EddieOffermann dot com

I just commented this to a thread on a film where there has been rampant speculation about the casting of a particular character. This character is generally thought to be of a particular ethnicity, and there's been a lot of discussion over who will be cast in the role. Popularly, people seem to be hoping it will be of the same ethnicity as they believe the character to be... but when we're talking about someone of Mediterranean/Arab/North African/Middle Eastern ethnicity - it's sometimes hard to find the right one. If the character was originally Pakistani, do you really have to find a Pakistani to play them? Or is it ok to get someone from Afghanistan or India? Is it racist to cast an Italian-American? or is it racist to say that you *can't* cast one?

Ultimately, I deleted my comment there. In reality, it's like that old (and not very PC) maxim: Arguing on the internet is like competing in the special olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded.

This particular comment was on an upcoming movie version of a video game. I decided to reproduce it here to let everyone know that I haven't died. I was just sick most of last week and while I soldiered through work every day, I basically came home and slept - so my effects blog suffered. The original poster had ranted about the casting of Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, the Spartans in 300, and various other distant historical characters in what he felt were ethnically inaccurate ways. Here was my response:

The original character back in 1989 was a stack of animated pixels about a hundred raster lines tall. As I recall, there was nothing about that tiny sprite animation that suggested any sort of ethnicity. It was Mario Brothers set in a middle eastern palace - so let's not make it out that the casting in a feature film version of a video game franchise is making any sort of political/social statement. With any luck, it'll be a great, fun movie: one we'll all enjoy, one that will be chock-full of fun stunts, visual effects and a good Action-Adventure storyline.

You write like you think the Greeks of 2500 years ago bear more than a passing ethnic similarity to people who live in Greece now, or that anyone has the foggiest idea if Jesus looked like a modern Mediterranean or an African. It's been a long time... I'm not sure we even know what *anybody* looked like back then. Casting a modern Israeli is just as irrelevant as casting a white man.

I feel like this sentence:

It is about people of a particular ethnicity not feeling like they can connect to a character in a movie unless they are the same 'ethnicity' or 'race' as them.

is as validly pointed at you as it is to anyone else.

Hollywood is all about makebelieve. When Bollywood makes a film, they cast predominantly Indian actors - because that's what their audience wants to see. It's not that the studio execs are racist, or even that Indian viewing audiences hate white people... It's that yes, for the most part audiences *do* connect to characters that are as much like them as possible. Movies aimed at a female audience have lots of female characters... Movies aimed at children usually have a bunch of kids in them. Movies aimed at white people are likely to have lots of white people in them too. Same with anything from Tyler Perry or Martin Lawrence - movies targeted at black audiences have lots of black people in them... and when I went to see "The Bucket List" guess what? Half the theater was in their declining years. Think we'd have brought out all those retirees to the theater if it was about a couple 20-year-olds dying of Hepatitis? Because I sure don't, and I don't think it's because grandpa hates his grandkids.

I really dislike that we're not a lot more accepting of differences of all kinds: race, gender, ethnic diversity within races, age, sexuality... but not everything that a particular group is interested in is racist, sexist, homophobic or what-have-you. And not everything that's marketed to one of these groups is symptomatic of some gigantic social ill.