Fury over Black Hermione Granger

[Bedrockgames]

what isn't respectful though?

Will smith is a great actor... er well was a great actor, I admit his recent movies being hit or miss... there is no reason why if you are casting a charismatic and some what doffy but still loveable action character he can't play it. If the story doen't care if you are black or white why should the audience? Is it disrespect ful to get him to play you? I know that I would be flattered (as a white 35 year old dude) to be told my story was being brought to the screen by him...

My life wouldn't be much different if I were black, or Asian... some people would even say if I were a woman I would be the same person (depending on who with differing levels of being mean when saying it, but still).

now martin luther king isn't different because he is real... he is different because his race matters. Fighting for Black rights is his story...

I don't know if it is an issue of respect, but it is history. You are talking about something that actually happened and it is not terribly accurate if you change too many details (even if they don't seem like important details). In a history movie, using the wrong period sword or armor can leave a lasting impression that takes ages to undo (sometimes it is very effective though). I am not as picky about this stuff as I used to be, but still it would be nice if film makers tried to stay a little more accurate with this kind of stuff. I get that changes have to be made out of consideration for story. But you are genuinely going to confuse people if you make a major historical figure into a different sex or race when they try to learn about it after. If it is done skillfully for a particular purpose that makes sense, I can understand it. Also it does depend on the kind of film. If Tarantino is making a movie based on Billy the Kid and changes him to Wilma, that might be cool (and no one is expecting it to be an austere representation of the past), if Spielberg is making oscar fodder, I'd hope they wouldn't make that sort of alteration. If people were more well versed in history, I'd probably be less finicky here, but let's face it, most Americans are getting their history from film.

 

[Ryujin]

I would be a little put off if Dominic Flandry was played by someone other than a central Indian or perhaps Polynesian actor., as the books are rather explicit as to his physical appearance. I'm actually surprised, given the recent spate of SciFi action adventure movies, that no one seems to have optioned that series.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

While you are trying to get Max to look at the differences between them, it is also your responsibility to look at the similarities.

Similarities like both list comparing fiction characters to real people? Yeah, I noticed that.

The point was not whether they were real people or fictitious people, the point was that we have all become accustomed to the person because of the way they have been throughout the entirety of history, whether real life history or fictional history.

Hold on a second, let me get this straight. You "became accustomed" to Bruce Lee's and Martin Luther King's race?

So while changing the race of a real person in a movie is different than changing the race of a fictional person in a movie for the obvious reason, they are also similar in that in both they go against the established race of the character, whether because the person was born of a particular race [Bruce Lee] or was simply given that race in a comic book or whatever [Batman/Spiderman].

"Established race?" No, in Bruce Lee's and Martin Luther King's cases, it isn't "the established race of the character." It's the race of a person who was real. You don't "establish" their race. Martin Luther King was black. Bruce Lee was Asian.

Let me ask you this, why do you think a character like Batman, a comic book character made up in 1939, was White? Do you think he could as easily have been "established" as Black or Asian?

How about this; what does Batman's being White add to the story?

In fact, I would bet some people probably know more about the history of Batman or Spiderman than they actually do Bruce Lee despite him being a real person because they are more familiar with them.

Irrelevant. Your knowledge of a comic character is just your knowledge of a comic character. Various aspects of a comic book character can be changed, including race, to further some story element. In most cases, the character's race isn't an important part of the story, and changing it is trivial. Change Martin Luther King's race, and see if that affects his life. What he experienced in life. What he accomplished. What he became.

 

[Dog Moon]

With Bond I can understand people not wanting much deviation from the established type because that is a character that has been around forever and people have to buy the actor is Bond each time they change. Personally if the actor were good, a black james bond would be fine with me. But I get why there would be resistance to that kind of change. As I said earlier, Daniel Craig was a little jarring for people at first because he has slightly lighter hair than a typical Bond. Any change like that is going to be a risk. Maybe a risk that ought to be taken in the right conditions, but still a risk. I'm okay with such a change for Bond, but I don't think someone wanting Bond to stay kind of the same means they are being sexist or racist or anything like that.

To me that kind of thinking just strikes me as being overly rigid about canon. It is like when you go watch a movie based on a science fiction book and someone is there criticizing every little change from the source material. I don't want to see the same thing on the screen each time they remake something. Sometimes it is nice to have a series that follows source material well (especially for things like getting people into the books) but if I've already read the books, it isn't like I need to supplement that with a step by step reenactment on screen. I'd rather than translate the source material into something that fits the medium of film. That often requires changes.

But Hermione is very different from Bond. She has only been played by one actress so far, and it isn't like a 'type' has been established. The author herself says skin tone has nothing to do with the character, so it seems like she is much more of an open slate.

The thing is, Hermione has been played by a single actress, who happens to be white, since the first movie... which happened in 2001, FIFTEEN years ago. I mean, it isn't the same length of time as the seventy years of James Bond, but to me it seems like fifteen years is long enough to set a sort of precedent, to get a character that people are accustomed to seeing.

 

[Morrus]

The thing is, Hermione has been played by a single actress, who happens to be white, since the first movie... which happened in 2001, FIFTEEN years ago. I mean, it isn't the same length of time as the seventy years of James Bond, but to me it seems like fifteen years is long enough to set a sort of precedent, to get a character that people are accustomed to seeing.

Well, two now. And maybe in a few years there will be yet another actress playing the character.

Once upon a time only one guy had played Hamlet.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I would be a little put off if Dominic Flandry was played by someone other than a central Indian or perhaps Polynesian actor., as the books are rather explicit as to his physical appearance. I'm actually surprised, given the recent spate of SciFi action adventure movies, that no one seems to have optioned that series.

Those kinds of changes don't bother me, particularly in science fiction set in the future (where I could see the point of changing that sort of thing to any number of groups---in order to account for recent history for example). In that particular story, I can't think of a reason why one would make such a change of the top of my head though. To me it isn't all that important that the book material be followed to the letter if the writer and director have a compelling reason for making the change. My feeling is I want the person making the movie or show to follow their vision and give me something worth viewing. If that vision means a change in race, fine. If it means changes to the plot, I am fine with that as well. But a complete adherence to the original book is increasingly the last thing I am interested in.

 

[Dog Moon]

sometimes changing race/gender changes the story, and sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes that change is the point...


example... I write a story where in the early 1900's an irish immigrant faces lots of racial prejudice and NINA signs... I call this character John McCormic. A few years later someone takes and adapts the story to film (yea me I sold my book THEN sold the movie rights...) and they cast John Mccormic as an Asian woman. Does that change the story... yes it does. a few years later someone wants to adapt the movie in a reboot (yea now I have 2 movies... cool) and they cast a black actor and have it take place in 1963, it's a change but is that more or less then the last?


I would totally watch the hell out of a female 007. It's the year 2015...um almost 2016. If you say hire a 30 something actress she was born in the 70's, and was a teen ager in the late 80's early 90's and recruited to MI6 in the late 90's... I think we had very successful female spies by then...

imagine the hard drinking sexually premisquise psychopath with a licence to kill... is there anything that requires that to be male?


In a sexism thread a few months ago I did a whole gender flip thing with movies, and how you really odn't care the sex most of the time... in that I proposed a slight flip in the two star wars movies "empire strikes back" and "Retuern of the Jedi"
"Luke, obi wan never told you what happened to your parents..."
"He told me enough, he told me you killed them..."
"No luke... I am your mother..."
under the mechanics and suit it could be anyone. But then at the end of Jedi, luke in his fear and being beaten by the empereor calls out "Mother..."

I don't like this post. It seems to go away from the point of discussion. No one here is arguing that we don't like the change because we're racist. We don't like it only because it is different than how it was before. And most certainly sexism isn't at play here either.

I would have been just as happy if Darth Vader had been a woman originally instead of a man, but changing it for later episodes would not have been right. But can you imagine in the newest movie if instead of "Grandfather Vader" they would have said "Grandmother Vader"? It's that CHANGE, not the fact that it would have been changed to female, is the problem at hand.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The thing is, Hermione has been played by a single actress, who happens to be white, since the first movie... which happened in 2001, FIFTEEN years ago. I mean, it isn't the same length of time as the seventy years of James Bond, but to me it seems like fifteen years is long enough to set a sort of precedent, to get a character that people are accustomed to seeing.

I think these are very different things. Yes that was a long series, but it was just one contained piece. I didn't see it as them setting precedence for how each for these characters must be portrayed in perpetuity. James Bond has changed actors multiple times and they always go for a similar look. That establishes a pattern in peoples mind (so when they proposed Craig, I was a little taken aback by his hair color). When I saw this Hermione, I had no trouble believing in the character because it wasn't like we had a bunch of different actresses playing the role over the years establishing a clear type.

 

[Ryujin]

Those kinds of changes don't bother me, particularly in science fiction set in the future (where I could see the point of changing that sort of thing to any number of groups---in order to account for recent history for example). In that particular story, I can't think of a reason why one would make such a change of the top of my head though. To me it isn't all that important that the book material be followed to the letter if the writer and director have a compelling reason for making the change. My feeling is I want the person making the movie or show to follow their vision and give me something worth viewing. If that vision means a change in race, fine. If it means changes to the plot, I am fine with that as well. But a complete adherence to the original book is increasingly the last thing I am interested in.

I can't speak for others, but for me Flandry's appearance is one of the central themes of the stories. He is an amalgam of all the dominant traits of the various human 'races.' He is the unity of Earth, made manifest in flesh. To take that away removes something very important.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I can't speak for others, but for me Flandry's appearance is one of the central themes of the stories. He is an amalgam of all the dominant traits of the various human 'races.' He is the unity of Earth, made manifest in flesh. To take that away removes something very important.

Which is why I said I can't think of a good reason for making the change off the top of my head. Still I don't want to discount the possibility out of hand. A director may have an interesting take or an unusual point that necessitates changing that very aspect of the story. I see source material as a source of inspiration for film, but I don't think the purpose is to replicate it. Someone may want to use the story to same something new and that is cool by me.