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Race and Gender swaps in movies, television, and comics: fresh, new twist to spice up a stale story, publicity stunt; or necessary to initiate change in underrepresented gender, races, and culture in entertainment media?
One of my favorite Stephen King books is being made into a movie. Doctor Sleep.
To give a very short summation, it is a sequel to the shining, and brings back an adult Daniel Torrence dealing with an ancient race of humanoids that feed on gifted people like Danny.
Speaking of race, in the book, Danny is white, as are most of the characters in the book. A little gifted girl named Abra Stone, is targeted by the bad guys, and Danny uses his gift to try and protect her.
She is described as a beautiful blonde girl with an Italian great grandmother, yet in the movie version, out of over 800 young actresses, they chose a young black female to play the role of the blonde Abra Stone. Why would they change the race of the lead female role?
People shat flaming kittens when they changed the race of “The Ancient one” by casting the great Tilda Swinton instead of an Asian male in that role. There were protests about that, Mordo who was played by Chiwetal Ejiofor(also great) instead of following the comics where he was a white male. Not knowing the comics, I didn’t know, nor did I care about this race switch. Hell, Even when the role calls for a white male, not changing that can generate anger. Netflix series “ironfist” has been blasted over the casting of a white male in the role instead of an Asian male-even though the comic book character is a white male. The criticism comes from “yet another white male adopting secrets of Asian culture.”
But why in the fuck would they cast a black female for the role of Abra Stone when she and her entire family are white in the source material? In The Passage, another one of my favorite books, they changed the role Amy Belafonte, aka “the girl from nowhere” to a black actress when the book describes her as a white blonde female.
They changed the race of Nick Fury from a white male to Samuel Jackson. Did this make much of a difference? Not really, I think Jackson does a good job as Fury, but my knowledge of the source material is limited. Johnny Storm cast as Michael b Jordan, which was a shitty movie regardless. In the new spider man movies, Mary Jane is played by a black female(Zendaya) instead of the red head we were used to.
They changed the race of Heimdall in Thor, who was played by Idris Elba, who is also rumored to be in the lead as the new James Bond. In the Thor universe, they also changed Valkyrie from a blonde to a black female. They changed little orphan Annie from a red head to a black actress, in a play in New York, Cinderella is now black with talks of making it into a movie. Hell, even Morgan Freeman’s character in Shawshank redemption is described as a white Irishman, but people who never read the book never knew about the race swap.
The super cute Zazie Beetz played domino in Deadpool 2, when the character was always portrayed as an emo-goth type in the comics. Halle Berry played catwoman, Jamie Fox as electro in Spider-Man, who is now a fat, most likely gay, Latino?
Captain Marvel was originally a man. Green lantern has been just about everything. In the hunger games, Cinna and Rue were both made black when they are not in the books, and there is controversy about Jennifer Lawrence being cast as Katniss because they believed that her description of a dark haired woman with olive skin indicates that she was supposed to be black. People on twitter accused the makers of the film of “White Washing” the movie. White washing is when you replace a minority character with a white character to make the movie “more palatable” to audiences. There was a time when movie roles for black characters were played by white men in black face-hell, going back to the Greek plays and those of Shakespeare, men played the roles of women by dressing up as female. Does anyone remember when bugs bunny did that? Pretty hot.
What men want, ghostbusters, overboard(the trailer was the 9th most unliked movie trailer in YouTube history and the movie lost $75mil), splash(not yet released), battle star galactica switch Starbuck to female as well as one other role, elementary changed Sherlock Holmes’s Watson to Asian female, oceans 8 remake of oceans 11(sucked bad), Thor now a woman; captain America is now black.
This list goes on and on, but there is too much fear of backlash to have a traditionally black character be portrayed as white. You will simply rarely ever see it. But race swapping seems like an attention getting grab when casting a traditionally white male role as an ethnic or female character.
When the race has no bearing on the role, or it has not been long established, it really does not matter too much. But when you have family connections and genetics to consider, such as Abra Stone being cast as black when the rest of her family is white, why do that?
One of my favorite Stephen King books is being made into a movie. Doctor Sleep.
To give a very short summation, it is a sequel to the shining, and brings back an adult Daniel Torrence dealing with an ancient race of humanoids that feed on gifted people like Danny.
Speaking of race, in the book, Danny is white, as are most of the characters in the book. A little gifted girl named Abra Stone, is targeted by the bad guys, and Danny uses his gift to try and protect her.
She is described as a beautiful blonde girl with an Italian great grandmother, yet in the movie version, out of over 800 young actresses, they chose a young black female to play the role of the blonde Abra Stone. Why would they change the race of the lead female role?
People shat flaming kittens when they changed the race of “The Ancient one” by casting the great Tilda Swinton instead of an Asian male in that role. There were protests about that, Mordo who was played by Chiwetal Ejiofor(also great) instead of following the comics where he was a white male. Not knowing the comics, I didn’t know, nor did I care about this race switch. Hell, Even when the role calls for a white male, not changing that can generate anger. Netflix series “ironfist” has been blasted over the casting of a white male in the role instead of an Asian male-even though the comic book character is a white male. The criticism comes from “yet another white male adopting secrets of Asian culture.”
But why in the fuck would they cast a black female for the role of Abra Stone when she and her entire family are white in the source material? In The Passage, another one of my favorite books, they changed the role Amy Belafonte, aka “the girl from nowhere” to a black actress when the book describes her as a white blonde female.
They changed the race of Nick Fury from a white male to Samuel Jackson. Did this make much of a difference? Not really, I think Jackson does a good job as Fury, but my knowledge of the source material is limited. Johnny Storm cast as Michael b Jordan, which was a shitty movie regardless. In the new spider man movies, Mary Jane is played by a black female(Zendaya) instead of the red head we were used to.
They changed the race of Heimdall in Thor, who was played by Idris Elba, who is also rumored to be in the lead as the new James Bond. In the Thor universe, they also changed Valkyrie from a blonde to a black female. They changed little orphan Annie from a red head to a black actress, in a play in New York, Cinderella is now black with talks of making it into a movie. Hell, even Morgan Freeman’s character in Shawshank redemption is described as a white Irishman, but people who never read the book never knew about the race swap.
The super cute Zazie Beetz played domino in Deadpool 2, when the character was always portrayed as an emo-goth type in the comics. Halle Berry played catwoman, Jamie Fox as electro in Spider-Man, who is now a fat, most likely gay, Latino?
Captain Marvel was originally a man. Green lantern has been just about everything. In the hunger games, Cinna and Rue were both made black when they are not in the books, and there is controversy about Jennifer Lawrence being cast as Katniss because they believed that her description of a dark haired woman with olive skin indicates that she was supposed to be black. People on twitter accused the makers of the film of “White Washing” the movie. White washing is when you replace a minority character with a white character to make the movie “more palatable” to audiences. There was a time when movie roles for black characters were played by white men in black face-hell, going back to the Greek plays and those of Shakespeare, men played the roles of women by dressing up as female. Does anyone remember when bugs bunny did that? Pretty hot.
What men want, ghostbusters, overboard(the trailer was the 9th most unliked movie trailer in YouTube history and the movie lost $75mil), splash(not yet released), battle star galactica switch Starbuck to female as well as one other role, elementary changed Sherlock Holmes’s Watson to Asian female, oceans 8 remake of oceans 11(sucked bad), Thor now a woman; captain America is now black.
This list goes on and on, but there is too much fear of backlash to have a traditionally black character be portrayed as white. You will simply rarely ever see it. But race swapping seems like an attention getting grab when casting a traditionally white male role as an ethnic or female character.
When the race has no bearing on the role, or it has not been long established, it really does not matter too much. But when you have family connections and genetics to consider, such as Abra Stone being cast as black when the rest of her family is white, why do that?
