joystickjunki3 said:
Before I get started, I'd like to issue a little disclaimer: I do not mean for this to sound like I disapprove of a black man playing a Norse god. That is not the point of this post.
OK, now that that is out of the way, let's begin. Please start by reading the following article from IGN.com.
http://movies.ign.com/articles/114/1140914p1.html?_cmpid=ign18
If you didn't read it, it's about a black man portraying one of the Norse gods (doesn't matter which one) in Marvel's Thor universe for the upcoming movie. Apparently, a white supremacist group is boycotting the film because of this.
I think their reasons are off-kilter, but their point may be minimally justified. I don't mind that a black man has been cast for the role, but here's my discussion topic for the situation: What would happen if a white man was cast as an African god?
Please voice your opinions on the matter.
JUST ONE MORE TIME: I personally do not give two shits if the man is black or white. I'm interested to hear about how everyone might feel if the situation was reversed.
I'll be blunt, I *DO* care about this. The entire situation is frankly ridiculous and the fact that people feel the need to dance around the issue due to fear of being considered racist is part of the problem. When dealing with an established character like this, they should find an actor that fits the part.
Arguements about this being a movie based on a comic book, as opposed to actual norse mythology are more or less irrelevent, given that Heimdall has appeared in the comics, we know what he's supposed to look like.
I have a strong opinion on the subject because frankly we've been down this path before. I was a bit more open minded when we had people trying to cast black actors as white characters in comic movies in the past. I look at what happened with Daredevil, and the casting of a black actor (and a pretty good one for that kind of role) as The Kingpin Of Crime, it just didn't work, and the movie flopped.
I also look at the allegations about the tensions that lead to the destruction of the "Buffy" franchise. Apparently it came down to the networks demanding that Joss Whedon write black characters into the show to be politically correct due to accusations that the show was basically "whitewashed" despite the occasional extras. Forcing him to insert specific characters and actors into his storylines and give them "X" amount of screen time, which he objected to, demanding creative control, causing the backlash that saw the end of that whole universe, and enough bad blood accross networks that "Firefly" was pretty much murdered in it's crib.
At any rate, a more fair question here isn't so much whether I'd have a problem with a white guy playing an African god, but whether I'd have a problem with a white guy playing a black super hero. Say for example if they wanted to cast a white guy as Blade in a reboot, or as Spawn (where most of the mortal cast are black along with the protaganist, at least for a long time). I would have objections to that on the same grounds, when you have a highly visual medium like comic books there are expectations for the characters, and the guys doing the casting should at least try and get actors who look a certain way and wear costumes akin to the ones from the comics when at all possible.
That said, I'd imagine in the final equasion my opinion is in a minority on these forums.
In the end it doesn't much matter because Hollywood is going to do what Hollywood is going to do. I may or may not see the movie, I don't know enough about it quite yet, however I will say the desician about Heimdall is a strike against it (not that I'm screaming "boycott") because it shows a massive disrespect of the source material.
A lot of people who look for racism everywhere, probably won't believe that I'd feel the same way if they changed the ethnicity of Blade or Spawn or another similar character, but I actually would. I have a very specific idea of what those characters are supposed to be like.
Samuel L. Jackson got away with Nick Fury due to the whole "Ultimate Universe" thing being around before the cast him (by a substantial amount of time). Truthfully it's not the version of Nick Fury I'm familiar with (in the regular Marvel Universe) but it's a passable interpetation. In comparison I don't believe we have had a black Heimdall in any of the various universes that I am familiar with.
