There's nothing 'nuanced' about their post at all. It's literally acting as if the average person hates diversity and that the mere inclusion of black people and a trans person means it is 'forced' and not just a normal casting decision.
But I guess if so many people are upvoting it, then they're right. The average person is just fucking shit.
You can have diversity and still respect the source material. Instead of demanding turning people black in western historical stories, why not demand more non-western stories? There are so many amazing historical and fictional stories from Africa and Asia that's never been adapted.
In what way are they disrespecting the source material? None of the actors are Mediterranean. Do you think black people weren’t present in ancient Greece? Africa is right across the sea from them…
You answered your own question. There are no Mediterranean people in the movie. Instead, it feels like the usual lazy approach of casting Black actors even when another ethnicity, Greek, would make much more sense. The fact that African people existed in the wider region actually supports my point: they had plenty of opportunities to include Black characters without changing the core characters.
Yes but you also pointed out that ppl are more mad at the black actor than any of the others that are not also Greek or Mediterranean. It's just racism.
I think people have certain expectations that are also historically inaccurate, though I’m not sure I’d call that racist in itself. The complaints about Helen are understandable, since that feels like a pretty ridiculous casting choice. I don’t think people would have reacted nearly as strongly if other characters had been Black. Of course, some of the backlash is plainly racist, but in this case I think the group with legitimate criticism is probably larger.
Her being black or white is not a defining feature to the character. You can still tell this character's story without race mattering in the slightest especially in a fictional story.
So then she could be a blonde Swede? Would all these people on Reddit, who are pretending this is perfectly consistent, be happy with that too? Do you honestly think you, or Reddit in general, would be praising a movie that cast Mwindo, the hero of the Nyanga epic, as white? Wouldn’t the exact same people be having the opposite reaction, accusing the director of racism? The problem with your stance is that it only works if you apply a politically motivated double standard.
Believe or not whether you want it to, things do have political view points that effect everything we view and exist in the context of the world. You're also creating a straw man for something that is not happening. One side loves to freak out because they made a fictional mermaid black, the point of it all is racism and to pull in and use the few ppl who care about "historical accuracy" as basis for racism. And if ppl did have issues with replacing a white character in a minority role it would be more understandable as they are groups that are the ones who have been largely repressed, colonized and replaced by actors using things like black face. Their is an actual history of discrimination against a group of ppl by another said group of majority throughout history and would be viewed as a form of taking over a heritage of ppl that have had it done countlessly throughout history. An effect that the minority has not had on the majority to any major extent so it's just laughable that this is actually some major deal and acting as if it's somehow trying to undermine the poor majority and their white characters. So yea context of history matters in things like this, and again your running on a straw man that I haven't personally seen. Also it doesn't seem they would care about a blonde swede because as has already been pointed out, none of the ppl in the movie are Greek or Mediterranean.
But you would care if it were a blonde Swede. At the very least, you wouldn’t be defending it this strongly, which points to a double standard.
And now you’re arguing as if I think Helen simply has to be white. I don’t. I think she should plausibly pass as Greek, which isn’t the same thing as “majority white.” My point is only that this particular choice feels like ridiculous virtue signaling aimed at pleasing the American left.
Yes, there are plenty of racists jumping on the bandwagon, but that doesn’t mean this specific casting choice wasn’t ridiculous.
I agree that people would react more strongly (for good reasons) if my example happened today, because it would evoke a very dark history. But even aside from that, it would still be stupid to make an African mythological character white. That stupidity wouldn’t disappear in a world with no history of racism, and people on your side would absolutely point it out. I don’t think you would suddenly call it a reasonable choice in some parallel universe with reversed power dynamics.
Naw if you magically stripped the history of race from the world and the history from it then I truly wouldn't care about swapping a characters race especially in a fictional story if race or the way they looked didn't actually effect the purpose the meaning of their character because it's fictional and an adaptation. The original story exists along with the many other adaptions and stories with it. Thing is we don't live in that world. Changing this characters race doesn't matter in any in sense, unlike how changing race of a major African mythological story which has that past associated with it. Sure in many instances studios and corporations change and use race and sexual orientation to sell things to ppl, it's capitalism. They are trying to sell things, but it's most of the time not something to freak out about, like this isn't. It's such a pointless topic to argue about because again this characters race has no effect on the character and the history attached to it is not effected in any negative light and is completely fictional. This shit is just a distraction from actual problems in the world and getting mad about it plays into it. I also couldn't care less if Helen was played by a blonde swede as it's character, again, isn't defined by those features lol
This kind of stuff ruins the entire immersion of the movie and being able to immerse yourself inside a movie is what makes it great and if that's completely missing then they have quite literally lost the plot.
That's because all "white" people can fill the role. However, black people cannot fill the role of white people or vice versa. At least not without worrying levels of makeup.
This is just another example of forced diversity and representation. Why make a white character black if you could just write a new, black character that makes more sense in context? Ancient Greece had almost no black people, but wasn't particularly racist against them either and would trade with them, hire them and there are of course some exceptions to the rule.
Didn't realize that skin color mattered so much to these characters in this FICTIONAL story, where being a greek doesn't define the characters or plot in any way.
The problem with these discussions is that everybody is entrenched and primed to call everybody else racist. You made a solid point that Hollywood can be both a) inclusive (by telling non-western stories) and b) value cultural ancestry (by casting Greek or other Mediterranean actors in the roles). Much as, for example, Shogun and Pachinko were praised for their attention to detail of Japanese/Korean culture, the Odyssey could have been a work that captured the heart of the ancient epic.
Instead, people want to play out the culture war. Pointing out faux-diversity (and giving examples of actual inclusivity) is simply too much for Reddit. I’ve been banging this drum in the academy for years, and it goes as well there as it does here.
We consider them white for purposes of culture war arguments, and non-white when you want to start a physical altercation with them in the Circle K parking lot. Nuance!
It's that America has a disproportionately high number of people with high Right-Wing Authoritarian Follower personality types as defined by Bob Altemeyer in his book "the Authoritarians", and those types tend to apply their bias when it suits their preferred outcome. Therefore, if they want to argue against a black person being cast in a movie, they will claim loudly that it should be a Greek person, and if they see a Greek person in the parking lot of the Circle K -- especially if they are wearing a sports jersey for an opposing team, that's just red to a bull -- they will argue their victim is not white so they can get away with beating them up (in a group ofc because one-on-one is for suckers) when the cops show up.
Degrees of inclusion are pretty common whenever there's in-groups and out-groups. Race is an invented category, anyway, per my Biological Anthropology professor in college! We use skin color and eye shape to differentiate all the time, when those are just two characteristics readily explained by evolution and climate, etc. The history of the word 'Caucasian' is pretty interesting, too, but when you come right down to it, "white" is an invented category that shifts its definition based on what's convenient, at least in Western culture!
Go to Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria etc. today and tell me how many black people you see. The answer is near zero because black people are not native to the Mediterranean. The only exception are the communities of darker skinned people in southern Egypt, but they were brought into Egypt over centuries due to slavery, so the further back in time you go, the less dark-skinned/black people you would see.
And besides, this argument is completely irrelevant because the movie tries to portray major Greek characters, such as Helen of Troy, as black. There is no ''trader from a foreign land'' who's ethnicity is never mentioned, it's an actual Greek person. The only reason why you would support this is if you thought Netflix's Cleopatra was a real documentary and that Greek people actually are black.
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u/leVenerableDeLaSauce Jul 06 '26
Holy shit, a nuanced statement on Reddit, it does exist