The Big Picture: Skin Deeper

[Callate]

I really don't have a problem with any of the casting in Cloud Atlas, but then, I'm white. It does seem like the cross-racial, ensemble nature of the casting ought to have perked some ears that there was something unusual going on, though. Would it have been a better movie if the tyrannical future took place in some place more generic than Neo Seoul, rendering the cross-racial casting unnecessary? I really don't think so.

Argo brings up other questions in my mind, namely- is it better to have a movie not get made at all than to have non-white roles played by white actors? It feels like a movie whose action centers on 1970s Iran is a fairly hard sell, one made easier by Afleck's relatively positive reputation as an actor and director. I'm genuinely ambivalent on the question, in part because I'm not sure if "fighting the good fight" to change minds about the bankability of non-white actors in lead roles at every opportunity is likely to pay off or just result in a lot of promising movies never making it past the pitch.

 

[Kamikan Hyakushou]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Did you say its ok for a black person to play a white character, but not the other way round? Look Bob, no one gave a crap that the guy in Thor was played by a black actor, what annoyed them was that the character in the comic was white. These same fans would also complain if you made a Blade movie with a white guy playing Blade.

To be honest, if its original content then who cares what colour the actor is and whom they are playing. Have a black guy made up to look Chinese or a white guy made up to look black. A man in female make up. No one cares. Its just the PC crowd that jump on this stuff and paint it as a racial thing when its not and as usual its aimed more at the white people than other races.

Also as Bob seems to really love the Cloud Atlus movie im guessing the next few Big Pictures will be all about how amazing it is.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I'm not going to watch this one, now. I'm actually going to try to see the movie (supposing it ever comes to any of the theaters here, which it might not because it looks and sounds Indi-ish and nothing that sounds Indi-ish ever comes to theaters where I live (GODSDAMMIT!)) and I'd rather go into it with something of an ability to draw my own conclusions.

Sorry, Bob.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

I'm getting what you're trying to say, but one has to ask the question: why was the context ignored in the first place?

It was ignored by stupid people. There's your reason.

What they said. Some people just completely miss the point...

So Bob since the past is unchangeable and that historical stigma and blackface will always be around, isn't those double standard justifications going to be eternal?

Seriously how would we know when we can drop the double standard altogether. I really want to know.

The answer's probably going to be more non-white roles but roughly how many do we need?

Also, this.

I don't think it'll ever happen.. or maybe I'm just cynical...

 

[esperandote]

This movie looks great yet too deep for me to understand and enjoy that kind of puts me off of watching it.

I didn't know about the Washowski... siblings part.

 

[brazuca]

So to americans latinos are not white? French, italians, polish, spanish and portuguese are all not white. Kind remembers me an episode of Family guy.

 

[punipunipyo]

Educated, nice one Bob....

 

[sonofliber]

So to americans latinos are not white? French, italians, polish, spanish and portuguese are all not white. Kind remembers me an episode of Family guy.

[ youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paQnokH3Px4]

this so much, everytime they say latinos like its some sort of skin coloration, cause HOW YOU DARE TO SAY THAT WHITES ARENT ONLY AMERICANS AND EUROPEANS?

 

[daxterx2005]

cloud atlas looks awesome, I still can't wait to see it.

 

[ZephrC]

So Bob since the past is unchangeable and that historical stigma and blackface will always be around in the past, isn't those double standard justifications going to be eternal?

Seriously how would we know when we can drop the double standard altogether? I really want to know.

The answer's probably going to be more non-white roles but roughly how many do we need?

That's easy. You'll know that time has come when people stop making a big deal about this kind of thing.

It's pretty sad how quickly and easily history forgets things, really.

 

[PunkRex]

I know this is a little off topic but concidering just how badass Idris Elba was in Thor and Rock'n'Rolla im surprised he's not bigger state side... or here in the UK actually. Seriously, I thought he was gonna be the next BIG black actor.

 

[Akio91]

So.....this is the first I've heard of this. Bob, are you making up issues for views? Or is this some Hollywood insider mad that the rest of us have missed out on?

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

I'm surprised you didn't bring up the Mandarin [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/10006-Lets-Watch-The-Iron-Man-3-Trailer.2] when you were talking about "yellowface" racial acting. Hell, just us responding to that article had an interesting conversation on how to adapt the character to the modern hair-trigger racial response...

Ben kingsly is asian BTW, just a bit further west than china is all (india)

While I was referring to the Mandarin character in general, this actually pisses me off a lot more than it should. "Asian" is a really troubling concept for me, mainly because it merges several distinct cultures that each maintain a single identity but historically exchanged key cultural elements (such a Buddhism) while maintaining their separate identities. Hell, what is commonly referred to as "the Chinese" is actually an amalgamation of several ethnic groups that were unified every few centuries under an emperor. Hell, ever noticed that the northern half of the continent is Russia?

But the thing that really infuriates me is the idea that Indian is close enough to Chinese that they can be effectively swapped. It's not. Minus a small handful of similarities (hey, there's Buddhism again), they are very, very different cultures and people. Even their traditional ideas of time itself are starkly different from each other. The traditional Chinese take was that was more objective and could be cataloged, which was the reason behind a surprisingly accurate and complex bureaucracy and historical record system, where as the traditional Hindu concept of time was more fluid and that humans had been living the same cycles of life and death meant specific moments in time were less important than the people travelling through it (truthfully, it's been a while, so some of the specifics may be inaccurate, but the macro points are there). And this is one of the elements that distinguishes the two cultures. Nor does this get into the modern history of the last 200 years and how the west had drastically different approaches to the two cultures.

Wow... that was probably more of a rage post than I anticipated. My point is not to say that Ben Kingsly is a bad actor or pick because he's of Indian heritage, as he's probably one of the best actors in the modern era, but rather the idea that "hey they're both Asian; who's going to notice?" is okay...

 

[aba1]

I don't really see how this is a issue if anything this movie proves that ethnicity really is not a thing as much anymore. Now directors can hire the best actor for the part and if need be use some makeup to change there race if it is even relevant. Now we can have actors who are just best for the part.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

So to americans latinos are not white?

It depends. For census/demographic purposes, there are actually two separate categories for white and non-white (and sometimes you see things like "non-hispanic black" too, depending on what you're looking at). A lot of Puerto Ricans have mostly Spanish ancestry which makes them largely white/European, for example, while there are other groups in Central/South America that mixed much more extensively with the existing cultures and have much less European ancestry proportionally, in some cases relatively little. And then you have other people, like many Dominicans or some groups in Brazil, who have substantial African ancestry. Basically it varies a lot and it's too complicated to say that they, as a group, are or are not any one thing, but yes, many of them are not considered to be (and don't consider themselves to be) white.

French, italians, polish, spanish and portuguese are all not white.

My initial response to this was, "wat." I'm not even sure what it has to do with previous sentence unless wherever you're from considers "latino" to mean what we (rarely) use something like "Latin peoples" to describe, which is something very different (and also has nothing at all to do with Poland). In the western hemisphere, latino/hispanic tends to pretty much exclusively refer to people from the Spanish-/Portuguese-speaking countries of the western hemisphere. Europeans are not included in that. And Europeans are white. My parents are from two of those countries (my mom was born and grew up in one of them before coming here), and it would be hard to find someone considered whiter than I am. Heh.

 

[Hitchmeister]

I'm getting what you're trying to say, but one has to ask the question: why was the context ignored in the first place?

Mainly because the issue was primarily raised by people who had no context. They saw Jim Sturgess in Korean make-up in the trailer and reacted without knowing anything about the story. "Never let facts interfere with a good righteous indignation."