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CMV: Actors should be allowed to play any role they want, without restrictions on race and ethnicity.
Delta(s) from OP
This has been bugging me since Alison Brie was forced to apologize for voicing Diane Nguyen, a Vietnamese Amercian character from BoJack Horseman.
Simply put, I find the entire situation ridiculous. It is the nature of actors' job to play someone they are not! "Cancelling" performers for accepting a role when character's race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or other feature doesn't match that of the actor is just as absurd as, say, charging Claire Foy with lèse-majesté because she, a commoner, played Queen Elizabeth II.
Can you explain the reasons for outrage and change my view?
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Deltabot Comment
First of all, I agree that cancelling a voice actor who was simply hired by someone else for a role is ridiculous. Alison Brie might understand why they are rethinking the casting but she really should not have to apologize for it.
I can try to explain why we are having this moment about voice actors though. Voice acting is a very tiny world. It happens when the best talent can sound different every time they work, why would you hire tons of different people when two people throwing their voices would be fine? As a result, the talent pool is small and rather white.
Hiring POC to take on POC roles is one really easy way to force equity in the business. Basically, if the world was perfect and POC were proportionally represented in the field, everyone should be able to play whatever roles their voices lend themselves too. But it’s not that way. Some people said “there are hardly any Asian/Black/Latino voice actors, and we can’t even get the roles away from the 50 available white people when the role is an Asian/Black/Latino person.”
So here we are.
I agree that creating more opportunities for POC actors is a good cause, so !delta
However, isn't it better to encourage casting minority actors in "white" roles? The idea that, say, only Indonesians should play Indonesian characters can lead to further stereotyping.
Of course! What do you think POc actors do most of the time? Since there’s no Roles meant for us, we always audition for roles when they are asking for “white or ethnically ambiguous” or “any ethnicity welcome to audition” then months later when the movie or show comes out we always see they end up casting a white person anyway. I was a Vietnamese actress I did it for about 6 years and one of the reasons why I stopped was because there was very little opportunity for me. It’s not Alison’s fault, she doesn’t have to apologize for getting casted, she’s just trying to find work too, but the thing is, she can find work everywhere. Being a white actress she gets a lot more opportunities.
I remember I was on the set of law and order as an extra cause they needed Asian sex trafficking victims. I was sitting with a bunch of other extras chit chatting and I mentioned that this was the first time I was on law and order, and the white extras where like “what!? Really???? O.o Ive been on this show like 5 times!” And I remember sitting there thinking (well yeah, you being a white male or female you can be in ALL episodes of law in order! They rarely need someone that looks like ME cause they can’t fathom casting as Asian person UNLeSS it was for an Asian specific stereotype role. YOU can be casted as a mother, a child, a friend, a bystander even! Even though I could play a mother or friend or bystander that happens to be Asian also, Casting only thinks to cast me when they need a sex trafficking victim, or a karate person or a Chinese immigrant, or Vietnamese nail salon person so my opportunities are less)
So when a character like Diane nguyen comes along, and she is not stereotypical, that’s very rare and it’s a real blessing. I’m glad they created her. But it honestly should have when to someone else
This was a gut punch. I am so sorry. I hope you'll find a way to fulfil your ambitions.
...Seriously, I cannot believe how dehumanizing this was.
Asian actor here as well. This is our life.
On the surface it looks just like empty symbolic liberalism to everyone else. And to these companies pushing for diversity? That's absolutely what it is. Diversity is "hot" right now. Cha-ching, cha-ching.
But also, for actors of color like us to make a living on our art we need roles. We have years of training just like white actors. Why are we only relegated to playing sexual objects as women and de-sexualized nerds or foreign pimps as men? Why are we only being treated as glorified extras?
And when there are so few legitimate roles for us and producers decide to go with yellow-face, not only are they spitting in the face of an entire community of trained underrepresented professionals, but they also aren't going to get as good of an end result.
Yes, an actors job is to disappear into the character. But white people really seem to be impressed when a real athlete plays an athlete in a movie, or a real musician plays a real musician in a movie, etc. But the minute Asians want Asian roles to actually be played by Asians then white people have a problem with it. Someone with the lived experience of being Asian is going to be able to tell an Asian story better. Plain and simple. Would a white man being able to inhabit the lived experience of Muhammed Ali? Of course not.
So when it comes to Asian roles, there seems to be an unsaid bias that white actors represent "quality control" and an actor "stretching themselves" and that giving the role to an Asian actor is because or "pan-handling." If that's not the case, then why do people feel threatened about it anytime representation in film is brought up?
Voice acting obviously has different norms and people play multiple characters, but the fact is that Asians are super underrepresented here too. And it's not because Asians have worse voices. It's because producers are white and they only trust white people. Hell, look at the majority of anime dub actors. It's almost funny how all of them are white. And with a character like Diane Nguyen, who's actress doesn't have to do a bunch of character switching, why the hell wouldn't you hire an Asian person? Especially if you're going to explore Asian identity as part of the plot?
Edit: Since this comment blew up a bit, I'll add another anecdote. I was working with a famous Asian Broadway actor. I'm talking an NYC veteran, not a young performer. And they talked about how every Asian in NYC waited around to play a prostitute in Miss Saigon or a concubine in King and I. And when those shows closed, every Asian actor would go back to temping or waiting tables while the white actors went on to their next Tony-award winning gig. They wouldn't get the chance to perform again until another show with Asian whores got revived by wealthy white producers. Not to mention in Hollywood, Asian actors often get paid way less than their white counter-parts.
It's not just a diverse aesthetic thing. It's economic. There are social consequences to yellowface and discrimination. Asian artists can't make a living. They can't pursue their craft. Hell, most aren't even afforded the opportunity to audition with the hopes of booking enough credits to qualify for health insurance through the union they are forced to join. And future generations of Asian performers aren't cultivated because of that.
Giv'er a Delta
Isn’t law and order supposed to be set in NY? SMH about not hiring actors of colour for a city with those demographics.
This is exactly it. People can’t fathom minorities just existing, we have to fit their predetermined roles. When you do see minorities cast in roles that are not stereotypical, then people get mad that it’s forced diversity. You just can’t win.
While I’m not going to agree or disagree there, for a voice acted role, surely the role should go to whoever voiced the character the most accurately to the creator’s design for the character, no?
Like, in a completely hypothetical scenario (I know very little about this particular case, so I’m just casting an extreme hypothetical here), where the POC voice actors that did apply were really not up to the task, but one of the white actors did an amazing job at auditions, surely a production company shouldn’t be pressured to hire a sub-par performance just for diversity’s sake?
Of course, often giving the role to a white person over a POC can be racially motivated, but I don’t know enough here to make a judgement on that. But I do feel like it’s, if anything, a step back to mandate that ‘only x race can play x role’ when it’s an off-screen role like voice acting - imo it should be purely merit driven, and racial background, be it white or POC, should be completely irrelevant.
Devild advocate: what if the far and away best performer in auditions was white? Do you think the director should sacrifice the integrity of their art to satisfy minorities? We've culturally established that blackface is off the table unless it's a commentary on blackface (ex. Tropic Thunder) but a white person as an Asian doesn't have nearly the same level of toxicity behind it.
The looks are also much more similar between east Asians and Westerners as opposed to somebody with black skin vs white. For example, I grew up in Canada but my family is split mostly between Asian and European (moms parents are from Hong Kong, dad's from England). I look white by happenstance but have clearly Asian looking cousins as well as a sibling. Am I not allowed to play Asian parts because I look white even though the rest of my family can? That could play out as sort of racist in itself if that's the case.
Edit: and if I can play those roles, then what separates me from any other white dude? Knowing my history? What about somebody who is adopted?
I'm not sure where you have been. The backlash is much worse for POC being cast for traditionally 'white' roles, even when the character in the source material has no race.
Some examples are the black teenager who was cast as Ariel receiving death threats.
Also the whole black stormtrooper situation. Again death threats.
There is no excuse for death threats.
But one the reason that people are "angry" about Ariel is that all redheads seem to become black the last few years.
I don't recall her red hair being integral to the character or the story. I could see your point if they did this with the eventual Brave live action remake. It would fundamentally change the story. A mermaid is a mythical creature.
You're saying all redheads are becoming black, but you don't have another example at all? Do you even have an example where this change was made where the hair was integral to the story? Also it's uncommon, but there are black people with naturally red hair. It's actually uncommon in general and most red heads on screen are not natural.
Also when Rue was cast as a black girl in the Hunger Games and people lost their minds
It's even worse because district 11 is supposed to be agriculture...in the area that was formerly America. People being upset by the appearance of a black farmer in their dystopian fantasy are on another level.
Honestly, what you’re proposing would be way better than saying voice actors should be the same ethnicity as the character, but unfortunately, it would be way harder to push, and I don’t see many content creators being willing to do this.
Well yeah thats indeed better but then a lot of people become mad and say the oppisote: white should stay white.
And fuck those people but a movie has to make money. And often outrage isnt a good way to make money.
Look at jojos rabbit. Great amazing movie. But at the start many people didnt want to support it because it had hitler in it as a child friend…… (for those who haved seen it, do it know. Its amazing and makes fun about how stupid the nazis were).
Here it only played once a day in a super unpopular time slot. Even though it was a movie with a amazing cast and story….
They don't get hired for those either, white va's do. That's the whole point. The industry unfairly favoring white va's, even for POC roles, making it hard for POC va's to get anywhere in the industry.
would it not make more sense then to simply create more PoC oriented movies/animation?
I assume that if you start with PoC producers making a movie for other PoC people, then they will likely hire PoC actors.
There may be a bias, but Christopher Judge is famous for playing an ethnically Greek character.
I am all for seeing more people of color in leading roles. The only issue I have is when they take an already existing story, claim they want to make a screen adaptation and stick true to the story, and then make a character a person of color, LGBTQ+, or any other classification group just for the sake of pandering. If it makes sense to the story, that’s great! Go for it! If they have to start making all sorts of justifications and it doesn’t make sense from a story perspective, and it’s obvious that they are being inclusive just to pander, to me that is more offensive. Kind of like ‘hey you shouldn’t have this role, but because your in a demographic that would score us huge points with the social climate, we’re giving it to you’.
Take your Indonesian character for example. If the story is an already existing story, and they are claiming they want to make a screen adaptation and stick to the source material, then the character should be played by an Indonesian person. If they are making their own story, though, then cast whoever is best for the role.
Bottom line, I’m all for casting people of every demographic, as long as it isn’t for the wrong reasons.
So people should be discriminated on the bases of race while getting a job where their race, ethinicity whatever shouldnt matter?
Explain to me how that is not racist.
Is that really a delta though? I feel actively hiring more POC actors and being okay with ethnicity not playing a role in casting are mutually exclusive.
You can still hire more POC actors, and still have white actors play the role of POC characters, especially if POC are playing "white" roles and vice versa
I agree with this, but that's an eventuality.
Society has to first get used to the existence of POC actors first it seems.
POC actors almost never play whites though
So fix that issue. Racially typecasting actors seems like it works in the opposite direction.
They've been doing that for a long time. Phil Lamar has done a lot of white characters. So has Kevin Michael Richardson.
The same thing has happened in a lot of live action movies as well. Nobody blink twice when Samuel L Jackson was cast as Nick fury. Nobody got upset when Morgan Freeman was cast as red in Shawshank redemption. No one gave a fuck when Michael Duncan Clark was cast as kingpin. No one cared when Will Smith was cast as Agent j in Men in Black. There was a little bit of outcry about casting Idris Elba as the gunslinger, but only because racial hatred of white people was actually a big part of that story, and making Roland black and Susannah White would get real awkward. Thankfully, that movie bombed so we'll never get a sequel. When Pam Grier was cast as a blonde white flight attendant in Jackie Brown, literally zero fucks were given by anyone. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You can only get upset if you're upset when it goes both ways. If you only have an issue when white people do it to non-white characters but have no issue when non-white actors do it to white characters, That's called being a hypocrite.
Alternatively, I do remember a lot of outcry when it came to a black actress getting cast as The Little Mermaid. Same thing with the black actresses playing Iris West in The Flash tv show and Starfire in Titans.
I think a pretty important concept here is that race is an asymmetrical issue in America. It's not "every race has its issues and problems and prejudice is bad" (or it is, but it's not the whole story), it's more "certain races have endured historical oppression, the effects of which are still felt today in socioeconomic terms, while others have historically been dominant and still benefit from the systems set up by previous generations."
This leads you to issues like white actors have an easier time getting roles, or white culture is the "default" so other cultures might get misrepresented or disrespected because writers and directors aren't familiar with it, and then THOSE issues is what fosters movements to have more POC actors playing roles representing their specific background, both because it improves diversity in acting roles and because it makes it more likely that accurate cultural representations make it to the screen. So no, asymmetrical solutions to asymmetrical issues aren't necessarily hypocritical.
OTOH, remember that America=/=the World.
The effects of woke culture affect even cultures and countries that are unrelated to America and pretty much monoracial.
Example: Im from Poland, and we had literally a single world-known cool piece of fiction, the Witcher series. When it was turned into a TV show, all traces of Slavic culture and Polish legends were scrubbed off it, a single Polish actor was hired for a role that was not even canon, and there were several inexplicably PoC characters put in it.
I know that "certain races have endured historical oppression, the effects of which are still felt today in socioeconomic terms," - because we ARE ONE. And yet, it is ok to wipe us out from the media or culturally appropriate, because we are pasty and not tan.
I agree. But I imagine we will disagree on how fast to take that concept and what is to be done about it.
No black person alive today was ever a slave. The vast majority of black people alive today were born after Jim Crow was abolished. Historical oppression is important context but it's usually ONLY context. The state of public schools in black neighborhoods in Democrat-run cities has almost nothing to do with slavery or Jim Crow.
Certainly. But current choices are orders of magnitude greater in their effects.
This is where you lose me. White privilege isn't a thing. Just because one group is systemically oppressed doesn't mean everyone not in that group is systemically advantaged. Some things are net negatives overall, and the systemic oppression of black people was used to simultaneously oppress the "wrong" white people. You can't put everyone into neat boxes, and critical race theory is trash. People are more than their skin color and identity.
Does it? There are far more white actors competing for those roles. Are you telling me that Allison Brie had an easier time getting hired than Tyler Perry? You're 100% sure of that?
Does white culture even exist? You can never nail a Marxist down on this point. It seems like it does when it helps their argument but doesn't when it hurts it. Weird, that.
It's one thing to write a story with a specific race in mind. It's quite another to take an established property and change the race of the people involved. I didn't hear anyone complaining that there weren't enough white people in the movie parasite. That's a Korean movie written by a Korean star in Korean people. It's totally fine they're all Korean. But if you made a biopic about George Washington and made him a Korean, I'm going to have a big fucking problem with that.
I would like to note that Nick Fury was black (and was said to "look like Samuel L. Jackson") in the comics before the MCU (like, back in 2002 or something). I think it was the Ultimate version, or something.
You're half right. The Nick Fury you're thinking of is from an alternate universe to main marvel continuity (Earth 1610 as opposed to 616), where he is black and very similar looking to Samuel L Jackson. So it's not entirely correct to say that Fury was black in the comics before the MCU: a notable version of him was black, which inspired the MCU.
And yeah, it was called the Ultimate Universe.
In fact, once Samuel L. Jackson saw the comics using his likeness, he made sure that if Nick Fury was ever in a movie, then he'd be the one actor that plays him.
Actually, I recall the fervent outcry at the mere mention of Idris Elba playing James Bond.
that at least made some sense, since Bond is supposed to be the same guy across all movies. While Bond movies never had much logic in them, Bond going from a white guy to a black guy somehow would be pushing the ridiculousness too far. It would basically be an in-universe blackface.
outcry of support! There are so many people that were stoked about him playing James Bond instead we're getting some black chick nobody wanted for the simple fact that the studios wanted to be extra extra inclusive so they couldn't go with a well-known black actor they had to make it a black woman
It’s interesting that all the examples you’ve mentioned are of black actors. Maybe being underrepresented is more of an issue for the Asian actors community?
Comment removed by moderator
I think the reality is that casting directors should hire the person who they think has the voice that best suits the character and their skin color is absolutely irrelevant.
The problem is that when the only people who are deemed “best for the job” are the white ones. People talk about meritocracy as if it’s a panel of completely objective unbiased people choosing who gets things based on merit but it’s not. When the things on the resume of a POC, black person, or woman are not considered as important or as good as what’s on the resume of a white man, is it really based on merit that the white person lands the role/position/job?
Why not cast people based on a voice-only audition?
It's not like that would even be hard to arrange.
That "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, given that the industry never did it based on talent before. Hollywood is 100% not a meritocracy. Very talented people get left out, while all sorts of well connected hacks actually get roles. Then the ones that achieve lasting fame aren't based on talent either - some shows get high ratings and go on for a decade, while other shows might flop and its actors remain unknowns. Then, there's all sorts of name recognition stunt-casting instead of open auditions, which helps the already famous even more vs the nobody with talent.
Perhaps after we get better representation, we can work on making it a meritocracy, but to imply it currently is one is naive.
I agree it's all about who you know, and that's true in almost any industry. If that's the case, isn't the problem more cronyism than racism?
People hire non ethnically correct actors because they know them, they are a known quantity.
Let's say you are producing a movie and borrowed 100 million to do it, how much risk are you going to be comfortable taking when selecting actors?
yep any day now any day now with all the diversity a profit driven enterprise thats largely based on conventional attractiveness will become a meritocracy any day now. Just one sprinkle of diversity will do /s.
Perhaps. But everybody can suffer from bias. It seems logical they would have a preference for someone they’ve worked with before or whose work they’ve seen or heard. Given two actors of equivalent skill, they can end up choosing someone with a history of being adaptable, rather than choosing one with a history that shares more experiences with the character who’s being portrayed.
I mean, it really depends. It's kind of infuriating that in the movies, some of the Percy Jackson characters are very different from the book descriptions of them, looking especially at Anabeth.
Ah, I was replying to the post above about voice actors who are heard but not seen.
I agree though that if a writer creates a physical description in the book, it should be reflected accurately in the movie. Kinda how Hermione was written as buck toothed and homely but then was played by Emma Watson who is quite beautiful.
They tried remember when people lost their shit because they cast a black Ariel?
This already happens a lot and people are totally fine with it. Look at Phil Lamarr, dude is black and no one had any issues with him playing Samurai Jack, he nails the role (not that Jack is white, but my point is that PoC often play roles not associated with their race)
Like to point out Kratos(God of war series main character) has been voiced by two people since his cretsion in 2005 and both have been Black VO.
Also a really good example, and both killed it too. His voice is super iconic.
Thanks! I think hiring more POC to voice white characters might help, although I can see a problem with enforcing that at the same time as the current thought of hiring people who match the races of their characters. There’s also a problem where a disproportionate amount of characters on tv are white. By getting more POC involved in casting, we may encourage that to shift as well.
Lots of times, the people who are encouraging this kind of hiring aren’t discouraging other kinds of solutions like yours as well. This was just an easy disparity for people to point out and so it became a lightning rod. True equity doesn’t have one solution.
It literally won't, because unless it's someone with a super noticeable voice, you won't ever see the race of the person who's voicing the character. You'll only see how the character is portrayed in the cartoon.
I believe that as OP said , sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, etc doesn't matter when doing voice work.
But under your argument, when the character is a white Latino who should voice it? Should it only be a white Latino, can it also be a white non Latino or a non-white Latino? I mean since we are going deep into who should and shouldn't. What about Japanese roles should only Japanese people do them or any east Asian person? I could go on and on.
Also how about in countries like mine where black people are 0,06% of the population? I can assure you that our dub for US movies like Coming 2 America didn't have a single black person doing them since they are almost non-existent here.
Should we only do subtitles for movies like that or try to find black foreign voice actors that speak the local language to do them?
Giving everybody the same opportunities comes from access to good education, healthcare, the same training, and then doing open casting instead of nepotism (which isn't connect only to race and ethnicity and has more to do with your socio-economic class), I don't care about the race of somebody doing the voice of Batman or Wonderwoman, I just want the best person to do them.
Should white characters be voiced by white actors then? I’m on mobile but there’s quite a few really great male black voice actors that have that deep baritone voice. They voice a ton of characters regardless of race. If the voice is good why should the race of the actor matter?
As much as I love for POC to have more roles, sometimes I see actors and wonder if they’re there for diversity purposes.
Wait till they find out the actor voicing Bart Simoson is female!
So why do you want to unemploy white people?
Hire the best for the job. If a white skinned actor is better then a vietnamese one for a vietnamese roll, so be it. I see it the same for the reverse.
Besides white isn't a race despite the usa pushing it as such. Where's the Slavic representation? Slavics keep getting the shit end of the stick. Slavics usually play white trash rolls or the super villian.
It's a fucking joke though. No one got bent out of shape or cared even slightly Phil Lamar or Kevin Michael Richardson or James Earl Jones voiced a white character.
Well yeah, because the scales are only tipped in one direction. In the US, where lots of media is made, white people have historically had the advantage.
Did she have to?
But what about forcing white actors in black movies, or other ethnicities in Asian films?
Why should anyone be given the opportunity you're describing just because they were born the correct race, rather than because they're the best suited for thr job? Sounds a lot like racism...
Because we are not giving ourselves the opportunity to truly find the best suited. There could be amazing voice-over actors that we will never see.
It requires diverse views from people hiring to properly screen candidates, in all professions.
As commentator before you stated, in a perfect world, this would be a non-issue and anyone can play any race, but we need to get there first. So yes, we may need to tip the scales which seems unfair, but the scales are already unbalanced, so we need to counter-weight it for awhile until it's in balance.
I don't think we will witness it in our lifetimes, but we need to start somewhere.
no we dont. Its entertainment there is no human right to be represented in private industry.
Its not a meritocracy and never will be. As long as you bring in most cash for the Recording and licensing companies you will usually be cast. Excluding passion projects and films not made with primary comercial incentive.
Good acting is secondary to money in showbiz.
If you're looking for a way to give a chance to not yet established competent voice actors then discriminating by race is a ridiculous way to do it. What about white unestablished competent voice actors?
Eric Bauza voices almost everyone in cartoons nowadays.
The point of this issue isn't to prevent actors from playing parts that don't match their gender or ethnicity: It's to combat the systematic exclusion of actors who aren't straight or white.
Up until very recently there just weren't many acting parts in Western media available to non-white or LGBT actors, and most of the available parts were either demeaning or tokenizing their actors. Even today, there is still a bias towards white and straight actors at every level for any part that doesn't explicitly call for a person of color for the role.
The push for specific roles to go to actors who match their characters isn't a way to exclude white cishet actors, it's a push to include actors of other backgrounds who would've been otherwise excluded from acting overall.
A related issue is the call for actors to share a certain identity with the character they're portraying if that identity is central to the character or the story, such as a black actor playing Nelson Mandela or MLK: In theory you could have an actor of any ethnicity playing him and just rely on the audience's suspension of disbelief (I'm not even going to entertain putting a white actor in blackface, given that practice's racist history), but the ethnicity and background is such a pivotal part of the character you're portraying that casting a black actor almost becomes a matter of basic decency and respect to the character as well as for their audience.
!delta
I have to agree that sometimes the character's ethnic background can be critically important, an indispensable part of the story.
Still, how close does the matching need to be? Is it acceptable if an African American actor plays Mandela or Xhosa is cast as MLK?
I don't know, that's certainly up for debate. I'm just saying that either would be better than casting Timothee Chalamet
But in that case the poster can say "I have a dreamy"
A good example of this is when casting Sulu in the newer Star Trek movies, the director JJ Abrams wanted to hire John Cho, who is Korean and not Japanese. He actually consulted the original actor George Takei to get his input on the situation, who gave the casting choice his blessing.
In my opinion that is an example of a well-handled “mismatch” casting.
Try thinking about the issue like this: White people make up 60% of the population, yet represent 88% of screen time on television. White people are vastly overrepresented on television. On the inverse, miniorites (with the exception of black americans) are very underrepresented. This leads to a case where if you are a white actor, you are left with an abundance of different roles to choose from. However what if you're a native American actor, a Filipino actor, the vietnamese actor? You have a veeeery limited pool of roles to choose from, much lower than actual if t.v roles were based on actual population diversity. So you go in with this disadvantage, and then proceed to see the one role written for your very undepresented demographic go to yet another white actor (who already has a much bigger pool of roles to choose from) To these actors (and an audience made up of a similar race ) this is adding insult to injury.
That's only cable TV, broadcast TV they are much more in line at 64.2%, meanwhile, black people are quite overrepresented in broadcast TV at 24.7%.
Edit: the Nielson report, which I assume is where you got the 88%, has an "Inclusion Opportunity Index Ranker. The only groups that are underrepresented according to this group are Native Americans, Hispanics, and Women. The groups more overrepresented than whites includes Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, LGBTQ, Black, Southeast Asian, and AAPI. East Asians and Black Latinos are overrepresented but barely. This is for all categories of the research.
This is how most targeting works--most endeavors aim for the largest easiest demographic. If you can get 60% of the market with no effort or, with significant effort, get 88%, it's usually far far cheaper to just get the 60% because of how the Pareto Principle works--that extra 20% will cost you as much or more than the 60% did. I think it's great that we want this to change, but people using these numbers as evidence of prejudice come off as inexperienced and just not understanding the ecosystem of practices they live in.
I can actually agree with that assessment. Market forces usually trend torwards whatever makes the most cash. But does it matter if a system doesn't have discrimination as intent if it still produces discrimination as a result? In the end, its a meaning without a difference to those affected by it.
Source?
Because at least one of those numbers is wrong, according to the 2020 Census white people are 76% of the population.
Source?
Do you have a source for this? I don't doubt it's true, I'm just curious to see the number for the various racial/ethnic groups.
What percent of the country's population is white is irrelevant. What's relevant is, what percent of actors out there are white? If 60% of the actor population is white yet they get 88% of the roles, then yes there's a problem. But not every job's racial make up accurately reflects that of the country.
Why is that a problem in and of itself?
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I agree that this is a problem. !delta
But I disagree that "earmarking" the roles by ethnicity is the best way to fix this. Shouldn't we promote more diverse hiring for "white" roles instead?
If POCs cannot even get POC roles (nevermind the utter dearth and stereotypes around them), how exactly is this supposed to happen?
there is no such thing as “white roles” lol, they’re all roles that could have been played by anybody but white people were picked to play them. cue most rom-com, drama, etc.
unless the movie was historical or specifically focused on a character’s background as white, ie the godfather
We should, and we should also be writing more diverse characters in the first place (having non-white actors voice white animated characters doesn’t fix the issue of having a disproportionate amount of white people on our screens). But until that happens, surely you see why white actors who understand the issue would feel uncomfortable taking a role in which they portray a minority character?
Wait, are you suggesting that instead of having minorities represent their % of population in screentime, we should instead just have minorities play white people? I'm genuinely curious how you think that's better then having minorities play roles of their actual skin color.
Can you give some non-historical examples of a "white" role?How many examples?
How many examples are there of racially neutral roles being filled by whites? How about by POC?
How about all of them, if they're not historical. I can narrow it down even further if you'd like. How about those shitty Hallmark movies where everyone lives in a white suburb and there's a black "Best friend" supporting actor?
Or how about the fact that after nearly 20 years we finally had POC on bachelorette etc? None of those rolls particularly needed a white person to fit, but they were filled by whites anyways.
I remember years ago I used to date this white woman. She told me she thought the show Family Matters was racist because it didn't have white people on it. She did this at the time when Friends, Seinfeld, Boy meets world, Home improvement, and a shit load of other shows dominated the airwaves without a shred of any POCS in their cast. But equality feels like oppression to the privileged....
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I mean to challenge OP into producing an example of a role which requires a white person to play it. I totally agree with you on every point, here.
The context is that OP was asking for more diversity in "white roles." My point was essentially yours, that the vast majority of roles don't even have a racial requirement, yet get filled by whites, so maybe I misunderstood what they meant by it. I took it to be just a reflexive referral to all roles being default white roles, but since you brought it up and I'm thinking about it, maybe I was the reflexive one and it was purposeful commentary. I should have asked but I was already pissed at them.
Anyways, sorry I didn't communicate my intent better.
I'll start by saying that Diane Nguyen was not forced to apologize. She apologized on her own. No one made her.
The creator also apologized and said he agreed with the critique.
You may notice that Alison Brie isn't cancelled even the tiniest bit AND she continued playing the character for the rest of the show.
Literally nothing happened to her. She just chose to apologize. That's nothing. She's still rich, she's still famous, she's still got a great career, and people still praise her performance as that character.
I mean, Bojack Horseman is widely considered (among critics) to be one of the best animated programs of all time and the creator has a semi-spinoff show running as we speak.
No one has been cancelled here.
In fact, anyone is allowed to play any race. It's not illegal. You can do it. People will tell you they don't like it, but you're allowed to do it.
If you want an explanation about why people get upset about this sort of thing, you can read the creator of Bojack's explanation since he agrees with the critique of his show.
Basically, race plays a role in people's lives. His show cast a white actor as a Vietnamese character and had no Vietnamese writers.
That meant no one was on staff to give an authentic voice to the character.
The easiest way to ensure you're giving an accurate and non-stereotypical portrayal of a race is to have the actor match the race of the character. Another great way is to have writers who share that character's race.
If representation is important, then it should also be important to have that representation be as accurate as possible.
Remember, this is something studios and shows are choosing to do because viewers want to see it.
No one is having any real consequences.
I'd love it if you could point to some examples of real bad things happening to people because of this.
Famous actors voluntarily stepping down from roles doesn't count unless they don't get roles in the future. Apologies don't count. Apologies do no harm. It's just words.
Hank Azaria is still doing great. Jenny Slate is still doing great. Alison Brie is still doing great.
People still love The Simpsons. Bojack is a massive critical success. Big Mouth is still running and very popular.
Do you have a single example of this ruining someone's career?
People right now prefer that POC characters are portrayed by people who share the character's race. I don't see what's wrong with that. It opens jobs for POC. It ensures characters are portrayed accurately. It's had no negative effects that I can find.
So who cares? Just let them do it.
Writer representation is so fucking critical. As a white guy, there's no way that I can write about a lived experience I have not lived. Many of my friends are black and brown. I've lived in black urban neighborhoods. I currently live in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, where English isn't spoken very much... certainly not as a primary language. But no way could I write for any of their experiences. It's why shows like Atlanta are so great. Truth is hard to capture if you're speaking for someone else.
So it's one thing to play a "colorless/genderless role" in my mind. Roles where you can replace any person with another person and it doesn't matter because race is not an important aspect of the character.
However if you are playing a role of someone you have literally no connection to, it changes the entire dynamic of the role and it changes the entire message of the content. Let's say you replace the lead character in Get Out with a white guy, the entire meaning and content of the film changes. All of a sudden it is just another psychological horror film and it loses tons of meaning and depth. Which is why actors gender/race are not always interchangeable.
On top of that lets say if you hire a white person to play an obviously Asian character how do you make it clear that they are Asian? Do you tape their eyes back to make them look Asiany? Do you have them speak in broken English? The problem is you automatically start promoting racist stereotypes and your character automatically loses credibility. It then becomes about the stereotypes the character is portraying and the it is just a joke.
You literally cannot have a serious movie if you are talking about putting actors in black face or white face or asian face to play a role that they are not.
Do I think an actor should be "cancelled" because they did a role like that. I think it depends. Is the role an ill-advised one or is it pointed insult. Is it like old timey blackface, where it was racists making fun of black people? Or did someone just not think through their decision very thoroughly? To me intent is more important than result. Tropic Thunder comes to mind. Robert Downey Junior was not playing a charicature of a black man. He was a white man playing a charicature of a black man, so in the this case the joke is the person who thinks it is ok to do that and not the person he is playing.
But I think no matter what if you replace a racially specific character in a role specifically about race ie. Falcon and the Winter Soldier you automatically lose the meaning of the content and then if you out the white character in black face and make him talk black to fit the role you have automatically taken you serious content and made it at best a comedy if not just a joke.
You could always do what ScarJo did: wear a black wig, eye makeup that makes you look asian-y and not only pronounce Japanese words incorrectly, but do it DIFFERENTLY for the same words, and insist the role isn't asian.
There was a great example in the comments: Chernobyl miniseries. Actors were not ethnic Russians or Ukrainians, but hey managed to convey authenticity without resorting to thick Russian accents, broken English or other stereotypes.
That is because you have white people playing white people. Yes they are absolutely culturally different, they speak differently. But it isn't nearly as much of a stretch to replace one cultures white person with another cultures white person. In the same way that Africans will sometimes play African Americans or British Africans will play African Americans. But how do you indicate that a white person is a black person on film when playing a role where race matters?
1., nobody cancelled Alison Brie. She is still a respected actor who is getting work.
2., your point would make sense if actors of color were equally considered for all kinds of roles at the same rate white people are, but they’re not. While television and movies are more diverse than they’ve ever been, our go-to casting is still heavily white, and actors of color are regularly pigeonholed into certain, often smaller roles. So when a role comes up for someone who is specifically supposed to be a character of color, it feels particularly egregious for a white actor to get that role, too.
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This is part of the problem. It's hard to make wealthy and well connected people feel the consequences of their actions. The main driving force behind canceling someone is producing a shitstorm so large that it can't be ignored by whomever is working with that person, be it sponsors, companies that seek someone for advertising, movie producers, or whatever. Those people then need to cut all ties to that person, and then, without many choices of income, they have successfully been canceled.
But if the person doesn't really care, because they can just comfortably retire on the wealth they have accumulated over the years, it doesn't really matter. So it works best on people who aren't that big yet, and it sometimes seems like some people do this for sport, and it seems like it gets out of hand sometimes. For example, focusing your efforts on canceling a twitch streamer who was mean to another player in World of Warcraft, potentially ruining their one source of income and forcing them to re-organize their entire life doesn't really seem appropriate when all the people you listed are still roaming around without any repercussions.
Hey, u/Two_Corinthians you gonna reply to this? u/halfadash6 has two good points worth discussing
Thank you. I really, really hate the way the word "canceled" is being used recently.
Anytime anybody has any issue with anything that anybody else does, you have people crying "cancel culture!"
Alison Brie expressed regret for voicing an Asian character? "omg they're canceling Allison brie".
Dr Seuss estate reviews all his books and removes 5 or 6 relatively unheard of books from print, leaving dozens of other books, movies, animations, and merchandise still available world wide, "wtf, THEY'VE canceled Dr Seuss!".
So sick of it.
That Dr Seuss thing was brilliant. Company chooses to stop a product, gets outrage about being "canceled" and makes money hand over fist. Based on that, if I was a company that had some poor selling back catalogue with any sort of EDI issues, but some well known other titles and dwindling sales I'd announce I was stopping selling the unpopular stuff for EDI issues and watch the outrage money come flying in.
People have been taught to construe "taking responsibility for your actions" with "getting cancelled" because they aren't comfortable with their actions being criticized for being inconsiderate or worse.
For all the talk of "personal responsibility", the criticism of "cancel culture" is one backwards sentiment not in keeping with that belief.
Yeah the only thing I found about her casting in that role was Alison, herself, saying she regrets the role because she's white.
somehow literally everyone with any controversy is now "cancelled" by "cancel culture"–if you call a small group of people on Twitter a culture–this shit's getting old man
Well to your second point someone should not be hired specifically because of their race and color of their skin they should be hired cause they are the best candidate. Also its not really a surprise since american tv is arguably one of the most popular thing ands most people in america are white so honestly im not surprised it hasnt been more poc nor am i in favpur of quotas unless absolutely neccesary.
So this is a thing that comes up a lot when trying to hire more diversely. The idea that the "best candidate" should be hired.
This fails to take a few things into consideration.
For one, it's rare that there's one outstanding candidate for anything. This is true for every job basically ever, from dishwashers to the president. Have you ever actually hired people before? Normally you cut it down to about 2-4 people who would all be really good at that job. You've established everyone can do the job, and now you're picking for other reasons that extend beyond the job description. Maybe they have other skills you weren't initially looking for, or maybe their available start date is better, or maybe someone seemed a little easier to get along with, or maybe they look just like you and happened to be in your same frat in college. Whatever the reason, the person you ended up picking for that role wasn't necessarily the "best candidate" in the sense that they were clearly better than the rest, they were likely on par with others with their own pros and cons and you just decided their pros more closely aligned with what you happened to be looking for at the time.
And two, this negates the fact that you're picking from those who have applied. If you're doing a shit job of reaching out to a wide pool of talent, then it's unlikely you're actually selecting the best person for the job. If I'm hiring for a software engineer but the only place I post the job listing is the community board of my local library, it is really unlikely that the people who apply are actually the best candidates for the job because there will just not be that many software engineers who see that advertisement. I've already narrowed my talent pool before I ever even received an application. Sure, maybe a really talented software engineer who just happens to be looking for a new job just happened to walk into the library after I put the add up, but there are clearly better ways to recruit for that job.
This is obviously an extreme example, but holds truth even in our current hiring systems that may seem like they're less biased. The idea of hiring the best candidate for the job is fantastic, but often time the person who actually would be best for that job never even saw the posting to begin with because of the way you went about recruiting.
So well written. And the word "best" is a very amorphous quality hidden by the fog of the future. People just use this mantra of "best for the job" to avoid thinking more deeply about the issue.
Yeah like looking at the statistics it's quite suspect to assume that the "best" person for the job always just happens to be white...
My point is that we overwhelmingly cast white actors for roles where race doesn’t matter. They aren’t even auditioning actors of color most of the time. So as it is, we’re not actually sure the best person is getting the role regardless of race, because we’re not even considering other races for the role.
And just because it’s not surprising doesn’t mean it’s okay.
Just to clarify, are you saying that it would be OK if in John Adams miniseries John Adams role was played by a Vietnamese person?
At one point in history, acting was purely a profession for men and so men played all of the roles. If you were a woman that wanted to be an actor, too bad, the role you wanted would go to a man even if the character is a woman.
Most actors in the US are white and most characters are white too. Many casting directors care, at least a little, about the race of the actors they're hiring. So if you're a Vietnamese actress trying to break into the acting world, you're just not going to get hired for roles where they aren't looking for a Vietnamese actress. This makes it hard to break into the field and make a career out of acting. This causes a self-reinforcing pattern where the main people able to make careers out of acting are white, so all the best known actors tend to be white, and if you're hiring someone with a proven track record they'll also tend to be white.
So on the rare occasion that someone casts a role that calls for an underrepresented minority, its a bit offensive for some other well known actor not from that minority to take what could've been a great opportunity for a person from that minority to break in and help change the underrepresentation problem.
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Because then they get accused of tokenism. The best thing is to have more diverse writers, directors, casting directors and producers, which should lead to more proportionate representation in front of the camera as well.
Who are the TV and film directors who believed that minority underrepresentation is a problem? They're usually minorities. And minority TV and film directors aren't as prevalent or powerful the white majority. That's why allyship is important. Because even if every minority in the film industry worked very hard against this problem, there would be little progress without support from why film industry people as well.
A good example of why there is outrage is the movie "21" which was supposed to be about the MIT Blackjack team. In reality, the MIT Blackjack team was mostly Asian Americans, but somehow in the movie adaptation, most everyone suddenly became white. So even in real life stories where the real people are Asian Americans, they get casted as white people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_(2008_film)
I agree, characters where their ethnicity heavyly impact the way they would interact with the world (culture are very different, european doesnt behave the same as asians, ect) need to be portrayed by an actor of the same ethnicity or you're going to break immersion. Hence why i really have a huge problem when some character are being tokened just for the sake of putting diversity and throw the whole immersion out of the window.
Why isnt there more movies around some part of our history that would make more POC active in the movie industry, that's an other topic.
I wouldn't have access to bankable Asians either if all I did was hang my rich white friends in Hollywood every day
I know nothing and this Alison Brie issue, however, there are many instances when you want/need the actor to match the character they’re portraying.
For example, if you’re filming a movie that takes place in ancient China, having a black man play a role of a Chinese man would break the immersion.
Also, it would be incredibly insulting to have an Indian (from India) play a Native American.
Or what about having white men playing Zulu tribesmen?
I agree if that actor is playing the character, but with voice actors does it really matter? Shouldn’t the person that can do the voice you want for that character get the role regardless of race,gender,etc. If I was making an animated show or film, I’d want blind auditions, all I want to hear is the voice.
The thing is, with voice acting it doesn’t matter to most of the audience, but it feels really, really awkward to those who can hear the little differences, the subtle mistakes. And those are mostly the same people that identify with the character.
In that case though, someone from that race/ethnicity wouldn’t always match the voice. A Chinese person born and raised in the US might speak no Chinese or do a terrible Chinese accent. Same thing if a black American voiced an African immigrant character
I 100% agree.
By all means, make the effort to cast a person with matching/similar ethnicity, but it shouldn't be an absolute. I have a friend who's family is Costa Rican, and grew up there from the age of 4 or 5. If you never heard him speaking to his family, and never looked at him you would not be able to tell him apart from a room of 'white guys'.
Again, 100% agree. My family is of Swedish descent... but I have about as much in common with Swedes as you (likely) do. I don't speak Swedish, I've never been to Sweden, and I don't have blond hair. Yet no one would complain about a non-Swede voicing a Swedish character in a show.
I get, and agree with, the minority representation argument and that it helps to 'level the playing field' for minorities, but to group all white people together is just as racist. You wouldn't cast a Pakistani/Indian actor to play a Chinese character... but both are "Asian". So why is it OK for the same to be done to white characters?
I agree. It’s more complicated in real life - always. What I said doesn’t go just for ethnicity either (in fact, I deliberately didn’t mention ethnicity because I was answering a more general question), though I assume it’s the same there. Dialects and sociolects are two of the areas where I notice this the most.
This doesn't work in this case, though. Diane is from an immigrant family where everyone but her has a heavy Boston(?) accent, so her accent being American is correct
Just to clarify, I was replying to a specific comment asking why this kind of thing matters for voice acting in general. I know zero about the specific thing in the example used in the original post.
I can understand that, because as a cannabis user I hate 99% of “stoners” as they written in movies and TV. However when I see someone playing a character from California, it doesn’t bother me when they don’t use the prefect accent or slang. That logic also puts people in a box of well since you’re this then you can only play these roles, which can be sexist, racism and the like.
I forgot about the great stoner race.
Surely that's on the director and the script, not the actor?
I actually agree, but that’s not really relevant to my comment. I was answering a question about why this kind of thing mattered in voice acting.
It does depend on how seriously and historically accurate the film is trying to be. For some things which are just supposed to be fun, it doesn't really matter.
No point in getting bent out of shape when random people of color show up in medieval Britain in Doctor Who. It's a light-hearted timey-wimey time-traveling adventure not a serious historical drama.
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I really don't think we should be including Dr. Who in the "historically credible" camp of film making. Hahaha
Ryan Gosling would make a great Martin Luther King Jr tbh
There's already a meme about him playing Barack Obama
If Christopher Jackson can play George Washington then Ryan Gosling can play Obama. I guarantee he would knock it out of the park.
While we're at it, Forest Whitaker would make a great Joe Biden.
I don’t know if that is true.
I saw a version of Cinderella where the King was a white guy, the Queen was a black woman (Whoopi Goldberg actually), the Prince was some boring Filipino kid, and title character was a black girl (the singer Brandy).
I never really noticed until my 5-year-old said to a grocery clerk who had her hair in cornrows like Brandy, “You look just like Cinderella!” The clerk was confused. “Not the regular Cinderella. The brown Cinderella on TV.”
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Cinderella is set in a fictional world, Ancient China is not a fictional world. Cinderalla could be of any skin colour and it wouldnt affect the story but you can't have a non-chinese play the role of a Chinese emperor if you want the audience to take it seriously.
Wait, the France of Cinderella is fictional, but the China of Mulan is not?
I think you are reaching there.
Yes, sometimes it helps to have the physical attributes of the performer match those of the character, but I can think of many great performances where that did not happen. Olivier as the Moor, Mary Martin as Peter Pan, Linda Hunt as Billy in Year of Living Dangerously.
What I like even more is when they just match the character to the actor who gives the best audition. Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie competed for the title role in Salt. There was endless speculation about what it “meant” that the protagonist of Night of the Living Dead was black, until George Romero pointed out that Duane Jones crushed it in the role. Nobody said the same thing with Himesh Patel in Yesterday, but you could tell some people were thinking it.
Cinderella is not set in France. Cinderella is a story with thousand different versions, set in whatever place the writer/speaker wants it. Hua Mulan, on the other hand, is a Chinese folk hero, who might have been a real person. It would be like putting Joan of Arc in Africa or Geronimo in Europe.
I think the part you're missing is that we're talking about the industry that cast John Wayne as Ghengis Khan.
That movie is over 60 years old. Our culture has changed tremendously since then.
Then how about Scarlett Johansson as Makoto Kusanagi?
That wasn't Makoto, it was the robot body they put Makoto's brain in.
Personally I would love to see Arnold Schwarzenegger cast in the role of Cosette for the first act of Les Miserables
The problem with this is there are stronger restrictions on actors of color than white actors.
There was a public outcry over Idris Elba playing 007
POC aren't allowed to be Starfire
In Star Wars
Or citizens of Panem
That's the part of the conversation that tends to get left out. Without that context, seeing folks like Allison Brie apologize seems out of left field. The context is that POC actors are held back from roles far more often than white actors, and when roles that are designed to be characters of color, it's frustrating to see studios give those roles to white actors.
Yes there are angry twitter mobs on both sides, but the white twitter mobs scare studios much more than the POC ones.
What about for history movies? What about Gender, or size?
If there was a movie made about George and Martha Washington, people really should have no issue if Angelina Jolie is cast as George and Peter Dinklage is cast as Martha Washington?
When you do that, are you not engaging in some bizarre alternate history?
Some actors just aren't fit for certain roles. Simple. Do you want a white person playing an established black character (especially a historic one)? Do you want a black person playing an established white character? Personally I find it disrespectful of the source material, or if it's historical, than history. Would you cast a fat and ugly person to play a beautiful characters? Or a beautiful person to portray an ugly one? No, same thing. Would you have a boy play a girl, etc.
The thing about the voice actor though was idiotic. Voice actors can obviously be whatever race, gender, or ethnicity without restriction as long as the voice is right.
Spoke about this on another post a couple of days ago
I think it depends heavily on circumstance as to when it does and doesn't matter. When it comes to voices, and only voice acting, I feel its a different matter however. People can be one race and sound like a completely different races' following stereotypes. In this regard? No issue with anyone playing any role as its only a voice.
In regards to physical acting I am very on the fence with this. When characters are written, typically you'd hope characters aren't no more than token black man or token minority group simply for pandering sake, and as such, you'd expect their character to be subtly reflective of the culture, upbringing, and backstory (not to be mistaken with making it front and centre, but concious awareness is important I feel when developing characters as you must be aware of alternative motivations than simply current stimuli in whatever setting is going on) when an existing character or property is then adapted, yet already clearly stated as one race or one gender, changing this a. Is a dick move because just slapping a minority over the top of an existing character is just shoe-horning them in and not creating new interesting characters for said representation, but also b. Fundamentally changing the character. I feel there are some ambiguous characters that can be replaced easily, but switching them in and out for other races often times causes blatant changes to the character themselved, for otherwise certain aspects may just not make sense.
An example of an ambiguous character imo would be say the Doctor from Dr. Who where it can be any gender, any race. Alternatively, take someone like James bond, he's a semi ambiguous character. I feel you can change the race (though some disagree) however, changing the gender would destroy who the character itself is and just be pandering rather than respecting the property in itself. A character I would struggle seeing as anothet race or gender would be a representation of say the Queen of England. Changing that up would just be weird - especially if you are looking at the Royal family in some historical period piece - adding that context also matters in these situations. Another example would be characters in the black panther movie, it wouldn't be remotely as good if you just slapped some generic white people in there, as context matters to the story you're telling - the characters were written to be black, hiring a random white guy isn't gonna seem right given their background, culture, and setting.
I'm very on the fence as I like the idea of people not caring about race or gender in general, but I don't think thats as easy to do unless starting with a new character. Preexisting ones are established and written for what they are the majority of the time.
In many situations, yes it's silly to be offended. But I think there are definitely situations where it's ok to want more accuracy. After all, a good film is one that feels real.
For example, if they made a new dramatized movie about the life of MLK, wouldn't it be weird to cast a white man to play the role of MLK? I don't think there's anything wrong with seeking out a black man who looks as much like MLK as possible.
Same would apply about a movie portraying Abraham Lincoln.
I don't think Alison is being cancelled for accepting the role. It's being criticized and there is a difference. Alison didn't do anything wrong beyond accepting a role that should have been cast to reflect the character's heritage.
Cancelling was originally a means of a minority expressing that they weren't going to support certain things. I micro boycott as it were. It began in the late 70s/early 80s and was brought into the zeitgeist by New Jack City.
It has since been corrupted by Fox News and the alt-right conservative press machine as a means outraging white people and keeping them in a state of frenzy as is the playbook for totalitarians trying to seize and or hold power. They claim that legitimate attempts to correct our racial past are wars on nostalgia. It's an extension of the war on Christmas. Completely meaningless and designed to enflame their base followers. It was brought into modern vernacular as cancel culture is an evil through Mr. Potato Head losing the pronouns and Dr. Suess declining to publish six books that didn't sell very well and had grossly racist themes and content. THEY THE RADICAL LEFT IS TRYING TO CANCEL DR. SUESS!!!! TRYING TO CANCEL MR. POTATO HEAD.....
Was Alison forced to apologize? No. Was it wise to do so, to shift the negative attention away from her Hollywood persona. Yes, so she chose to, and may also sincerely believe it in principle. She is in real life a very sweet and compassionate person, but she also has to work. So she took the gig, and it was good for her and the production. It wasn't good for all the out of work Asian actors that are not even considered for starring roles, who can't even read for supporting roles and are relegated to bit parts that fulfill stereotypes that can and are harmful to their fellow Asians.
That's really where the criticism originates. It's an effort to communicate a desire and a demand for equity in media. Representation is good for everyone. It is nice, when you have a blonde hair, blue eyed kid who is 1/4 Asian and you're trying to keep alive your heritage to have people in media that represents them, let alone being able to see yourself or your spouse represented. Its good for people to see their co-workers represented etc.
So I think of cancel culture as social justice through market forces. People who don't deserve to be cancelled inevitably survive it. Like Chris Pratt. He caught a lot of undeserved flack in the last few years and handled it with dignity and grace. There are those that absolutely do deserve to removed from the spotlight like Kevin Spacey. Huge fan of his work and consider his cancellation a loss to the arts- but I've also witnessed his appetite first hand and wouldn't wish that on anyone.
If the result of these loud voices that Asian actors get to portray more work and have equal access to roles that anyone could play- Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne, James Bond then that's a good thing.
For voice acting? Sure, go nuts. But when it's live action, race matters. Especially for historical roles.
There was recently a decision to have a black woman, Jodie Turner-Smith play the role of Anne Boleyn. For those unaware, Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536. She married King Henry VIII of England. This is a historical figure, a real person from English history, and she was white.
The argument that actors and actresses can play anyone falls apart when you look at this scenario. First of all, such a casting is an obvious historical inaccuracy that borders on disrespect. If you are representing a real person, you have a duty to be faithful to that person. Secondly, race-swapping only goes one way. Casting a white character as black is now normal, but no-one would dream of recasting a black character as white. When it's only men being replaced with women, and white people being replaced with black, then it's clear that it is not a case of choosing the best actor - it's a deliberate, malicious act; a conscious choice to put political activism into a creation.
Actors are a product, they have audiences from all sorts of different backgrounds and there are no laws restricting what they can do (involving parts they can take). They could legally do blackface, so they are "allowed" to do anything.
The fact that their audiences might disagree with some of their decisions and then might decide not to consume their product anymore is just the basics of a functioning society. Society is just waking up to the idea that maybe every movie doesn't require a white savior, and a Native American maybe shouldn't be played by Johnny Depp.
Robert Downey Jr successfully wore blackface in a movie without much blow-back, because it was making fun of the entertainment industry making bad casting decisions.
There are plenty of great action star Asian women, so there was no reason to put Scarlett Johansson in the part of one of the more famous anime characters.
Are you saying nobody should have strong opinions on what they consider problematic behavior and be allowed to make personal choices as to whether or not they voice their opinion?
What if it’s for a movie or show that’s intended to be very historically accurate, and the producers believe an actor with similar ethnicity and possibly similar social experiences/heritages would be best to bring the character to life?
I mean so long as they're qualified and fit the description of the role then that's fine. I mean if the role calls for an Indian woman with a south asian friend who is meant to be comedic relief, yeah find the right two people for that then to allow for the movie or play, etc, to be that much more believable. OP can you also agree that actors and actresses shouldn't be cancelled over political beliefs? What'd you think about the Disney Mandalorian actress who got fired about saying conservatives are fired for sharing their political beliefs, only for Disney to come right back and fire her for, well her political beliefs...I'm not saying people should or shouldn't left, right, center, it shouldn't matter, the question should be, are you a good actor/actress for the role?
The reason for the outrage is that it was important to the business of hollywood to have the known white actor on the playbill than to take the risk of using an asian actor, which is I think pretty clearly wrapped up in a long history of not including asian actors as candidates for roles.
It's problematic out of the gate that the asian actor has less of a chance in hollywood, but then doubly problematic that they can't even secure a role playing someone with their own actual heritage. It's a canary in the coal mine.
I think it's totally reasonable reward businesses for making choices about how they operate that align to our values. If you believe that Alison Brie - the multi-million dollar business - and the companies that cast and budget films - should break the patterns that exist then why not do so with your dollar and share your opinion with others?
Hollywood in general is used to treating everyone like crap and expecting actors and actresses to lose weight or gain muscle on demand, while working 16 hour days. A lot of the "behind the scenes" people are paid by contract "per job" not hourly, so they earn pennies on the dollar, but they have to accept it or someone else will take it.
I think there’s two cases
Live action: BFOQ, bona fide occupational qualification is a legal term, saying employers can discriminate if there is a required trait or skill, to give an example, only hiring Asian actors for Crazy Rich Asians.
I agree, I remember the guy who plays Cleveland on Family Guy had a similar situation. As long as one’s voice is not with an accent/dialect that makes it clear the race of the actor, there should not be any restrictions. If a southern farmer with a strong twang voice acted for an LA hispanic gang member, it might raise some suspicions, but otherwise I see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to. I imagine shows would want to prioritize voice actors who were similar to their character, but they can’t always realistically afford to find a different voice actor for every minor character
Well, look at it this way: why won't you hire or allow more diversity into the industry, instead of just making white (the majority/mainstream population) people play those diverse roles?
I'm from India and despite being a country of majorly brown skin, we have an alarming fairness fetish. Very frequently, actors who are rather plain looking or dark skinned will not be given entry into Bollywood because they don't look good enough, but then film makers will go and caste fair actors to play dark skinned roles. Even now, we have fair actors using make up to appear dark and "poor". Why not just let dark skinned people play those roles?
The problem is that we penalise someone for their non-mainstream natural traits, but then monetise on those same traits by using the mainstream population.
This is very well stated. Concise and accurate.
I can see your point, but no thank you.
I don’t need Jennifer Lawrence voiced as Harriet Tubman or the further whitewashing of history. The powers at be spent the better half of the 20th century doing that shit.
Ask Al Jolson and other black face minstrel and coon actors. Hiring a trained black actor just wasn’t it, so they’d voice and throw an under-qualified person, that looked like them, in paint and have him in blackface and have him “act and talk” black.
I’m sorry that this doesn’t bother you, but there is so much wrong with that viewpoint. I’d say changing your mind is pretty simple, given the history and context if you look around.
Same in other mediums like gaming as well.
Whether they are Indian, Chinese or any ethic minority, they have a right to be offended at being mocked.
I can only speak from the AA experience, but there are lots or black, and other PoC, actors and voice actors that are just as qualified, that are looking for work and are overlooked and unemployed. I personally know dozens from my college days.
PoC are traditionally severely underrepresented in these lanes. When people speak of privilege, this is what is meant. 9 times out of 10, it’s that mindset that will have an executive hire a guy from the suburbs, who can talk “black” based off a bs stereotype. Idc how “good” he is, it’s a mockery.
I mean, why does a director, writing room and actor get to tell and narrate a story and experience that they know next to nothing about?
There’s a reason it brilliantly worked when Kirk Lazarus did it in Tropic Thunder. It’s brilliant because it’s an actual reflection of Hollywood and what happens in real life. That’s why it worked so well.
Good luck to you, my man.
I totally agree to your point, with a small small correction. Actors should be able to play any role if the race of the character does not matter.
I feel like there are very little instances when race matters. Yasuke should never be played by anything other than a black male (he was the first and only black samurai). This is the only example that comes to mind.
even if there were no black people in medival Europe, black people should be able to play those role because their race is irrelevant to their role
I am only referring to the situations where the race of the character is really the main pivot of the story.
I think there is some cases where maybe the experience of the character is a uniquely African American one, then they hire a white guy to voice it. Like surely you could find a talented African American voice actor to voice the role and give it some depth because perhaps they have also dealt with the same experience. I get that for some roles, it's not the voice actor's fault - they got hired for a job.
Once there is parity across the board in terms of representation for actors, then yeah you can make the argument that an actor can play any role they want - but we don't really have that the now.
Casting ethnically correct voice actors is a safety net to avoid bad representation. If you have a character from a specific background but no one from that background in production, it’s easier to use stereotypes, cliches, and generally bad writing. There is a lot of nuisance that a culture outsider would miss. Having a voice actor makes sure someone is more likely to provide accurate cultural representation. Now ethnicity is not the same as culture. This isn’t a silver bullet but it sets up guidelines that help avoid shitty writing especially if that background is fundamental to the character
I agree. However I believe most of this stems from the history in acting and voice acting where almost all the roles were dominated by white actors. Any race or ethnicity would almost be played by a white actor/actress which leaves non whites with nothing much. Unless it was a character playing a racial stereotype and unless they had a white actor willing to do it they'd give it to the minority. We still see problems regarding this today like with the anime industry in the west. Notice how many Asian, Black, Brown VAs there are compared to White ones. Not many.
The problem from my (white male) perspective is the lack of minority representation in white/western/mainstream media. If you're going to have a minority character in your media I absolutely cannot understand how you can't find someone from that minority (I use this term VERY loosely). On the other side of that, last year they cast a black woman for the new live action Little Mermaid and there was an uproar.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2019/08/07/halle-bailey-opens-up-little-mermaid-casting-backlash/1941300001/
Race and ethnicity are as relevant as sex and age when it comes to acting, as actors do not really act so much as they portray various characters, real or fictional.
Your example is absurd of course, but there are valid examples too. Like how in the upcoming (Soon™) Halo TV series they are casting Danny Sapani as Captain Jacob Keys, a white dude who is completely dissimilar from him. Aside from casting a woman they could not have fucked up more and the series is going to suck more because of it.
Well, I mostly agree. Actors shouldn't fit the role to all the details, or else it makes art too restrictive and not art anymore.
Though I think, in movie adaptation of the books they shouldn't switch looks of the characters too randomly, unless there's some clear and interesting concept behind it. Movies should be interesting to the viewer, not just to the actor.
But in voice acting I couldn't care less, who the actor is, if I like the voice
I think the most important thing for an actor or actress is believability. I think in the case of Alison Brie, since she is out of camera view for voice acting, it's ok.
You wouldn't cast a white man in the role of Martin Luther King jr. for a civil rights movie right? That's because race, though a human construct, still has meaning in a lot of our history and today in our modern life.
It's simple and it's the same reason white people should not appropriate other cultures.
Being non-white is a liability when non-white people attempt to gain equity in any way-jobs, promotions, education, housing, food security, economic security, property ownership, healthcare, small business loans. It is still something that is disrespected and discriminated against. Black people lose their jobs because of their hair. Are less likely to get hired because of their names. Our music, art, language, style and cuisines are often disrespected and deemed uneducated or classless. Our dispositions deemed angry, insubordinate, trashy, etc. BUT when white people do what we do- rap, sing, get braids, tan, etc. it is considered cool, cute, acceptable, harmless. Our characters are underwritten or secondary in scripts. We are often cast as criminals, poor, and crass. White people used to wear Black face when committing crimes like robbery. Karens call us dangerous and violent unprovoked.
We have less visibility and opportunity for acting roles AND we are given less support to tell our stories with our lived real perspective existing under these conditions. As a result, bigoted writing is approved and creates false and sometimes deadly stereotypes that further influence our safety and equity. So when any role for a person comes up for a specific marginalized group, it should go to someone who fits that culture, race, gender identity, sexual orientation etc. because it's ours. Plain and simple. Our story we fight very hard to tell. Even if our character is written by someone white, we suffered the right to interpret it and honor it and no one else.
There should also be more and better BIPOC,LGBTQ+, and/or women identifying roles.
This does not work in the reverse because white people are not marginalized. They hold the social power, being white is a statistical advantage in life, and they perpetuated a society through torture, rape, war, and resource hoarding, that overwhelmingly benefits them. So, they can give up space for other people to work, be that doing the voice of a white person or helping transition a white specific role into one of color.
And any white actor or person who accepts one of these roles or specific jobs, is complicit in continued gaslighting and colonization of our identities. You don't get to patronize, mock, kill, undermine, incarcerate, and/or rape us to then get to be us, voice or whatever.
Just saying that BoJack is a very woke show where they constantly make fun and criticize the entertainment industry, so it's a little ironic that they'd hire a white actor to play a character that has an entire storyline and existential crisis about her family being vietnamese.
It's called acting for a reason.yes we should use actors of all colors but I think it's a directors choice and the script and I don't think quotas are good for anything. Talent is talent regardless of color. All this outrage is wasted energy.
Diane Nguyen was basically a white character in yellow face. They even lampshade it with the family full of Boston accents. Tbh I didn’t care until she went to Vietnam. On a writing level, it doesn’t make sense.
If it was inherently equal on all grounds, I would agree. However, you have characters of color who are frequently white-washed, on top of non racially specific characters which are overwhelmingly given to white actors. The cards are stacked against any actors who are not white.
They are allowed to play whatever role they want but the twitter outrage community is also allowed to bitch and moan to no end over movies they weren’t even interested in seeing in the first place.
Simply put, look up the history of blackface. White actors were hired to portray black people (often in grotesquely exaggerated stereotypes) because it was unthinkable to hire a black person.
There's a very dark history behind hiring white people to play minorities. Ask yourself this: is there a good reason to hire someone who isn't Vietnamese to portray a Vietnamese character? And then look again at the history of discrimination that minorities in the business have faced.
Here's some reading on blackface:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface
https://www.history.com/news/blackface-history-racism-origins
https://apnews.com/article/daaacc648c0e49b68fa42a15d6f26a05
How far does this go though? Can we hire a Kenyan to play someone from Angola? Or Vietnamese for Laos? Shouldn't the best ones for the job get it?
I've always wondered why the terms "equal opportunity" and "equal outcome" have gotten confused.
In my eyes, there is a push to hire poc voice actors/actresses because they are poc, not because they accurately fit the role.
Equal opportunity is allowing the production company to choose whichever candidate best fits the voice and style of a character regardless of any traits.
Equal outcome doesn't care about talent. It cares about your race and gender.
Not that I don't agree with your overall point that the usage of white actors to play non-white characters comes more from a racist reasoning than from a logic reasoning but that question (and the same with any combination of character ethnicity and actor ethnicity) could always be answered with "artistic decision" and there are scenarios where I could totally believe that.
As a practical example, HBO's Chernobyl almost exclusively features Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian characters but was played by English, Irish and (surprisingly two that I'm aware of) Swedish actors. I can see the artistic preference to have the characters speak English instead of Ukrainian/Russian and I can see the practical need of several skilled actors fluent in English (although I'm skeptical that HBO was unable to get a handful of Ukrainian actors fluent in English for at least minor roles of which I'm not aware were given the space in Chernobyl).
Honestly the choice of flying in actors was probably more of a desire to not involve Ukrainian labor laws and taxes as much as possible than anything else. Very few people in the intended audience would be able to tell a Russian from a Ukrainian accent in English, and finding Russian actors for this would be no problem.
Though, now that I think about it, using Russian actors to play Ukrainian roles would probably be pretty controversial. Hm.
The fact that a person's race should not be a determining factor for whether or not they are hired for a job? Isn't that sort of the whole thing these days?
You're conflating motivations of people in the past, and assuming people today doing tangentially similar things have the same motivations, which is pretty ignorant. By your logic, you could only hire Queen Elizabeth to portray Queen Elizabeth. As you're assuming anyone else playing queen Elizabeth would be doing so out of hatred. The logic is just nonsensical.
No Vietnamese people applied for the job.
Oh come on dude. Dark history ? Like Hank Azaria playing Apu ? This is just ridiculous and makes people laugh at SJWs. Most people are against stupid cancel culture shit like this.
Yes. The cartoon didn't have horse men to voice the main character. It's a fucking cartoon.
Voice actors yes. You aren't seeing them so they don't have to portray the character
Now live action. No, just hire the proper ethnicity for their character. No race bending needed.
Recast Mona with the Rock voicing her; and recast Maui with Auli'i Cravalho’s voice.
Nuff said.
Somewhat agree, like let’s take animations for example; say if the character they’re playing or voicing has a story/role that is centered around mostly their race. The original voice actor of Cleveland from family guy/cleveland show is white, and that character (black) has a majority of his dialogue to be about something racial/cultural. So it’s a little off imo.
Say that same guy/voice actor was playing a black character in another show but all that character was about was space travel and rockets, growing as a person, focusing on self, more on their own individualistic personality outside of cultural/racial themes then that seems fine to me.
It’s a big difference to be a white guy voicing a black character and your lines are usually like “Oh lawd, not the children! Mama! Why do they always treat our people this way?!” (family guy-esque), compared to “Quick get on the ship, everything’s going to blow!”
Edit: I wouldn’t cancel or attack the voice actor for agreeing to the job, I would go after who hired them. I wouldn’t attack them either though just explain how it can be off putting to some. It’s situational. This discussion can go all the way back to talking about the ethics of when blackface in media in the past.
Next thing you're gonna tell me is that Will Arnett isn't really part horse.
… Why are people getting angry about this in the first place?
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Disagree. You do not have to view everything historically.
What makes you think a white person isn't equally capable to voice a character simply due to the color of their skin? That's a pretty racist idea of you to perpetuate.