Well, I apologize. I should have clarified that I had read reactions to this story on several other sites, and I was mostly reacting to the outrage there. I posted here, because I have a much higher opinion of the community on this bbs.
Here is my logic, for what it is worth. The announcement is made that Downey might be portraying Rumi. Most Western people will probably not have heard of him, but that is not unreasonable or unexpected. But he has an Islamic sounding name, and is apparently important enough to be remembered many centuries after his death. It would also be reasonable to think it unusual that Downey or Decaprio would play someone like that. If I were a person who was concerned about âwhitewashingâ in Hollywood, this announcement would likely get my attention. I would then try to learn a little about the poet, so see if my instincts were correct. If I found that Rumi was likely of Tajik descent, and then I learned a little about the Tajik people, I would probably decide that either actor could probably pass as Tajik. I might still be bothered that an important Islamic poet was being portrayed by a non Islamic actor. I donât really know the firm rules for being outraged at this sort of thing, so I donât know if you have to be the same religion as the person you portray.
But it is apparent to me that many of the people who are the most outraged, especially on other sites, never took the step of learning about the poet. They went straight from the Islamic name to public outrage. I personally think that denouncing a person in a public forum is a non-trivial matter, and should only be done when you know you are right.
And of course 13th century Bactria is a complicated subject. They had just left the Roman empire, and were being invaded by Genghis Khan. But I think we would see much the same reaction if the subject was more accessible. If it was announced that an epic film about the Trail of Tears was being made, with Sean Connery portraying Chief Koo-wi-s-gu-wi, most people would have questions. Some people would get very angry and denounce him for whitewashing. Other people would spend some time on wikipedia, and learn that the Chief was 7/8th Scottish.
Once again, I did not mean to imply that you could not look up Rumiâs birthplace on a map. I meant that many people had not bothered to do so before forming their angry opinions.
They did remake it, in 1980, with Neil Diamond. UnfortunatelyâŚ
Itâs Ernie Hudson!
Fair enough. But if he was Tajik, why not get an actor from that region? Why insist on white actors for all major roles, because $$$$$? Why think itâs good enough that they can âpassâ as Tajik, so who cares? It only reinforces white supremacy.
Itâs also something of an insult to white people that says Hollywood thinks weâre all so narrowminded, that weâll only watch films starring white men. I donât think thatâs true of all consumers of movies, even if itâs true of some. Are you really only interested in watching films that star people you recognize and identify with racial and gender-wise? Do you care so little for the lives of people who donât look like you (and I am assuming youâre white and male here, so please let me know if Iâm wrong).
There is a whole bundle of things that is wrong with this constant play regarding films in Hollywood - the perception that the audience will only identify with white men, therefore, those are the only films that get support, and there is a vocal minority of film fans who reinforce that notion by having a meltdown whenever a POC shows up in a film. Remember the reaction to the casting of Rue in the Hunger Games or the recent casting of a black actress as Hermione in the Harry Potter play, or Idris Elba in the Thor films? Itâs kind of funny how the argument tends to go one way (casting whites in all the roles is fine, but casting POC in major roles is terrible and should never happen).
The Roman Empire must have got much further than I had thought. I was under the impression that they had never extended much further East than, say, Nisibis (modern Nusaybin). Mind you, I was also under the impression that, by the 13th century, they (the Eastern Roman Empire) had pretty much lost all their Asian possessions.
Thanks. They were pretty much relegated to the old Greek coastal areas in Asia Minor, eh? Nisibis would be in Northwestern Mesopotamia in the Ayyubid Sultanate at that time. The Parthians and Sassanians had put a fairly hard check on Roman expansion to the East.
Looks that way? the Seljuks were on much of modern day Anatolia, it looks like and this is long after the initial expansion of Islam in the modern middle east into modern Afghanistan.
Why did you remind me?? WHY???
Thatâs nice. Did you choose to call them âAryansâ without their consent, re-posting their image here with a label of your choosing that is loaded with racist history (in the west, in the English language), or do they self-identify as âAryansâ (on a webpage of their own that you should have linked to)?
Oops, meant that as a reply to Thesaurus_Maximus, not sure how the switch happened, in which case the âAryanâ term would have made more sense. My bad.
no problem.
Rich/famous/successful ones still are, especially if their name doesnât telegraph âforeignerâ:
or
Oh yes, theyâre a slippery bunch, those A-rabs! Slippin into whiteness whenever they can, the sneaky buggers.
/s
And that was more than a century after Manzikert, so yeah, the Seljuks had interior Anatolia firmly under control, and were pressing towards the coasts. The Byzantines had lost that and all of the Levant (Greater Syria). I somehow donât think they ever had Bactria to lose - the Macedonians long before, maybe, but not the Romans⌠
Thatâs because the Ilkhanate was even sooner. Kinda kicked the crap out of the Rum Sultanate, they did - ended up leaving a bunch of little beys to pick up the pieces (of which Osman was one).
Oooohhh, they did a really good job! âŚbut how did they know where all those seamounts were? And the shapes of the continents, tooâŚthose old mapmakers were better than we ever knew!
Better?
http://discovermagazine.com/2014/june/14-the-mapmakers-mystery
Maps are human representations of the world, meant to orient the viewer to the ideology of the time and place. Modern maps, despite their claims to objectivity and accuracy do that as well, even when the topography correct, itâs still in the service of particular ideology.
