Turning white characters black

Bukkie

I agree with Doodlebug, it was ridiculous Anne Boleyn was played by a black actress when she was a white person. There would be total uproar if a black historical figure was played by a white actor or actress. As Spinnaker says it's pandering to the PC brigade.

Doodledog disagrees with the OP.

All historical figures should be played as whatever ethnicity they actually were.
It can vary for dramas if it fits in reasonably with the location and time period it’s set in.

I agree JudyBloom; maybe it has something to do with a lack of imagination.

My own personal view is that it depends on the context i.e To Kill a Mockingbird, how would it be, if Atticus was played by Denzel Washington and Tom Robinson, Ryan Gosling?
Virgil Tibbs - Brad Pitt & Sgt Gillespie - Chiwetel Ejiofor.....it wouldn't work, despite them being good actors (depending on your opinion of course!)
However in many areas of fiction does it really matter? - I'm pretty sure that every reader will have a different version of a characters appearance in their mind's eye, despite what the author writes!

If we are looking at historical characters / real people, then I do think we need to remain as close as we can - although I'm pretty sure Henry V111 didn't resemble Eric Bana (sadly ).

Isn't using the race, gender, sexuality of an actor a sign and standard for what people believe is progress, I actually think that's slightly insulting to all but I fear that's what happening in many cases.

petra

Bukkie

I agree with Doodlebug, it was ridiculous Anne Boleyn was played by a black actress when she was a white person. There would be total uproar if a black historical figure was played by a white actor or actress. As Spinnaker says it's pandering to the PC brigade.

Doodledog disagrees with the OP.

Doodledog is probably assumed to be in the 'PC brigade'

Clearly something was lost in translation along the way. C'est la vie.

We have no idea what colour Jesus was.

He was portrayed as people imagined him to be, like Lathyrus3’s Inuit reference.

Chances are, in the country he lived he was not as he is portrayed in the first and later images, so why not point that out.
The Black Madonnas are held in high regard.

Is that really an excuse for changing the ethnic original colour or appearance of historical people we do know about?

Or, if it comes to that, completely changing the appearance of a fictional character when a specific description is part of the character portrayed, whether that’s colour, ethnicity, disability etc?

Doodledog

I think you are disagreeing with me actually . Which is fine, but just to put the record straight I don’t care if a black actress plays Anne Boleyn.

I thought it was interesting. Anne was a bit "exotic" having grown up in France so to me the black actress represented her being rather "other" to the English court. Not that it worried me either way.

Whitewavemark2

I long for the day when this sort of conversation never happens, because we no longer see colour, but just the person.

How good would that be?

Would you ever claim you "only see the person" and just don't notice age or gender?

Allira

^Idris Elba for James Bond, ooh yes please^.
I might start watching again!

Form an orderly queue. No pushing in!

TerriBull

I suppose the counter argument would be how many times has Othello been played by a white actor, or indeed to see a film such as Lawrence of Arabia, where some of the Arabic warlords, Omar Sharif aside, were played by white men.I think casting for such roles is more authentic now, except there has been a reverse situation, where I think it can give a distorted version of the racial make up of Britain back in times when it was overwhelmingly white. I remember having a conversation with a black friend something along the lines of "there would have been a small black presence in Britain throughout history", her reply was "a lot were transitory and their numbers were miniscule in relation to the general population" Possibly more concentrated around dock areas, where Somali seamen for example settled, before the arrival of the Windrush generation.

Funny how little outcry about those white actors playing non white chapters.

My granny was born in the 19th century. She told me about her life in a small Irish village. One story was about a man who came back from20 years in the British army. He brought a wife and two daughters. No one ever saw the wife but granny knew the daughters, they would go to the village well where granny and the others carried buckets but these girls carried their water in copper pots on their heads. She said they were beautiful with slightly tanned skin and long straight black hair. He'd served in India and me thinks in that little Irish village around 1900 there was an Indian woman and two mixed race teenage girls. I'm sure if someone writes a play about that village some people would object to non white chapters being included.

As for 1962 there were plenty of non white people around. My husband came here jn 1948. I started a new primary school when we moved house in 1959, my teacher was black, my best friend was black. So I'm not at all bothered about non white people in 1962. My husband was a serving police officer in an English force in the 1960s.

eddiecat78

I don't mind more fictional characters being played by black actors . But I do object when it happens to real people who we know were white. For example Anne Boleyn. And we recently watched a film in which Agatha Christie's husband was black (he wasn't!)
As you say, there would be uproar if someone like Nelson Mandela was played by a white actor

I don't know what Jesus looked like in your church or kids' picture books, but he never looked very Jewish in mine

I see books I like very vividly. Very often I think "why did they cast X, they are nothing like the character". Of course that's because I see them so clearly, currently I've had to give up on Slow Horses as the cast is all wrong in my head, nothing to do with race or colour, they are just wrong.

Doodledog

Do you care if an actor has different coloured hair from your idea of the hair colour of the character s/he is playing? I don’t think it matters at all. As often as not we have portraits, not photos to go on (and those of Anne Boleyn were destroyed on her death) so only a rough idea of their appearance, anyway.

I don’t think skin colour is the most important thing about a person unless the story revolves around it. So a film about Nelson Mandela would need a black man in the role, but one about Anne Boleyn could cast colour blind.

Does not bother me one jot, back in the day men played all parts, male and female.

For me the colour of their skin is irrelevant.

theworriedwell

I see books I like very vividly. Very often I think "why did they cast X, they are nothing like the character". Of course that's because I see them so clearly, currently I've had to give up on Slow Horses as the cast is all wrong in my head, nothing to do with race or colour, they are just wrong.

However, I do agree that when I’ve read a book I picture characters in my mind very vividly and I’ve often been bitterly disappointed with casting.

Cosy for me it isn't their skin colour that jars, it is something deeper than that but I can't quite explain it but an Inuit Jesus or a black James Bond doesn't bother me.

Chardy

eddiecat78

I don't mind more fictional characters being played by black actors . But I do object when it happens to real people who we know were white. For example Anne Boleyn. And we recently watched a film in which Agatha Christie's husband was black (he wasn't!)
As you say, there would be uproar if someone like Nelson Mandela was played by a white actor

I don't know what Jesus looked like in your church or kids' picture books, but he never looked very Jewish in mine

I think you mean Middle Eastern rather than Jewish, a popular misconception.Jews don’t look ‘Jewish’ if they did then 1930’s Germany wouldn’t have forced them to wear yellow stars.

Lathyrus3

Allira

Lathyrus3

The Western world has been very happy for centuries with a fair, blue-eyed, Jesus.🤔

Not that it bothers me much. I was enchanted to see an Inuit Jesus calming the sea full of whales in a stained glass window in the Arctic.

Jesus was not Inuit.

He was Jewish.

I do know that😬

I just loved the way they’d made him their Jesus.

The other window had polar bears going into the ark and a snow goose with the branch in his beak.

😁
And why not!
Except the polar bear would probably eat everything else.

butterandjam

Whitewavemark2

I long for the day when this sort of conversation never happens, because we no longer see colour, but just the person.

How good would that be?

Would you ever claim you "only see the person" and just don't notice age or gender?

So, in the interests of artistic licence, let's set it in 2025, Henry VIII is an absolute Monarch and is busy beheading people he takes exception to.
There would be panic in some online forums!!

Would you ever claim you "only see the person" and just don't notice age or gender?

They've asked me to play Olivia Rodrigo in a film about her music. Will I pass muster, do you think?

Cossy

theworriedwell

I see books I like very vividly. Very often I think "why did they cast X, they are nothing like the character". Of course that's because I see them so clearly, currently I've had to give up on Slow Horses as the cast is all wrong in my head, nothing to do with race or colour, they are just wrong.

However, I do agree that when I’ve read a book I picture characters in my mind very vividly and I’ve often been bitterly disappointed with casting.

Me too.Even though Penelope Cruz is very attractive she just didn’t fit in with my idea of how Pelagia looked in my head in Captain Corellis Mandolin ( my favourite book at the time). It was a terrible adaptation of the book anyway ( nearly everybody was mis cast imo with the possible exception of John Hurt).And Timothy Spall wasn’t right, to me, in the recent Wolf Hall series. I know some people won’t ever watch adaptations of books that they’ve liked but I do like to see how they go about condensing a whole book into a film.

The new casting for the remake of Harry Potter, has cast a young Black actor as Snape.
The book describes Snape as pale, white sickly looking man, they got it right with Alan Rickman playing the part.
Lots of folk on Insta have commented on this choice when it was announced the other week. Any other character could be Black but Snape?

The chap they have cast is obviously very good to play that iconic part, but the other castings look spot on.

We will have to see how he can make this his own.

I’m glad that my post provoked such an intelligent discussion! I agree with the poster who said that she sees characters in books very vividly (based obviously on how they’re described by the author.)
And that’s why I’m disappointed when screen adaptations have miscast actors (in my view obviously.) I’m not sure whether I have too much imagination or not enough!
Someone also pointed out that a lot of casting these days is designed to bring in a new, younger audience. I’d suggest that this alienates some older people who have actually read the given book.
I’m all for original dramas, using actors from under-represented groups, rather than throwing authenticity out of the window.
And as I said, we need more historical non-white drama. There’s black history, Asian, middle-eastern…Personally I’d like to see something about the Australian aborigines or American Indians, from their perspective and not the white man’s.

Jesus was almost certainly of Middle Eastern appearance, dark hair, brown eyed and brown skinned, not fair haired and blue eyed as often displayed in religious art. I think that idealised Aryan version of Jesus that has been promoted for centuries is a complete misnomer. Jewish people don't fall into any one category as to their colouring, the Sabras born in Israel and before that Palestine are dark and more in keeping with the Middle Eastern appearance of the area as opposed to Ashkenazi Jews from various parts of Europe who can be very fair, but not necessarily so. The Serphardic Jews often have the darker looks of Spain where they emanated from.

LaCrepescule

I’m glad that my post provoked such an intelligent discussion! I agree with the poster who said that she sees characters in books very vividly (based obviously on how they’re described by the author.)
And that’s why I’m disappointed when screen adaptations have miscast actors (in my view obviously.) I’m not sure whether I have too much imagination or not enough!
Someone also pointed out that a lot of casting these days is designed to bring in a new, younger audience. I’d suggest that this alienates some older people who have actually read the given book.
I’m all for original dramas, using actors from under-represented groups, rather than throwing authenticity out of the window.
And as I said, we need more historical non-white drama. There’s black history, Asian, middle-eastern…Personally I’d like to see something about the Australian aborigines or American Indians, from their perspective and not the white man’s.

Sorry I don't see them vividly because of a physical description, I see them as a person.

Visgir1

The new casting for the remake of Harry Potter, has cast a young Black actor as Snape.
The book describes Snape as pale, white sickly looking man, they got it right with Alan Rickman playing the part.
Lots of folk on Insta have commented on this choice when it was announced the other week. Any other character could be Black but Snape?

The chap they have cast is obviously very good to play that iconic part, but the other castings look spot on.

We will have to see how he can make this his own.

We will have to see how he can make this his own.

But it's not his own.
The character has been described as such for a reason, presumably.