Racism and casting

[kate_nepveu]

This makes me want to merge my anti-racism icon with my headdesk icon:

As for Dave Karnes, his role as one of two Marines to locate McLaughlin and Jimeno by searching the pile when the professional rescuers had backed off is based on reported accounts and fictionalization, since he didn't cooperate with the film's producers. . . .

Had the

Comments

[scifantasy]

OK, that's pretty dumb. But I can see how it would happen, and besides, the World Trade Center attacks have always been a source of weird racial/cultural effects. At the same time, it brought all New Yorkers, of all races, closer together; but it introduced tension about Arabic and Islamic groups; and on the gripping hand New York, that bastion of liberal thinking, tends to be opposed to the war on terror and racial profiling...it's complicated

[kate_nepveu]

Maybe you read my post backward? In real life, which this movie purports to be portraying, this guy is BLACK. The movie changed it to white. This made it *less* multicultural not more.

Unless you read it backward, I don't see how the statue example is relevant.

[scifantasy]

No, I read you right, and I don't deny that it's really a stupid case. What I was saying was, the World Trade Center has a lot of weird racial repercussions.

[kate_nepveu]

Let's try this. You can "see how it would happen". How would that be?

[veejane]

I have never seen any pictures of any of the people involved. When the Times profiled first the trapped officers (handcuffs) and then Chuck Sereika (sweatshirt) as part of the Found Objects series, they never showed any photographs of any of the participants, and did not specify race at all, even in minor details. (Texture of concrete being more salient than texture of hair, at that particular moment!)

Since the story was done without several witness/participants' input, and probably the Times essays are what the script is based on, it does not surprise me at all that the casting got whitewashed.

Because being not-white is the exception, not the rule! Even in a major metropolitan city! Don't you know anything??

[kate_nepveu]

And yet the author of the _Slate_ article interviewed a number of players and offered to share that information with the filmmakers, who said no.

And no, apparently I don't know anything!

[veejane]

...except about copyright law!

[kate_nepveu]

. . . though even less than I thought I did! Ack, this is going to be work!

[cheshyre]

Dunno if you're reading riba_rambles, but yesterday I pointed out that Kenneth Branagh's forthcoming film version of As You Like It is going to be set in Meiji Japan with almost no Asian actors.
He's crosscasting blacks as the male romantic leads, but the only Asian actors are in extremely minor roles.

[kate_nepveu]

Uh, yeah, that would be just a bit odd, wouldn't it?

I don't know _As You Like It_, but isn't the interesting thing about Meiji Japan how *Japanese* society was changing? I mean, why bother?

[adrian_turtle]

Why bother? For the pretty costumes, obviously. *rolls eyes* This is multiculturalism at the imperial level of Elizabeth I.

[rilina]

Oh, dear. I had heard about the casting of blacks as the brothers (both actors I really like, especially David Oyelowo), but I hadn't heard about the setting. It seems likely to be problematic, though I can't find enough information on the film to say.

Bleah

[netdef]

I call it deliberate ignorance of the truth, an attempt to lay themselves blameless by claiming that the facts were not available (i.e. the original person would not cooperate, wishing himself to remain private as all the best good samaritans do) even though outside witnesses knew the truth and tried to inform the producers.

Re: Bleah

[kate_nepveu]

On what do you base the allegation that outside people tried to inform the producers?

[oyceter]

Drive by comment because I really have to run, but *headdesk.*

Just... ARGH. I anticipate this being touted as an example of being "colorblind" when in fact it is merely whitewashing minorities out of the picture again.

[kate_nepveu]

And your prediction would be correct, in these comments, even (which, since you have to run, you probably haven't seen).

[oyceter]

Urgh, I just saw!

I have no real comments except... *headdesk*