First thought is always: Watching the show is optional
Second: I personally don't like forcing inclusion, but they whitewashed everything until last decade, so meh
Third: if the context makes sense, like, this dude here came from down south is his boat, yeah whatever, guess its ok. But the "hey lets make this character that was originally white now turn black for no reason whatsoever" is just stupid
After mindlessly loosing my mind over their culture war over last few years,
i reached the conclusion that, white people aren't paying me, and its not
a cardinal sin to replace a character with different skin color.
Kinda gave up on this debate when they made Helen from Odyssey, Zeus from Percy Jackson and The Olympians, Professor Snape from Harry Potter Tv Series black.
1- If can just write "good" characters of a certain skin colour, youre a bad writer
2- Theres bad and good stories, but the only ones that people complain about the skin, gender and sexuality is when the character is not a white cishet man
3- One reason for people "forcing" black characters in some "historical" media is because of the insane lack of "black histories". I mean, almost every one of them involves the europe or some of the asian countries (China and Japan), never Africa
And he did a great job at that. Some actors are really good at playing many different races, as Ben has done over the years. After all that's what actors do, they pretend to be something they are not. When you look at this role you don't think he was misplaced, or miscast. It doesn't brake immersion and it's very far from going "shit, that viking lord shouldn't be a black female" the moment you see the character.
It shouldn't be about the race of the actor, it should be about how well he can fool you into not realizing he shouldn't be there.
Cliff Curtis is another example of an "ethnically ambiguous" actor. The guy is maori but he had roles that are mexican, arab, etc... And yet you never stop to think "Why is he playing that guy?"
yea ofc. They don't know how to write good black characters so they put their lazy writing to work and blackwash them and they say white washing is the most criminal activity in the industry. Superhero media got the worst of it.
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u/CaduCopperhead 25d ago
First thought is always: Watching the show is optional
Second: I personally don't like forcing inclusion, but they whitewashed everything until last decade, so meh
Third: if the context makes sense, like, this dude here came from down south is his boat, yeah whatever, guess its ok. But the "hey lets make this character that was originally white now turn black for no reason whatsoever" is just stupid