How to deal with race-bending

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  • How to deal with race-bending

    I'll start with an example...

    Akira. A beloved property. Ideally, you'd cast an Asian lead actor. I'd love to think as a society, we're there. I get excited by diversity in film and tv, every time I see it. But Garrett Hedlund got cast, considered to be a bankable star. I imagine there were executives who would have loved to cast a bankable Asian actor in that role, but felt they couldn't find one or felt too limited. Maybe they tried. Maybe not. I don't know the story.

    But as writers who may adapt minority roles, it's easy to see how disheartening it can be to not get an actor that feels authentic to the character. All you have to do is read some threads that are terrified by the decision to make Kaneda from Akira a white dude.

    So if the studio says - this is the route we're going - what's the best way to handle it? If you're adapting a beloved property like an Akira, how would you go?

    In Departed, it was a complete adaptation, change of character, venue, and title name. (And it was a very successful film.)

    In Old Boy, it was a change of ethnicity, names. In Dragonball, a more awkward version, with a white lead playing a character with a Japanese name.

    Like I said, ideally you would cast authentically. But when your hand is forced and you have to adapt a beloved property, what would your take be?

  • #2
    Re: How to deal with race-bending

    What is "authentic" casting when you're talking about fictional characters?

    "The Departed" wasn't inauthentic because they recast white characters, because they wrote a story set in the U.S. Just because it was an adaptation of a story that wasn't doesn't seem to have any impact on that. I hardly see why it's relevant.

    On a certain level, this is like the people getting upset because a classically white comic book character is cast with a minority actor, despite the fact that the producers of the original comic book had a limited ability to create minority characters to begin with.

    Or, heck. Chiwetel Ejiofor is rumored to be the next Bond villain. Would you be opposed to casting him as the net Bond? I think that'd be awesome. It would require rethinking the character substantially, but we have to do that anyway (since the original character, I believe, served in WW2). You'd have to change the backstory (he certainly wouldn't have a coat of arms) but you could still get to a place of him being essentially Bond.

    And although I recognize that there's something less icky about a black Bond than there is about a white Akira because of cultural imperialism and all that, at some point it's the same approach, the same technique.

    I'm not familiar with Akira (I think I've seen it, but so long ago that I remember almost nothing about it, and anime has never really resonated with me) but I'd take the approach I'd take is this:

    Make choices that are consistent with the mandates you have to deal with, and respect the integrity of the character you're creating AND the character you're adapting. Recognize that they're not the same character. That is to say, if the character is from a rural farming town in Japan, you don't make him from Miami or New York, you make him from somewhere in Iowa. That's going to necessitate a huge number of different choices because Iowa is going to be fundamentally very different from rural Japan, but you can make choices on the outside that lead you to the same place on the inside.

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    • #3
      Re: How to deal with race-bending

      Originally posted by madworld View Post
      Like I said, ideally you would cast authentically. But when your hand is forced and you have to adapt a beloved property, what would your take be?
      You're not really "race-bending", are you? You're just changing the character in some ways, usually their origin/backstory, and adjusting the story to match. Leaving ethnicity aside, writers often have to make these kinds of changes anyway, when a different actor comes onto a project. A male character becomes female, an older character becomes younger, and so on.

      This is true even when the ethnicity of the old actor and new actor are the same. Take Deniro and Pacino, for example. They're both great Italian American actors, but they bring different things to the screen. A part written to exploit the strengths of one might not be best suited for the strengths of the other.

      In a broader sense, we're talking about the plot vs character conundrum. Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that plot comes entirely from character. Now that you have a different character, you make a different plot.

      Obviously, the plot can't change too much, because then you lose the story you're trying to translate to the screen. At the same time, the actions of the new character have to be entirely believable for what we know about that character in that situation. So the new character ends up making the same decisions and taking the same actions as the old character, but for reasons that are specific to her and her situation.
      If you really like it you can have the rights
      It could make a million for you overnight

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      • #4
        Re: How to deal with race-bending

        Thanks for the responses, very good points. Also, for the record, I'd love to see a black James Bond.

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        • #5
          Re: How to deal with race-bending

          This is just one of those things where you can't lay down any kind of coherent rules in advance. No matter what you do, someone's ox is getting gored (purist fans of the original IP, millions of underrepresented minority audience members, the right actress who nailed the audition, someone somewhere will ask why they couldn't've adjusted the race or gender or whatever else). And the contexts get to be so disparate I can't even compare. Take two extreme examples:

          The Star Wars prequels were causally continuous, so if Anakin and Padme had been cast as, say, South Asians, it would be distractive to the viewing audience to wonder how Fisher and Hamill could possibly be their kids.

          But in a full on remake, no one complains when the Scotsman is recast as Japanese in Throne of Blood, or the Indians from Dances With Wolves are replaced by Na'vi actors.

          For me personally, the skin tone change of Nick Fury was never an issue. I like the way he's played. My only complaint is that the iconography of that character was the eyepatch AND the salt & pepper sideburns, which an actor of any race or gender could have easily pulled off.

          But if you're a comics reader, you'll know they've taken the cinematic casting decision and relayed it back into the books, which has resulted in them having to continually hang a lampshade on the decision. Which is still distractive in its own way to some, since the books are part of a (sliding) continuity.

          I instantly dropped 47 Ronin off my radar when they cast a white dude, which, judging only from the trailer of a movie I will probably never see, is making no more nor less the same pandering, mercenary falsifications of the original material in its choice of adding CGI supernatural baddies as it is in its Reeves choice.

          All these are sort of rambling top of my head nonrepresentative samples meant to illustrate the general rule that there is no general rule here. If someone says "never race bend ever", they're wrong. If someone says, "Mike Myers in a fatsuit would have been exactly as good in the lead in Precious", they're wrong. There's a lot of in between.

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          • #6
            Re: How to deal with race-bending

            Originally posted by madworld View Post
            I imagine there were executives who would have loved to cast a bankable Asian actor in that role, but felt they couldn't find one or felt too limited. Maybe they tried. Maybe not. I don't know the story.

            So if the studio says - this is the route we're going - what's the best way to handle it?
            Actors are a bit like used cars (no disrespect intended). You get the best one you can, as close as possible to your preferred specifications, dependent on availability and price.

            Sometimes something as simple as scheduling can rule somebody out, sometimes marquee value is the deciding factor. Casting directors can have a big influence by making recommendations for the role and finding someone very suitable who doesn't exactly match your original brief.

            If the studio chooses a particular route, you can be fairly certain that's where it's going and there are only two practical ways to handle it. One is to accept it, the other is to guarantee someone better and affordable and available. These decisions are always made in the context of lots of other decisions - there are lots of balls being juggled at the same time and lots of things have to fall into alignment for a project to get off the ground. Race-bending is just one of many factors that come into play. Casting decisions are seldom ideal and often unexpected, and sometimes it's the unexpected chemistry that pays off and surprises everyone. As a general rule I would simply say that unless you are in an influential position or have a lot of leverage it's usually better to go with the flow in these situations or, as the Chinese say, bend with the wind.
            "Friends make the worst enemies." Frank Underwood

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            • #7
              Re: How to deal with race-bending

              How often are feature writers involved in casting decisions?

              Isn't the writer's job in this situation to write the best script possible for whoever has been cast?
              If you really like it you can have the rights
              It could make a million for you overnight

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              • #8
                Re: How to deal with race-bending

                Originally posted by odocoileus View Post
                How often are feature writers involved in casting decisions?
                Almost never.
                "Friends make the worst enemies." Frank Underwood

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