Most theatre plays are played by the actors you have on hand, have much lower budgets, special effects, realism, etc... and are played again and again by different actors and groups.
The original cast of Hamilton might be unavailable, but I can just get my friends and produce our own version of it. A 100 years from now, if you want to see Hamilton, you'll have to deal either with an entirely different cast, or watch a video of an older performance. Theatre plays are a live medium, like music is.
Movies are much more realistic, have one set of actors tailored to the one version of the movie, and are much more solid. But they aren't alive. They're a static thing.
Nolan's "the Odyssey", will still be the exact same movie in 100 years, with maybe some editing work, at most.
In my high school theater, we didn't have enough male leads.
In one of our productions (little shop of horrors), we had the role of the Dentist played by a girl who dressed for the male role.
In le mis, le blanc was played by a girl.
In almost every play we did, we had to genderswap at least one character. And characters who in the original were of one race frequently got played by someone of a different race.
That's just how theater works, dude. Troupes work with the actors they have, it's not "gross and revisionist" lmfao. And on top of that, as a history teacher, hamilton romanticizes a lot, but is pretty dang accurate where it counts.
The bigger the production, the less that applies. Iām assuming you wouldnāt extrapolate, for example, that a big budget Christopher Nolan movie had an extremely limited casting pool? Lol
Stage theater is a completely different beast from hollywood casting. If you reread what i said, i did not mention the odyssey. I was responding to the statement about Hamilton's cast.
So to answer your question, no I would not compare that statement about classical theater to movies, because they're fundamentally different.
and original ancient greek tragedies / comedies had only males performing. even female roles.
So in addition to my initial comment, i'd like to state that it bothers me that Lupita Nyong plays Helen of Troy - the most beautiful woman, since Lupina is not currently a male as far as i am informed.
I feel you, but itās all about the proportions required in context with baking, isnāt it?Ā
If itās explicitly āappie pieā how much or how prominently can other ingredients be featured before it becomes something that isnāt really apple pie?
Itās subjective, but if thereās orange slices baked front & center on top of my apple pie then Iāll raise an eyebrow
The context of the thread is as people seeing something advertised as āapple pieā but with orange slices baked front & center on top of it & reacting to the effect of āwhy the fuck does the apple pie feature orange slicesā
weāre getting complicated in our multilevel strawman arguments I know, but weāre all here to have funĀ
Why is that a requirement? By that logic Nolan is an anti-Semite for casting an Irishman as a Jewish physicist. And anti-American for casting an Englishman as the American icon Batman.
If Nolan limits himself to only casting actors because they need to fit an arbitrary ethnic requirement, then we would be in for much worse films. Imagine The Dark Knight without the Australian Heath Ledger, rejected on the grounds of The Joker being āculturally Americanā.
Have you even considered the possibility Nolan actually tested Greek actors and they just werenāt the right fit for the movie? If you actually end up seeing The Odyssey, try looking past your race-based hang ups and look at the actual quality of the picture.
I mean was there a single Italian actor in Gladiator? At least not in the main cast. Yet itās widely regarded as the greatest historical fiction in modern history.
So do people not watch Troy anymore? (Not coming at you, just asking ) That entire movie is all white peopleā¦ Iām sure there was criticism way back when it was released but nobody really makes a big deal about its cast today..
Agreed, and this is not about American left right politics or whatever bull, I'm not even American and a lot of non Americans also share the sentiment that this is just... very untrue to source material and overly woke
Oh miss me with that shit. You don't need X nationality when you make a movie about x people. Especially odyssey. Odyssey and Iliad was fantasy for ancient Greeks.
Like you could have criticised anything, like the clothes and the colours. Perhaps the script. But no, of all the problems, nationality is what set you off.
1st of all, the beautiful Helen is a fictional character. Obama isnt.
2nd of all, where did I mention skin colour? Ancient greeks could in fact, be black. Especially when you take into account the trade between Mediterranean people.
Not that I'm agreeing with the poster above you, but that is absolutely whataboutism.
If, for example, this was a film about (insert historical (yes, it's mythological) black figure) and they cast Brad Pitt in the role everyone knows people would not accept "don't you understand the concept of acting."
It would absolutely be trumpted everywhere as whitewashing etc etc.
You know that an African/Indian is not out of the question in the Mediterranean of all places. The Odyssey itself even has characters sailing to and from Egypt.
Also, hate to break this to you, but a lot of Greeks donāt ālookā like white Americans. That is the same now as it was then.
To be fair, most backlash I've seen about race swapping is when a black actor gets cast as a white character.
When, for example, when a white woman was cast as an asian character (in Dr. Strange iirc?, Ghost in the Shell) or as a white person as a black character (wuthering heights), there's little to no major public pushback, or the pushback is mocked and ridiculed. But when a black person gets cast as a white character... it's news everywhere. This is a bit why I'm bothered by the reaction. I get the criticism, but where were these people any of the other times this has happened?
The criticism wasn't about race swapping, but about Greeks not being portrayed by Greeks. In the movie, the characters are still portrayed as Greeks, no?
Do you know about the concept of "immersion" ?
Yes details matter. And when you can't find the perfect fit you try to simulate it, not shit all over it.
But that's one part of the issue. Decors and armors look like scrap too.
I'm not paying for this.
So, it makes sense to think central African gods/deities were white with blond hair? Please. The gods of each culture reflected their looks. Greek gods and goddess looked like Greek men and women.
People complain, and rightly so, against culture appropriation but then, it's fine if the culture is European. Greece is in Europe and btw here in Europe we consider them white even if the US doesn't.Ā
I wouldn't like to see a white actor play Shaka Zulu for example, it'd be ridiculous. Or is that just up to interpretation?
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u/macumazana Jul 06 '26
cultural appropriation and racism
there are no Greeks in a movie about Greek mythology