I agree, it was a silly justification for Depp to use even if true.
If its any consolation, one thing these “big-budget movies that cast white people in non-white roles” seem to have in common is that they tend to be box office disasters.
6 Likes
So, we’re supposed to be colorblind when it comes to hiring, unless the job is acting, in which case you have to exactly match the ethnicity of the character you’re portraying, even though the whole idea of acting is pretending to be someone else. Got it.
9 Likes
My white-guilt-o-meter is having a reaction.
I always took “neverland” as a place that lost children lived their fantasies and had a ‘tribe’. Just like children would play Cowboys and Indians or Pirates. Without authentic ethnic identity…but child like role playing.
10 Likes
Exactly. The only thing worse than having a non-Native American play this role would be having a Native American play it, because that might give anyone racist enough to defend the character a shred of cover. (Although I’m sure the film version was sanitized beyond all recognition, which is a good thing in this case.)
Tiger Lily and the other “Indians” are basically a grab-bag of every racist stereotype of “savages” an Englishman of Barrie’s era could think of, and most of them are not even the, ahem, “right” stereotypes for Native Americans. She’s about as authentic a Native American as an actual tiger would be, with none of an actual tiger’s redeeming qualities. I mean, for crying out loud, she’s the princess of the “Piccaninny Tribe.” The Piccaninny tribe, for fuck’s sake. There were minstrel shows that found more dignity in their characters than Barrie in writing this steaming pile.
They called Peter the Great White Father, prostrating themselves [lying down] before him; and he liked this tremendously, so that it was not really good for him.
“The great white father,” he would say to them in a very lordly manner, as they grovelled at his feet, “is glad to see the Piccaninny warriors protecting his wigwam from the pirates.”
“Me Tiger Lily,” that lovely creature would reply. “Peter Pan save me, me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him.”
Nope nope nope. Burn it to the ground. By all means cast a Native American actor as Peter Pan or Hook or Wendy or Tinkerbell, but that’s beyond saving.
14 Likes
I know. It’s not like Depp is the only guy in Hollywood who can pull off snark. Most Native Americans I’ve talked to in a bar know snark and doubletake and mugging expression at least as well as Depp.
2 Likes
Incidentally, while I’d like to believe that Rooney Mara has learned her lesson about the sensitivity and thoughtfulness that white actors should bring to the question of playing characters of different racial backgrounds…
6 Likes
Things change. There was a fairly minor outcry when the straight Eric McCormack was cast as the gay Will Truman in Will & Grace. Eric is very talented and well-suited for the role and overall the show is regarded mostly as a positive influence on public perception of gay culture… and yet I believe today we’d see a larger outcry against a straight actor taking on such a role.
I recently worked on a TV episode that originally contained a transgender character, and when the producers wanted to hire one of their favorite (cisgender) actors for the part, the network actually balked, in large part due to the negative reaction they expected to see here on the interwebs.
Consider that we don’t often see preteen boys playing the women’s parts in Shakespeare’s plays anymore, nor have many high-profile white actors flocked to make like Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier and don blackface to play the part of Othello the Moor of Venice in recent decades.
Not since Michael Gambon circa 1990, at any rate.
Never mind whether any given actor possesses the chops to carry off a role. The question has become whether a given production will put in the effort to find an actor appropriate for the role. Just as you can’t make the argument that “women aren’t permitted to act onstage” anymore, nor can you plausibly argue that you can’t find a black actor with the chops to play Othello, or a Pacific Islander actress to portray the role of a Hawaiian woman, and so on. I get the impression that if it’s possible to find an actor who fits the demographic bill of the character, one really should cast from that pool first, and never mind the star power of a “name.” I’m pretty sure one might get a pass for casting Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump rather than an actual amputee, since the budget probably wouldn’t cover sawing Mr Sinise’s legs off at the appropriate point in the script (to say nothing of the awkwardness if reshoots were required), and we’re not yet at the point where real werewolves demand proper representation in horror movies, but on the whole, I think most of this movement has been in a positive direction.
20 Likes
Mara Rooney
You know what I hate? It’s when some white woman pretends to be a different race on screen…
9 Likes
Can’t even manage to keep his races right when stereotyping…
3 Likes
Wait, so an actor playing Mary Magdalene would need to be what, Christian? Jewish? Middle Eastern? A real Harlot? All of the above?
Rooney was hot naked in Dragon, give her some rope, or something.
Wait till the race police get onto all the Asians playing Asians that they aren’t. How about Ken Watanabe playing the KIng of Siam? Just about any Asian would get pissed about Japanese playing them. You know, WW2, occupation, atrocities & genocide.
3 Likes
Tempest, meet teapot.
1 Like
You’re acting as if context doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. If we lived in a world without racism, it might be common for actors of any race to be made up as actors of any other race, and that would be fine.
But in the real world, you don’t ever see a Norse epic with a black cast.* You don’t ever see a Victorian Britain period piece with a Hispanic cast. You see white guys playing Egyptians, white guys playing Native Americans, white guys playing Japanese, white guys playing basically any character who isn’t actually of central/southern African descent. It’s all one-way. Can you see why that is a problem?
*Someone is warming up their keyboard to remind me about Heimdall. Yes, yes, you’re very clever.
26 Likes
Does anyone here think its possible for Disney to make a film , no matter how sensitively , about anywhere without creating racial stereotypes? Cartoons have and always will be. It would have made no difference if the actor was native american or not.
Either we except this is the case or never watch another Disney film!
Does anyone here think a mid level actor is going to turn down a part in a major production? Anyone who would turn it down wouldn’t be in the film business already.
The Kingpin was black because the only other option at the time was Big Show.
1 Like
My grain of sand:
Ethnicity matters when ethnicity is one the that character main traits.
What are the character traits of Daredevil’s Kingpin? He is a huge scary gangster.
Does his ethnicity matters? NO.
What are the character traits of To Kill a Mockingbird’s Tom Robinson? He is black and one-armed.
Does his ethnicity matters? YES
What are the character traits of Peter Pan’s Tiger Lily? She is a Native American princess.
Does her ethnicity matters? FUCK YES.
13 Likes
I think you’re absolutely correct. BUT, irrespective of the make-believe world of the story, casting decisions are still a real-world occurrence with real-world consequences, and in that context I think choosing a non-Native American actress to portray a Native American character is needlessly tone-deaf. The characters aren’t authentic, but the peoples they’re loosely are, and deserve recognition when their cultures are used in even the most outlandish fictional settings.
1 Like
[quote=“Ashen_Victor, post:36, topic:74109”]What are the character traits of Peter Pan’s Tiger Lily? She is a Native American princess.Does her ethnicity matters? FUCK YES.[/quote]So… Native Americans had a weird monarchy system with a ruling princess. And they spoke broken English with chinese accent. And their tribe was named “Piccaninny” - which denotes wild, dark skinned, african children/small people/slaves. Gotcha. Definitely needs a native american woman to play this weird hodgepodge mash-up of childish fantasy.
5 Likes
There’s no ‘tempest’, this is a discussion. Attempting to frame these conversations as hysterical outrage is getting old.
Listen, @shaddack - we get it, you don’t give two hoots about these issues - they don’t involve machines and require empathy - not your thing. You don’t have to join every thread and inform everyone how unnecessary their feelings are. Got it?
12 Likes
Does anyone here think its possible for Disney to make a film , no matter how sensitively , about anywhere without creating racial stereotypes? Cartoons have and always will be. It would have made no difference if the actor was native american or not.
Either we except this is the case or never watch another Disney film!
Does anyone here think a mid level actor is going to turn down a part in a major production? Anyone who would turn it down wouldn’t be in the film business already.
You seem to be mixing the two movies, but just for clarification, the live action one referenced in the original article is Warner Bros., not Disney…
1 Like
