When is it okay to race/gender swap a movie role?

I dont think the line was used but the woman clothed in sun painting was used if memory serves me correctly.

If Bryan gets the rights to SotL and the show gets picked up he is considering a latina to Play Clarice to showcase the difficulties of a latin american growing up in the south. That has already caused controversy in the fandom. I dont see a problem with it.

Something I posted in another thread brought me back here. Memoirs of a Geisha used chinese actors and actresses. This caused an outcry. The reasoning was they were very popular actors in China so it was to chase the dollars, but it pissed off the japanese audience. I dont know where I sit on this issue.

Idris Elba as Heimdall was a strange one – I mean, take Vikings as an example. When Odin appears he looks like them, historically specific to that part of the world at that time. Obviously the Teutonic gods would have looked like the people who invented them. I've mentioned the ITV series Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands elsewhere and that presented a mix of races that was completely anachronistic — fact has to play a role sometimes.

Oh was he? I didn't know about that.

But it was historically based, wasn't it? It wasn't out of its original context, like the Ian McKellen 1930s-styled Richard III. My feeling is that a stage play, especially Shakespeare, is a more malleable environment, and can be more "of the people" because it's closer to them. But I see TV and film differently, essentially because they're permanent. The Hollow Crown, like Beowulf, was a compromise to avoid being labelled as discriminatory, and that's a shame when they'd clearly gone to such lengths to represent everything else about the periods accurately. Of course Shakespeare isn't always historically accurate, Macbeth being maybe the most famous example.

I didn't think it would be, but it might not even have been in the novel. It's good though isn't it? I thought it really allowed us into his head in a very dark and very sad way.

The tv show? Yeah I was obsessed. The author really liked Bryan's spin on the characters as well.

No, the Manhunter line.

Ha. My mistake. Yeah it's a great line.

Can't wait for a JFK movie in which JFK is played Samuel L Jackson or Denzel Washington.

Or Martin Luther King is played by Leonardo Dicaprio or The Rock.

That would be worthy of some giggles.

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I've only seen previews of Vikings, and I haven't seen anything of Beowulf:Return to the Shieldlands, but what I've seen/heard of Vikings it looks like they're trying to do the show as authentic as possible, so I agree you shouldn't be casting any other races as Norsemen. And I agree that history/fact matters. I strongly disagreed with the casting/portrayal of Hannibal in the History Channel's Barbarians Rising, which made him out to be some ancient civil rights leader with Jessie Jackson being one of the talking heads.

But as far as Thor goes, we're one or two movies away from a talking raccoon and Thor sharing the screen, so Idris Elba playing a Norse god isn't the most unbelievable thing to me; especially since it's such a minor role.

The Hollow Crown version of Henry V, I agree that it's historically based, since it's set in the 15th Century, but I wouldn't hold any Shakespearean adaptation to any kind of historical authenticity. I understand where you're coming from, but again, I feel Shakespeare is more about the talents of the actor than the setting, so the talent of the actor trumps race for me.

Yeah, and this is particularly true since they were written in a time where men played women on stage, which means they were written from the ground up to be about abstract connections, relationships, and themes, and weren't trying for (or reliant on) immersiveness.

Another example is Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves playing brothers in Branagh's 1993 adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (which I grew up with and really like), despite being different races.

Oh it's believable if you don't question it. It's a regular argument for fantasy that because it's fantasy anything goes. I think in making it you've got to respect the material and take it seriously, no matter how far fetched it may be.

Yeah, that's why I was talking about Shakespeare being "of the people" and adapting to reflect its audience – which also allows it a kind of immortality. Another relevant play is the recent Antigone with Juliette Binoche, which had a multi-racial cast despite being set in Ancient Greece – but, if they'd gone to town to present it as if the audience had gone back in time, on location and with all the trimmings, I'd have the same crisis over anachronistic players . As it was, it being a play allowed me into the material without that distraction.

Just as well really .

Carry On Up the Jungle was on today and I was smiling at Bernard Bresslaw, blacked up as the African guide Upsidasi. I remembered all the other instances where he, and other members of the Carry On cast, had taken on the guise of another ethnicity. Bresslaw's funniest is almost certainly the "beautiful warrior" Bungdit Din in Up the Khyber. Now, it's true you could find inherent racism in these characters but I think the effect is so ridiculously stupid that parody takes over. Also, because the Carry Ons used virtually the same cast time and again, you looked forward to seeing who each actor would end up being next, no matter how ludicrous (e.g. Charles Hawtrey as Chief Big Heap ). I suppose Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder is along similar lines, as well as Eddie Murphy's Jewish customer in Coming to America.

if the gender/race has no bearing on the character or story being told....

ie, an FBI agent could be any sex or race. JFK could not.

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Yeah, I'm not surprised that people missed that part of the OP and jumped straight to "you wouldn't have a black JFK!"