On the other hand regarding Apu specifically, Harry Shearer has said when this first became a thing that he would be happy to step down from voicing this one character (among multiple) in a long-running series to let a newer, less established Indian American actor take a shot at it. And I think that's really nice of him.
White Actors Giving up Long-Standing, Non-White Roles
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With voice acting I feel you can be far more flexible on whom you cast for what role unless you’re specifically doing something with real people. I’d no more expect an animated film about Nelson Mandela to have Mandela voiced by a white man any more than I’d expect one about Audie Murphy to have Murphy be voiced by a Hispanic man. Otherwise, well, Uncle Phil is still one of the best damn Shredder’s we ever got and I’ll not trade it for anyone.
This is the definitely a situation when the word 'pandering' actually means something.
I think it's silly. That said, I'm willing to entertain the following:
Right now, in the current day, there's an agreement that if one's playing a historical figure, you'd get the person of that ethnicity to play that figure. As in, you wouldn't have someone using blackface to play Malcolm X, or someone using whiteface to play George Washington. Or, alternatively, if the story has ethnicity play a role, then it would make sense. So, you'd usually have someone black play Othello. These are usually givens. So hypothetically, you could extend that argument to voice acting in animation, or any other non-live action medium. Hypothetically, decades from now, someone will look at the attitudes of 2020, and find parallels to attitudes in 1920. Similarly, you can extend this to gender.
That said, in terms of principle, I disagree. The ability to do voice acting isn't tied to ethnicity. And you could break this down ad infinitum. The voice actors are at least volunteering their absence, but if this is to become some kind of guideline that groups are obligated to follow, then we're in very iffy territory IMO. Maybe the line between live-action and animation is semantic, but maybe it's not.
Apu is easily a potential damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.
Apu's a stereotype. He's a stereotype in a show that's filled with stereotypes. He's certainly one of the better developed stereotypes, but still a stereotype. Replacing Apu with an Indian V.O. could be argued to be more offensive, provided that you're taking offence in the first place.
We could go further and either remove Apu from the show, or change him so that he isn't a stereotype. The latter though, well, is there a single character in the Simpsons that has actually changed as a character?
Reportedly, the publishers of the No. One Ladies Detective Agency have stated that if McCall Smith had pitched the books today, they'd refuse to publish them, as he's a white man writing about black female characters. Also, American Dirt comes to mind, along with arguably Blood Heir.
Neither of these works were outright cancelled or whatnot, but it does correspond to a puritan strain, the idea that you can't write outside your experience. If you want to criticize AD for misrepresenting Mexicans? That's fair game. Criticizing the author for not being Mexican/Latina herself? I'm afraid I disagree.
Black actor voicing a white guy.
It's come under criticism in recent years.
This is one of the more infuriating things that I see being done. It's one of the best justifications for just writing whatever you want to write because you'll get criticized regardless.
Which I find to be very bad criticism since if it was the reverse people would be even more critical of it.
I think there's some value in bringing actors that match the experiences of the character they're portraying. Actors bring a bit of themselves into the piece, and having someone who understands the role better than even the writer did can lead to some really good parts. That only applies to a narrow range of genres within voiceover work though. If we start worrying about race portrayal of space pirates or talking animals, we've gone overboard. And I highly doubt the positive addition of personal experiences is going to outweigh the experience of having already played the character.
I managed to find one of the articles from Tor. Here's the quote:
"Here are the facts as we find them: The first Star Wars film has no Black people in it, save the voice of James Earl Jones, who is voicing a white character. The second Star Wars film has one Black person in it, and he betrays his old friend to Darth Vader in service of peace for the city he manages."
And here's one from Polygon:
"Instead, the two most recognizable Black entities in the first Star Wars trilogy are James Earl Jones, voicing the authoritarian Darth Vader, and Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), who — though he eventually sides with the resistance — would rather not rock the boat because he’s a businessman, not a revolutionary."
Specifically with Vader, the sense I get is that Vader in the OT is argued to be a form of whitewashing because we have a black man voicing a white character. Both articles tie in to larger critiques of Star Wars, but on the subject of Vader specifically, those are the ones that come to mind.
TBH, in some ways, I find the criticism of Lando more iffy, but then, I've always found the criticism of Lando to be iffy, including in Empire itself. Lando's actions are understandable, but no-one acknowledges that, even after he frees Leia and Chewie. And I get the sense that the film intends for the audience to dislike Lando as well, at least in this film. But that's arguably off-topic.
This is exactly the kind of thing where blind recruitment would make a hell of a lot of sense. It's hard to be racist or sexist when you don't know the race or sex of the applicant, and what someone looks like is more or less wholly unrelated to the job of voice actor.
Strategies like this result in a less diverse group of employees, which is undesirable to the top brass, because then they can't tweet about how diverse they are.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just sayin'
This seems like a criticism about lack of diversity, and a lack of "good role models", as opposed to a criticism of "black actors voicing white roles"
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Okay so I wanna piggyback off this conversation to come to a logical next step. Should writers only write for the ethnicity/gender/sexuality they are?
Lets take Cleveland Brown - his white voice actor is stepping aside so a black man can take over. Sure fine, if thats what he and the family guy staff think is best moving forward, go for it.
But now should Cleveland's dialogue only be written by a black man? To give him an "authentic" voice as well as...voice. Could a black woman work too? Or would the next rung down by a white man?
Can a gay man write for a straight role? We know straight people tried with Will and Grace and that show aged about as well as Madonna covered in milk.
Lets take Cleveland Brown - his white voice actor is stepping aside so a black man can take over. Sure fine, if thats what he and the family guy staff think is best moving forward, go for it.
But now should Cleveland's dialogue only be written by a black man? To give him an "authentic" voice as well as...voice. Could a black woman work too? Or would the next rung down by a white man?
Can a gay man write for a straight role? We know straight people tried with Will and Grace and that show aged about as well as Madonna covered in milk.
Depends on who you ask and when you ask them. There's no consensus on this even with one person but good luck getting anyone to admit that. Because if they admit that different people have different ideas on this then they lose their ability to police what you can write about.
Yes. Writers have to be able to write about people. That said, if you're going to write a character from a group you aren't a part of, you should probably run your ideas and drafts past some people from said group(s), see what they think. Most of all, audiences want the work to have a note of authenticity to it. So a cis person who is writing a trans character should consider it due diligence as part of their research to ask some trans people if they'd be willing to look over and critique your work in progress.
But surely there's a...grace period worth of writing that you don't need to consult? I mean if you're writing a trans-character in a star wars game and they're dialogue is "The Empire is here, watch out!" you shouldn't need to consult with a trans person to see if that's believable.
I mean sure if you're doing a character study or character rich story and some aspect of their character is central to their character or story, consult all the way. That makes perfect sense.
What Im asking I guess is there dialogue/stories where the writer isn't writing the character as a trans person, but just as a person and we're doing people reactions, not necessarily a trans person's reaction? (Read trans as any type of person the writer is not for the sake of debate)
I'm looking forward to writing my first novel where literally every character in it has to be a white, middle class, British cis male. And then the inevitable torrent of abuse I'll get for prejudice because of under-representation of minorities.
Sure. It just makes a good general rule to make sure your test audience doesn't all look the same.
On the subject of writing outside your group, sensitivity readers are a thing, and have been for awhile. Of course, if you're writing, you'll need to pay them for it, so effectively, you're going to have an editor and sensitivity reader go over the same work, and pay the latter to do it, and sometimes hundreds of dollars. And to clarify, writing is rarely a lucerative career - only a handful of authors can make a living only by writing books.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with sensitivity readers. I mean, their services are (usually?) optional, and it's not as if authors won't already get their work checked. But if someone goes down the route of "you're X, so can't write Y," then we have a problem.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with sensitivity readers. I mean, their services are (usually?) optional, and it's not as if authors won't already get their work checked. But if someone goes down the route of "you're X, so can't write Y," then we have a problem.
Well I think reasonable opinions have been expressed and agreed upon. It never hurts to have a sensitivity reader go over your work, and for some work it should be mandatory, but other times when you're writing a person and a minority aspect to their character isn't part of the scene(ie my Star wars example earlier) then its a good option but not strictly needed.
Although its kinda funny thinking about 'sensitivity' readers. Isn't that the literature equivalent of "I have a black friend"? Like my book isn't racists, a black man read it and said so and we all know minorities are like the Borg hivemind, its one voice, one opinion.
I get the need for sensitivity readers, but is also sounds like something really easily gamed and used to derail criticism.
Or if you have friends who are part of different groups from you and would be happy to help you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I had the impression from my own social circles that it's the norm for creative people to get a lot of their feedback from friends long before it gets a professional evaluation of any kind.
Yeah, there's that.
Depends what kind of feedback you're talking about. If we're talking about stuff like spelling, grammar, story structure, etc., then yeah, when I was with a writing group, that stuff came up all the time. Representation though? No. It didn't. And this wasn't for the lack of BAME individuals, it simply never came up. In part because what we wrote was predominantly sci-fi and fantasy, which does give you some wriggle room in this area, but not all.
On the personal level, it's a moot point for me for a variety of reasons, but if one's worried about representation, then asking someone about it can come under the category of "emotional labour." I'm wary of the term (the term as it's used now doesn't reflect how it's used originally), but if I'm writing about Group X, and ask someone for help on Group X, then I'm assuming that Person X knows how to represent their group. And if Person X gives me the all-clear, but Group X are offended, then how is Person X going to be feel?
The reason I'm neutral on sensitivity readers, at least at this point in time, is that their services are, as far as I'm aware, optional. And this also extends to other areas. For instance, Rick Riordan has shown himself to be comfortable in writing works based on Greek, Roman, Norse, and Egyptian mythology, but has the "Rick Riordan Presents" sub-series, where he works with authors to write from other mythologies; Hindu, Mayan, Amerindian, Korean, etc. If someone declared that Riordan couldn't write those works, I'd be iffy. Him helping other authors get their works published? That's fair game. It's his own choice, and even if you put the representation question aside, that's helping authors get their foot in the door.