8 ms·

I mean ... she's a fairy, not a human .. what does her skin have to do with the time period or place in which she appeared? And there's literally zero reason t

I mean ... she's a fairy, not a human .. what does her skin have to do with the time period or place in which she appeared? And there's literally zero reason to insist that Collodi's description is the only way a fairy character can be portrayed in a staged version of his book. The real problem is getting upset over the skin color of the actors and actresses playing fairies (or stormtroopers or elves or angels or for that matter any fantastical role, which is rooted in escapism and alternate realities.)

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> she's a fairy, not a human .. what does her skin have to do with the time period or place in which she appeared? I mean, why can't we have a viking Black Panther and put Wakanda near Iceland? > The real problem is getting upset over the skin color of the actors and actresses playing fairies No one is upset for that, I, as Italian, am upset that some writer thinks that Collodi's story needed to be changed in ways that add nothing to it and also betray what he clearly wrote with his own hands. The pale white skin is a well known proxy for ethereal/angelic beings, they are not white people, they are otherworldly magical creatures, made like that. There were a lot more places where they could have added diversity, they decided to go for the most obviously controversial one.
- skywhopper 4y ago
  The race and location of Black Panther and Wakanda are integral parts of their story and character. Not the case with the blue fairy. Definitely not the case with elves in a fantasy world.
  - GameOfFrowns 4y ago
    I hate to break it to you but Black Panther IS a fantasy story set in a fantasy world. The reason why black people would lose their minds if they would have Black Panther played by a white actor is that escapist superhero fiction has become cultural identity and the superheroes are role models. Therefore replacing a central element by their oppsite, is destroying said cultural identity. Now ask yourself why it appears to be so important to Hollywood to replace white roles with black and queer actors: Why does Arielle need to be black? Why Spiderman? Why James Bond? Why Captain America? Why Roland Deschain from Dark Tower?
- oblio 4y ago
  > The pale white skin is a well known proxy for ethereal/angelic beings In European and European derived culture...
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Chinese seem to be quite a fans too of white jade like skinned beauties...
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    Of course they did. But Disney is not making culture, they are making entertainment for making money. Tolkien is culture, Amazon's rings of power is not. EDIT: sorry, misread your comment, no, not only in European cultures, it's consistent across the cultures throughout history. White is the light, first men loved light and hated dark, in darkness lure grave dangers. For example in African mythologies fairies are white too, pearl white to be precise. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumboes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumboes
    - oblio 4y ago
      > Tolkien is culture, Amazon's rings of power is not. Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture, that's a huge discussion. But for sure the TV series is culture. * * * Cool link! True, the association with light is strong, universally. Actually, there was also the social class factor in any culture where tanning is highly visible: aristocrats vs everyone else, who had to work outside. No tan = upper class.
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture Fair enough, point taken. I should have phrased it better. Let's put it this way: Tolkien was an intellectual and a Linguistic Professor, his works have cultural relevance, he was trying to write the new British mythology from the POV of a scholar, he wasn't thinking about writing a best seller to get rich. Conversely, I love the Terminator, but Terminator has no cultural relevance, it is popular culture or pop culture, it lives among us, yes, but the reason why it exists is entertaining people that go to the movies.
- ubercore 4y ago
  I want the best actor for a role, not one with the right skin color. You can hedge around the skincolor issue all you want, but that's the basis for your complaint.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    metoo I don't know why this fixation with the colour of the skin. I was merely pointing out that they changed a character, one that was very distinctly described, that obviously would be at the center of flamed debates and cause uproar. My understanding is that the more people talk about the movie, the less Disney need to spend in marketing it. Of course best actor for the role, but the studio never put it that way, so they are to blame IMO. Also, I mean, the blue fairy is called blue (it's actually turquoise in Italian) because she has long turquoise hair. The new fairy is bald. Kinda provocative, does it make for a more compelling story or is it for attention grab? We'll see when the movie comes out.
  - samatman 4y ago
    Colorblind casting is the right approach to theatre, I firmly agree with this. The world might not be ready for Raisin in the Sun to be translated to Vietnamese and performed entirely by Vietnamese people, I say go for it. This works so well because theatre is a practice. Any play, even if it's performed once by one company (surely the mode for plays) is of the ages. Merry is black in your stage adaptation of the Fellowship, you say? Of course he is, everyone knew Isaac was going to get that role, he's a natural for it. Cinema is a product, not a practice or a process. Like it or not, it makes a single, definitive statement about a story. It's fair to dislike it when those choices differ dramatically from those made by the author, including in matters of appearance. If you think rabid fans won't be put off by 'trivial' things like an eye color mismatch, think again. You singling out skin color is your special pleading, reflecting your interests. I reject it. It is one of many aspects of casting in film which differs from the stage, for good reason.
    - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
      The problem is that casting is explicitly not colorblind. Nobody would complain if a Nigerian studio did a black-only version of LotR because (presumably) they have more black actors than white. It's the intentional woke fuckery, just so the studio can talk about racist manbabies or whatever, that is toxic. They're trying to start this very review-brigading as an excuse for however bad the show turns out. If it tanks they blame the ratings, not the material.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Can't reply to the post below but where you say "I want to see black people stories, not just black people participating in white people stories where they are not originally mentioned." - I don't personally care if a movie reinterpretation casts a bald black actor (of either sex) for a character that's orginally a blue-haired pale-skinned fairy, but I definitely agree with this statement. And I wouldn't personally have an issue with using obviously caucasian actors in such a story, even if the original authors would have naturally assumed all the characters were black. Unless the character's racial background is important to the story itself (12 years a slave etc.) or the movie is aiming for historical accuracy, I'm all for having an open slather approach to colour-blind casting.
  - didibus 4y ago
    > I want to see black people stories, not just black people participating in white people stories where they are not originally mentioned Isn't part of the problem that there are no such stories for those who were stolen from their culture and made to work by force, kept uneducated on purpose, and weren't given the opportunity to build stories of their own? A lot of Afro American don't speak their original language anymore, they don't know the folklore, the religions, the customs, might not even know where they came from, it's all been forgotten and erased, they're raised American now. I feel this is where inclusivity matters, if you're raised American, but aren't, and all movies and stories exclude you, it just reminds you that you're still treated differently. I'm definitely not very educated on Afro American stories, so maybe I'm wrong here, I just thought this is possible, it can be easy for colonized nations and enslaved people to lose their culture as they are forcefully assimilated, so decades later of this it's hard for them to make movies about what maybe is forgotten even to them.
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      Even if you restrict "black" to mean African Americans, that subculture has existed in its own right quite long enough for new stories to have been formed surely? The wikipedia article on African American literature would certainly suggest there's plenty to choose from.
smileysteve 4y ago
To upvote, geeat performances are rarely based soley on how the source was written and often based on the cast available and the audience. To not target a performance with accent, race, mores, values, language would be most dull indeed. And no human tales would spread past a homogeneous population.
concordDance 4y ago
Actors should be a good match for the role they play. That includes accent, build, height, sex, attractiveness, characterization (Will Smith couldn't play Sauron) and skin colour.
- tptacek 4y ago
  So, what you're trying to tell us is that Denzel Washington was miscast in The Tragedy of Macbeth? Presumably also Ira Aldridge as King Lear. What's especially funny about this is that your criteria disqualifies Shakespearean theater in the time of Shakespeare.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    Not op, but I believe he meant that casting in theater and cinema are different. "In film and television, the audition is called a screen test, and it is filmed so that the casting director or director can see how the actor appears on screen." > disqualifies Shakespearean theater in the time of Shakespeare Ira Aldridge was born a couple centuries later than Shakespeare's King Lear. Theater and movies are different media, if you wanna put up a play about Matrix you need actors that are able to act and to fight like in the movie, which I guess are not that many. If you're shooting a movie, you simply hire stunt doubles. Cinema is a fiction, it's not a live performance. Most of the times main actors are there because they are popular and help the movie promotion.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      I'm not sure if you noticed that I gave examples both in film and on stage.
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  The cast of Hamilton has a few things to say to you.
  - tzs 4y ago
    If you are referring to "Hamilton" using a diverse cast to play characters that were white in reality, I'm not sure that is a good example. The commenter above said "Actors should be a good match for the role they play". I haven't seen "Hamilton", but from what I've read it has little or no mention of slavery. When you don't have slavery in a story set in that era the character's race usually isn't important for the role so the actor's race doesn't matter.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Exactly. People will follow “fairy magic” hook line and sinker and to have a diverse cast of elves (who are still by the way still very pretty except that guy who plays elrond) makes them doubt the quality. I think there's a lot of hidden affront at diversity here. All I care about for this series is 1) is it entertaining, 2) are the actors good? 3) give me more dragons. I think it's off to a mediocre start, but I have hopes it will get better. It's certainly not the steaming pile that Reddit and HN are making it out to be, and it's not Better Call Saul level either.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> she's a fairy, not a human .. what does her skin have to do with the time period or place in which she appeared? I mean, why can't we have a viking Black Panther and put Wakanda near Iceland? > The real problem is getting upset over the skin color of the actors and actresses playing fairies No one is upset for that, I, as Italian, am upset that some writer thinks that Collodi's story needed to be changed in ways that add nothing to it and also betray what he clearly wrote with his own hands. The pale white skin is a well known proxy for ethereal/angelic beings, they are not white people, they are otherworldly magical creatures, made like that. There were a lot more places where they could have added diversity, they decided to go for the most obviously controversial one.

skywhopper 4y ago
The race and location of Black Panther and Wakanda are integral parts of their story and character. Not the case with the blue fairy. Definitely not the case with elves in a fantasy world.
- GameOfFrowns 4y ago
  I hate to break it to you but Black Panther IS a fantasy story set in a fantasy world. The reason why black people would lose their minds if they would have Black Panther played by a white actor is that escapist superhero fiction has become cultural identity and the superheroes are role models. Therefore replacing a central element by their oppsite, is destroying said cultural identity. Now ask yourself why it appears to be so important to Hollywood to replace white roles with black and queer actors: Why does Arielle need to be black? Why Spiderman? Why James Bond? Why Captain America? Why Roland Deschain from Dark Tower?
oblio 4y ago
> The pale white skin is a well known proxy for ethereal/angelic beings In European and European derived culture...
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Chinese seem to be quite a fans too of white jade like skinned beauties...
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  Of course they did. But Disney is not making culture, they are making entertainment for making money. Tolkien is culture, Amazon's rings of power is not. EDIT: sorry, misread your comment, no, not only in European cultures, it's consistent across the cultures throughout history. White is the light, first men loved light and hated dark, in darkness lure grave dangers. For example in African mythologies fairies are white too, pearl white to be precise. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumboes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumboes
  - oblio 4y ago
    > Tolkien is culture, Amazon's rings of power is not. Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture, that's a huge discussion. But for sure the TV series is culture. * * * Cool link! True, the association with light is strong, universally. Actually, there was also the social class factor in any culture where tanning is highly visible: aristocrats vs everyone else, who had to work outside. No tan = upper class.
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture Fair enough, point taken. I should have phrased it better. Let's put it this way: Tolkien was an intellectual and a Linguistic Professor, his works have cultural relevance, he was trying to write the new British mythology from the POV of a scholar, he wasn't thinking about writing a best seller to get rich. Conversely, I love the Terminator, but Terminator has no cultural relevance, it is popular culture or pop culture, it lives among us, yes, but the reason why it exists is entertaining people that go to the movies.
ubercore 4y ago
I want the best actor for a role, not one with the right skin color. You can hedge around the skincolor issue all you want, but that's the basis for your complaint.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  metoo I don't know why this fixation with the colour of the skin. I was merely pointing out that they changed a character, one that was very distinctly described, that obviously would be at the center of flamed debates and cause uproar. My understanding is that the more people talk about the movie, the less Disney need to spend in marketing it. Of course best actor for the role, but the studio never put it that way, so they are to blame IMO. Also, I mean, the blue fairy is called blue (it's actually turquoise in Italian) because she has long turquoise hair. The new fairy is bald. Kinda provocative, does it make for a more compelling story or is it for attention grab? We'll see when the movie comes out.
- samatman 4y ago
  Colorblind casting is the right approach to theatre, I firmly agree with this. The world might not be ready for Raisin in the Sun to be translated to Vietnamese and performed entirely by Vietnamese people, I say go for it. This works so well because theatre is a practice. Any play, even if it's performed once by one company (surely the mode for plays) is of the ages. Merry is black in your stage adaptation of the Fellowship, you say? Of course he is, everyone knew Isaac was going to get that role, he's a natural for it. Cinema is a product, not a practice or a process. Like it or not, it makes a single, definitive statement about a story. It's fair to dislike it when those choices differ dramatically from those made by the author, including in matters of appearance. If you think rabid fans won't be put off by 'trivial' things like an eye color mismatch, think again. You singling out skin color is your special pleading, reflecting your interests. I reject it. It is one of many aspects of casting in film which differs from the stage, for good reason.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    The problem is that casting is explicitly not colorblind. Nobody would complain if a Nigerian studio did a black-only version of LotR because (presumably) they have more black actors than white. It's the intentional woke fuckery, just so the studio can talk about racist manbabies or whatever, that is toxic. They're trying to start this very review-brigading as an excuse for however bad the show turns out. If it tanks they blame the ratings, not the material.
wizofaus 4y ago
Can't reply to the post below but where you say "I want to see black people stories, not just black people participating in white people stories where they are not originally mentioned." - I don't personally care if a movie reinterpretation casts a bald black actor (of either sex) for a character that's orginally a blue-haired pale-skinned fairy, but I definitely agree with this statement. And I wouldn't personally have an issue with using obviously caucasian actors in such a story, even if the original authors would have naturally assumed all the characters were black. Unless the character's racial background is important to the story itself (12 years a slave etc.) or the movie is aiming for historical accuracy, I'm all for having an open slather approach to colour-blind casting.
- didibus 4y ago
  > I want to see black people stories, not just black people participating in white people stories where they are not originally mentioned Isn't part of the problem that there are no such stories for those who were stolen from their culture and made to work by force, kept uneducated on purpose, and weren't given the opportunity to build stories of their own? A lot of Afro American don't speak their original language anymore, they don't know the folklore, the religions, the customs, might not even know where they came from, it's all been forgotten and erased, they're raised American now. I feel this is where inclusivity matters, if you're raised American, but aren't, and all movies and stories exclude you, it just reminds you that you're still treated differently. I'm definitely not very educated on Afro American stories, so maybe I'm wrong here, I just thought this is possible, it can be easy for colonized nations and enslaved people to lose their culture as they are forcefully assimilated, so decades later of this it's hard for them to make movies about what maybe is forgotten even to them.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Even if you restrict "black" to mean African Americans, that subculture has existed in its own right quite long enough for new stories to have been formed surely? The wikipedia article on African American literature would certainly suggest there's plenty to choose from.

smileysteve 4y ago

To upvote, geeat performances are rarely based soley on how the source was written and often based on the cast available and the audience. To not target a performance with accent, race, mores, values, language would be most dull indeed. And no human tales would spread past a homogeneous population.

concordDance 4y ago

Actors should be a good match for the role they play. That includes accent, build, height, sex, attractiveness, characterization (Will Smith couldn't play Sauron) and skin colour.

tptacek 4y ago
So, what you're trying to tell us is that Denzel Washington was miscast in The Tragedy of Macbeth? Presumably also Ira Aldridge as King Lear. What's especially funny about this is that your criteria disqualifies Shakespearean theater in the time of Shakespeare.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  Not op, but I believe he meant that casting in theater and cinema are different. "In film and television, the audition is called a screen test, and it is filmed so that the casting director or director can see how the actor appears on screen." > disqualifies Shakespearean theater in the time of Shakespeare Ira Aldridge was born a couple centuries later than Shakespeare's King Lear. Theater and movies are different media, if you wanna put up a play about Matrix you need actors that are able to act and to fight like in the movie, which I guess are not that many. If you're shooting a movie, you simply hire stunt doubles. Cinema is a fiction, it's not a live performance. Most of the times main actors are there because they are popular and help the movie promotion.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    I'm not sure if you noticed that I gave examples both in film and on stage.
kasey_junk 4y ago
The cast of Hamilton has a few things to say to you.
- tzs 4y ago
  If you are referring to "Hamilton" using a diverse cast to play characters that were white in reality, I'm not sure that is a good example. The commenter above said "Actors should be a good match for the role they play". I haven't seen "Hamilton", but from what I've read it has little or no mention of slavery. When you don't have slavery in a story set in that era the character's race usually isn't important for the role so the actor's race doesn't matter.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Exactly. People will follow “fairy magic” hook line and sinker and to have a diverse cast of elves (who are still by the way still very pretty except that guy who plays elrond) makes them doubt the quality. I think there's a lot of hidden affront at diversity here. All I care about for this series is 1) is it entertaining, 2) are the actors good? 3) give me more dragons. I think it's off to a mediocre start, but I have hopes it will get better. It's certainly not the steaming pile that Reddit and HN are making it out to be, and it's not Better Call Saul level either.