Actually this might seem strange, but I thought the best way is to stop arguing against these groups of people, people who are not discriminatory but sincerely just for some reasons, sick of PC. I find doing the right thing ourselves silently could actually bring these people to your side effectively. Nut of course I understand it can be difficult.
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Can’t agree with this, but let me rephrase because I can see where it might be misleading, what happened if she actually auditioned better than anyone else?..
Or probably more importantly, why don’t we just immediately give her the benefit of the doubt and suggest she got the role despite not being white, and nailing the audition, than just assuming it’s some statement…
My immediate thought was that they had chosen the wrong image to go with their article (I did not know who Jodie Turner-Smith was). When that was made clear I was dumbfounded - genuinely couldn’t process my thoughts, really had no idea what to make of it and I think that’s because I was having this internal battle with myself along the lines you have mentioned. The lack of physical resemblance I found jarring but then what if she was the best person for the role? That was effectively my inner turmoil.
That then led to me contemplating whether (for me) physical resemblance was really that fundamental? And my own views have been that it’s less important for the portrayal of characters that are fictional (particularly where their colour or race is incidental to the role). For example I would have no difficulty with a black actor playing James Bond. None whatsoever. I’d love to see Idris Elba, for example, playing him.
But I do think physical resemblance is more important when portraying real historical figures. More important than the actor’s talent? That entirely depends upon whether the actor has the talent to convince the audience. Like I say, I’ve struggled to take to Olivia Coleman’s portrayal of the Queen in contrast to Claire Foy’s and those are minor physical discrepancies. As you say though, that might entirely depend upon how familiar, how ingrained, someone’s physical appearance has become in my psyche.
Anne Boleyn I have a far less ingrained concept of her physical appearance so discrepancies may be much easier for me to dismiss. Perhaps I’m just a pedant for historical accuracy?!
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My answer is the post you responded to. In a historical piece you cannot be blind to visuals. If after careful consideration they decided this was the best route to take regardless of the issues it raises then fair enough. But that is a huge mountain to overcome in terms of the skepticism of the viewers.
But for the record that was not the only time you gave such an argument. You also said this…
put the shoe on the other foot, to award the role to an inferior but visually more inline actor would be politically correct bullshit, because, yknow, we cant have people stealing cultural heritage?
I understand where you are coming from, but think you are presenting false choices to justify the argument you are making (the idea you’d have to put a white actor in an ethic role because you only had bad options among the ethnically authentic actors…that’s the result of being a bad casting director). FWIW, I think it is cool to take the position of being completely open to seeing how this plays out. That does not mean that intense skepticism about the motives and success of this decisions are not justified.
Ok.
Fuck it though, I’m gonna give the lass the benefit of the doubt and just say she deserves the role on merit
Best of luck to her.
Just for accuracy I thought Mel Gibson was a shite choice for Braveheart.
Right colour wrong accent
But that’s just it, the programme is intended to be a statement.
Looking at the publicity, it is apparent that Channel 5 has deliberately set out to be controversial, to shock its intended audience.
For example, Channel 5 said the drama would focus on Boleyn’s attempts to “challenge the powerful patriarchy closing in around her”.
And the producers, Fable Pictures, said the drama would challenge “all the conventions of who we think Anne Boleyn was and shine a feminist light on her story.”
How better to challenge convention by choosing a black actress to portray a feminist Boleyn confronting the patriarchy.
Maybe Turner-Smith was chosen on merit; but in this era of woke, box ticking identity politics with its ever attendant racial/gender/sexual quotas in the media, it can be hard to avoid arriving at the conclusion, that her selection for the role was to conform to an agenda.
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My concern is that there is a massive drive by Holywood, BBC and others to drive this equality thing. That is all well and good but they take it so far it actually ruins the experience and devalues the message they are trying to push.
I’ll use Star Wars again as a prime example. The Force Awakens was A New Hope rehash with a female lead. Ok no problem there but they’ve gone and made the female lead all powerful, flawless and simply never loses. The result is just a poor series of films. The character has no curve, nothing to learn and nothing build, they’re perfect already. It just leads to poorly crafted stories and films as they put the importance of trying to raise the status of something above the actual story.
it may ultimately lead to actually damaging the very thing they are trying to push forward.
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I see your Star Wars and raise you Ghostbusters 2016.
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Yep. I haven’t seen it all but looked at a review or two and they weren’t kind, and rightly so from the clips I’ve seen.
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I don’t think that’s a problem of trying to have a female lead - or any issue about equality. That’s a problem of Kathleen Kennedy being a complete hack and a fraud who backstabbed and lucked her way into a role she should never have had then fired everyone around her who had an ounce of talent.
If those films had been well written then I doubt many people would have cared if the lead was a female. Having films about women or black people doesn’t mean you immediately have to make them unbeatable Mary Sue characters, it just happens that Star Wars did that because of the idiots in charge of the project.
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A female Mayor 
When did they start allowing that 
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I get some of the points that are being made, but could there be an element of snowflakeyness to the constant outrage over snowflakey PC culture gone mad? 
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You get out of here
I saw your comment about Tom Cruise over acting 
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No one minds if the lead is female, I certainly dont. I dont disagree that it was a clusterfuck of leadership with those films. The issue is that the writing of her character is so poor and flawed by some desire to make her “special”, just to address a poorly perceived ideal on equality. That ideal has overtaken the story and literally ruined it. Its the same with Finn, and leia to a certain degree. The result is the stories have no where to go and have to continually make up bullshit side stories and tenuous links to take them where they want to go. As you say it’s all at Kathleen Kennedy’s feet but it also seems to be something that’s being pushed at Disney in general.
Take the the two Mulan films side by side. The original has a character that grows. The second is perfect off the bat and that leaves them with no where to take the film. You may as well skip to the end where the hero beats up the baddie because everything beforehand is irrelevant.
They could do it with leading men but it seems far less prevalent ad far as I know.
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Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to offend. If you feel like he’s a brilliant actor then I had no right to impose my opinion on you.
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They do all the time.
Example please?
The question is whether it was done to fit an agenda or because the films were poorly written with no overall narrative goal for the trilogy and so naturally leaned heavily on lazy tropes. I think people assume the former because of Kennedy, but it’s pretty clear the issue with the films was her lack of creative oversight over the films rather than too much. Also, if you look at the work of Rhian Johnson, the writer of the second film where the flaws really started showing, there is no adherence to this “agenda” in any of his other work.
I think sometimes films are just bad and lazily put together.
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