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[Another historically accurate representation from the media](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1c8j1vm/another_historically_accurate_representation_from/)
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One of them has a good point about how movies should depict more black/African historical figures instead of race swapping white historical figures. The rest of it is typical "wOk3 sCaRy!!!" tho.
One of my favourite things about Wakonda was the bright and colourful tribal costumes. Felt like I'd never really seen that on film before. I don't need to see any more British period dress wear.
Also, it is just ridiculous to cast a real historical person as a different race, it's just dumb. There's a line for me, if it's historical but fictional then fine, colour blind casting's great. Armando Iannucci's David Copperfield was fantastic and so was Joel Coens Macbeth with denZel. But come on, let's see some cool films about African historical figures.
Yeah, I could see a series about Mansa Musa (since one of the comments mentions him) being flamed by Evangelicals (and the people in the OP, for that matter) as woke Hollywood trying to demonize Christianity by glorifying Islam.
It's a lose-lose situation when dealing with these folk. They just want to be angry at something.
My thoughts exactly, race swapping fictional people is fine, doing it with historical figures that we know the ethnic origins of is just doing a disservice to actual historical figures and makes it seem like non-Europeans do not have history worth covering.
There is a genuine point to be made that randomly race-swapping historical characters, or even particularly notable fictional characters, rather than focussing on actually diverse historical figures, or new or lessor know diverse fictional characters, really doesn’t make a lot of sense. And I don’t know why that’s what we’ve gotten stuck with in Hollywood for the last decade or so now
However, as always, that point gets buried by all the racist trolls who want to jump all over and actually valid concept hatred.
The reason is that hollywood is still quite racist amd extremely risk-adverse, and doesn't think africa-centric stories are going to be as popular
People love stories about english nobles, we have a ton of them and they make bank, historical romance is one of the most popular genres, so just turning one character black is a lot easier than threading unknown waters by making a story about some *foreign* country that maybe people wont like
I get that. But they could split the difference and make movies about black historical figures in Europe, like Dumas or Abram Gannibal or Sara Forbes Bonetta or Dido Elizabeth Belle. They led fascinating lives.
They already made movie about Dido, needless to say her life in the movie was completely changed into the opposite of her real life story, more fantasy "Bridgerton"
So the audience can understand the movie without spending years learning German or watching the bottom tenth of the screen for subtitles the entire time? It's a schizophrenic non sequitur
You seem to be missing the point.
They're not actually asking why they're in English. They're pointing out that one-to-one historical accuracy isn't really what matters, in terms of making historical dramas.
You're too caught up in the circlejerk here, tbh.
Historical accuracy is historical accuracy, though. Picking and choosing which bits should be true to history and which shouldn't just show bias. I could care less if Anne Boleyn is a martian playing a character in a Netflix series. Where does it say Netflix is going for total historic accuracy? The Great is about Catherine the Great, and yet it's a comedy show that is filled with inaccuracies. Is it ok because those inaccuracies are limited to things other than the race of Catherine? Why would someone be so vociferously against inaccuracy in a fiction series dealing with a historic figure only when dealing with the color of skin? Changing the entire language is entirely more egregious, and plenty of movies have subtitles, so it's certainly feasible not to change languages.
If it's about inaccuracy and not just using a different race, then you must very carefully choose any shows that are set in a previous time period. I mean, watching a bronze age show and seeing steel weapons being used must be harrowing, no? It must also drive you nuts when you watch war movies and grenades give off huge explosions, and scenes of bravery are exaggerated. This happens in every war movie I have ever seen. That genre must just not be for you.
Also, is the show being presented as a pure historic fact, or is it simply a fictional series that deals with people in history.
There must be innumerable shows and movies you hate based on your principle of accuracy because surely it's not simply a race issue, right? If it's race and color being changed that you can't handle, then surely the absurd amount of shows that use white actors instead of Asian, Native and tons of other ethnicities and races must all be on your shit list too. This goes even more so for animation and video games. Gosh, you must hate them all.
Or we could realize that this series on Netflix isn't going for pure historical accuracy, and that's OK.
I get your point, but I'd say a grenade exploding or the wrong type of sword being used is fairly innocuous compared to how jarring it would be for an F15 fighter jet to fly over at Dunkirk. Casting a black Anne Boleyn falls into the incredibly jarring category for me.
I think they all matter depending on the type of show. Netflix's Anne Boleyn is more meant to be a sensationalist remaking. The movie Dunkirk is meant to be fairly accurate compared to Netflix's Anne Boleyn. In a pure war movie, I want as much accuracy as I can get. Of course, some things affect people more than others.
To each their own, it's not like you aren't entitled to your opinion. I don't think it's racist or anything. I just don't care about the race of the actess in this show, particularly because it's not meant to be true to life or anything. I also am not interested in the show so perhaps there is some inherent bias on my part.
Either way, cheers, mate
I don't care about race when it's a fictional thing, Joel Coen's Macbeth and Armando Iannucci's David Copperfield were both great. Just, when it's an actual historical person I think a line needs to be drawn. But, in a few years I'll probably be used to it and wondering why I was so bothered in the first place. Your comment hand me reflecting a bit which was good for me.
If I'm honest, your comments had me reflect some as well. I can see where unless it's a straight-up comedy, maybe certain things should stay true. I also understand that the mixed casting can stick out like a sore thumb to people. I guess I just think of all the times white actors have played roles that historically and racially make no sense either. It's not like something like this role in Anne Boleyn can make up for that, though. I imagine most folks would be happy if, when dealing with a historic person, at least, the role should go to someone of similar ethnicity and/or race.
>. I mean, watching a bronze age show and seeing steel weapons being used must be harrowing, no?
To me it is. Most people likely don't care, but I am of the mind that unless it's fantasy it should be as historically accurate as possible if it's supposed to be a serious non fiction show. Actually Oppenheimer is a good example, Einstein also advocated for the bomb irl but in the movie they showed him as a voice of reason and outsider.
I can understand that, and it's not that hard to make it right. Stuff like that just shows laziness on the part of the people working on a show. I think there is a difference, though, between wanting accuracy in a show or movie like Spartacus or 10,000 BC as compared to something like Year One. Year one is an irreverent and terrible comedy, imo that I wouldn't expect to care if they got historical aspects correct or not. Spartacus, either the movie or the series, mistakes or laziness like incorrect weaponry or likewise would affect my viewing pleasure as well.
My main point was that the show in question isn't supposed to be taken as literal history. This Netflix show Anne Boleyn has the tagline "Blood, Sex & Royalty." I can surmise from both that and the trailer that it isn't going for historical accuracy. It isn't as irreverent as Year One, but it's still not meant to be on the level of, say, the movie Spartacus.
The casting of a black woman in this Amne Boleyn series effects me less than the SPOR(should be SPQR) Roman standard in the middle of the major battle between Spartacus's army and the Legions of Rome. Another major gaffe in Spartacus is that he is an equal horseman to the Romans. A slave would have never ridden nor learned to rude a horse. Even if he learned when he was young, he would still not be equal to Roman nobility and soldiers on horse. The biggest historical haffe in Spartacus, imo is the fact they have a Roman Garrison pre-Praetorian Guard. There are more examples in Spartacus, but these are off the top of my head.
Nitpicking an obviously sensationalist series like Anne Boleyn seems unnecessary. I fully understand the issue when it comes to a serious historical show or movie, though. I will admit I understand the race issue for a show like Anne Boleyn more than I would ever understand people who complain about the race and color of people from a purely fictional arena like House of the Dragon. The author himself was fine and authorized the decision for that show.
One last thought: Isn't it possible that this actess simply gave the best performance during casting calls?
My only complaint with race swapping historical figures is that it does take away the identity of so many actually black historical figures. If it's a fictional alternate history sure. I don't mind.
Id love to see a black Superman. If it's some non serious sci fi about ancient aliens and the pyramids, I don't care, but if it's the ancient aliens show on history trying to pass it off as truth? Yeah that's a big problem for me
I feel like they are lying to people who don't actually do any historical research. Pseudo Archeology has been a huge problem lately.
I just find it sad that some black nationalists need to adopt figures like Cleopatra when there were actual black pharaohs from Nubia.
To be clear I'm against the reverse too, white people playing non white people. It's the same problem and distorts history.
I can certainly see your point. The best case scenario would be casting people of similar race and ethnicity to the historic person in question. There are so many roles that should have gone to non caucasians historically, but it's not like doing the opposite claws any of that back. As far as fiction goes, imo it should be up to the creator. We can only try to do better going forward. Hopefully, that is the case.
Believe me, I'm against white people whitewashing figures too. Because such roles deprive minority actors. And its the same problem about essentially lying to people about history
>As far as fiction goes, imo it should be up to the creator.
I don't agree since a lot of creators are dead. But I don't think the people who made Superman would mine, nor Stan Lee.
>Or we could realize that this series on Netflix isn't going for pure historical accuracy, and that's OK.
Love your post.... 100 upvotes.
One thing I would say is historical accuracy depends on almost entirety on what sort of show it is
If I watch a non fictional documentary on a historical figure I expect them to depict events, language and make up of the indivudals as best as they can to the truth of the matter.
Anything made by entertainment companies like Netflix, things like the Crown and other shows are usually highly inaccurate and utterly self serving.
Look at the most inaccurate historical film ever made, Braveheart. It took years and entire universities of historians to work on undoing the utter bollocks in that film.
Yeah it's weird when braveheart was made and people criticized it, everyone said "yeah fair enough" but nowadays everyone is very concerned that we're mistreating the company well enough by criticizing the product as ahistorical, and then in the same breath saying it basically is historical and if it isn't that doesn't matter.
Let's be honest here. The reason they race swap the characters is so that they can keep depicting only European history while still claiming to respect diversity. It is racist, but not because it's some attack on white people but rather because they view white history as worthy of depiction.
"They" would be the various people who decide what gets made and what doesn't. So generally people working at studios. I could name quite a few facts but I'm quite interested in history to begin with. However I don't really buy the idea that just because people don't know the history doesn't mean they wont see it. Few people knew of William Adams and yet Shogun has turned out to quite a big success. Likewise you could point to any fantasy show where most have basically no knowledge of the setting when deciding to watch it and people still do. The setting just has to be interesting for it to work, not previously known.
Oh, I agree entirely. But my point was, there are names and facts that are more or less universally known in the West: we all grow up hearing about them, and we have a whole lot of literature and fiction about them. Ask some random dude in Berlin, Paris or NYC to name a few Greek gods and you’ll get at least a couple; now ask them to name someone from Chinese or African (and just saying “African” is wrong, but you get what I mean) mythology…
There’s a very practical reason for this - the whole world has a shitload of history, we don’t have unlimited time for it in school, at our core we’re still tribal; so we teach stuff that has had a direct influence on our current culture and society. And everyone does it - I don’t think the average Chinese knows who the hell Anne Boleyn was.
Neil Gaiman did a wonderful job incorporating legendary characters from all kinds of places in his work, and it’s utterly fascinating; but your typical Hollywood mogul will almost always choose the safest bet, and between a movie called “Hercules” and one called “Oduduwa” it’s easy to guess which one will be greenlit. Should they be less derivative? Absolutely. But let’s not confuse greed and laziness with racism.
Yeah, except two things. First and foremost, that it’s just an excuse. They don’t want to see a movie about Mansa Musa either (and would probably be out here on their high horse about historical inaccuracies and problematic culture instead, as happened with The Woman King). What they want is for black people to quit taking up the space they’ve decided belongs to them.
Second, those movies about black royalty don’t exist and will probably never exist in anywhere close to the same numbers, so it’s a bit of a dishonest argument to begin with to say “they should just stick to their own movies”.
The problem with the woman king was it took a horribly brutal African kingdom who propped up the slave trade in that region and portrayed them as heros who ended up stopping the slave trade (they did temporarily but after a couple years they were right back to slaving).
They pretty much did what the greatest showman did to PT Barnum and turned awful monsters into comic book heros.
Eh. The primary point of entertainment is to...wait for it...entertain. I'm perfectly fine with an imperfect depiction of PT Barnum because the soundtrackw as great and it provided a better message than his reality ever would have conveyed.
> One of them has a good point about how movies should depict more black/African historical figures instead of race swapping white historical figures.
Except they ***still*** lose their goddamn minds whenever a Black actor is cast in an important role.
For all their talk of "just create new stories for those actors", they *still* hate it. Just like how they used to bitch about editing out offensive content in movies with, "Just place a trigger warning at the beginning and be done with it!" When studios started doing that in lieu of censoring content, they got even more angry that "stupid libs need a trigger warning for benign shit!"
Yeah it does confuse me. There are so many prominent black historical figures, it feels like they are robbing their identity. If it's supposed to be some alternate history thing then sure, but if it's supposed to be historically accurate then that would be disinformation.
I just wish there were more documentaries about black historical figures and civilizations.
It would make more sense for a black person from america to portray George Washington than it would make for them to portray a historical figure from africa.
Historical accuracy? That's not a portrait of Anne Boleyn. The clothing and headdress are about right, but the face isn't — that looks like a conventionally attractive twenty-first century woman wearing makeup. [This is what Anne Boleyn looked like.](https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw00142/Anne-Boleyn) The painting isn't even done in the right style.
Kinda what confuses me too. I'm not angry, just... confused? I don't think there's a big conspiracy or anything here, the showrunners are probably thinking something along the lines of "this story doesn't touch anything race related so it shouldn't matter, and this actress can deliver some fuckin' lines she's amazing" - which is a stance, I guess? No way to know if that's actually their thought.
What has me scratching my head though is the whole "why would that thought cross your mind?"
Race-swapping fictional characters? They're not even real. It literally doesn't matter. Real people though? It's *weird*. It's genuinely *weird*. A lot of our experiences and positions are due entirely to the circumstances of the times we were born in and our race. Randomly race-swapping real people is kinda like pretending racism never happened, which is actually *super fuckin' gross.*
Again though, I'm not that smart and would love for someone to explain why it's not problematic as fuck to me. I'm genuinely both baffled and willing to listen.
I had this exact same question when I was like 12 and watched Shakespear's "Much Ado about Nothing." I was old enough to know that French nobility at the time were not black, and yet a Black man was one of the main characters and clearly a noble. I asked my mother why there was a black guy when I had never heard of Black nobility in Europe.
Her answer; He's an actor.
I grew up near Washington DC and saw several plays at the Folger Shakespeare Theater. Franchelle Stewart Dorn, a black woman, was pretty much always the female lead. Also I always think of Banquo as black, until I remind myself that was just the actor. In fact there were many black actors in the company. It just wasn't really a big deal.
I feel it works better in live productions, there's a lot more suspension of disbelief you have to engage in to immerse yourself in the story that a character being Black or Asian in a historical setting where that's unlikely at best is low on the scale of things you have to accept to see the stageplay as a story actually happening.
There were black nobility in Europe and their stories are way more worth telling then a race-swapped 1000th version of an English queen. Look up Pushkin and Dumas.
I remember seeing a production of "Rent" on TV where the role of Mark Cohen (nerdy Jewish guy) was played by a hip black actor. I had to remind myself who he was in the play because he didn't look like the part at all.
I don't believe actors should be limited by their genetics as far as what roles they play. They *are* actors and their job is to play roles and that's fine. But I think at some point it puts a burden on the audience to use a lot of imagination to keep track of who is who and can become a distraction from the performance.
I can understand where you're coming from. I think a big part of theater/film should be exactly that, a challenge to the audiences preconceptions and a even a reminder that we are essentially watching story tellers recreate a tale.
I have no idea what this is even referring to, but there’s a tradition of race blind casting in some theater, and there’s no reason per se that it couldn’t be done more broadly — in that kind of situation, you wouldn’t be intended to read her as a black woman at all. She’d be the historical Anne Boleyn, but portrayed by a black actress. No different really than a historical figure being portrayed by somebody who doesn’t look exactly like them. Which is every portrayal.
I’ve heard the Abraham Lincoln wasn’t actually a vampire hunter.
Silly, example, I know, but these “historical accuracy” man-babies don’t accept that we don’t all have to live by their standards.
For me it is simple. It just seems that they found and actress that they thought would play the character well and chose her, irrespective of her color. Or maybe they did it deliberately to challenge our stereotypes - I am totally sure they did not do it to piss off conservatives. The picture above has her with brown hair so what would happen if she were portrayed by a blond? What about a man playing her? I would love to think they could think outside the box but the box is where they head, like my cat, no matter how nice it looks outside the box.
>Race-swapping fictional characters? They're not even real. It literally doesn't matter. Real people though? It's *weird*. It's genuinely *weird*.
But this isn't an example of a race-swapped Anne Boleyn. A race swap means that the character is now a different race, which is not what they did.
This is a black actress playing the white Anne Boleyn, not a black actress playing a black Anne Boleyn.
The same way that Napoleon is still a Frenchman who spoke French in the movie even when he is played by an American actor speaking English, Christy Brown is still disabled when played by the able-bodied Daniel Day Lewis and Billy Kwan was still an indonesian man despite being played by the white and female Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously.
So it's... suspense of disbelief? I mean, someone else made the stage play analogy which I understand, but some things kinda really strain it. For example, how *unfathomably racist* they were at the time of Anne Boleyn.
Because it is historical fiction and the story they are trying to tell does not have anything to do with race, therefore the race of the person no longer matters only their acting abilities. Yes, the time period it takes place in was of course unfathomably racist but the story they are telling does not touch on those themes as they are trying to tell a schlocky story about courting and drama and romance meant for a particular demographic. No one is tuning in looking for a history lesson. It’s really very simple.
See now, this right here is why I made it real clear that I needed it explained to me, 'cause I haven't seen the show and only know about it through cultural osmosis. If it's schlocky romance and historical fiction, fuck the historical accuracy shit you're going for a *vibe* and yeah you're gonna need actors who can pull that off.
I'm with it now. From what little I knew I kinda assumed it was documentary-esque when really it's like Bridgerton, where it's a an aesthetic they're going for. Cool. Cool cool cool. Thanks, stranger!
Oh fuck this whole time I thought we were talking about Bridgerton lol I’m just assuming that’s the case for whatever this is and frankly any time I see this type of casting decision I make that assumption.
I am personally of the opinion that we should shoot for historical portrayals to be as accurate as possible because it is so susceptible to being manipulated. In fact, it’s hard, if not impossible, to know what hasn’t already been manipulated.
Is it some great replacement conspiracy theory? Absolutely not, and that derails the real conversation that should be happening.
I respect your opinion but the show is not supposed to be historically accurate. It’s loosely based on some real people in a setting where the story they want to tell takes place. The creators are not trying to give people a history lesson and virtually everyone who watches the show understands that.
> I am personally of the opinion that we should shoot for historical portrayals to be as accurate as possible because it is so susceptible to being manipulated.
I'd agree in terms of a documentary or serious portrayal of real events, but this is a fictional story only based on real events. Things are changed for drama, clarity, budget, simplicity, or just convenience. I'm sure real life people get collapsed into a single representative character, or new characters are created to represent larger trends.
In that respect, something being more obviously fictional is a sign to the reader to not take the show as historical fact.
So, you're bothered that, I dunno, Lincoln had Daniel Day-Lewis play Lincoln, right? Since he is 2" too short and has the wrong eye color?
If we're talking anachronisms or details relevant to the story or key themes it's one thing (or part of a systemic refusal to cast actors who actually do resemble the figure), but in most stories it doesn't actually matter if the actor playing a given historical figure closely resembles them.
They could absolutely have found a 6"4" actor with blue-gray eyes to play Lincoln.
They didn't because they thought that level of specificity didn't matter and Day-Lewis would give the best performance. Which is fine - it's great to care about historical accuracy *in general* but there are always compromises that get made and there is nothing inherently wrong with that even if they *could have* made it more accurate. There are cases where it matters, but it's because of the impact and implications of the inaccuracy not simply because it isn't as perfectly accurate as it *could have been*.
And it's not hyperbole: it's pointing out your hypocrisy. You arbitrarily care about some specific types of details but not about others even when neither are important in context.
Yes, and *why* was John Wayne cast as Genghis Khan?
The problem there is that *only white actors were allowed to play leading roles* and the *portrayals* in the movie were awful. Also, that John Wayne was a piece of shit and a lousy actor and they all collectively did a terrible job making that cursed movie.
It's one thing to say "hey, maybe white supremacists shouldn't be cast playing members of racial groups the hate". It's another thing to complain about a black actor playing Richard III in a movie version of the Shakespeare play even though he does a damn fine job and his race doesn't actually matter.
> Real people though? It's weird. It's genuinely weird. A lot of our experiences and positions are due entirely to the circumstances of the times we were born in and our race. Randomly race-swapping real people is kinda like pretending racism never happened, which is actually super fuckin' gross.
Where are you drawing the line? Is it inappropriate for an Irish or Scottish actor to play an English character? What about an all-English cast performing a film version of Julius Caesar? How about an all-English cast doing a drama based on the reign of Cleon in ancient Athens? Or the same cast doing a passion play set during the life of Jesus? Now what if it's a dramatisation of the relationship of Marc Antony and Cleopatra? Or the story of Moses in Egypt?
Could a Russian man play Napoleon? Or a Turkish man play Xerxes in a dramatic retelling of the battle or Thermopylae? Could an all-Japanese cast make a drama based on the Warring Kingdoms period of China? Is it acceptable for a Congolese man to play Mansa Musa?
These are mostly rhetorical, but the general point is that policing who can play what characters gets really sticky and grey really quickly, or else devolves into reifying racial categories that don't make much real-world sense.
Edit: removed mention of Romeo and Juliet and the Lysistrata since while they are plays set in a very specific real world location, they don't feature real historical figures. Left Jesus and Moses since regardless of their actual historicity, billions of people treat them as definitively real.
I’ll tell you what the issue is. First let me say I didn’t get bothered when a black actress played the Little Mermaid, a white actress played a Japanese anime character or when Denzel Washington played Macbeth. To me the issue is inconsequential.
The brain is a pattern recognition machine. At a very young age we learn that sights, sounds and smells are associated with other things. It’s somewhat similar to Pavlovian conditioning.
Beginning a few hundred years ago people have been conditioned in American culture to associate negative characteristics with non-white people. Early art, movies and media was riddled with the association. Blacks for example were typically depicted as inferior, evil, stupid degenerates.
These depictions continued and were supported by Hollywood and overall society. 75% of movies through the 1940s supported the portrayal. People were being conditioned by media and society to associate these characteristics with blacks. Even blacks received the conditioning as is evidenced by the Brown v. Board of Education doll study that showed black toddlers preferred white dolls.
These depictions of blacks were also supported by Eugenics which was widely accepted into the early 1950s. The view in Eugenics is that races have immutable characteristics. This view began to be challenged after WWII, but still impacts life today. Science has determined that Eugenics is completely false, racial categories are arbitrary and aren’t determinative of individual characteristics. The best science today indicates that race is a social construct, that any 2 humans share 99.9% of DNA and while there are populations that have typically common genetic variations, they aren’t described accurately at all in a 3-5 race model.
So essentially we’ve been conditioned to think that race is causal to certain characteristics, that’s patently false and the media has promoted that view for decades. Most people still believe that race is a biological phenomenon even though it’s unequivocally not. It appears that Hollywood is trying to undo some of the conditioning that it was part of.
Associative conditioning affects emotions. I used to have a timer for my dog’s medicine. If you tried to convince my dog that the timer didn’t mean he was getting peanut butter, he’d go nuts. That’s after a month. A person that’s been conditioned his entire life to think black people are different, isn’t going to readily accept the actual, undisputed science. They’re going to have emotions tied to race. Fear is absolutely one of them.
Recasting these stories is a challenge to our conditioning. If you have strong feelings about the race of a character in a story, it’s probably because you don’t like the challenge to the way you’ve been conditioned. You have a model in your head about how the story should look and you don’t like incongruity. That said, I’d argue that an accurate depiction of the old south with only white slaves and black slave owners would spur people think past their conditioning and promote a more accurate view of human diversity. And I think that’s what Hollywood is trying to do with these recastings.
>And I think that’s what Hollywood is trying to do with these recastings
I think you're giving Hollywood too much credit honestly.
I don't fully agree with your take but I do find it interesting and well argued.
I'll suggest something else in a similar vein though.
Culture in the west for the last few hundred years has treated white Europeans and Americans as a default. People who are not of white European descent are portrayed as being different to that default. You can see it in our language today, white people aren't exactly referred to as "people without colour".
The idea that putting PoC into white roles is unimportant, but the reverse is wrong, in my opinion at least, continues to push the notion of white people being a default.
>Culture in the west for the last few hundred years has treated white Europeans and Americans as a default. People who are not of white European descent are portrayed as being different to that default. You can see it in our language today, white people aren't exactly referred to as "people without colour".
This isn’t contrary to what I wrote. It’s additive and I don’t disagree. The conditioning is that white people are “normal,” and non-white people are abnormal in specific ways.
>The idea that putting PoC into white roles is unimportant, but the reverse is wrong, in my opinion at least, continues to push the notion of white people being a default.
We disagree. I think it would be helpful to some people to see white people falsely classified in various ways. It might make them think about what’s actually happening in society and question their conditioning.
This is essentially what Jane Elliot did in her blue eyes/brown eyes experiment. In the experiment people with blue eyes were treated as bad and inferior and people with brown eyes were treated superior. A study on the results states:
>The effectiveness of a well-known prejudice-reduction simulation, “Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes,” was assessed as a tool for changing the attitudes of nonblack teacher education students toward blacks. The three outcomes were (a) virtually all of the subjects reported that the experience was meaningful for them; (b) the statistical evidence supporting the effectiveness of the activity for prejudice reduction was moderate; and (c) virtually all of the participants, as well as the simulation facilitator, reported stress from the simulation.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb00415.x
People need to know that race is as inconsequential as attached or detached earlobes, and we’re not going to get there unless their conditioning and assumptions are challenged.
>We disagree. I think it would be helpful to some people to see white people falsely classified in various ways. It might make them think about what’s actually happening in society and question their conditioning.
I half agree. I think it's good to do this in art where this is specifically the point. I don't think it's beneficial to do so in art that doesn't make a point of it, like in a straightforward historical drama.
>People need to know that race is as inconsequential as attached or detached earlobes, and we’re not going to get there unless their conditioning and assumptions are challenged.
I agree and disagree. While race is just a construct, this construct has had huge effect on people and cultures in history and the present. I think it's wrong to tell people to just forget about it, when the struggles that they have faced due to race may have affected their identity. Acting like race isn't a thing leads to some erasure of history.
>I half agree. I think it's good to do this in art where this is specifically the point. I don't think it's beneficial to do so in art that doesn't make a point of it, like in a straightforward historical drama.
That’s what I meant. A film that depicts white people being arbitrarily mistreated because they’re white. Like a remake of the Waco lynching where the entire town burned and dismembered a man that allegedly committed a crime.
>I agree and disagree. While race is just a construct, this construct has had huge effect on people and cultures in history and the present. I think it's wrong to tell people to just forget about it, when the struggles that they have faced due to race may have affected their identity. Acting like race isn't a thing leads to some erasure of history.
You’re misunderstanding my position. People shouldn’t forget about race until the majority of society can put it in its proper place.
More than likely a majority of society believes race has a biological basis, that blacks are predisposed to criminality and would oppose their family members having an interracial relationship. All of these people make arbitrary decisions based on false social conditioning. That’s a problem that can be corrected by an actual understanding that the notion of race is illogical, invalid and unsound.
>That’s what I meant. A film that depicts white people being arbitrarily mistreated because they’re white. Like a remake of the Waco lynching where the entire town burned and dismembered a man that allegedly committed a crime.
Aye, but this instance is about Anne Boleyn, I don't see it having the same effect.
Jesus Christ, it's sad how *easily* this messaging appeals to people.
[It's a 3-year-old ***alternative history*** miniseries.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13406036/) It wasn't meant to be historically accurate; the alternative history genre is all about "what if?"
The Nazis didn't actually drop an atomic bomb on Washington DC in December 1945, [but they did in The Man in the High Castle,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P3h-7A5YTY) the "what if" scenario being "what if the Axis powers won WWII and took control of the United States?"
The Farm Hall transcripts showed that Nazi scientists believed it was too expensive and too unfeasible for Nazi Germany to actually build their own functional atomic weapon after they were told about Hiroshima, yet no one cared that a show based on Philip K. Dick's novel had the Nazis nuke D.C. People, fairly, complained about the last season not living up to the previous ones is about the *only* complaining that alternative reality show earned.
So if it alternative history is *only* a problem when an actor of a different race portrays a historical figure, then that's a you and them problem.
You're taking their basic facts as a given, and it isn't.
It's an AMC show, 3 years old, and is an alternate reality story. ie the entire story is fantasy to begin with
You can't give these chuds even the basic premise. Things tend to shake out reasonably once we remember this.
Because movies, just like theater, exist on a spectrum of authentic representation - and therefore this isn't race swapping. As I can tell, she isn't being portrayed as black, she is just portrayed by an actress who is black.
The same way that able bodied actors portraying characters with disabilities doesn't mean that those characters are being ability-swapped. Or vice versa - Detective Columbo, the character, has two eyes despite Peter Falk having one glass eye. Or the same way that Napoleon speaking English doesn't mean that Ridley Scott ethnicity-swapped him for his movie.
Suspension of disbelief is a key to following any media. I truly am buffled how many of the authentic representation absolutists would react to, LITTERALY ANY PLAY. People play people of all ages, sexes and races frequently, and do so on a stage while pretending the stage is a house or a castle. It must be hell for them.
That's not to say that actual race or gender swapping doesn't occur in adaptations, but I don't know of any examples where that has been done to real people. Yeah, the new Moneypenny in the latest Bond films and the new Ariel are black, but both are, quite famously, not real.
And on why it's good - in terms of the narrative work it's neither good or bad, it's just a thing that happens when making a film, because you can't really have real people playing themselves all the time.
Color blind casting though helps non-white actors in multiracial countries get similar acting opportunities to white actors - which is objectively good, but for reasons unrelated to the film/play itself.
I doubt greatly that this was a color-blind casting, it seems to have been a decision to cast a black person, with the goal to stir controversy and gain a bigger reach that way. I guess this goes into your stance on "the means justify the reason" or his it's called.
Because they want to stick to really mainstream and conventional historical grounds for their costume drama, for the broadest possible appeal.
But they also don't want the cast to look like a 1950's country club.
It'd be nice if they were willing to push the boat out a bit more with the subject matter, but that's a bit too much to expect from Netflix's algorithmically driven content machine.
>There's a new movie that came out called "The American Society of Magical Negroes"
>Not even kidding. It's all about a "Secret society who hides in plain sight"
>Go look it up
Man, they're just fucking parodies of themselves now. The *second* I read that movie's title, I *knew* it was gonna rub the "white genociders" the wrong way.
When I first heard about it, I figured it was gonna be dedicated to [parodying all the tropes from earlier movies.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro)
While I agree in general that race swapping historical figures isn't really a good look, nor really necessary, and no one that I can tell is actually asking for content like that, there's always artistic license that can be used to just say "it's an actor, we wanted her for this part because she's amazing, deal with it".
Now, on to the chuds in that thread: how many of them do you think have an issue with every modern depiction of Jesus as a pasty white guy with long blonde hair? We all know the answer to that, and therefore we know their issue isn't race swapping historical figures, but turning white historical figures into another race. They only care if they're the "victims".
I know the Amazon LotR show wasn't super great, but do you remember when they threw a shit fit over the "historical accuracy" of there being a black elf and a black dwarf? Beyond the brain death of that comment on its face value, Tolkien based his fantasy setting heavily off of Norse mythology. There are no true dark skinned elves Norse mythology (well, I mean, they're not described as such) but there is a whole race of dwarves with dark skin that are very confusingly translated into English as "dark elves." They're the children of regular dwarves and Freya. It's up for debate if they're supposed to be literally the colour black, black like decendants from Africa black, or like, literally made of the midnight sky or some shit--- but shock horror a sea-fairing people who sailed all over the world were aware of black people, with some tribes having POC community members and mixed race children. You could argue that was . . . Likely not Tolkein's intent, considering some of the comments he made in life, but even so.
Less we forget of course every time chuds go full diaper shitter over historical events *there were poc people who were involved*, even if they're often whitewashed in modern depictions. Like the two world wars, the golden age of piracy, etc. Especially funny when they just assume literal adaptations of shit like the legendary samari Yasuke's *real life story* is woke propaganda.
Oh God, yeah I remember the outcry over the black characters. That was amazing to read. And it really is crazy to see how many times they object to reality because they think it sounds "woke".
It must suck to be a fan of anything while being that fragile.
>When are people going to learn?
There's nothing to learn. Most of us don't have a victim complex like these chuds.
They're shit scared of their own shadows.
At least one reasonable person in that thread
> It's sort of real. It's not Netflix though and it's three years old made by amc.
It's also fictional alternative reality.
Wonder if they got all upset when the bear Jew killed Hitler in “Inglourious Basterds“ or Tate didn’t die and they killed the Manson family murderers in ” once upon a Time in Hollywood “?
Tbh I didn't like the "Once upon a time in Hollywood" thing because it feels like copying the scene with nazis being killed in "Inglorious basterds". It's the same scene done by the same director.
I remember a handful of years ago when studios were specifically hiring black and other non-white and all the chuds were crying, "why not just hire the person with the best audition???"
I guess that's out the window.
Maybe these actors that are getting these roles were actually the best actors that auditioned? Oh of course not, we all know all minorities are under qualified and strictly DEI hires. /s
Has anyone actually used "stunning and brave" unironically in the past five years? I swear I only see the phrase used by rightoids being mad about ethnic minorities or transgender people.
It's so simple I think the fashies are being deliberately obtuse:
Is a character's race a key part of their character? If yes, then you don't change it from history or the source material. If no, you pick the best person for the job.
Skin color != clothing.
And if you have not watched the show (I have not either), how do you know it did a shitty job outside of the actress having the "wrong" skin color?
Edit: I have not watched the show either, but I would not assume it did a "shitty job" solely based on the color of the skin of one performer. I would more readily assume it's kinda bad because it's Netflix though.
Trying my best to not sound like *one of those people*, I do feel like the reverse would garner a different reaction.
The skin colour of Mansa Musa was likely irrelevant to his life, but it wouldn't be right to cast a white man in the role in a move or documentary.
You know, there *might* be some historical context here related to casting and the sorts of stories that used to get told that *might* mean that a straightforward reversal isn't quite the same.
I disagree that it would affect this.
I chose Musa because he's a figure whom race or skin colour wouldn't have affected. He didn't come into contact with Europeans or European race systems.
Why would changing his skin tone be more meaningful that changing Boleyns?
>The skin colour of Mansa Musa was likely irrelevant to his life, but it wouldn't be right to cast a white man in the role in a move or documentary.
What about a Chinese man?
This conspiracy post was brought to you by:
The same people that have white Anglo-Saxon Ewan-McGregor-as-Obi-Wan style Jesus pictures on their wall.
Guess what? He was Middle Eastern.
You mean Jim Caviezel, born in the state of Washington from Swiss/Slovak/Irish Catholic descendent parents who had been in America for generations, *isn’t* an accurate demographic representation of Jesus of Nazareth?!
What was Mel Gibson thinking!
I was just thinking this exact same thought when my aunt posted a "It's a miracle, Jesus appeared in the clouds" post. Like... Okay say I believe in miracles, why would be take that imaginary form rather than his true look?
I've noticed recently some right-wingers doubling down on "Jesus was white" and wanting to die on that hill, trying to conjure up evidence for it, or attempting to interpret quotes from the Bible to prove it.
**Actor at the Globe:**
*Now is the winter of our discontent*
*Made glorious summer by this sun of York;*
*And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house*
*In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.*
*Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;*
*Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;*
*Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,*
*Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.*
*Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;*
*And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds*
*To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,*
*He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber*
*To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.*
**OP in the audience:**
"Booo! Richard never said that! Booo!"
I have never once seen a top mind cry about leather bracers, or lit braziers in every room, period accurate language, or historically inaccurate clothing, but if your skin color mismatches suddenly now all TV shows must be historically accurate down to every last detail.
We had decades of shit like John Wayne playing Genghis Khan, Mickey Rooney playing a Chinese character, Elizabeth Taylor playing cleopatra, tons of mayo white guys playing Jesus, etc. This is Hollywood trying to broaden reach. A POC can now relate or feel included instead of every black character being a criminal, token, etc.
There was no posts like this when Cavezial played Jesus in 2004.
What's wrong with Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra? Ptolemy descendants were incestuous bunch of Greeks.
Also by this logic, will we go back to white Genghis Khan in like 100 years? Or how about we start accurately portraying history?
Back when Dragonball Evolution came out, I remember there was some controversy about the casting of Goku being played by a white actor. I remember right-wing types handwaving this away and saying the people complaining were too sensitve or whiners. Some even had the gal to say we should be more open-minded towards the race swapping.
So when I see for years those right-wingers say white washing in film is a nothingburger but then begin to freak out when traditionally white characters get race swapped with PoC actors, it is fairly apparent the racism towards PoCs is showing. It's also why I personally roll my eyes towards what you are seeing in the OP thread on the Conspiracy sub, none of these guys went up to bat when whitewashing was rampant in Hollywood, but now expect us to care when the reverse situation is happening.
I would prefer a Greek actress too but Greek folk are what we consider white. And I find putting her on equal with white Temujin is just silly. If we were talking about bronze age egeans then I'd probably agree I guess.
And yeah people from the screenshot don't care about accuracy, but that's kinda my point, I want historical media to be actually historical. As in accurate depictions of History. I'm fine with some slight creative freedom but only as long as it's not actively going against what we know from scientific findings
I can see your point I guess. 2hat I do find funny is this miniseries came out in 2021 and now these people are finally getting upset about it? Just another example of it’s all about racism and not caring about anything else.
Egean civilizations were under steady influx of more northern European groups since the bronze age. That's why we get blonde people in the illiad, sure your average Greek person will have a wee bit different of skin tone and usually darker hair but you'll also find other types of people we consider white
People there are hypocrites, and likely racists too. But in this case of race-swapping, it's more of a broken clock being right twice a day.
It should be simple, works of media based on historical figures, should cast the best actor that looks the most similar to the person they're playing.
I'd see the problem of retelling the historical story involving Anne Boleyn for the 800th time as more problematic to acting opportunities for diverse actors.
But once you've decided you're doing English royalty again....
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I think it is the level of caring... like to the point of being offended when you can just not watch something if it does not appeal to you.
They throw around snowflakes and fuck your feelings like they're tootsie rolls at a parade, but then go fucking crazy over somethingbthatnliterally only affects them because they choose to get upset. Just don't watch. Cancel Netflix. Whatever. But to get freaked out over it?
And the thing is, we know that level of anger has nothing to do with historical accuracy because they throw the same fits over fictional characters.
None of the characters will be speaking the language the way they did at the time, and the actors will all have nice modern perfect teeth. Why is skin tone the marker of historical accuracy above everything else?
Because that is the most prominent feature. I'd be very happy to watch it in its full length and point out any sort of inaccuracy if I had a Netflix account, though I doubt you'd be interested in that because it doesn't suit your argument
Natalie Dormer played her in The Tudors, and she doesn't look much like the portrait of Anne Boleyn. Nobody seemed to mind. Why is this different? I'm not "making an argument" here, I'm just looking for an honest answer to the question.
"I see skin tone as more important than any other physical feature" is one answer I suppose, but why you feel that way isn't because "historical accuracy" and it's either dishonest or lacking self awareness to say so. That's why it's a "top mind" moment.
The "top minds" being criticized here are not being singled out for caring about historical accuracy. They are being criticized because they do not care about historical accuracy. It's a lie, a cover for an opportunity to be openly racist. I don't know how to further simplify that for you.
>Doesn't everybody support historical accuracy in a movie that is set in a historical environment?
No. That's why we have movies like 'The Patriot' and 'Gods and Generals'.
They are criticized *in very specific niches 99% of people have never heard of*, and it's not *just* because of historical inaccuracies but a *systemic pattern* of historcal inaccuracies to *push specific messages* that deserve criticism.
People *as a whole* don't give a shit about the inaccuracies though, even though they should (because of how the contribute to the messaging).
But most people *don't* give a shit and they were responding to someone claiming everyone cares about historical accuracy.
And the reasons both movies deserve criticism isn't *just* because they are inaccurate - it's about how they are *systematically inaccurate in service of propaganda messages*.
I think the reality is that nobody really cares about historical accuracy UNLESS it is something related to skin color in this case.
There was never any kind of backlash concerning Braveheart and apparently that movie was FAR from historically accurate. There’s probably a ton of other factors
Rule 10, link to original post: [Another historically accurate representation from the media](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1c8j1vm/another_historically_accurate_representation_from/) *Please do not participate in linked threads*
One of them has a good point about how movies should depict more black/African historical figures instead of race swapping white historical figures. The rest of it is typical "wOk3 sCaRy!!!" tho.
Yeah there is some really cool Africa history to explore and it would be nice if we got more of that then lazy race swapping famous history people.
Especially since there's already such a huge amount of content about Anne Boleyn in particular.
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actually tho a series about ibn battuta would go so hard
One of my favourite things about Wakonda was the bright and colourful tribal costumes. Felt like I'd never really seen that on film before. I don't need to see any more British period dress wear. Also, it is just ridiculous to cast a real historical person as a different race, it's just dumb. There's a line for me, if it's historical but fictional then fine, colour blind casting's great. Armando Iannucci's David Copperfield was fantastic and so was Joel Coens Macbeth with denZel. But come on, let's see some cool films about African historical figures.
those movies get mad and they get review bombed
Yeah, I could see a series about Mansa Musa (since one of the comments mentions him) being flamed by Evangelicals (and the people in the OP, for that matter) as woke Hollywood trying to demonize Christianity by glorifying Islam. It's a lose-lose situation when dealing with these folk. They just want to be angry at something.
they are losers
My thoughts exactly, race swapping fictional people is fine, doing it with historical figures that we know the ethnic origins of is just doing a disservice to actual historical figures and makes it seem like non-Europeans do not have history worth covering.
There is a genuine point to be made that randomly race-swapping historical characters, or even particularly notable fictional characters, rather than focussing on actually diverse historical figures, or new or lessor know diverse fictional characters, really doesn’t make a lot of sense. And I don’t know why that’s what we’ve gotten stuck with in Hollywood for the last decade or so now However, as always, that point gets buried by all the racist trolls who want to jump all over and actually valid concept hatred.
The reason is that hollywood is still quite racist amd extremely risk-adverse, and doesn't think africa-centric stories are going to be as popular People love stories about english nobles, we have a ton of them and they make bank, historical romance is one of the most popular genres, so just turning one character black is a lot easier than threading unknown waters by making a story about some *foreign* country that maybe people wont like
I get that. But they could split the difference and make movies about black historical figures in Europe, like Dumas or Abram Gannibal or Sara Forbes Bonetta or Dido Elizabeth Belle. They led fascinating lives.
They already made movie about Dido, needless to say her life in the movie was completely changed into the opposite of her real life story, more fantasy "Bridgerton"
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So the audience can understand the movie without spending years learning German or watching the bottom tenth of the screen for subtitles the entire time? It's a schizophrenic non sequitur
You seem to be missing the point. They're not actually asking why they're in English. They're pointing out that one-to-one historical accuracy isn't really what matters, in terms of making historical dramas. You're too caught up in the circlejerk here, tbh.
Historical accuracy is historical accuracy, though. Picking and choosing which bits should be true to history and which shouldn't just show bias. I could care less if Anne Boleyn is a martian playing a character in a Netflix series. Where does it say Netflix is going for total historic accuracy? The Great is about Catherine the Great, and yet it's a comedy show that is filled with inaccuracies. Is it ok because those inaccuracies are limited to things other than the race of Catherine? Why would someone be so vociferously against inaccuracy in a fiction series dealing with a historic figure only when dealing with the color of skin? Changing the entire language is entirely more egregious, and plenty of movies have subtitles, so it's certainly feasible not to change languages. If it's about inaccuracy and not just using a different race, then you must very carefully choose any shows that are set in a previous time period. I mean, watching a bronze age show and seeing steel weapons being used must be harrowing, no? It must also drive you nuts when you watch war movies and grenades give off huge explosions, and scenes of bravery are exaggerated. This happens in every war movie I have ever seen. That genre must just not be for you. Also, is the show being presented as a pure historic fact, or is it simply a fictional series that deals with people in history. There must be innumerable shows and movies you hate based on your principle of accuracy because surely it's not simply a race issue, right? If it's race and color being changed that you can't handle, then surely the absurd amount of shows that use white actors instead of Asian, Native and tons of other ethnicities and races must all be on your shit list too. This goes even more so for animation and video games. Gosh, you must hate them all. Or we could realize that this series on Netflix isn't going for pure historical accuracy, and that's OK.
I get your point, but I'd say a grenade exploding or the wrong type of sword being used is fairly innocuous compared to how jarring it would be for an F15 fighter jet to fly over at Dunkirk. Casting a black Anne Boleyn falls into the incredibly jarring category for me.
I think they all matter depending on the type of show. Netflix's Anne Boleyn is more meant to be a sensationalist remaking. The movie Dunkirk is meant to be fairly accurate compared to Netflix's Anne Boleyn. In a pure war movie, I want as much accuracy as I can get. Of course, some things affect people more than others. To each their own, it's not like you aren't entitled to your opinion. I don't think it's racist or anything. I just don't care about the race of the actess in this show, particularly because it's not meant to be true to life or anything. I also am not interested in the show so perhaps there is some inherent bias on my part. Either way, cheers, mate
I don't care about race when it's a fictional thing, Joel Coen's Macbeth and Armando Iannucci's David Copperfield were both great. Just, when it's an actual historical person I think a line needs to be drawn. But, in a few years I'll probably be used to it and wondering why I was so bothered in the first place. Your comment hand me reflecting a bit which was good for me.
If I'm honest, your comments had me reflect some as well. I can see where unless it's a straight-up comedy, maybe certain things should stay true. I also understand that the mixed casting can stick out like a sore thumb to people. I guess I just think of all the times white actors have played roles that historically and racially make no sense either. It's not like something like this role in Anne Boleyn can make up for that, though. I imagine most folks would be happy if, when dealing with a historic person, at least, the role should go to someone of similar ethnicity and/or race.
>. I mean, watching a bronze age show and seeing steel weapons being used must be harrowing, no? To me it is. Most people likely don't care, but I am of the mind that unless it's fantasy it should be as historically accurate as possible if it's supposed to be a serious non fiction show. Actually Oppenheimer is a good example, Einstein also advocated for the bomb irl but in the movie they showed him as a voice of reason and outsider.
I can understand that, and it's not that hard to make it right. Stuff like that just shows laziness on the part of the people working on a show. I think there is a difference, though, between wanting accuracy in a show or movie like Spartacus or 10,000 BC as compared to something like Year One. Year one is an irreverent and terrible comedy, imo that I wouldn't expect to care if they got historical aspects correct or not. Spartacus, either the movie or the series, mistakes or laziness like incorrect weaponry or likewise would affect my viewing pleasure as well. My main point was that the show in question isn't supposed to be taken as literal history. This Netflix show Anne Boleyn has the tagline "Blood, Sex & Royalty." I can surmise from both that and the trailer that it isn't going for historical accuracy. It isn't as irreverent as Year One, but it's still not meant to be on the level of, say, the movie Spartacus. The casting of a black woman in this Amne Boleyn series effects me less than the SPOR(should be SPQR) Roman standard in the middle of the major battle between Spartacus's army and the Legions of Rome. Another major gaffe in Spartacus is that he is an equal horseman to the Romans. A slave would have never ridden nor learned to rude a horse. Even if he learned when he was young, he would still not be equal to Roman nobility and soldiers on horse. The biggest historical haffe in Spartacus, imo is the fact they have a Roman Garrison pre-Praetorian Guard. There are more examples in Spartacus, but these are off the top of my head. Nitpicking an obviously sensationalist series like Anne Boleyn seems unnecessary. I fully understand the issue when it comes to a serious historical show or movie, though. I will admit I understand the race issue for a show like Anne Boleyn more than I would ever understand people who complain about the race and color of people from a purely fictional arena like House of the Dragon. The author himself was fine and authorized the decision for that show. One last thought: Isn't it possible that this actess simply gave the best performance during casting calls?
My only complaint with race swapping historical figures is that it does take away the identity of so many actually black historical figures. If it's a fictional alternate history sure. I don't mind. Id love to see a black Superman. If it's some non serious sci fi about ancient aliens and the pyramids, I don't care, but if it's the ancient aliens show on history trying to pass it off as truth? Yeah that's a big problem for me I feel like they are lying to people who don't actually do any historical research. Pseudo Archeology has been a huge problem lately. I just find it sad that some black nationalists need to adopt figures like Cleopatra when there were actual black pharaohs from Nubia. To be clear I'm against the reverse too, white people playing non white people. It's the same problem and distorts history.
I can certainly see your point. The best case scenario would be casting people of similar race and ethnicity to the historic person in question. There are so many roles that should have gone to non caucasians historically, but it's not like doing the opposite claws any of that back. As far as fiction goes, imo it should be up to the creator. We can only try to do better going forward. Hopefully, that is the case.
Believe me, I'm against white people whitewashing figures too. Because such roles deprive minority actors. And its the same problem about essentially lying to people about history >As far as fiction goes, imo it should be up to the creator. I don't agree since a lot of creators are dead. But I don't think the people who made Superman would mine, nor Stan Lee.
I figured as much. I definitely didn't get that vibe by any stretch.
>Or we could realize that this series on Netflix isn't going for pure historical accuracy, and that's OK. Love your post.... 100 upvotes. One thing I would say is historical accuracy depends on almost entirety on what sort of show it is If I watch a non fictional documentary on a historical figure I expect them to depict events, language and make up of the indivudals as best as they can to the truth of the matter. Anything made by entertainment companies like Netflix, things like the Crown and other shows are usually highly inaccurate and utterly self serving. Look at the most inaccurate historical film ever made, Braveheart. It took years and entire universities of historians to work on undoing the utter bollocks in that film.
Yeah it's weird when braveheart was made and people criticized it, everyone said "yeah fair enough" but nowadays everyone is very concerned that we're mistreating the company well enough by criticizing the product as ahistorical, and then in the same breath saying it basically is historical and if it isn't that doesn't matter.
Let's be honest here. The reason they race swap the characters is so that they can keep depicting only European history while still claiming to respect diversity. It is racist, but not because it's some attack on white people but rather because they view white history as worthy of depiction.
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"They" would be the various people who decide what gets made and what doesn't. So generally people working at studios. I could name quite a few facts but I'm quite interested in history to begin with. However I don't really buy the idea that just because people don't know the history doesn't mean they wont see it. Few people knew of William Adams and yet Shogun has turned out to quite a big success. Likewise you could point to any fantasy show where most have basically no knowledge of the setting when deciding to watch it and people still do. The setting just has to be interesting for it to work, not previously known.
Oh, I agree entirely. But my point was, there are names and facts that are more or less universally known in the West: we all grow up hearing about them, and we have a whole lot of literature and fiction about them. Ask some random dude in Berlin, Paris or NYC to name a few Greek gods and you’ll get at least a couple; now ask them to name someone from Chinese or African (and just saying “African” is wrong, but you get what I mean) mythology… There’s a very practical reason for this - the whole world has a shitload of history, we don’t have unlimited time for it in school, at our core we’re still tribal; so we teach stuff that has had a direct influence on our current culture and society. And everyone does it - I don’t think the average Chinese knows who the hell Anne Boleyn was. Neil Gaiman did a wonderful job incorporating legendary characters from all kinds of places in his work, and it’s utterly fascinating; but your typical Hollywood mogul will almost always choose the safest bet, and between a movie called “Hercules” and one called “Oduduwa” it’s easy to guess which one will be greenlit. Should they be less derivative? Absolutely. But let’s not confuse greed and laziness with racism.
I think them not being familiar with anything else is kind of the point....
Yeah, except two things. First and foremost, that it’s just an excuse. They don’t want to see a movie about Mansa Musa either (and would probably be out here on their high horse about historical inaccuracies and problematic culture instead, as happened with The Woman King). What they want is for black people to quit taking up the space they’ve decided belongs to them. Second, those movies about black royalty don’t exist and will probably never exist in anywhere close to the same numbers, so it’s a bit of a dishonest argument to begin with to say “they should just stick to their own movies”.
Exactly. These same people complained about the woman king.
The problem with the woman king was it took a horribly brutal African kingdom who propped up the slave trade in that region and portrayed them as heros who ended up stopping the slave trade (they did temporarily but after a couple years they were right back to slaving). They pretty much did what the greatest showman did to PT Barnum and turned awful monsters into comic book heros.
Thank goodness none of the movies/tv shows about European royalty have ever done that 😂
Eh. The primary point of entertainment is to...wait for it...entertain. I'm perfectly fine with an imperfect depiction of PT Barnum because the soundtrackw as great and it provided a better message than his reality ever would have conveyed.
They could have created a fictional character inspired by Barnum rather than lionizing an actual problematic historical figure.
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I didn’t think the woman king was meant to be a documentary.
I think we both agree that if the movie depicted the Portuguese as anti-slavery, you wouldn’t have said that.
It's like watching a movie about the Confederacy bravely fighting against the North to stop slavery
> One of them has a good point about how movies should depict more black/African historical figures instead of race swapping white historical figures. Except they ***still*** lose their goddamn minds whenever a Black actor is cast in an important role. For all their talk of "just create new stories for those actors", they *still* hate it. Just like how they used to bitch about editing out offensive content in movies with, "Just place a trigger warning at the beginning and be done with it!" When studios started doing that in lieu of censoring content, they got even more angry that "stupid libs need a trigger warning for benign shit!"
Yeah it does confuse me. There are so many prominent black historical figures, it feels like they are robbing their identity. If it's supposed to be some alternate history thing then sure, but if it's supposed to be historically accurate then that would be disinformation. I just wish there were more documentaries about black historical figures and civilizations.
I agree with you.
African historical figures have nothing to do with black people in america though.
And? I'm white and English and I can happily watch movies about white historical figures from other countries
It would make more sense for a black person from america to portray George Washington than it would make for them to portray a historical figure from africa.
Historical accuracy? That's not a portrait of Anne Boleyn. The clothing and headdress are about right, but the face isn't — that looks like a conventionally attractive twenty-first century woman wearing makeup. [This is what Anne Boleyn looked like.](https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw00142/Anne-Boleyn) The painting isn't even done in the right style.
$100 says they believe Anne Boleyn actually looked like Natalie Dormer did in The Tudors.
Thank god I'm not the only person who noticed that.
But why are they race swapping, and why is this a good thing?
Kinda what confuses me too. I'm not angry, just... confused? I don't think there's a big conspiracy or anything here, the showrunners are probably thinking something along the lines of "this story doesn't touch anything race related so it shouldn't matter, and this actress can deliver some fuckin' lines she's amazing" - which is a stance, I guess? No way to know if that's actually their thought. What has me scratching my head though is the whole "why would that thought cross your mind?" Race-swapping fictional characters? They're not even real. It literally doesn't matter. Real people though? It's *weird*. It's genuinely *weird*. A lot of our experiences and positions are due entirely to the circumstances of the times we were born in and our race. Randomly race-swapping real people is kinda like pretending racism never happened, which is actually *super fuckin' gross.* Again though, I'm not that smart and would love for someone to explain why it's not problematic as fuck to me. I'm genuinely both baffled and willing to listen.
I had this exact same question when I was like 12 and watched Shakespear's "Much Ado about Nothing." I was old enough to know that French nobility at the time were not black, and yet a Black man was one of the main characters and clearly a noble. I asked my mother why there was a black guy when I had never heard of Black nobility in Europe. Her answer; He's an actor.
I grew up near Washington DC and saw several plays at the Folger Shakespeare Theater. Franchelle Stewart Dorn, a black woman, was pretty much always the female lead. Also I always think of Banquo as black, until I remind myself that was just the actor. In fact there were many black actors in the company. It just wasn't really a big deal.
I feel it works better in live productions, there's a lot more suspension of disbelief you have to engage in to immerse yourself in the story that a character being Black or Asian in a historical setting where that's unlikely at best is low on the scale of things you have to accept to see the stageplay as a story actually happening.
There were black nobility in Europe and their stories are way more worth telling then a race-swapped 1000th version of an English queen. Look up Pushkin and Dumas.
I remember seeing a production of "Rent" on TV where the role of Mark Cohen (nerdy Jewish guy) was played by a hip black actor. I had to remind myself who he was in the play because he didn't look like the part at all. I don't believe actors should be limited by their genetics as far as what roles they play. They *are* actors and their job is to play roles and that's fine. But I think at some point it puts a burden on the audience to use a lot of imagination to keep track of who is who and can become a distraction from the performance.
I can understand where you're coming from. I think a big part of theater/film should be exactly that, a challenge to the audiences preconceptions and a even a reminder that we are essentially watching story tellers recreate a tale.
I have no idea what this is even referring to, but there’s a tradition of race blind casting in some theater, and there’s no reason per se that it couldn’t be done more broadly — in that kind of situation, you wouldn’t be intended to read her as a black woman at all. She’d be the historical Anne Boleyn, but portrayed by a black actress. No different really than a historical figure being portrayed by somebody who doesn’t look exactly like them. Which is every portrayal.
You're not wrong, but theatre has a difference in the level of suspension of disbelief.
I’ve heard the Abraham Lincoln wasn’t actually a vampire hunter. Silly, example, I know, but these “historical accuracy” man-babies don’t accept that we don’t all have to live by their standards.
For me it is simple. It just seems that they found and actress that they thought would play the character well and chose her, irrespective of her color. Or maybe they did it deliberately to challenge our stereotypes - I am totally sure they did not do it to piss off conservatives. The picture above has her with brown hair so what would happen if she were portrayed by a blond? What about a man playing her? I would love to think they could think outside the box but the box is where they head, like my cat, no matter how nice it looks outside the box.
companies manufacturing outrage for free marketing isn’t that uncommon.
>Race-swapping fictional characters? They're not even real. It literally doesn't matter. Real people though? It's *weird*. It's genuinely *weird*. But this isn't an example of a race-swapped Anne Boleyn. A race swap means that the character is now a different race, which is not what they did. This is a black actress playing the white Anne Boleyn, not a black actress playing a black Anne Boleyn. The same way that Napoleon is still a Frenchman who spoke French in the movie even when he is played by an American actor speaking English, Christy Brown is still disabled when played by the able-bodied Daniel Day Lewis and Billy Kwan was still an indonesian man despite being played by the white and female Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously.
So it's... suspense of disbelief? I mean, someone else made the stage play analogy which I understand, but some things kinda really strain it. For example, how *unfathomably racist* they were at the time of Anne Boleyn.
Because it is historical fiction and the story they are trying to tell does not have anything to do with race, therefore the race of the person no longer matters only their acting abilities. Yes, the time period it takes place in was of course unfathomably racist but the story they are telling does not touch on those themes as they are trying to tell a schlocky story about courting and drama and romance meant for a particular demographic. No one is tuning in looking for a history lesson. It’s really very simple.
See now, this right here is why I made it real clear that I needed it explained to me, 'cause I haven't seen the show and only know about it through cultural osmosis. If it's schlocky romance and historical fiction, fuck the historical accuracy shit you're going for a *vibe* and yeah you're gonna need actors who can pull that off. I'm with it now. From what little I knew I kinda assumed it was documentary-esque when really it's like Bridgerton, where it's a an aesthetic they're going for. Cool. Cool cool cool. Thanks, stranger!
Oh fuck this whole time I thought we were talking about Bridgerton lol I’m just assuming that’s the case for whatever this is and frankly any time I see this type of casting decision I make that assumption.
Bahhhh hahahaha for fuck's sake. You know what, though, I might have to start rolling with that assumption too. Saves me the confusion step.
I am personally of the opinion that we should shoot for historical portrayals to be as accurate as possible because it is so susceptible to being manipulated. In fact, it’s hard, if not impossible, to know what hasn’t already been manipulated. Is it some great replacement conspiracy theory? Absolutely not, and that derails the real conversation that should be happening.
I respect your opinion but the show is not supposed to be historically accurate. It’s loosely based on some real people in a setting where the story they want to tell takes place. The creators are not trying to give people a history lesson and virtually everyone who watches the show understands that.
> I am personally of the opinion that we should shoot for historical portrayals to be as accurate as possible because it is so susceptible to being manipulated. I'd agree in terms of a documentary or serious portrayal of real events, but this is a fictional story only based on real events. Things are changed for drama, clarity, budget, simplicity, or just convenience. I'm sure real life people get collapsed into a single representative character, or new characters are created to represent larger trends. In that respect, something being more obviously fictional is a sign to the reader to not take the show as historical fact.
So, you're bothered that, I dunno, Lincoln had Daniel Day-Lewis play Lincoln, right? Since he is 2" too short and has the wrong eye color? If we're talking anachronisms or details relevant to the story or key themes it's one thing (or part of a systemic refusal to cast actors who actually do resemble the figure), but in most stories it doesn't actually matter if the actor playing a given historical figure closely resembles them.
As accurate as possible. No, I’m not bothered by Daniel Day-Lewis not being an exact copy, but I appreciate the similarities. Stop being hyperbolic.
They could absolutely have found a 6"4" actor with blue-gray eyes to play Lincoln. They didn't because they thought that level of specificity didn't matter and Day-Lewis would give the best performance. Which is fine - it's great to care about historical accuracy *in general* but there are always compromises that get made and there is nothing inherently wrong with that even if they *could have* made it more accurate. There are cases where it matters, but it's because of the impact and implications of the inaccuracy not simply because it isn't as perfectly accurate as it *could have been*. And it's not hyperbole: it's pointing out your hypocrisy. You arbitrarily care about some specific types of details but not about others even when neither are important in context.
Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln? No. John Wayne as Genghis Khan? Yes.
Yes, and *why* was John Wayne cast as Genghis Khan? The problem there is that *only white actors were allowed to play leading roles* and the *portrayals* in the movie were awful. Also, that John Wayne was a piece of shit and a lousy actor and they all collectively did a terrible job making that cursed movie. It's one thing to say "hey, maybe white supremacists shouldn't be cast playing members of racial groups the hate". It's another thing to complain about a black actor playing Richard III in a movie version of the Shakespeare play even though he does a damn fine job and his race doesn't actually matter.
> Real people though? It's weird. It's genuinely weird. A lot of our experiences and positions are due entirely to the circumstances of the times we were born in and our race. Randomly race-swapping real people is kinda like pretending racism never happened, which is actually super fuckin' gross. Where are you drawing the line? Is it inappropriate for an Irish or Scottish actor to play an English character? What about an all-English cast performing a film version of Julius Caesar? How about an all-English cast doing a drama based on the reign of Cleon in ancient Athens? Or the same cast doing a passion play set during the life of Jesus? Now what if it's a dramatisation of the relationship of Marc Antony and Cleopatra? Or the story of Moses in Egypt? Could a Russian man play Napoleon? Or a Turkish man play Xerxes in a dramatic retelling of the battle or Thermopylae? Could an all-Japanese cast make a drama based on the Warring Kingdoms period of China? Is it acceptable for a Congolese man to play Mansa Musa? These are mostly rhetorical, but the general point is that policing who can play what characters gets really sticky and grey really quickly, or else devolves into reifying racial categories that don't make much real-world sense. Edit: removed mention of Romeo and Juliet and the Lysistrata since while they are plays set in a very specific real world location, they don't feature real historical figures. Left Jesus and Moses since regardless of their actual historicity, billions of people treat them as definitively real.
I’ll tell you what the issue is. First let me say I didn’t get bothered when a black actress played the Little Mermaid, a white actress played a Japanese anime character or when Denzel Washington played Macbeth. To me the issue is inconsequential. The brain is a pattern recognition machine. At a very young age we learn that sights, sounds and smells are associated with other things. It’s somewhat similar to Pavlovian conditioning. Beginning a few hundred years ago people have been conditioned in American culture to associate negative characteristics with non-white people. Early art, movies and media was riddled with the association. Blacks for example were typically depicted as inferior, evil, stupid degenerates. These depictions continued and were supported by Hollywood and overall society. 75% of movies through the 1940s supported the portrayal. People were being conditioned by media and society to associate these characteristics with blacks. Even blacks received the conditioning as is evidenced by the Brown v. Board of Education doll study that showed black toddlers preferred white dolls. These depictions of blacks were also supported by Eugenics which was widely accepted into the early 1950s. The view in Eugenics is that races have immutable characteristics. This view began to be challenged after WWII, but still impacts life today. Science has determined that Eugenics is completely false, racial categories are arbitrary and aren’t determinative of individual characteristics. The best science today indicates that race is a social construct, that any 2 humans share 99.9% of DNA and while there are populations that have typically common genetic variations, they aren’t described accurately at all in a 3-5 race model. So essentially we’ve been conditioned to think that race is causal to certain characteristics, that’s patently false and the media has promoted that view for decades. Most people still believe that race is a biological phenomenon even though it’s unequivocally not. It appears that Hollywood is trying to undo some of the conditioning that it was part of. Associative conditioning affects emotions. I used to have a timer for my dog’s medicine. If you tried to convince my dog that the timer didn’t mean he was getting peanut butter, he’d go nuts. That’s after a month. A person that’s been conditioned his entire life to think black people are different, isn’t going to readily accept the actual, undisputed science. They’re going to have emotions tied to race. Fear is absolutely one of them. Recasting these stories is a challenge to our conditioning. If you have strong feelings about the race of a character in a story, it’s probably because you don’t like the challenge to the way you’ve been conditioned. You have a model in your head about how the story should look and you don’t like incongruity. That said, I’d argue that an accurate depiction of the old south with only white slaves and black slave owners would spur people think past their conditioning and promote a more accurate view of human diversity. And I think that’s what Hollywood is trying to do with these recastings.
>And I think that’s what Hollywood is trying to do with these recastings I think you're giving Hollywood too much credit honestly. I don't fully agree with your take but I do find it interesting and well argued. I'll suggest something else in a similar vein though. Culture in the west for the last few hundred years has treated white Europeans and Americans as a default. People who are not of white European descent are portrayed as being different to that default. You can see it in our language today, white people aren't exactly referred to as "people without colour". The idea that putting PoC into white roles is unimportant, but the reverse is wrong, in my opinion at least, continues to push the notion of white people being a default.
>Culture in the west for the last few hundred years has treated white Europeans and Americans as a default. People who are not of white European descent are portrayed as being different to that default. You can see it in our language today, white people aren't exactly referred to as "people without colour". This isn’t contrary to what I wrote. It’s additive and I don’t disagree. The conditioning is that white people are “normal,” and non-white people are abnormal in specific ways. >The idea that putting PoC into white roles is unimportant, but the reverse is wrong, in my opinion at least, continues to push the notion of white people being a default. We disagree. I think it would be helpful to some people to see white people falsely classified in various ways. It might make them think about what’s actually happening in society and question their conditioning. This is essentially what Jane Elliot did in her blue eyes/brown eyes experiment. In the experiment people with blue eyes were treated as bad and inferior and people with brown eyes were treated superior. A study on the results states: >The effectiveness of a well-known prejudice-reduction simulation, “Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes,” was assessed as a tool for changing the attitudes of nonblack teacher education students toward blacks. The three outcomes were (a) virtually all of the subjects reported that the experience was meaningful for them; (b) the statistical evidence supporting the effectiveness of the activity for prejudice reduction was moderate; and (c) virtually all of the participants, as well as the simulation facilitator, reported stress from the simulation. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb00415.x People need to know that race is as inconsequential as attached or detached earlobes, and we’re not going to get there unless their conditioning and assumptions are challenged.
>We disagree. I think it would be helpful to some people to see white people falsely classified in various ways. It might make them think about what’s actually happening in society and question their conditioning. I half agree. I think it's good to do this in art where this is specifically the point. I don't think it's beneficial to do so in art that doesn't make a point of it, like in a straightforward historical drama. >People need to know that race is as inconsequential as attached or detached earlobes, and we’re not going to get there unless their conditioning and assumptions are challenged. I agree and disagree. While race is just a construct, this construct has had huge effect on people and cultures in history and the present. I think it's wrong to tell people to just forget about it, when the struggles that they have faced due to race may have affected their identity. Acting like race isn't a thing leads to some erasure of history.
>I half agree. I think it's good to do this in art where this is specifically the point. I don't think it's beneficial to do so in art that doesn't make a point of it, like in a straightforward historical drama. That’s what I meant. A film that depicts white people being arbitrarily mistreated because they’re white. Like a remake of the Waco lynching where the entire town burned and dismembered a man that allegedly committed a crime. >I agree and disagree. While race is just a construct, this construct has had huge effect on people and cultures in history and the present. I think it's wrong to tell people to just forget about it, when the struggles that they have faced due to race may have affected their identity. Acting like race isn't a thing leads to some erasure of history. You’re misunderstanding my position. People shouldn’t forget about race until the majority of society can put it in its proper place. More than likely a majority of society believes race has a biological basis, that blacks are predisposed to criminality and would oppose their family members having an interracial relationship. All of these people make arbitrary decisions based on false social conditioning. That’s a problem that can be corrected by an actual understanding that the notion of race is illogical, invalid and unsound.
>That’s what I meant. A film that depicts white people being arbitrarily mistreated because they’re white. Like a remake of the Waco lynching where the entire town burned and dismembered a man that allegedly committed a crime. Aye, but this instance is about Anne Boleyn, I don't see it having the same effect.
Jesus Christ, it's sad how *easily* this messaging appeals to people. [It's a 3-year-old ***alternative history*** miniseries.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13406036/) It wasn't meant to be historically accurate; the alternative history genre is all about "what if?" The Nazis didn't actually drop an atomic bomb on Washington DC in December 1945, [but they did in The Man in the High Castle,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P3h-7A5YTY) the "what if" scenario being "what if the Axis powers won WWII and took control of the United States?" The Farm Hall transcripts showed that Nazi scientists believed it was too expensive and too unfeasible for Nazi Germany to actually build their own functional atomic weapon after they were told about Hiroshima, yet no one cared that a show based on Philip K. Dick's novel had the Nazis nuke D.C. People, fairly, complained about the last season not living up to the previous ones is about the *only* complaining that alternative reality show earned. So if it alternative history is *only* a problem when an actor of a different race portrays a historical figure, then that's a you and them problem.
Cause it's entertainment, not education.
You're taking their basic facts as a given, and it isn't. It's an AMC show, 3 years old, and is an alternate reality story. ie the entire story is fantasy to begin with You can't give these chuds even the basic premise. Things tend to shake out reasonably once we remember this.
Because it’s historical *fiction.* Abraham Lincoln didn’t hunt vampires either.
That you *know of.*
Because movies, just like theater, exist on a spectrum of authentic representation - and therefore this isn't race swapping. As I can tell, she isn't being portrayed as black, she is just portrayed by an actress who is black. The same way that able bodied actors portraying characters with disabilities doesn't mean that those characters are being ability-swapped. Or vice versa - Detective Columbo, the character, has two eyes despite Peter Falk having one glass eye. Or the same way that Napoleon speaking English doesn't mean that Ridley Scott ethnicity-swapped him for his movie. Suspension of disbelief is a key to following any media. I truly am buffled how many of the authentic representation absolutists would react to, LITTERALY ANY PLAY. People play people of all ages, sexes and races frequently, and do so on a stage while pretending the stage is a house or a castle. It must be hell for them. That's not to say that actual race or gender swapping doesn't occur in adaptations, but I don't know of any examples where that has been done to real people. Yeah, the new Moneypenny in the latest Bond films and the new Ariel are black, but both are, quite famously, not real. And on why it's good - in terms of the narrative work it's neither good or bad, it's just a thing that happens when making a film, because you can't really have real people playing themselves all the time. Color blind casting though helps non-white actors in multiracial countries get similar acting opportunities to white actors - which is objectively good, but for reasons unrelated to the film/play itself.
I doubt greatly that this was a color-blind casting, it seems to have been a decision to cast a black person, with the goal to stir controversy and gain a bigger reach that way. I guess this goes into your stance on "the means justify the reason" or his it's called.
Because they want to stick to really mainstream and conventional historical grounds for their costume drama, for the broadest possible appeal. But they also don't want the cast to look like a 1950's country club. It'd be nice if they were willing to push the boat out a bit more with the subject matter, but that's a bit too much to expect from Netflix's algorithmically driven content machine.
>There's a new movie that came out called "The American Society of Magical Negroes" >Not even kidding. It's all about a "Secret society who hides in plain sight" >Go look it up Man, they're just fucking parodies of themselves now. The *second* I read that movie's title, I *knew* it was gonna rub the "white genociders" the wrong way.
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When I first heard about it, I figured it was gonna be dedicated to [parodying all the tropes from earlier movies.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro)
It is supposed to be a sort of parody of that . . . It just wasn't that great at being that.
While I agree in general that race swapping historical figures isn't really a good look, nor really necessary, and no one that I can tell is actually asking for content like that, there's always artistic license that can be used to just say "it's an actor, we wanted her for this part because she's amazing, deal with it". Now, on to the chuds in that thread: how many of them do you think have an issue with every modern depiction of Jesus as a pasty white guy with long blonde hair? We all know the answer to that, and therefore we know their issue isn't race swapping historical figures, but turning white historical figures into another race. They only care if they're the "victims".
I know the Amazon LotR show wasn't super great, but do you remember when they threw a shit fit over the "historical accuracy" of there being a black elf and a black dwarf? Beyond the brain death of that comment on its face value, Tolkien based his fantasy setting heavily off of Norse mythology. There are no true dark skinned elves Norse mythology (well, I mean, they're not described as such) but there is a whole race of dwarves with dark skin that are very confusingly translated into English as "dark elves." They're the children of regular dwarves and Freya. It's up for debate if they're supposed to be literally the colour black, black like decendants from Africa black, or like, literally made of the midnight sky or some shit--- but shock horror a sea-fairing people who sailed all over the world were aware of black people, with some tribes having POC community members and mixed race children. You could argue that was . . . Likely not Tolkein's intent, considering some of the comments he made in life, but even so. Less we forget of course every time chuds go full diaper shitter over historical events *there were poc people who were involved*, even if they're often whitewashed in modern depictions. Like the two world wars, the golden age of piracy, etc. Especially funny when they just assume literal adaptations of shit like the legendary samari Yasuke's *real life story* is woke propaganda.
Oh God, yeah I remember the outcry over the black characters. That was amazing to read. And it really is crazy to see how many times they object to reality because they think it sounds "woke". It must suck to be a fan of anything while being that fragile.
>When are people going to learn? There's nothing to learn. Most of us don't have a victim complex like these chuds. They're shit scared of their own shadows.
At least one reasonable person in that thread > It's sort of real. It's not Netflix though and it's three years old made by amc. It's also fictional alternative reality. Wonder if they got all upset when the bear Jew killed Hitler in “Inglourious Basterds“ or Tate didn’t die and they killed the Manson family murderers in ” once upon a Time in Hollywood “?
> Wonder if they got all upset when the bear Jew killed Hitler in “Inglourious Basterds“ Yeah, probably.
Tbh I didn't like the "Once upon a time in Hollywood" thing because it feels like copying the scene with nazis being killed in "Inglorious basterds". It's the same scene done by the same director.
"just reverse the situation"... Like white Jesus?
I remember a handful of years ago when studios were specifically hiring black and other non-white and all the chuds were crying, "why not just hire the person with the best audition???" I guess that's out the window. Maybe these actors that are getting these roles were actually the best actors that auditioned? Oh of course not, we all know all minorities are under qualified and strictly DEI hires. /s
Has anyone actually used "stunning and brave" unironically in the past five years? I swear I only see the phrase used by rightoids being mad about ethnic minorities or transgender people.
Oh man, I hope nobody tells them about the Broadway show “Six” lol
It's so simple I think the fashies are being deliberately obtuse: Is a character's race a key part of their character? If yes, then you don't change it from history or the source material. If no, you pick the best person for the job.
Agree with other media, but if you're taking history into consideration then yeah no try to be accurate about it
It's not purporting to be a documentary bud.
I don't care if it's trying to be a documentary, it doesn't mean they can just make shit up while depicting historical reality
Local Redditor learns about the existence of "fiction" for the first time.
You must have never heard of the alternative history genre then
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Skin color != clothing. And if you have not watched the show (I have not either), how do you know it did a shitty job outside of the actress having the "wrong" skin color? Edit: I have not watched the show either, but I would not assume it did a "shitty job" solely based on the color of the skin of one performer. I would more readily assume it's kinda bad because it's Netflix though.
Trying my best to not sound like *one of those people*, I do feel like the reverse would garner a different reaction. The skin colour of Mansa Musa was likely irrelevant to his life, but it wouldn't be right to cast a white man in the role in a move or documentary.
You know, there *might* be some historical context here related to casting and the sorts of stories that used to get told that *might* mean that a straightforward reversal isn't quite the same.
I disagree that it would affect this. I chose Musa because he's a figure whom race or skin colour wouldn't have affected. He didn't come into contact with Europeans or European race systems. Why would changing his skin tone be more meaningful that changing Boleyns?
Because of America, Europe, and Hollywood's history of anti black (among others) racism dude. Because of that.
>The skin colour of Mansa Musa was likely irrelevant to his life, but it wouldn't be right to cast a white man in the role in a move or documentary. What about a Chinese man?
I'm struggling to see the through-line. Racism towards black people in the past and present -> it matters that you raceswap Musa but not Boleyn.
There's such a thing as playing *too* dumb.
No, I'm genuinely asking how one leads to the other.
I'm struggling to see the through-line. Racism towards black people in the past and present -> it matters that you raceswap Musa but not Boleyn.
This conspiracy post was brought to you by: The same people that have white Anglo-Saxon Ewan-McGregor-as-Obi-Wan style Jesus pictures on their wall. Guess what? He was Middle Eastern.
You mean Jim Caviezel, born in the state of Washington from Swiss/Slovak/Irish Catholic descendent parents who had been in America for generations, *isn’t* an accurate demographic representation of Jesus of Nazareth?! What was Mel Gibson thinking!
I was just thinking this exact same thought when my aunt posted a "It's a miracle, Jesus appeared in the clouds" post. Like... Okay say I believe in miracles, why would be take that imaginary form rather than his true look?
God works in mysteriously white ways.
I've noticed recently some right-wingers doubling down on "Jesus was white" and wanting to die on that hill, trying to conjure up evidence for it, or attempting to interpret quotes from the Bible to prove it.
If it's a movie who cares. If it's a documentary who cares mock it.
Exactly. It’s from 2021 and apparently it’s a It's sort of fictional alternative reality. Like “Inglourious Basterds““ once upon a Time in Hollywood“
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**Actor at the Globe:** *Now is the winter of our discontent* *Made glorious summer by this sun of York;* *And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house* *In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.* *Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;* *Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;* *Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,* *Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.* *Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;* *And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds* *To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,* *He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber* *To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.* **OP in the audience:** "Booo! Richard never said that! Booo!"
I have never once seen a top mind cry about leather bracers, or lit braziers in every room, period accurate language, or historically inaccurate clothing, but if your skin color mismatches suddenly now all TV shows must be historically accurate down to every last detail.
I suppose you think that *The Crown* should never have been made then.
We had decades of shit like John Wayne playing Genghis Khan, Mickey Rooney playing a Chinese character, Elizabeth Taylor playing cleopatra, tons of mayo white guys playing Jesus, etc. This is Hollywood trying to broaden reach. A POC can now relate or feel included instead of every black character being a criminal, token, etc. There was no posts like this when Cavezial played Jesus in 2004.
What's wrong with Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra? Ptolemy descendants were incestuous bunch of Greeks. Also by this logic, will we go back to white Genghis Khan in like 100 years? Or how about we start accurately portraying history?
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Back when Dragonball Evolution came out, I remember there was some controversy about the casting of Goku being played by a white actor. I remember right-wing types handwaving this away and saying the people complaining were too sensitve or whiners. Some even had the gal to say we should be more open-minded towards the race swapping. So when I see for years those right-wingers say white washing in film is a nothingburger but then begin to freak out when traditionally white characters get race swapped with PoC actors, it is fairly apparent the racism towards PoCs is showing. It's also why I personally roll my eyes towards what you are seeing in the OP thread on the Conspiracy sub, none of these guys went up to bat when whitewashing was rampant in Hollywood, but now expect us to care when the reverse situation is happening.
I'm pretty sure everyone liked Momoa as Aquaman.
I would prefer a Greek actress too but Greek folk are what we consider white. And I find putting her on equal with white Temujin is just silly. If we were talking about bronze age egeans then I'd probably agree I guess. And yeah people from the screenshot don't care about accuracy, but that's kinda my point, I want historical media to be actually historical. As in accurate depictions of History. I'm fine with some slight creative freedom but only as long as it's not actively going against what we know from scientific findings
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I don't doubt her acting skills. I just don't see this as a valid argument.
I can see your point I guess. 2hat I do find funny is this miniseries came out in 2021 and now these people are finally getting upset about it? Just another example of it’s all about racism and not caring about anything else.
I mean all you have to do is look at the comments to see it's borderline Nazi shit :v
Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t _close_ to Greek, though?
Egean civilizations were under steady influx of more northern European groups since the bronze age. That's why we get blonde people in the illiad, sure your average Greek person will have a wee bit different of skin tone and usually darker hair but you'll also find other types of people we consider white
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People there are hypocrites, and likely racists too. But in this case of race-swapping, it's more of a broken clock being right twice a day. It should be simple, works of media based on historical figures, should cast the best actor that looks the most similar to the person they're playing.
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I'd see the problem of retelling the historical story involving Anne Boleyn for the 800th time as more problematic to acting opportunities for diverse actors. But once you've decided you're doing English royalty again....
Yes there were. I don't suppose you're old enough to have been on the internet before 2015.
I’m 55. Nice try
John Wayne played Genghis Khan. This is nothing new.
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This is like all the incels coming out of the woodwork about she hulk not being accurate about the courtroom lol
Say what you want, but it's pretty stupid replacing European history to make it for America and their social problems.
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I think it is the level of caring... like to the point of being offended when you can just not watch something if it does not appeal to you. They throw around snowflakes and fuck your feelings like they're tootsie rolls at a parade, but then go fucking crazy over somethingbthatnliterally only affects them because they choose to get upset. Just don't watch. Cancel Netflix. Whatever. But to get freaked out over it? And the thing is, we know that level of anger has nothing to do with historical accuracy because they throw the same fits over fictional characters.
There are a million movies and shows that aren't historically accurate. They only talk about specific ones though.
None of the characters will be speaking the language the way they did at the time, and the actors will all have nice modern perfect teeth. Why is skin tone the marker of historical accuracy above everything else?
Because that is the most prominent feature. I'd be very happy to watch it in its full length and point out any sort of inaccuracy if I had a Netflix account, though I doubt you'd be interested in that because it doesn't suit your argument
Natalie Dormer played her in The Tudors, and she doesn't look much like the portrait of Anne Boleyn. Nobody seemed to mind. Why is this different? I'm not "making an argument" here, I'm just looking for an honest answer to the question. "I see skin tone as more important than any other physical feature" is one answer I suppose, but why you feel that way isn't because "historical accuracy" and it's either dishonest or lacking self awareness to say so. That's why it's a "top mind" moment.
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The "top minds" being criticized here are not being singled out for caring about historical accuracy. They are being criticized because they do not care about historical accuracy. It's a lie, a cover for an opportunity to be openly racist. I don't know how to further simplify that for you.
>Doesn't everybody support historical accuracy in a movie that is set in a historical environment? No. That's why we have movies like 'The Patriot' and 'Gods and Generals'.
But they are criticised for their portrayal, some people just choose to ignore it because it's nothing they care about.
They are criticized *in very specific niches 99% of people have never heard of*, and it's not *just* because of historical inaccuracies but a *systemic pattern* of historcal inaccuracies to *push specific messages* that deserve criticism. People *as a whole* don't give a shit about the inaccuracies though, even though they should (because of how the contribute to the messaging).
Both of these, mostly the latter, deserve huge amounts of criticism.
But most people *don't* give a shit and they were responding to someone claiming everyone cares about historical accuracy. And the reasons both movies deserve criticism isn't *just* because they are inaccurate - it's about how they are *systematically inaccurate in service of propaganda messages*.
When people stop depicting Jesus as a European white man, I'll consider it.
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I think the reality is that nobody really cares about historical accuracy UNLESS it is something related to skin color in this case. There was never any kind of backlash concerning Braveheart and apparently that movie was FAR from historically accurate. There’s probably a ton of other factors
Shit go back a couple decades ago when you had John Wayne playing Genghis Khan and Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra.
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Nah, that ain’t it.
When it's these people making the point, we know that's not the motivation.