cultural melting pot of modern-day New York City” or “Ariel and her sisters are all different races because Triton has taken many wives from all over the world”, and then make that clear through context clues, now the idea of them being black no longer feels like an afterthought, it feels like it was a conscious decision and that time and attention was given to making them feel like they belong. And while it would frankly be better for studios to knock it off with the constant rehashing and write new stories (not everyone likes Jordan Peele’s stuff, but few would call it derivative), a remake done with care and respect is better than one done without them.

bostonbananarama,

I don’t know if it is intentional or not, I try not to assign a motive to opinions, but your viewpoint seems to require that black characters have a justification for being black in a way that you don’t for white characters. I think there’s a difference between mere change, such as Annie or Little Mermaid, and incongruous change, such as whitewashing Wakanda, since it is intended to be a cloistered black nation in sub-Saharan Africa.

ArcoIris,

I try not to assign a motive to opinions either, so I’ll try to explain further to ensure you can fully understand my viewpoint.

My requirement that a character’s qualities have sufficient justification applies to white characters as well, hence my Wakanda example. As you said, that would be incongruous change, and the thing that makes it incongruous is the fact that you’re dealing with an exception. It’s important to note that, in many works that take place in a version of the real world, especially modern America, white people are assumed, even by non-white viewers, to have an inbuilt justification for existing in a story by virtue of being considered the ethnic majority - not saying that’s a good thing, or a bad thing, just that that assumption exists. Since that is not the case in the context of a cloistered Sub-Saharan African nation, any white characters that appear therefore require more specific explanations for their presence. This is, needless to say, why every white character in Black Panther is a foreigner.

Thinking about it, though, I also realize now that Annie is perhaps a bad example, since the original story also takes place in the United States iirc, and any story set in an American city can automatically be reasonably assumed to have people from all walks of life living there, so no explanations are really needed. Even if you were to also make Daddy Warbucks black, and set it in a time period where a wealthy black man would be considered an unusual or exceptional thing, all you would have to do is have some visual indication of how he got his money (such as a framed business degree, for example), and suddenly his status not only makes sense, it also subtly establishes something about his character (“He defied the odds through hard work and intelligence!”) that can be built upon as the story progresses. In fact, ideally, you want that level of characterization for every character, regardless of whether they’re a minority.

Really, it’s in the more fantastical examples that things start to become muddled, since in-built justifications can’t exist in a world that is not like our own. But that also means that you can be looser with your explanations, since in fantasy settings, internal consistency is more important than realism. In my Little Mermaid example, you probably didn’t question the idea of mermaids looking like humans from the same part of the world, despite the fact that if merfolk were real, they would live underwater and thus have no need to evolve different skin pigmentations. Consistency is the reason for this. But in The Lord of the Rings, which is implied to be set in our own world’s mystical past, dark-skinned humans already exist, and since they come from a far-off continent, their complexion can be reasonably assumed to be way it is for the same reason as in real life: An adaptation to an equatorial climate. So when Rings of Power introduces black elves, and then does NOT have them also come from another part of the world, that consistency is broken unless an alternative explanation is given.

Hopefully I’ve expressed my perspective clearly and concisely. Any type of person can exist in any setting and any story, so long as any concerns about potential inconsistencies are acknowledged and addressed. At the other end of the scale, you can even dismiss those concerns entirely and deliberately tell a story with zero regard for historical accuracy. What matters is that it’s a conscious design decision and that the audience is aware of what to expect going in. Knowing those expectations is a big part of the balancing act of being a writer.

barsoap,

Hispanic character played by a white lady

I hate to break it to you but Spaniards are European.

snooggums,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Why do you think her character was a Spaniard and not Hispanic?

barsoap,

Even if you meant Latino and not Hispanic there’s still plenty of European-looking people there. Making this an issue in the first place is terminally American. She got the role among other reasons because she speaks Spanish, which she picked up hanging out with Latinos in her gym rat days, which frankly speaking is miles above Hollywood standards when it comes to casting e.g. roles supposed to be German (“Jaja Weißkrautbrötchen!”): It’s much more important to get someone who can portray a culture well, than to get someone with the right surname or blood quantum or similar BS.

Also since when is Vasquez not from Spain. You could argue by linguistic analysis, she uses “pandejo” which is chiefly used in Latin American Spanish, OTOH as an immigrant to the US from Spain you’d pick it up quickly.

ILikeBoobies, (edited )

It goes both ways, you can’t pretend to take the higher path by neglecting a group of people because people in that group have neglected others

But we have make up so the race of the actor doesn’t have to match the character they are portraying

mindbleach,

There’s people who think, unless a character’s race or gender or what-have-you is a key component of their story, they should be male and caucasian. Like that’s the default and characters need a reason to be different.

leraje,
@leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Fuck those people :)

mindbleach,

Sideways.

Son_of_dad,

I only dislike it when historical shows or movies race swap, cause it kinda ignores the racism of that community at that point in time. Like a black woman playing queen Elizabeth wouldn’t make sense. Or Cleopatra for that matter

ours,

You would hate “The Great”. It’s semi historical but humorous and they cast all sorts to play what would be 99% just Russians and it is fantastic.

Son_of_dad,

If it’s historical fiction it doesn’t bother me really

funkless_eck,

a lot of people don’t understand that racism was different back then too. For example people in the Roman empire may not have understood the differences in skin color being that important, but would over index on tribe, religion or birth right

SupremeFuzzler,

I’ve been watching white guys play samurai and pharaohs and Jesus my whole life. It’s not that hard to get used to someone with historically inaccurate pigment playing a role. But for some strange reason, it’s only a political choice when the actor with the “wrong” skin color is dark.

Son_of_dad,

No it’s always been weird with white guys too. John Wayne playing Asian us fucked up, so is all the blackface throughout Hollywood’s history. I don’t expect them to go find an Aramaic Jewish actor from the middle east for a Jesus movie, but don’t make him Korean and act like it’s accurate or something

SupremeFuzzler,

I guess what I’m getting at is that, when you watch John Wayne playing an Asian guy, do you spend the whole movie wondering why the other characters aren’t constantly asking about his skin color and facial features? Probably not, since we can easily accept that while the actor is white, the character is still Asian.

But when a black actor plays a white character in a historical piece, you want to know why everyone isn’t constantly asking about their skin color and facial features. The answer is exactly the same: the character hasn’t changed. The other characters in the film don’t see the actor, they see the character.

Son_of_dad,

Ok but by that logic why can’t we get Cyllian Murphy to play Martin Luther King? Or hell, forget gender too, maybe we can get Allison Brie to play Pancho Villa, and it won’t be distracting cause all the other character in the movie are gonna act like it’s normal

SupremeFuzzler,

Well, why not indeed? Both of those could be interesting films, depending on who was involved in making them, and what they were trying to say.

LeroyJenkins,

wait a minute. are you saying everyone accepts white washing? just because you do doesn’t mean we should all just get used to it. people are tired of their classic ethnic stories being played by a bunch of white dudes or changed to a full white cast for the sake of palpability for the west. nobody aside from white people want that shit…

GraniteM,

I find it a little interesting the effect of casting women and people of color as Imperials in the Star Wars universe. The Empire is explicitly supposed to be a fascist racist organization. The casting of all lily-white poncy British-accented dudes in the original trilogy is supposed to read to the audience as “These are the bad guys; see how colonialist they look?”, while it’s the rebels and outsiders who are ethnically and gender diverse. The existence of Thrawn and Isard in the expanded universe was supposed to highlight just how brutal and talented they were, that they were able to succeed in such a racist and sexist Empire, even given their backgrounds.

I understand the idea of wanting more diverse casting in modern Star Wars, but making the Empire diverse seems to confuse the visual metaphor just a tad. I suppose that they’re keeping the “Empire is racist but only in the sense of it’s human-supremacist,” but it still seems a little odd.

Son_of_dad,

Yeah I agree with that too, as a kid, racism was an obvious trait of the empire, even how they refer to aliens like chewy “where are you taking this… Thing?”

Suddenly the Empire is racially diverse and even has aliens and people of color in command.

barsoap,

The Empire is speciesist, not racist. It’s similar in the Witcher universe: There’s plenty of elves and monsters around for humans to hate so why hate on other humans.

barsoap,

I’m actually like 1% miffed about how the Dune films dealt with race, there’s three skin colours mentioned in the book: Olive, light olive, and dark olive. Paul happens to be dark olive.

Dune is set 20000 years in the future, humanity had plenty of time to mix it’s all shades of olive.

AI_toothbrush,

I dont have a problem with this. Its a play. Its up to thw director and the actors to interpret the script in their owns ways. I do have a problem with the disney mermaid thing but only because those are movies. Movies are a one off thing. Stop remaking the same movies with race swapped characters and instead make new movies that are inclusive.

ABCDE,

It was a book, interpreted by Disney. There’s no reason the characters had to be one race.

Wizard_Pope,
@Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world avatar

Well yes but at the same time the original little mermaid is Danish and from like the 15th century or something.

ABCDE,

So all the characters, including the fictional creatures, should be Danish? And speak Danish. And… Well, you get the idea.

Wizard_Pope,
@Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world avatar

Never said that. It jus tmakes no sense to call the new movie a remake if you change stuff around

ABCDE,

Change what around? It was originally a book.

Wizard_Pope,
@Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world avatar

The new remake of their cartoon The Little Mermaid. I know it was originaly a book and the mermaid dies at the end.

ABCDE,

If it was remade, it would have been a cartoon.

ccdfa,

Ugh right?! Nothing at all like this Shakespeare guy from 16th century England!

barsoap,

I hate to break it to you but mermaids aren’t actually humans and their Vitamin D biology is probably completely different.

The actual crimes committed in the live-action remake is the atrocious colour grading and the script.

Wizard_Pope,
@Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world avatar

And the cgi animals and the fact that the king probably sleeps around as each of his daughters is so different from the others.

Default_Defect,
@Default_Defect@midwest.social avatar

Maybe it would help a little to stop fucking remaking shit so much.

ABCDE,

It’s hundreds of years old. We haven’t had a big “remake” (it’s an adaptation, since it was a play originally) since the Leo version decades ago.

yeah,

And mercutio was the best part of that.

snooggums,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Gnomeo and Juliet changed a name and they weren’t even human!

synae,
@synae@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Warm Bodies did it and Romeo was dead the entire time!

snooggums,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

It was reverse because he came back from the dead!

ABCDE,

Disgusting. Giving roles to other species is taking work away from homo sapiens.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works avatar

It’s a bit fucking different with theatre mate.

Performances are done live for starters, it’d be fucking stupid if each play only ever performed once on one night.

seSvxR3ull7LHaEZFIjM,

Romeo and Juliet is the stupidest target for this when all of Shakespeare has been interpreted in wildly diverging ways, skin color would be the smallest of which (and where was it stated that Juliet was white?)

pendulum_,
@pendulum_@lemmy.world avatar

It’s been a lot of years since high school English, but Juliet Capulet was of the Italian family Capulet in the 1590s.

There is some detail in the references of the Capulet family to real world factions of the time. But both those arguing for and against this casting don’t care about any of that.

LeroyJenkins,

yeah… people actually don’t care about the canon when they can use social issues and division as marketing

SlopppyEngineer,

The story says she’s from a noble family in North Italy. Most likely she has olive skin tone.

andrewta,

How did you get down votes for that?

lath,

You can get down votes for anything. Because they’re free.

andrewta,

Went for the dad joke.

hessenjunge,

Probably some Northern Italians taking offense at the incorrect generalism about their skin tone?

lurch,

i hope she’s extra virgin tho

hessenjunge,

Not that the skin tone matters much but you’ve obviously never been to northern Italy.

feedum_sneedson,

Where they’re white as fuck.

gedaliyah,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

You know that she was portrayed by a non-Italian for the first few hundred years, right?

SlopppyEngineer,

Of course. Italy didn’t exist yet when the play was written.

gedaliyah,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Wait, do you think that there were no Italians before the state of Italy was established?

Aqarius,

Funfact: when Garibaldi’s troops reached Sicily, chanting “Viva Garibaldi, viva l’Italia!”, many locals assumed Garibaldi’s wife is named Talia.

desconectado, (edited )

They were not “Italians” though, they were part of the Venetian republic, which now is part of Italy.

This is like saying Pocahontas was from the US just because she was born where is now the state of Virginia.

gedaliyah,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

More like saying Pocahontas was a Native American. Which in most settings would be an appropriate description.

hessenjunge,

They were. The place was called Italia before Romans set foot on British soil.

bostonbananarama,

Wait, do you think that there were Italians before the state of Italy was established?

hessenjunge,

The place has been called Italia since at least 49BC

kromem,

Well that explains why everyone was so up in arms like this over historical skin tone accuracy when Romeo and Juliet were played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. /s

SlopppyEngineer,

Yeah, that movie was made before anyone knew what woke meant. In fact, most people still don’t know what it means, but that hasn’t stopped anybody using it.

Sizzler,

Don’t even funking try to tell me Mercutio wasn’t woke in that version of R&J. He was glorious!

TankovayaDiviziya,

Italy is quite diverse like Spain in terms of skin tone. There are plenty of white skinned and olive skinned Mediterraneans.

hperrin,

So are they saying that Romeo and Juliet can’t be together? Ironic.

gedaliyah,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

This is one case where I feel like choosing to make them an interracial couple actually adds to the tension and makes it relatable. The feudal politics of who marries whom? I couldn’t be more disconnected. Petty folks getting upset about a white guy and a black lady getting hitched? Now I’m getting fired up.

dabu,
@dabu@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    snooggums,
    @snooggums@midwest.social avatar

    Romeo and Juliet is one of the most iconic love stories

    Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy, not a love story.

    desconectado,

    Are they mutually exclusive though? Plenty of love stories are tragedies, just to mention a few: Titanic, Anna Karenina, The Notebook, Love Story…

    I would even say, most tragedies are love stories.

    Deceptichum,
    @Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works avatar

    No it’s beautiful and love filled when 13 year old girls and 16 year old boys commit suicide.

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