Fang

[Dave W]

Never mind the exploitation, Tommy Seebach's Apache is one of the all-time great YT videos from Scandinavia, second only to Armi Ja Danny's I Want To Love You Tender.

My general attitude is "screw your cultural appropriation." Human progress is built on sharing of cultures. You don't own yours, and you have no right to accuse others of appropriating it. OTOH, ridiculing others is bad form, and so is exploiting for financial gain.

[Pilgrim]

If we start picking apart Hollywood's representations of Native Americans, Asians, Canadians, Roma ("Gypsies", now considered an insulting term), Yankees, Southerners, Mexicans, French, Germans and any other group we can think of, we'll never finish the task.  All have been stereotyped and played by members of other groups.  However, it seems we (or at least those who care enough to exert the effort) are now gaining enough perspective to recognize the casting and characterization errors which we see in movies.

But with the reactions also come over-reactions, as in all things.  And of course there are people who spend their time actively looking for excuses to be offended.

[Dave W]

Criticizing actors for playing a different ethnic group is preposterous. There's a reason it's called ACTING.

[Pilgrim]

With minor exceptions - like casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan?  (Bad idea in any case....)

[uwe]

"And of course there are people who spend their time actively looking for excuses to be offended."

"Criticizing actors for playing a different ethnic group is preposterous. There's a reason it's called ACTING."

Truer words have never been spoken. There are people who see Denzel Washington playing Macbeth



as perverted wokeness because Macbeth can't have possibly been black. To which I say: He never even existed, he's a figure of fiction, you could have a Martian play him. (For the avoidance of doubt: The visuals of that film are spectacular, I will certainly see it when I get the chance - and Denzel is always worth watching.)

Then there's people who say you can't have Othello played by anyone but a black man and all past performances of great white actors are despicable blackface:







To which I reply: Last I heard, Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier and Anthony Hopkins were not ridiculing black people in minstrel shows and robbing them of their dignity, but portraying a dramatic character who happened to be black already in the original play.

Not to forget of course those people - we now really want everyone to be offended! - who hold the view that black people should not be playing Othello at all because it reinforces the cliche of the gullible black man manipulated by evil, yet intellectually superior whites. According to that school of thought, James Earl Jones, Lawrence Fishburne and Chiwetel Ejiofor were all really only Uncle Tom traitors to their race ethnicity.







Going forward, the solutions can only be that (i) we stop playing Othello altogether, or (ii) we do find that Martian to take on the role, or (iii) how about finding a black actor we first whiteface and then add another layer of blackface?

[Pilgrim]

Or perhaps, pay less attention to those who run around wearing a sign that says "Give me a chance to be offended.  I DARE YOU!"

Just because someone is offended doesn't mean their feelings are justified or significant.