How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I just wanted to know how do you guys feel about them race swapping characters that are white by casting black actors or actresses I am not a racist but I do think that it's getting kind of getting ridiculous I understand with films like black panther wakanda forever but roles like commissioner Gordon and Ariel the little mermaid film and I know the guy from Westworld was good as commissioner Gordon but personally I think jk Simmons would probably have made a better commissioner Gordon no offense to the guy from westworld he was good but I liked pat hingle more than him again no offense Geoffrey Wright was good but he just didn't blow me away in the batman and Halle bailey I just don't know anything she has been in I mean did she start on the Disney channel or something because I don't know her and they actually spray painted her hair orange and it just looks terrible just terrible I'm sorry that's just the way I feel about it. I understand that being inclusive is an important thing in Hollywood today and that certain characters can be played by black actors and actresses who have the talent but sometimes I feel like movie studios are trying to force people into being inclusive and not casting actors who bust their asses trying to get a role. But what do guys think do you agree with my views or do you think I am not being fair let me know down below!

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on "white-washing" roles.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Please use punctuation next time.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I think it's ultimately a question of asking just how relevant a given character's whiteness is to who they are as a character and, in the case of long-established characters like Commissioner Gordon, whether or not a character being white in every single one of their older iterations means that they have to continue being white in newer ones. If it's just a matter of thinking Jeffrey Wright specifically is not a good actor to play Gordon, that's one thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean his casting is an instance of forced diversity (and it's also a bit condescending to assume that a veteran character actor like Wright didn't also bust his ass working his way up to such high-profile roles).

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

If its done well in this case i mean if theyve chosen the actor for his or her acting ability rather than just basing it on their skin colour etc then I have no real issue with it.

Look at the character of Nick Fury who was always portrayed as a Caucasian but then was changed as they brought in the acting chops of Samuel L Jackson and very few battered an eye as it was done well.

If changes are made purely to push diversity then theyre better off creating a brand new character then the race of that new character isnt an issue.

To me it leads to several problems

1. The characters that are changed they aren't race swapping the villain and making the villain worse they choose a specific type of character and make that person black. Bad guys have to look and act a certain way often time straight white and male.
2. The bar for the characters is a one way street, if it's a white actor in the role it's white washing and bad. "white washing" is something that happened decades ago yet anytime it's even marginally used the film/art is trashed.
3. The biggest problem with race swapping is that all the films look/feel the same. In the effort to look good in a press release or a photo you either get shallow meaningless characters or redundant figures. This is the irony of "diversity" these films don't give you a diversity of ideas just different pallet swaps of the same characters.
4. It pushes a political agenda..in art. While many people hate the idea of propaganda if you agree with the message it's sending then its okay. Awards and Lists now have to be rewritten to be more inclusive, standards are dropped and stories aren't being told because gatekeepers think that they are better than you.
5. It's a deliberately divisive issue that emboldens people to threaten and harass working actors by not catering to your audience you create the other. When someone has been othered they tend to react terribly. Studios don't care about this because they can virtue signal and act like they have nothing to do with this...they are the good guys but...
6. Those same studios will pander to bigoted and racist ideologies of other nations if they can profit from it. You have a tipping point where morals/values don't matter as long as you are making money. These companies are taking the worst parts of capitalism and communism and merging them into someone worse.

Nick Fury was race swapped in 2002 a decade before The Avengers by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch it was a meta joke

https://i.insider.com/553f04c6ecad04...jpeg&auto=webp

This is what the writer had to say....

Interesting. I didnt know that it was done in 2002. Before Jackson I only ever knew the character to be white from the older comics and his cameos in the 90s animated Spider-Man.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Errrr, zero problem with it at all. Why would there be?

Unless the character is well known for being white, historically like Bill Clinton or something.

And paragraphs! My eyes really can't handle reading posts written like this, I often give up after just a few seconds.

I would agree with this, it only matters when it's about a real person since you probably want them to look similar. Otherwise it shouldn't be in the thoughts of anyone. It seems the issue comes from filmmakers/studios intentionally doing it, which I don't like either but I understand why they do it. I just wish it was something that nobody had to even think about and it was all done and received in a more natural way.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

If it is a fictional character,then it doesn't bother me at all. I'm all for the best actor possible getting the role.

i dont understand whats your problem with posts written like this as for the threads title itd be fun to see white obama and black George w bush it would make me laugh but apart from laughing i would also be pissed off or maybe not i dont know im just trying to make this long and annoying to read so sorry for saying bs but its not like i never say bs outside of this thread as a matter of fact i always do so summing up i think that i feel very good and very bad at the same time when they race swap characters it just depends on how many white and black women were swapped for hot nude asian girls

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I feel like fighting, being angry n stuff. Am I right? Right?

I only care when it happens to comic book characters because they never ret con any of their characters. Purity is king at Marvel and DC.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Swapping race or gender to spread political agenda is bullshit. Having a black actress playing Anne Boleyn is no better than having black-faced white actors playing blacks in the old films (it's actually worse, as there's the added hypocrisy involved in modern times).

Not interested to write anything more elaborate as these threads are bound to get locked anyway.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

I think everyone's already said anything I could possibly want to about this: often it's fine, sometimes it messes too much with the core of a character, and it can be done deftly and well, or it can just be a cynical ploy to garner some press. It's pretty much all in the specifics. I don't think anyone could write one overarching rule that led to intuitively pleasing results in all scenarios without a lot of ad hoc exceptions.

In the case of Wright's Leiter, I think a big part of whether or not it's justifiable is whether or not it would be realistic at the time. In the modern day, there are no doubt quite a few black CIA agents, and Leiter's very essence never relied on his race, so I'm perfectly cool with Wright being Leiter as long as he's as good as the other Leiter actors. Sometimes they make it obvious that they're race-swapping for politics, but this is the kind of situation that makes sense for the context.

In Nick Fury's case, they introduced a black multiverse variant in the comics, so take it for what you will. Jackson makes a better Fury than Hasselhoff did.

Now switching everyone around in that live action Power Rangers movie... Power Rangers was ALWAYS about multinationality, so switching the races around was pointless. I mean, Zach was COOL because he was a great dancer, and that stemmed from pride of his heritage. And they took that away from him in the 2017 movie just because they didn't want teenagers getting offended by something that's actually a compliment. No one is saying all black people act one way just by making a black guy a good dancer.

Re: How do all of you feel when they race swap characters?
 

Everytime I start to type something I end up deleting it. So go ahead and finish my post for me:

The real problem here is....

I actually think the term "race-swap" itself is completely a couched and intentionally politically-charged term that says a lot about the person using it and immediately makes me back away from that person.