What happens when they cast a black actor to replace another ethnic group?
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
660 points (94.8% liked)
memes
21287 readers
1994 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
If there's ever a Hollywood Adaptation of Hamilton, I hope that Lin keeps to his casting choices as reflecting modern America, not 1776 America.
The Conservatives would lose their mind. But I also couldn't imagine a white guy playing Hercules Mulligan. Certainly not singing Yorktown.
Actually probably most of the original cast would be in it, anyway. Sort of like In The Heights, except hopefully reprising their own original roles.
Certainly wouldn't be a sung-through musical though. Hollywood would need to split it into two, with extra "world-building" and dialogue, like they did with Wicked.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This is the worst when the film is legitimately bad, too.
Like, we all pretty much agree Gods of Egypt was a bad movie, but it's still got defenders because they think we're mad about the Black God and not the whole entire cast of White Guys.
Even worse is Captain Marvel. It's just a terrible non-plot without any character growth and intrigue, it's the female version of Green Lantern 2011, but unlike Green Lantern we can't all agree it's a bad movie for all the same reasons.
Movie studios go out of their way to amplify a few outspoken racists when people start trying to criticize movies on reasonable grounds. That's why when all you can hear about a movie is that it's "woke shit", it's because there's nothing good about it.
I honestly think this was the strategy for The Little Mermaid. Casting Halle Bailey took all the attention off the fact that it was another soulless live-action remake of a Disney classic, and nobody wanted to criticize it because they were afraid of being lumped in with all the racist dipshits (not to mention all the free advertising they got from said racist dipshits' angry xitter posts).
load more comments
(2 replies)
Captain Marvel was genuinely just a bland and uninteresting character. Similar story with Rey.
Admittedly a lot of comic book characters are drawn as stoics which is hard to adapt to movie and TV without making them seem unemotional, like with Spawn, except in the Spawn movie we had Klown which more than made up for the lack of facial expression from Spawn.
A similar issue with Hellboy, except we had really good effects and the glorious voice of Ron Perlman to make it work.
I loved Captain Marvel! Maybe you need to stop expecting Shakespeare from capeshit?
It's cool that you enjoyed it! But there's no need to pretend that this is a binary choice. Guardians of the Galaxy is also capeshit with a stoic woman, yet IMO Gamorra is a much more interesting character than Captain Marvel.
I also liked many parts of the movie, but some other parts were big enough misses that I'm not really interested in rewatching.
IMO Gamorra is a much more interesting character than Captain Marvel.
Eh. Gamora is the love interest of a protagonist of the movie. (Arguably the main one in GoG, obviously but still.)
Captain Marvel is the protagonist of her movie.
Idk, I've seen GoG movies twice at least but I haven't rewatched Captain Marvel... maybe it's a good time. Thanks.
But yeah for the female characters from GoG i just find Nebula a far more interesting character. We actually see her develop and see her past and she's not just a romantic interest (even when there's hint of a bit of that perhaps), unlike Gamora. Gamora didn't really have an arc imo, just disliking his "daddy" and then dying. And then coming back and being a bitch more or less. Dk, seems uninteresting to me.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(13 replies)
You know what we call people whose job is to pretend to be other people they are not? Actors.
There's always been race swapping in films. Just look at John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan.
It's totally fine when white people do it. /s
I believe there was also a shitstorm when the chick in Ghost in the shell was chosen to be white (instead of Asian), and similar with Avatar the Last Airbender?
Am I allowed to be annoyed at race swapping if I'm consistent? If you're going to make a movie about characters with a canon appearance, the actor should conform to that appearance.
If you're making Romeo and Juliet, the actors should at least look Italian. Now, if you're doing a full reimagining, that's a different thing. If you're making West Side Story, half your cast should look Puerto Rican. But if you're just doing a straight telling of a story, especially a historical one, casting choices shouldn't distract from the story.
Romeo and Juliet is a great example of why I think it's fucking asinine to even care.
Specifically, if the actors need to look Italian, you will need to argue that an accurate telling of that story has never been accomplished.
Was it an accurate telling when Shakespeare himself was involved in the production? When the actors were exclusively pasty English men? Or was it only accurate after Shakespeare himself was dead and a translated production was performed in Italy by Italian men and women? Do the actors need to actually be 16 and 13? Or can maybe young looking adults be used? Should we go back to the original Italian spelling of their names or is anglicisation in this case ok?
Why does your suspension of disbelief only stop when the skin color changes? What even does an Italian look like? Rome was a commercial hub for centuries that saw settlers from all over the known world. Are they not Italian?
What's even better is there's a great opportunity to use subtext to tell a much deeper story with Romeo and Juliet specifically by making one of the families black, because the specific beef between the Montague's and Capulet's isn't really discussed.
Sure, there are times when it's important to get those details right. Specifically, when ethnicity is a central component to the story being told. Those stories aren't very common, and almost certainly will be the ones you think of as exceptions to everything else I just said. Otherwise, bro, it's a movie, everything about it is a lie.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Maybe we should ask Mongolians how they felt about John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan.
hey now! John Wayne always gave the colored folks roles they deserved! /s
load more comments
(1 replies)
I always tell people like this that jesus was a short brown skinned jewish man and I take offense to white people portraying him in video and people portraying him as white in paintings too and I swear they would shoot me on the spot if we u.s. losers but we are canadian losers.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Poor Elon Musk. The casting choices on The Odyssey have deeply affected his big, sensitive heart. But you wouldn't know it, due to his mature stoicism.
I mean, you expect he'd tweet up a storm, post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post over several days, making him look like some sort of whiny, tantrum-throwing white supremacist.
But, no. The control that selfless Titan of Industry has over his emotions is inspiring!
this like every conservative, they call these things woke, they dont really care about the historical accuracy of it.
load more comments
(7 replies)
Some people don't want to let anyone else tell a story.
And sometimes its just racism.
Its even worse than that. They had a white voice actor when the cartoon character is black!
In Germany, Turk from Scrubs has the same voice actor as Howard from The Big Bang Theory.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)