Diversity and Representation in Media

I'm late to this, but part of the reason why I don't really like the concept of the biopic is that real life isn't really like a story. It doesn't have the obligation of being dramatically convenient and you can't necessarily expect to have a satisfying narrative for a 2 to 3 hour movie based on an important person's life. So people often try and find ways to frame and dramatize the narrative, but often in ways that betray actual history, which in turn can give people a false impression of what the person or their circumstances were really like.

Almost every biopic I've heard about has had one noticeable problem or another with this. Not to say I'd poo-poo every biopic in principle but it's impossible to not notice the trend.

Really? They almost demonized her husband in order to hype up her?

Thought for what I read, they did manage to put a realistic him despite everything, which is great.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 8th 2019 at 2:07:53 PM

There was also a review complaining Martin didn’t get enough focus.

Side issue: apparently Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and On the Basis of Sex have raised some issues in the Jewish community- namely, that both projects are about Jewish women, but neither are played by Jewish actresses. If you look up Felicity Jones Jewish on twitter you can find a decent number of annoyed people. I think it’s an issue worth discussing.

Edited by wisewillow on Jan 8th 2019 at 3:29:14 PM

I agree with this.

During film course I once spent a while studying biopics because I was intrigued by exactly this problem (i.e how to turn real life into drama). My broad conclusion was that biopics that try to cram a person's life into a couple of hours are the weakest ones, and the strongest biopics tend to be those that focus on a specific timeframe of a person's life. This is partly because fictional drama films also rarely try to cram a character's entire life into two hours: you tend to get only a specific timeframe of that person's life.

So, for example: Lincoln (specifically focusing on Abe's 13th amendment), Raging Bull (focusing on Jake Lamotta's height and downfall as a boxer), The King's Speech (basically covering a couple of years of King George VI's life in the context of the rising threat of Nazism).

The other approach is to go experimental with it and frame the narrative in a disjointed, strange way to mirror how chaotic real life is (and often deliberately mimicking the medium the real life figure operated in). Examples being The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Jackie or Chatô - The King of Brazil.

Hard genre to master, and that's without even going into the whole "artistic interpretation vs actual history".

Edited by Gaon on Jan 8th 2019 at 12:37:47 PM

Yeah, it isn’t very appreciable, especially when it comes to a real person’s life, that their culture is dismissed as either not too important or easy to imitate.

On an inverse side note, Into The Spider-Verse, casts Jewish actor Jake Johnson as Peter Parker and also shows a fair amount of said culture in his life.

Given how frighteningly prevalent anti-setimism continues to be today, I have to agree with their complaints.

That's interesting. Is Peter jewish in the comics too?

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jan 8th 2019 at 5:02:01 AM

No, he’s a Christian. It’s part of why the whole deal with Mephisto thing is so baffling.

What's so baffling about it?

Dude literally met God two issues before, has always had this quiet, personal belief, then makes a deal with the devil, literally.

It’s part of why One More Day sucks, because in order for it to work, Peter has to ignore everyone telling him it’s a bad idea, no one else can help (not even Doctor Doom) AND prioritize his dying aunt above all else, including not only his wife, but his future daughter who he sees in a vision, then throws it all away so his aunt survives. With the freaking devil wanting his marriage and nothing else.

But that’s just comic book nonsense, and I’m gonna stop before I start sounding like Linkara.

Edited by Beatman1 on Jan 8th 2019 at 4:49:19 AM

You already sounded like him .

Dammit.

Anyway, back to the topic.

The nature of media representation means there will be some fictionalization. One of the most fascinating "bio-pics" I ever saw was the adaptation of American Splendor, where the movie embraced meta-commentary unlike anything else and had Paul Giamatti acting right alongside the actual Harvey Pekar. It showed the same event (Harvey meeting and courting his wife, a Fourth-Date Marriage) within the movie and then had the movie characters attend an off-broadway play depicting the same thing, showing us the subtle differences in interpretation (since it was based on the same issue of the comic) and basically leaving it up to the audience to determine how the actual event really happened. It showed the real Harvey and his friend Toby interacting while on the set of the movie, while showing the Harvey and Toby actors behind them watching and laughing hysterically at their antics.

Edited by KJMackley on Jan 8th 2019 at 2:14:25 AM

Regarding the whole Jewish thing, I suppose it's similar to how some Japanese actors sometimes play Chinese characters or vice-versa… By that I mean a "Eh, the character looks white, the actor looks white, no one's gonna notice a thing" kind of mentality. Unfortunate for sure.

Ultimate Peter Parker was Jewish. It was a recurring thing that he’d use Yiddish from time to time.

Thing is, not all Jewish people look like the American stereotype, which IIRC is an extreme version of Ashkenazi features. So casting non-Jewish actors who “look” Jewish is weird and plays into stereotypes while erasing actual Jewish actors.

Edited by wisewillow on Jan 8th 2019 at 5:26:41 AM

I remenber a chinise actress in memory of a geisha complaing about that, saying how white people can play another white people and people barely complain but the same does not happen with POC.

Now, the movie does have huge issues but maybe she got a pont.

I do think it’s a decent point (though possibly not with regards to that particular movie, because it was a historical movie from a time when the actor’s country and the character’s country were at war, and the two countries have a lot of bad blood between them still. Even having said that - I get why it would be entirely offensive for a Japanese actress to play a Chinese character in a WWII-era movie but am less clear on why the reverse situation is offensive).

Virtually nobody complains about white characters, or black characters, or Latino/Latina characters, or indigenous characters, being played by an actor with a different nationality. The actor who played MLK in the movie Selma was British (David Oyelowo). And Morgan Freeman, an American, played Mandela in Invictus. We’re talking major, pivotal, iconic historical figures here, and practically no one batted an eye at it.

The idea of characters needing to be played by characters of the same nationality seems like something that’s very specific to East Asian characters/actors. I’ve rarely heard it come up in any other context.

Edited by Galadriel on Jan 8th 2019 at 6:40:37 AM

I will guess is because so little representation of Asian or that the amount is turing for thr worst since the 90, and of course intercamabiale asian cultures.

But is true that white people have this weird standar of all being the same which allow them to play on other with little problem but accent, something that is consider racist when apply to POC.

There's a lot of really uncomfortable politics/history of imperialism with east asian countries in particular, and a lot of those politics are still extremely relevant today, so I'm not surprised it's a sensitive subject. I don't think the british black actor example is a good comparison in this context.

I guess it's largely a matter of historical or symbolic significance… And current international relationships also… I suppose a French character being played by an English actor in a film about the 100 Year War would be a bit awkward. >.> (Then again…)

Edited by Lyendith on Jan 8th 2019 at 12:55:01 PM

I think that Samuel L. Jackson complained to the press about the British Daniel Kaluuya playing an African-American character in Get Out!, which John Boyega called him out for.

Transnational casting is common enough in East Asian cinema, actually. Red Cliff has Japanese-Taiwanese Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang and Shidō Nakamura as Gan Ning. Mongol mostly starred non-Mongolian actors as well, though it's more of a Russian/Kazakh production and was mostly shot in China.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jan 8th 2019 at 3:58:29 AM

Yeah, I’ve seen black journalists discuss how complex/questionable it is to cast non-American black people in roles that are African American. This article is worth a read.

I must not put jokes about British Imperialism

Nah, I can't.

Stereotypical British Gentleman with a Monocle: You see, rebellious Americans. British culture is so superior that even our africans are superiors to yours.

I mean, seriously, what's up with that obsession with acting like Britain is so superior. We're not in the Colonial Era anymore. I'm not even that opossed to having Afro-British as Afro American characters, but those lines straight up from British Imperial propaganda just annoy me.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 8th 2019 at 8:45:34 AM

It's worth pointing out, on the topic of black British actors playing black American actors, that one of the primary reasons for this is that the British film industry was basically consumed whole by Hollywood's over the years, unable to compete with Hollywood's juggernaut and having little incentive to do so given Hollywood also A) produces films in the English language B) absorbed British filmmakers and actors into its machinery, leading to British presence in films. Compared to most nation's film industries, the British Industry has been almost entirely co-opted by Hollywood in a fascinating process, leaving behind a very small and independent industry aside from occasional flashes (like Kenneth Bragnah's Shakespeare films). The BBC-made-for-tv films are probably the strongest corner of the British Film Industry both commercially and critically, and they're still nowhere near a Hollywood level (not to mention, it's one channel with the monopoly of all the big budget productions OF the entire United Kingdom).

And, here's where things boomerang to Black (and other minority) actors: a crushing majority of British productions are period pieces (usually Medieval and/or Victorian, the two cultural periods Britain culturally exports the most) that cast tend to cast 99% white people over "period accuracy".

So what I'm saying here is that the recurring appearance of british minority actors in Hollywood is more a result of Hollywood's own history of cannibalizing the British film industry for its own purposes, and a result of minority actors having a ridiculously small pool of roles to play in British productions given the A) already small state of the industry B) over-reliance in period pieces.

It's a complex issue, and after that was pointed out to Samuel L. Jackson (to his everlasting credit) he conceded he may have spoken from a place of ignorance and backed off.

Casting: I sometimes think it's great that we have actors who match the background of the characters. I do think that sometimes for certain parts it has to do with Ability over Appearance.

Johnny Bravo: On an off topic subject, I came across this Johnny Bravo episode called the Sensitive Male. Anyone who remembers Johnny Bravo, would know he's a Cassnova Wannabe, who tries to get hit on every hot lady he comes across. While some people might be divided on the premise these days, I really found this episode to really be relevant. This is due to the fact it tackles macho chauvinism and fake nice guys, who can be just as bad or worse than blatant obnoxious flirty jock types.

I do found it awesome that Johnny, even though he is a womanizing meathead, draws the line at manipulating women through lying. Back when I was younger I didn't really understand what the guy did wrong, but now these days I do and he really is one heck of a creep. It shows that so-called sensitive males can be equally obnoxious as their dumb macho jock counterparts.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5mxtj4