[keepper]

>Another example is the new Disney's Pinocchio, were the Blue Fairy is portrait by a black woman. The problem is not that she is black of course. but that the original story is set in Italy, Tuscany, mid 1800, were no black woman was ever seen

It’s quite clear that that is YOUR problem. It’s funny when people like yourself claim “I’m not X” while then clear laying the case.

And for the récord, i hope you open up a geography book. There’s been black people in Italy for pretty much all it’s history. You may want to also read a few history books. (Black moors, Alessandro de' Medici, etc )

Also, can people just chill with this racist crap. It’s freaking art, up to interpretation. An actor can be of any race or gender. Get over it.

[oblio]

> There’s been black people in Italy for pretty much all it’s history. You may want to also read a few history books. (Black moors, Alessandro de' Medici, etc )

I hate this argument because it's disingenuous. It's in great part a lie and undermines the push for diversity.

Just because there were 1-2-5-100, in major cities, in countries with populations of millions, didn't make them common and frankly more than a curiosity people would gawk at everywhere except for their immediate residential area.

The vast majority of people until 1900 or so lived and died within 100km from where they were born, most likely a village.

The average Congolese in 1700 died without ever seeing a European or a Chinese person.

The average Chinese in 1700 died without ever seeing an African or European.

The average European in 1700 died without ever seeing an African or Chinese person.

Heck, even today, go to poorer and less developed countries and tell me how many outsiders from far away you see. Moldova, Belarus, Tadjikistan, etc.

[amanaplanacanal]

It would be a sad world if we judged all of our entertainment by how close they were to “average”.

[oblio]

I don't mind character switches and such in media, but reaching a point in conversation like the one above, where the comment I'm replying to is asking everyone to RTFM history books to discover this supposedly hidden massive diversity in the Middle Ages is frankly, just a bad comment.

[Bakary]

Racism certainly plays a big part in the frequency of such complaints, but it nonetheless raises some important questions.

Ultimately, nobody really, genuinely holds the opinion that an actor can be of any appearance for any role. There will always be exceptions that will break their immersion, because unlike with theatre there is the expectation that the movie is WYSIWYG.

To give an extreme example, would you be completely undisturbed if the main character in 12 years a Slave was portrayed by John Malkovich? Or if a Jewish camp inmate in Schindler's list was portrayed as a black person? I don't think either example would sit well with the vast majority of people, no matter how racist or not racist they might be.

That's why pointing out that black people did exist in Italy is correct but beaide the point. The real debate is around the acceptability of certain expectations, and what determines the criteria for this acceptability.

[throw-away_42]

> [would you be completely undisturbed] if a Jewish camp inmate in Schindler's list was portrayed as a black person?

Why would you be disturbed in the slightest? Hitler hated blacks, and yes, some WERE actually in concentration camps:

"Although no exact figures exist, it is known that a significant number of black people were detained in concentration camps and forced labour camps during the Nazi reign, and that many were murdered. Nonetheless, there seems to be little interest in Hitler’s black victims. Their plight is not talked about enough. This is partly because unlike Jews, Roma and Sinti, black people were not marked for destruction. But they were denied their human rights, sterilised, persecuted, experimented upon and murdered in camps."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/27/black-...

[Bakary]

I am aware of this historical reality, but note that I specifically mentioned a Jewish camp inmate. Now, you might say that it's entirely possible that an Ethiopian Jew, somewhere somehow, was caught in the Holocaust's net and shot by Amon Göth, but let's be honest, we would be verging on bad faith argumentation at this point.

Taking the example even further, what about a specific Jewish inmate whose appearance is solidly documented an in the popular imagination, such as Anne Frank?

Ultimately, some expectations are seen as socially acceptable, others are not. But there are always expectations.

[satyrnein]

I was surprised to learn (about myself at least) that this isn't really true, when I saw the musical Hamilton. Of course, the characters also break out into song, etc.

[Bakary]

Well that is to be expected, because much like theatre musicals don't have that WISYWIG immersion expectation at all.

To test your belief, it would make more sense to picture a "serious" historical movie where the actors portraying the founding fathers don't look much at all like the faces on the dollar bills.

[satyrnein]

Not quite that level, but plenty of people seem fine with Bridgerton swapping the race of its characters, which I believe is otherwise a standard period drama.

[peoplefromibiza]

> It’s quite clear that that is YOUR problem. It’s funny when people like yourself claim “I’m not X” while then clear laying the case.

if you don't see a problem in changing someone else's literature and culture (I am Italian and have read Pinocchio since I was a kid) than you probably don't know what respect for different cultures is.

I would never think of a movie were Kunta Kinte is Dutch and is portrait by Chris Hemsworth.

Would you?

Also: my favourite roman emperor is

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septimius_Severus

He was black.

But in the small village in Tuscany of 1800 depicted in Pinocchio there were no black people, I can assure you.

[brobinson]

>He was black.

A quick search shows results saying his ancestors were all from northern Africa and the Middle East. He doesn't even look black in various busts/statues depicting him. He definitely looks north African. I'm pretty into Roman history, and this is the first time I've ever encountered someone suggesting there was a "black" (in the modern sense of the word) emperor.

[Amezarak]

Not commenting on Severus specifically, I’ve noticed that it seems really common in modern times for some reason for people to believe “white” means European, even though “white” people lived indigenously throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia - including people with blue eyes or red/blonde hair.

Similarly, “African” is for some reason taken to exclusively mean “sub-Saharan” even though as you note most people would not identify most North African ethnic groups as black.

[rendall]

Don't worry, it's not you. People who are quick to call someone racist are nearly always struggling internally with their own racism. To their credit they feel quite a lot of shame about that, but until it's resolved they can be quite unpleasant.

[burnished]

Let me offer a different perspective: the complaint is inconsistent and solely focused on race, which makes it appear racist.

[rendall]

I think GP is not arguing his case well, especially not to Americans, who come with a preset cluster of expectations and arcane protocols to signal that we "get it".

And, sure, anti-Black racism might be his prime motivation. But, just assuming it's so, when someone questions American appropriation of his own culture's literary traditions is ... it's frankly imperialist.

"Americans agree: Italian who questions American depictions of Italian cultural traditions is just a bigot"

Have a bit more charity.

[mcphage]

The only part of the depiction he’s complaining about is race, though.

[rendall]

Dunno. Ask. Listen. Be humble.

Have a hypothesis and then do your best to falsify that. Give him all of the charity he needs to refute your guess that he's a bigot.

"So you say that there is a convention in Italian literature of depicting other-worldly beings as having freakishly white skin. Would you be ok with the Pinocchio reboot if the same African-descended actress portrayed the fairy, but were instead made up with freakishly white skin?"

If he doesn't refute your generous chances, then guess what? You found a bigot. Congratulations.

If everyone were more parsimonious about it, calling someone a racist or white supremacist or a Nazi would actually have some meaning again. At this point it's just coming to mean "This person disagrees with me and I don't like it".

Remember, these depictions are intended to be immersive. If some element reminds the watcher that they are watching a story, and they find it difficult to suspend their disbelief, they're not going to like it. That could mean an actor with clearly incorrect ancestry for the role.

For example, in the real world, a rural village of people whose ancestors have been in the same region for hundreds or thousands of years are going to look a lot alike. This is why Finns do not look like Khoisan. Everyone knows this. No one has a problem with this.

If your fantasy setting has human beings (or humanoid beings) living for generations together in a small rural village, and you just throw a bunch of different real-world ancestries in there, a Khoisan burgher and a Finnish tavern keeper, that's going to need some kind of explanation. Highlighting that as a problem isn't automagically racist. Maybe it's "magic world" and people there just have that kind of reproductive variability. Cool. Whatever it is, it needs a reason. But without that, it comes off as immersion-disrupting tokenism.

So, no, I don't think "focusing on race" is an automatic signifier of racism.

[peoplefromibiza]

> The only part of the depiction he’s complaining about is race

Am I?

Are you sure?

Can you quote me on that please?

The blue fairy is an important part of my culture, at least for me.

If someones rewrites it using all the power of a conglomerate like Disney, that puts at risk our shared culture and heritage.

For me she's gonna be a woman with blue air, for someone younger it will be a bald black woman, that has no direct representation in the society where I live.

I don't care who the actress is or what the color of her skin is, it's just not the "Fata Turchina", it's another character.

Simple as that.

Try doing that with Sherlock Holmes and see what happens.

What would happen if a Chinese company made a movie where Martin Luther King is an Albanian immigrant who came to Italy with the Vlora ship in 1991 to become a supporter of immigrants rights and got killed by a mobster in a fight over a pool game?

[tzs]

> I would never think of a movie were Kunta Kinte is Dutch and is portrait by Chris Hemsworth

Kunta Kinte was a slave in a story that heavily dealt with slavery, set in a time and setting where slavery was race-based, for an audience somewhat familiar with the history of that time and setting.

If you made him Dutch and portrayed by Chris Hemsworth you'd have to include in your movie all kinds of extra exposition and world building to set the background for the story.

Most of the race changes people have mentioned so far did not involve characters where their race was either important to the story or to reducing the amount of exposition and world building you need to convey the story's context to the audience.

[pvaldes]

Not dutch, but Chris Hemsworth could perfectly fit in the role of a --slavic-- people in an history of slavery. The first slaves with that name where white. In this particular case the history is easily translatable to a different location.

[peoplefromibiza]

> did not involve characters where their race was either important to

I think the appearances of a character is quite important if the author took the time to describe it, don't you think?

Would a Little women adaptation where the three women are two trans gender people, one Black, one Asian and one South American person that identifies as woman, be a good idea?

We all know what "Little women" is about, we all expect that, not something else completely unrelated to the original IP.

Why isn't Jay Gatsby black in the movies and only black people in the book are also black in the movie?

Want my opinion?

People are making a big fuss about the ethnicity of actors, but I'm more inclined to think that Disney's worried about another failure like Tim Burton's Dumbo (the original Dumbo is considered unacceptable by today's standards and people staid away from the new one) and is playing it safe with a story (Pinocchio) that has no such bad legacy attached. it's so safe that there's even a "project Pinocchio" in my country against racism in schools.

> If you made him Dutch and portrayed by Chris Hemsworth you'd have to include in your movie all kinds of extra exposition and world building to set the background for the story.

That's exactly my point.

A black fairy is not an issue because she is black, but because it's a plot hole that the original story don't have.

[tzs]

>> If you made him Dutch and portrayed by Chris Hemsworth you'd have to include in your movie all kinds of extra exposition and world building to set the background for the story.

> That's exactly my point.

> A black fairy is not an issue because she is black, but because it's a plot hole that the original story don't have.

I just watched a couple trailers for the new Pinocchio movie and they included a scene with the fairy.

She's dressed in glowing white sparkly clothes, has translucent sparkly wings, a wand with a star on the end that is clearly a magic wand, is surrounded by sparkles, transfigured Pinocchio, and it looks like she travels in some sort of amorphous flowing light blob.

The amount of extra exposition and world building needed to let the audience know that the character is a fairy is zero.

Here's a photo [1].

[1] https://www.instyle.com/news/cynthia-erivo-blue-fairy-live-a...

[pvaldes]

The black bald fairy is just a stunt to create fake controversy, to sell tickets.

And if any children read this, let me tell you that either you run to ask money to your parents and go to itchy and scratchy land, or you are a bunch of little racists. You are warned. Gimme money.

[treis]

>But in the small village in Tuscany of 1800 depicted in Pinocchio there were no black people, I can assure you.

Probably not many English speakers either.

[wizofaus]

Or fairies. Or talking puppets.

[nec4b]

Septimius Severus was not black. He may had darker skin, but was not sub Saharan black.

[keepper]

So you’re now equating a pseudo historical character with a children’s book?

Oh brother…

I was not born in Italy, but I am of Italian descent btw. Not sure why that matters, but it probably does to you :-/

Also, I guess you mean only true northern Italians can play the character lol why don’t you phrase it like that as well. See how absurd it sounds?

[peoplefromibiza]

> So you’re now equating a pseudo historical character with a children’s book?

So you're not aware that Pinocchio is a metaphorical book about Italian society and the need for free, universal, public schools in Italy?

> only true northern Italians

"true northern Italians" do not exist.

They are like any other Italian.

It is absurd to think the contrary.

Probably even "Italian" as a distinct ethnicity doesn't exist.

Collodi is part of our culture, the blue fairy is part of our culture, we don't identify with her because she's white, but because she's good.

[fttx_]

I think you're right. Italian is not an ethnicity. Italy hasn't been a unified political entity for very long. There are Italians from all sorts of different ethnicities and races. Would it be okay for a Black person to play this role if they were Italian? If not, why is it okay for non-Italian white actors to play other roles?

Is a Corsican person Italian? Is an Italian-American? Is Mario Balotelli (for example)? Why does any of this matter?

[sensanaty]

> There’s been black people in Italy for pretty much all it’s history. You may want to also read a few history books. (Black moors, Alessandro de' Medici, etc )

I've always hated this disingenuous line of arguing. Yes, technically there were some black people in Italy, but these types of arguments always frame it in such a way that it seems like it was a common thing to witness for the average citizen. The large, large majority of Italians (we're talking in the past obviously) have never seen anything other than other Italians, and those few foreign black people were very much a rarity.

Hell, go to places like Serbia today as a black man and you'll be gawked at like you're an alien, even in the capital Belgrade, yet alone in the smaller cities. Or do the flipside, go to a remote part of a country like Indonesia as a white man, like a random village in Papua or even a city like Jogja (and it's not exactly a small or unpopular city either), and you'll similarly be gawked at.

I'm a Serb (so corpse-white when I don't tan) but lived in Indonesia my whole life, I can't tell you the number of times I've been in situations where people have looked at me in fascination because of my white skin, even in places where tourists are common. If you go to Borobudur as a white person, you're going to be asked to have your picture taken by a dozen curious Indonesians who have never in their lives seen a white person in real life, and this is a massively popular tourist spot in a pretty massive city with plenty of foreigners coming and going.

So sure, there were some black people in Italy, but let's not pretend like that was anywhere near the norm or something you could expect to see every day in 1700s Italy as an average Italian.

[wizofaus]

"go to places like Serbia today as a black man and you'll be gawked at like you're an alien"

But don't you agree this is something we should be trying to improve, and we could do so by ensuring that movie casting better reflects the more racially diverse situation we enjoy in the developed world (who produce much content exported to less diverse parts of the world)?

[sensanaty]

No amount of seeing black characters in a movie or show (or the flipside in Indonesia, seeing non-asian characters) is gonna make it any less strange for people when they spot them in real life if the reality for them is that every single person they ever interact with in their day-to-day lives looks like them.

I also don't see what exactly you're improving here either. Most people outside of the West that I've met don't care about diversity, at least not in the way American leftists seem to portray it. In my eyes, that Hollywood cast of elites making millions off of acting are all the same type of person regardless of their gender, skin color or any of the other superficial traits people usually judge diversity by, and I can relate to them as much as I can relate to a mosquito. Likewise, I might be Serbian by blood, but I feel about as Serbian as you probably do, considering I was born and have grown up in Indonesia. I relate more to Indonesians and stories revolving around Indonesia than I do anything coming out of the West (the influence of the Internet notwithstanding), yet by all superficial standards I definitely wouldn't be considered "diverse" enough for a lot of things considering I'm just another corpse-white dude.

I guess my point is that the US, and especially the Liberal/Hollywood idea of diversity isn't anything like what my friends and I would consider diverse at all, and I suspect a lot of people in the real world feel very similarly, though that's obviously hopeful conjecture on my part. I'll take my friend group consisting of every nationality that exists (and a lot of them are dual nationalities as well!) who have white skin color over the same number of Americans of every shade of the rainbow any day of the week if you ask me to make the most diverse crowd of people possible.

[wizofaus]

I'm not I entirely agree that frequently witnessing racial diversity in movies isn't going to affect the way you react to what you might see in your own neighbourhood. Our perceptions of what's "normal" absolutely are shaped by cultural norms and they can be spread by literature, TV and film as much as they can by lived experience. I'm a bit baffled by your description of a group of friends from "every nationality that exists" but all being white skinned - how on earth does that even happen? FWIW I'm not American but I have grown up surrounded by friends and colleagues from all over the world, and they very much do have a variety of skin colours, eye colours/shapes, and other superficial features that mark them as coming from various ethnic/racial backgrounds. There's literally no racial appearance it would be at all surprising to see featured among those in my suburb (e.g. there's a significant population of Somalians, who have very distinctive features, but plenty with an obviously Mediterranean background, likewise Chinese, Vietnamese, subcontinental etc. among a slight majority from the more obviously northern European ancestry that I share). I certainly would have found the experience of going to, e.g. Japan and seeing almost nothing but ethnic Japanese quite unnerving if I hadn't had some exposure to that reality via TV and/or movies beforehand. When I do watch movies or TV shows made in the US that somehow manage to avoid casting anyone who isn't white in a substantial role it's hard not imagine that somehow the producers/casting agents felt uncomfortable about living in a multi-racial world and were subconsciously trying to project a world that only existed in their imaginations.