Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

Ben's first words were "listen son" and no one can convince me otherwise

 

You ain't exactly a spring chicken these days either Coop.

****ing kids.

 

I don't remember IG2000 being part of the monkey lizard's death threat squad.

I do remember that comment though, but not just from IG. There was a period of time in the early years when every time someone mentioned having a female lead, this kind of comment would come up. "You can't have female leads because SW's fan base is male," or something like that. Same with gay characters. "No one can relate!"

 

I'm really sorry you had to deal with that. Frankly its a blessing I found the boards late, I was not that extreme but I certainly had reactionary views as a young teen. I think a lot of young males, especially hetero white ones, end up having to face a choice on their own once they reach a certain age. That being whether or not they are gonna force themselves to change and go through really uncomfortable self reflection. Being a decent person is not so much taught to those in privilege, but rather discouraged unconsciously with the person themselves having to pull themselves out of it.

That's why inclusion like Ahsoka is so important, and why we NEED LGBTQ rep in the GFFA on screen front and center. As the title of the thread says "ignorance is bias"

 

I hate to set aside the transphobic assault allegations, since they're very serious and are casting a long shadow, but I actually want to bring up another implication of the potential casting of Rosaria Dawson as Ahsoka --- the continuing trope of Hollywood putting black actors under alien makeup.

I think it's a discussion that's been had in this thread before, specifically in regards to the sequel trilogy casting a black woman and then oddly making her a shriveled orange alien --- but it's something that's been bizarrely prominent in Hollywood and, if the Dawson rumors are true, maybe even still ongoing?

From a 2016 Vulture piece: Why Won’t Hollywood Let Us See Our Best Black Actors?

"Idris Elba is in four major studio films this year, but you won’t see his face in any of them. ... His only live-action role in the lot is playing the villainous Krall in Star Trek Beyond, where he’s buried under so many facial prosthetics that he’s more than unrecognizable — he’s a different color entirely."

"I wish I could call all these castings a fluke. I worry they’re not. Look at Lupita Nyong’o, whose most notable roles since winning the Oscar for 12 Years a Slave have been playing the orange alien Maz Kanata in Star Wars and the white wolf Raksha in The Jungle Book. In this summer’s video-game adaptation Warcraft, Paula Patton is slathered in green paint as the half-human, half-orc Garona, which makes me wonder if she consulted Zoe Saldana for advice before taking the role: After all, Saldana has already played green in Guardians of the Galaxy and blue in Avatar."

"You don’t see Leonardo DiCaprio, Sandra Bullock, and Tom Cruise painting their faces to win roles, but this color-changing gambit has practically become required of black dramatic actors who want to appear in big-budget movies. ... Perhaps it’s just another symptom of Hollywood’s current failure when it comes to actors of color: If movie studios continue to treat black faces as an onscreen rarity, it’s not much of a jump for those same stars to then be deemed exotic-looking and alien."

Another 2016 piece, this one from The Frame, which reports and expands on the Vulture story: Why are Lupita Nyong'o and Idris Elba being cast in non-human roles?

It's not like The Mandalorian has been a white male party, by any means --- and on the flip side of the presented argument, the idea that Ahsoka would have to be played by someone white would be ridiculous and nonsensical gatekeeping --- but there's still some potential baggage related to Hollywood's recent put-the-black-people-under-alien-makeup trend. Hopefully the show's rather excellent diversity score would be a mitigating factor, in that Ahsoka would be surrounded by people of colour without makeup, too, instead of looking like she was the exotic guest star on an episode of Full House. Surely putting one black person under alien makeup isn't too much of a crime if there are other black people around who didn't get the same treatment? Anyone have any thoughts on it, or on the trend in general?

 

I think context matters a lot, and whatever other baggage Dawson would bring to the role, Ahsoka being coded as a WOC is definitely something that's been part of fan conversations for a long time. For one thing there's a big difference between WOC playing background/tertiary aliens versus important ones whose perspectives and experiences are directly explored in the story.

S'funny, scoring Mando S1 hadn't even crossed my mind yet but I guess it would be pretty solid--only WHMs I can think of off the top of my head are Bill Burr and Herzog. Piss-poor parity score, though.

 

Could you expand on that idea a bit? I don't think it addresses the issue presented in the Vulture article about black actors not getting to be black. Gamora has played a huge role in three MCU films so far, but it's been Zoe Saldana with fake green, not natural brown, skin --- Hollywood wanting to cover up women of color's natural skin tones is definitely problematic regardless of how big of a role they play in the story.

 

It wasn't meant to address the broader issue, which is indeed a broad issue. But I've seen lots of comments (and I don't have much of a place in that conversation, all I can do is describe what I read/hear) about how well-written alien roles can be a vehicle for SW to explore the experiences of the underprileged in a way that human characters of color can't because it would mean importing RL racial bias into the universe--that can't be a substitute for solid human characters of color but it can be a meaningful addition.

The MCU, OTOH, largely takes place on contemporary Earth, so a character like Gamora exists in a very different context.

 

Does Ahsoka represent the underprivileged, though? Jedi, even on the run from the Empire, would be a pretty sloppy metaphor for real-world victims of institutionalized oppression, and I'd be skeptical of an assertion that she could effectively represent those victims even if played by a person of color.

Not that that was specifically what you were asserting, and I did ask for thoughts on the trend in general, so fair play. But even during the Jedi Purge, Ahsoka seems far closer to being a member of the A-Team than a reflection of anyone suffering real-world oppression.

 

It's a conversation, sure. All I can tell you is that Ahsoka being played by a WOC means a lot to a lot of people. I'm not qualified to characterize all their reasons.

 

Yeah, and I hope I'm not getting across that I think it would be an inherently bad thing or anything. Of course an alien character should be able to be played by anyone, and like I said, the issues raised by the Vulture article would probably be mitigated by the simple fact that The Mandalorian would feature plenty of humans of color also existing in Ahsoka's environment. Unlike Avatar, for example, which featured mostly white humans interacting with blue aliens played largely by POC. Intent matters, and it's easy to see something... not great... in the intent of the Avatar casting, whereas casting a WOC as Ahsoka seems like the exact opposite.

 

This is something I've noticed a bit as well and found interesting, but at the same time I'm not sure how much to actually make of it. The MCU has put Zoe Saldana under makeup -- but it's done the same with Karen Gillan, Dave Bautista, Ben Mendelsohn, Paul Bettany, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Mark Ruffalo (going forward), Hugo Weaving, and Christopher Eccleston, put Josh Brolin behind CGI, and hidden Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and James Spader entirely in voice roles. If Star Wars and the MCU have hidden Saldana and Nyong'o, they've also shown John Boyega, Donald Glover, Forest Whitaker, Idris Elba, the entire cast of Black Panther (including Nyong'o!), Samuel L. Jackson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Don Cheadle, Anthony Mackie, and Naomi Ackie, and I'm sure that's not exhaustive. Idris Elba did voice roles and a makeup role in four 2016 blockbusters? Okay, but he's also shown his face in franchises bigger than any of those cited -- the MCU and Fast and Furious -- his face headlined an attempt at a blockbuster franchise in The Dark Tower, he's in a DC movie that's going to come out . . . he's been in a lot of high-profile movies and TV since 2016, and the only one I can find where his skin color was hidden is Cats, which was hiding everybody under terrifying CGI, Taylor Swift included. Is there really a case to be made that Hollywood is hiding Idris Elba's black skin from us? Can anyone seriously argue that "Hollywood won't let us see" Idris Elba?

It seems a bit tendentious of the article to cite makeup/CGI roles as "practically required" for black actors to get into blockbusters when Elba, by that point, had already appeared in the MCU (along with plenty of other black actors) as well as Pacific Rim, and Saldana was appearing in the same Star Trek franchise it was complaining about without any makeup -- the article acknowledges this but just wants to dismiss it so it can keep making its point. And it's absolutely tendentious to compare actors who are talented but, at that point still establishing themselves, with ultra-megastars like Tom Cruise or Leonardo DiCaprio as the standard. You know who else isn't doing makeup/CGI roles? Denzel Washington, Will Smith, or Samuel L. Jackson. Who is? Up-and-coming talent like Karen Gillan, Lee Pace, Oscar Isaac, and Ben Mendelsohn, talented journeymen like Paul Bettany and Jon Favreau (remember when he was the CGI alien in the movie where Donald Glover and Thandie Newton had big roles?), and non-megastars or stars from a younger generation who don't always headline movies and are open to not having their face on the movie poster like . . . Josh Brolin, Ryan Reynolds, and Bradley Cooper. Tom Cruise isn't doing voice roles. So? He's TOM CRUISE. Lupita Nyong'o, as of the two roles the article complains about, had TWO FILMS under her belt. The piece then complains about the minuscule sample size of her next two films. Is it really a problem that she was then put in STAR WARS and cast to do a voice role in a film where her peers in the other voice roles were Bill Murray, Christopher Walken, Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, Idris Elba, and Giancarlo Esposito? If Idris Elba right now compares to the category of Bradley Cooper, Ryan Reynolds, Jamie Foxx, and Josh Brolin, and not to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, and Leonardo DiCaprio, is that so terrible? The article itself cites Will Smith appearing in his own skin in Suicide Squad and asks why Elba can't do the same. Well, Elba will be appearing in his own skin in the Suicide Squad sequel. If Elba didn't become Will Smith overnight, didn't blow up as fast as the author wanted, it doesn't mean Hollywood's hiding him. You have to have some patience with the tiny sample size of people making a few films a year, if that.

The piece even acknowledges that Jennifer Lawrence signed on to a makeup role when she was a nobody and has been eagerly getting out of it ever since she became a star -- because the issue here is not really skin color so much as it is position on the Hollywood ladder (and personal tolerance for sitting in the makeup chair for several hours each morning even after you've made it high enough up). So the real complaint is that Nyong'o didn't luck into getting cast in The Hunger Games -- she earned her budding-star status by winning an Oscar (what a crime!) in an art film and it significantly increased the attention she got but didn't immediately vault her to Julia Roberts megastardom, which has almost never happened in that situation (Hollywood hasn't exactly beaten down Jean Dujardin's door since his Best Actor win two years before Nyong'o's Best Supporting Actress, and Adrien Brody didn't become Al Pacino just because he won an Oscar, either), and with it being very questionable whether that level of megastardom can even exist for new actors the way it does for stars from the pre-2000s. You can ask why Nyong'o hasn't blown up to the scale of Lawrence or Margot Robbie . . . but who aside from them has blown up on that scale during Nyong'o's career? We're dealing with a tiny sample size of a very complex question . . . we can consider whether "they're white" is some part of the answer, but it almost certainly cannot be the whole answer.

We're very sensitive to seeing people of color appearing in non-human roles, and fairly enough so. But I don't know that it's really a disproportionate issue or if it's just an issue where a few cases are jumping out at us. Plenty of white people are getting cast as aliens, too, or voicing animals in animated movies, and if you see these as truly color-blind roles, since literally anyone of any color could play them without it making the slightest difference, I'm not sure if it would be good or bad even if people of color did land those roles disproportionately (it might suggest unfavorable things about casting and character creation elsewhere, but the phenomenon itself would not be bad -- certainly no one, for instance, is complaining that the voice cast for Disney's Lion King remake was predominantly black). Looking at the list of MCU nonhumans up there, someone could just as easily write a pouty thinkpiece about "Why are white men taking all the colorblind CGI/makeup roles?" If those were the only, or the predominant roles, that we saw people of color getting, that would be one thing, but . . . I don't think it is, is it? I feel like there are some interesting questions buried in this discussion, but I don't think the idea that black stars are getting buried in non-human roles is a particularly accurate diagnosis of any actual ongoing problem (it may have felt like that for a brief window in which that article was written, but I just don't think the facts bear it out). I think it's more of a sideways, confused way of getting at the incredibly complex idea of the relative stardom status of black actors and whether or how many reach the same level of fame as whatever batch of white actors and what it means.

 

@Havac

It doesn’t matter that some white people are also being cast as aliens. It doesn’t matter because there’s no shortage of white characters on screen. There’s plenty of white actors cast as both human and non-human characters. People in the audience don’t have to look up who plays the voice of rocket raccoon to find an example of a white actor, because the same films have other white actors, who we do see.

The same is not true for poc, especially so for woc. If a woc is cast as a alien it’s more typical than not that they are the only woc in the cast, the result being that you don’t actually see any woc on screen. Zoe Saldana is great as Gamora and I’m sure the casting means a lot to many people, but not everyone takes the time to look up who plays the characters, many people probably have no idea that Gamora is played by a woc. Some of the more recent marvel films have done a bit better at including more woc but they are still mostly limited to secondary and minor roles.

There’s definitely a disparity, whether we’re looking at just the MCU or films in general.

 

But are we really arguing that a global megafranchise that has had significant roles for Tessa Thompson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Lashana Lynch, Laura Harrier, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, and Hannah John-Kamen is suffering from a shortage of onscreen women of color because it also hired Zoe Saldana to play one of its many, many non-human roles?

My point is not that we have perfectly enough women of color onscreen, or whatever. My point is that if there’s a problem with underrepresentation of women of color, the tiny handful of roles where they, like many other actors who aren’t women of color, play space aliens is not really the problem.

 

Havac........ why are you getting on a soap box about this?

I mean dude.

 

Yeah, I don't know if "But it happens to white people too!" is exactly a slam dunk counterargument. Of course white actors play aliens too and do voice roles in animated movies, but that isn't the point --- like starfish says, it's about proportion, and it becomes an issue when you cast a single WOC in your movie and then hide her skin under alien makeup. That Black Panther exists doesn't negate the idea that what Guardians did is potentially troubling.

 

What’s the right thing to do when you cannot cast a WOC to play a character that is viewed by many to be a WOC? It seems like in the live action context with Ahsoka they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

 

Nobody's said they can't cast a Woman of Color; if there was any takeaway from my initial post it was that there's definitely been a trend but that honestly The Mandalorian probably won't have that issue.

Like a lot of the recent discussions in this thread, context matters and the idea of casting a POC as an alien isn't intrinsically a bad thing, but being aware of historical trends and being able to justify a casting decision is important too. With Ahsoka it's easily justifiable.

 

Excuse me? Did I say we should cry for Paul Bettany? I pointed out that this is an extremely common type of role in blockbuster moviemaking right now, and it’s inevitably going to find some actors of color in those roles as well as all the white actors. I suggested that this is not an inherently bad thing, and that the overall picture doesn’t seem to suggest that actors of color are being singled out for these roles or disproportionately pushed into them, as the article implies. Which is a good thing, no?

As I suggested at the end, if it does feel like a bit of an extra blow when actors of color end up in these roles instead of more visible ones, I understand, I’m not arguing against that — but I think that says more about bigger and more complex issues with minority representation in film, that we’re not seeing them as much as we would like elsewhere, than it does about some specific problem with this type of role where, as the article suggests, black actors can’t get into blockbusters any other way, which is demonstrably false.

I get it. I’m not saying Hollywood is beyond reproach. But I don’t think the way the pieces you cited are trying to frame it accurately presents the problem.

 

The articles are from 2016 --- the fact that the MCU has made progress since can't be used as a knock against the articles. Black Panther exists now, and actors like Tessa Thompson and Zendaya are killing it these days, which is awesome, but prior to 2017 the MCU was still taking baby steps, and the fact that in 2014 they had covered up the natural skin of the only WOC they had yet cast in a really meaningful role was a legitimate knock against them (both against the film as a standalone and against the wider MCU).

You're right, it's not an inherently bad thing when POC are cast in these roles, we've mentioned that a few times --- the issue of minority actors getting these roles and the issue of minority actors not getting roles elsewhere are intertwined, as when it becomes a problem is when they get that kind of role alongside a mostly-white cast. Discussion on this subject can and should go deeper than just what was in those articles, and if your main issue is with the fact that some of the points in a pair of four-year-old articles on the subject are now dated, it seems like a weird hill to die on?

 

Yeah, the problem is the proportion of lead or minor (say, someone who talks once or twice) roles given to non-white actors in a film vs white actors in the same kind of role. This argument has come up in this thread before, several times. If you look at big fantasy films like GotG, Avatar, Force Awakens, LOTR, etc, the issue is that a LARGE (half sometimes) part of the non-white cast with speaking roles is in makeup or CGI'ed.

 

I am really glad Jeff brought this topic up. I remember there was a diversity thread somewhere on the boards in which I raised the issue and some tried to dismiss the kind of roles we give POC as not being significant. I think that is shallow. Alien roles should be given to more and more people of more and more diverse backgrounds of course, but we must be cognizant of the fact that a large number of the prominent SW roles for POCs have them as CGI aliens. Now Solo and RO have radically shifted that and I am so grateful for them. However the saga certainly fell short. With the addition of Rose helping to balance things out, but being ignored cause JJ is a coward.

I think it is best to have a WOC play Ahsoka in live action, however yeah I think this trend is annoying. Particularly given that in the context of sci-fi it does still seem to be skewed towards POC playing aliens.

I forget, Coop how do you rank minority actors vs minority actors with non-RL minority roles?

 

It's a binary metric--either the character is a straight, white human man or they're not, the idea being that anything other than that has some value from a diversity standpoint. Getting into "does character type x count for more than type y?" felt weedy at best, and well outside my ability to judge.

 

Oh right I forgot. Yeah I cannot speak to the validity either.