A thread for discussing representation and diversity in all kinds of media. This covers creators and casting decisions as well as characters and in-universe discussions.
Historical works and decisions are in-scope as well, not just recent news.
Please put any spoilers behind tags and clearly state which work(s) they apply to.
This week, producer Ross Putnam started a Twitter account called "femscriptintros
", where he puts up examples of how women are introduced in the screenplays he's read. And nearly all of sound like terrible porn or are too concerned with emphasizing said lady is beautiful despite whatever traits she may have. Here's a Take Two podcast made today where he talks about it.
(Edited April 19 2024 to add mod pinned post)
Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 19th 2024 at 11:45:51 AM
CONTEXT:'Jaws' star Richard Dreyfuss says Oscars new diversity rules 'makes him vomit'
Oh boy this hurts to read.
As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end."Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish, they shouldn’t play the Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?" He said. "This is so patronizing. It’s so thoughtless and treating people like children."
Well yes, because they don't deserve to be left in the side lines for way too long. Isn't that too much to ask?
"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try."just makes me think of this meme
aka 'please stop saying dumbass things,'
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverThe worst part is that he COULD have had a good point that we should be able to celebrate progressive and diverse movies without actually forcing people to be progressive and diverse. With that rule in place it will look like minorities are getting pity party awards. Like Parasyte and other diverse movies won a lot of awards WITHOUT the rule. Guillermo del Toro is Latino and had also won alot of Oscars.
But no. This guy just goes "MAN I CANT BE RACIST ANYMORE THAT SUCKS."
As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end.Thing is, those rules exist in the first place because Hollywood would rather not.
It's the same reason stuff like employment quotas exist.
We can talk about not having rules like that when discriminatory hiring practices etc stop being a thing.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 8th 2023 at 4:10:44 PM
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyThe thing with Dreyfuss here is that there is maybe a discussion to have about the diversity rules since they’re, uh, real simplistic and not in a good way, but when he goes for a blackface role from 60 years ago where the consensus at the time was “eh, Olivier is fine in this role, but he’s kinda phoning it in” as his example, it’s really, really hard to see it as anything but him going “but why blackface bad though?” Like, why is that the example he had in his pocket?
It feels roughly equivalent to the idiots who try and manufacture reasons to get away with saying slurs and tend to either use ancient examples or really bad faith examples.
Of course it's not a particularly well-made or good faith argument, but Othello and Shylock aren't particularly good examples for the argument "why white actors should be able to play any role". One because they are debatably racial caricatures (when I say "debatably" I mean that people have been debating this for hundreds of years), but also because while there were some Africans and Jews in Shakespeare's England, there weren't any acting at the Globe. At least as far as I know. Which is not the situation with contemporary casting.
And honestly was not the situation when Olivier or Hopkins played Othello either.
But either way, you can see how stupid this argument is if you asked Dreyfuss if he has plans to play Frederick Douglass.
On the racial caricatures thing, it did strike me that it would make a certain amount of sense for an edgy production of Othello to get at the uncomfortable racial politics by having a white actor playing Othello in Blackface. I was thinking of this based on this discussion by Shakespeare scholar Ian Smith about how the infamous handkerchief has allusions to the actor applying Blackface
.
The other Shakespeare thing Dreyfuss made me think of was Vincent Price's Theatre of Blood, where his character is a ludicrously hammy and out-of-touch Shakespeare actor (basically Olivier but less talented and more of a traditionalist) and his Shylock costume is an offensive Jewish caricature. Let's just say we're lucky that we didn't see his Othello.
Did you know there was a production of Othello where Patrick Stewart played Othello himself? He didn't do it in blackface, the production handled it by casting everyone else with black people. Some of the reviews at the time had big Shakespeare fans saying how uncomfortable the play made them and they hadn't really noticed the racial politics at play in it before. Which is its own problem.
Casting everyone except Othello with black people is a weird angle to take, but it's a valid one. And the thing is, no one fucking does completely accurate Shakespearean acting anymore. If you have a theatre company that's fine casting women, you do not cast white people to act in blackface, full stop.
I also want to note the reason why Othello and Shylock are the go-to examples for people being allowed to "play any role" is because they're the only examples. They're fictional characters who were never intended to be played by people of the right ethnicity and anything else you could point to is either offensive or stupid as an example. They're the exceptions that prove the rule and these days, they shouldn't be exceptions because there's no reason for them to be. There's nothing about Othello that means he's best played by a white man and there's nothing about Shylock that means he must be played by a gentile.
Edited by Zendervai on May 8th 2023 at 3:16:28 PM
Very well-put.
Incidentally, kind of ironically, but Olivier's Shylock was famously sympathetic and understated and he made an effort to reflect speech patterns and mannerisms of British Jews.
Similarly, Jonathan Pryce has played Shylock as well as other Jewish characters - he has a rather specific typecasting of playing (sometimes morally gray) religious/pious characters. And has similarly made effort at verisimilitude. But somehow he's also the same guy who did yellowface in Miss Saigon.
@Zendervai “but when he goes for a blackface role from 60 years ago where the consensus at the time was “eh, Olivier is fine in this role, but he’s kinda phoning it in” as his example, it’s really, really hard to see it as anything but him going “but why blackface bad though?” Like, why is that the example he had in his pocket?
Because apparently, that phoned-in performance was so brilliant to him as to stick in his mind even to this day. And…I think he wants to play as a black man himself someday?
"And he did it in blackface. And he played a black man brilliantly. Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man?"
That’s the impression I got from that part: “Oliver was the shit and it made me want to play as a black man someday. Don’t deny me MY DREAM!”
I’m getting flashbacks to Scarlett Johansson making the same argument about “it’s all art, just playing pretend”, though I can’t remember if it was for “Ghost in the Shell” or some other movie in the late 2010s.
Also, can I ask what “diversity rules” are we talking about? Are these official guidelines for the film industry?
Edited by fredhot16 on May 8th 2023 at 2:17:44 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.Othello was pretty Fair for Its Day when you view him in context. I mean, he is a high ranking, well respected general. And yes, it ends in his death, but that was pretty much mandatory for a tragedy, and I'm not sure Othello would have worked nearly as well as a comedy.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times![]()
She brought that up in conjunction to a biopic about a trans man where she was cast as the lead guy. It set off a discussion about how Hollywood insists on casting trans people with actors of the wrong gender and are a lot more invested in making the character look a lot more convincing before transitioning.
Yeah, but casting him in blackface now is racist as shit. It's taking one of the most classic black roles there is, looking at black people, and going "no, you don't get to have this." Also, no one was really talking about the character, just the optics of casting a black person with a white actor in blackface.
Here's an article that talks about the rules.
Basically, a lot of diversity is being mandated. Dreyfuss seems to be taking umbrage to the "at least 30% of the cast must be minorities" thing, but that's not actually mandatory. If a movie has a really diverse behind the scenes crew and a really diverse marketing crew, that fulfills the requirements.
Edited by Zendervai on May 8th 2023 at 5:28:16 AM
@Zendervai “Also, no one was really talking about the character, just the optics of casting a black person with a white actor in blackface.”
In fairness, I have to point this out.
Hodor 2: “Of course it's not a particularly well-made or good faith argument, but Othello and Shylock aren't particularly good examples for the argument "why white actors should be able to play any role". One because they are debatably racial caricatures (when I say "debatably" I mean that people have been debating this for hundreds of years), but also because while there were some Africans and Jews in Shakespeare's England, there weren't any acting at the Globe. At least as far as I know. Which is not the situation with contemporary casting.”
So, the content of the character was briefly mentioned in this convo. Red ain’t saying something to something nobody else was saying here, which I think Red might be glad to hear.
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.That sounded clearer in my head than the way I wrote it.
Tl; dr, Othello is a (deliberately) bad example of a white person playing a Black character because he's a fictional character that was originally played by a white person in Blackface.
That would not be the case with any historical or most fictional Black people.
But yeah, I think Redmess was responding to my post when discussing Othello as being Fair for Its Day.
Asked to Delete References to Racism From Her Book, an Author Refused

Is the former falling under Single-Target Sexuality?
"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try."