OMG this is almost as bad as a white man playing Charlie Chan, or Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese man in [i]Breakfast at Tiffany's[/i], or a Sicilian (Espera Oscar de Corti) playing "Iron Eyes Cody," or all of the other white actors playing various non-white characters. But let's lose our minds over a Black girl playing a mermaid. Everyone knows mermaids look like this.
@whowasthatmaskedman And according to most Hollywood movies the only difference between the Romans and the Gauls, including Romans in the ME was their haircuts, and togas.
@LordShadowfire One that is particularly bad in American tv and movies is the "all Asians are the same" so just cast whoever.
This can be particularly yikes when doing historical pieces and casting a Japanese person for really any other ethnic group or nationality in Asia for what should be obvious reasons.
And I like the show The Cleaning Lady but not sure if casting a Cambodian/ European French woman as Latina was a great choice.
@LeopoldBloom Yeah people complaining about a black woman playing the little mermaid was ridiculous.
But this is about stupid documentaries portraying Cleopatra as black, etc- classic scholarship, ancient depictions vs "Duh my nan always told me she was black so it must be true"
@BritishFailedAesthetic Yeah, I'm a stickler for accuracy in all things, so I need to point out that she was Macedonian and Persian, with perhaps a hint of African ancestry, so she was most likely medium brown. Not black, and not white.
@bijouxbroussard We surely do.. The English are about the most mongrel of the European races anyway. Gaelic, Celts from central Europe, Scandis via the Vikings, Romans of course, French from Normandie and Breton. Add some Saxon stock and stir for a Millenia..😷
@LeopoldBloom Yeah, I didn't realize. He's like a mixture of German, Dutch, Irish, and most likely some other random European shit. No Italian. Makes me wonder how real Italians feel about The Godfather now. (You know, apart from the whole "perpetuating the Mafia as an Italian stereotype" thing.)
@LordShadowfire James Caan (who wasn’t Italian either) received much acclaim. [quote][quote]Caan ended up being so good in The Godfather that it convinced audiences he had Italian heritage, even though the actor was born to Jewish immigrants who left Germany and settled in New York.
His performance as Sonny Corleone got him voted New York's Italian of the Year on two separate occasions, with the actor explaining how it even got some people to close their doors to him.
He said: "I won Italian of the Year twice in New York, and I’m not Italian.
"I was denied in a country club once. Oh, yeah, the guy sat in front of the board, and he says, 'No, no, he’s a wiseguy, been downtown. He’s a made guy.' I thought, 'What? Are you out of your mind?'"
@LordShadowfire I'm sure a little research would uncover that. On one hand, the Italian mafia is exciting on some level - well-dressed gangsters with a strict code of honor. On the other, they make all Italians look bad. Brando's ethnicity takes a back seat to that.
I think most Native Americans are more upset about how they are portrayed in old westerns, than the fact that Iron Eyes Cody wasn't really an Indian.
I did check wiki, but I also remembered an interview I read with [b][b]Jocelyn[/b][/b] Brando (his sister) who gave the info I posted. Perhaps she didn’t know.
