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

This brings up the issue with the Human Torch in Fantastic Four movies - the character was always white, and was cast twice with white actors, then, inexplicably he was cast with a black actor. apparently for pure pandering to woke demographics.

And it wasn't a case of a black actor playing a white character (such as in Hamilton), but the character was now supposed to be black as his father in the movie was, but his white sister (always his biological sibling) was now adopted!

(Whew! The hoops they have to jump thru for the sake of tokenism)!

But now, rumor has it that the next recasting of the Human Torch in the next FF movie will be with a white actor? Wha-wha-wha?

But I thought he was now black? (And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the explanation is these are all different yet concurrent, alternate continuities - the entire concept of which itself has irrevocably hurt both comics and movies... There's hardly any such thing anymore as a unique, one-and-only, iconic, definitive character when they can all be replaced by counter-continuity doppelgangers!)

P.S. I apologize in advance for posting this here as I know there is an entire alternate, concurrent thread devoted just to this subject.

Re: the post script. Yep, I've moved the post to the more appropriate thread you were referencing.

I don't really understand the rest. Sometimes you change biographical details of characters. If you can make a white character black, you can make them white again when you reboot or reconceive or whatever. There's nothing confusing about it. The confusion seems feigned in order to simply complain about the phenomenon again, which I say even as someone who thinks it's usually condescending pandering, for the record.

Re: "apparently...something something woke." I'm not sure what this is based in. I assume the "apparently" is substituting for "by my own personal speculation." I'd incline against it in this case, because they cast Michael B. Jordan, who's awesome, which is reason enough to make the change if he agrees to do it.

It's not really confusion over the character (except maybe for little kids who are really into a particular franchise), but confusion over the way our society thinks.

As I stated in a former post... if you were anti-tokenism that meant you were anti-racist (you adhered to the philosophy of MLK's statements about color-blindness and judging others on their content), but today the pendulum seems to be swinging in a different direction - if you oppose tokenism, then you are racist because a good portion of today's society consider the unchosen & inherent race of a person their most important aspect on which every other part of their life must be judged, forgiven or weighed against.

If you refuse to consider race as a part of one's content or merit you are now considered a racist (whereas it was always the opposite in the past).

It's beyond me why any actor would agree to play a race-replaced role since the greatest majority of people who find tokenism offensive and insulting on a personal level are minorities.

As always, my bottom line is defending established characters. There are lots of racial minority characters that already exist and there is an infinite number yet to create for actors to play. Characters can evolve, characters with anachronistic qualities can be updated, but race is something a person is born with and, like it or not, helps shape the rest of one's life.

And for those who might jump to conclusions and say, "Oh Capt. YOU seem the one obsessed with race... (thus, you're a racist)." I would respond that I'm concerned only with race-replacing established characters.

I would be equally dismayed if Luke Cage, the Falcon, Misty Knight, Robbie Robertson, the Black Panther, Moses Magnum, Shang-Chi, Sunfire, Red Wolf, or any other minority character were replaced with a white actor.

Many actors take any work they can get. I assume what you really mean is: why would any already-successful, safely established actor take such a role, yes? In which case, the answer comes from rejecting your premise, which seems to be that these recastings are always tokenism. That's a pretty extreme position. Every bit as extreme as thinking it's never tokenism. Successful actors don't take roles based on tokenism, they take roles you think are tokenism. The question is kind of like asking "why do actors take bad roles?" Duh, they don't think they're bad.

It's easy to make someone's actions look odd if you just assume they think exactly like you.

A person yes, but not a character. Many of them--superheroes in particular--are emblems for certain issues or ideas at their best, and mere power fantasies at their worst. For those kinds of characters, their race may very well be immaterial.

Also, if you understand and agree with the above, it would seem to answer some of your complaints earlier in the post about whether race should be ignored/considered immaterial.

I don't think caring about race swapped characters makes someone obsessed with race, by itself. But needing to talk about it all the time, trying to start or rekindle discussions about it repeatedly unprompted, or mentioning race in contexts where it has no relevance at all...those things suggest obsession.

Some of those characters are inextricable from their race. Not all characters are, however. I don't think this is a complicated distinction. In fact, I think you'd have to understand this distinction to create this list, since far from being a random sampling, it seems to be mostly populated with characters whose race is a fundamental part of their biographies or famous storylines.

Here's Anne Boleyn


Here is Alexander Hamilton.





Not just characters, but historical persons. If race was ever "inextricably" linked it would be in these cases.

Nothing is inextricable. Everything can be reimagined. You can have a lily white Jesus. You can have a black Santa. Sarah Bernhardt played men on stage, even after she lost a leg! The only limitation is what the social climate (i.e., politics) will allow. With regard to that, it's like shoplifting. If no one stops you from leaving the store with it, it's yours. Are there demos that currently get away with shoplifting more than others? If so, that's politics. If you don't like it, make noise for your demo. Move the needle.

Thus, these arguments will never end. The boundaries are drawn not conceptually (anything is possible), but in terms of propriety. And this is a matter of people yelling at other people.

Godron's appearance has hardly changed between the various iterations, making Gary Oldman the perfect person to play him as the two look very alike. To me, Gordon's face is extremely recognizable, so to mess with it, even to cast a white actor who doesn't look like him, is a problem. Even if you got a black man who had a similar face, Jeffrey Wright doesn't look like him at all.


Remember when it was a problem for Daniel Craig to play Bond because he wasn't black-haired? On top of that, I thought it was ridiculous to race swap most of the people in the 2017 Power Rangers movie because multi-nationality was a fixation of Power Rangers since the first season. Basically, this is something I'm fully with Iroquois on. You don't tug on Superman's skin and you don't mess around with Jim Bond. At the same time, Can we really say we like Parker from Alien just because he's black, or because he's strong and tough?

Can I make noise for my demo BY yelling at other people?

Personally, I'd like to race swap most of the people who've posted in this thread.

Doesn't sound like it. Bond is a bad example since, despite these complaints, Craig and his run have proved popular enough to make it clear that such a minor difference doesn't matter (though who knows how an actual race swap would go down - I think it's only a problem insofar that it draws attention to the idea that he's effectively an avatar of white British imperialism and the franchise has gone to the trouble of acknowledging that repeatedly).

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Bond was written during and imagined into a time after the empire, or at the very least, well into its sunset. He's more of a postwar symbol than a symbol of "empire." Bond doesn't go around pacifying Zulus or keeping sultans in line.

England was not "the empire" during World War 2. Bond was "born" in that era--in the books he is a former special forces guy (like Christopher Lee in real life) who found a postwar job as a spy. During the war, England was an island nation hanging on by the skin of her teeth. Bond is not some dusty image of a racist empire. He is grounded in the immediate history of a comparative mouse of a nation which held back a would-be racist empire.

The British were justifiably proud of their role in defeating the Nazis. Bond is part of that agency and that pride. The Brits were kind of like the Q-branch for the United States during the war. They developed radar, cracked enigma, made funky silenced Welrod pistols for special forces. Frank Whittle's engine rang in the jet age. Bond is an operator in the post war era who makes use of gee-whiz atomic-age gadgets.

And Britain, at the time, was predominantly white. Hence, Bond is white. This is not racism. This is demography. Calling him a "white" symbol sounds vaguely like a slur (why mention it? Is non-white imperialism better? More dignified? Less evil?) and is a distinction without a difference.

Bond is a sociopath. He is an alcoholic. He is a misogynist. But he's not an imperialist and his whiteness is nothing that needs apology. He's an avatar for boys who don't want to grow up and for a wee-bit of English national pride after the war (God knows they paid for it with blood and treasure). By the time Bond appears in the movies, his Englishness is just part of his charm and doesn't really signify anything.

I see no problem with it.

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Same, especially as I get older and a race becomes harder on me. I think when I was in my 20s I could race, no problem. But now in my early 40s, I feel it a lot more, but I'll never do more than a 5k race.

George Lazenby - best James Bond ever!
(Although it took ten tries with hair dye to get his hair that particular ethnic shade of brown!)

As an actor, I would have a hard time signing a contract forbidding me from ever working in a tuxedo again. And Bond is either going make or break your career (albatross or Saturn 5 rocket). No matter who you are the fans are going to gripe for the first two films (NOT MY BOND!). It's like trying to marry into a family and win over the kids as a new dad. No thanks. Much better to build a new character that you can define (e.g., Downey Jr. in Iron Man) and explore. Gotta respect youngsters like Jenna Ortega for having the fortitude to avoid 3-picture contracts. Some francise entanglements are a dubious invitation. Kitty rolls on her back gesturing "rub my tummy" (IT'S A TRAP!).