I wouldn't give a monkeys about any of these things you've suggested there.
Yeah. Sure you wouldn't. This type of thing is so obviously hypocritical, and one way, that
right now Gal Gadot is under fire for playing Cleopatra in an upcoming movie
even though Cleopatra was white. She and her family were not native Egyptians, they were Greek/Macedonian. But a white-skinned actress is playing an Egyptian queen and REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! WHITEWASHING!!!
We're not "triggered" by the prospect of POC playing white characters we're fed up. We're tired of the forced diversity, and the fact that it's
entirely a one way street. Let Gal Gadot play Cleopatra, or Scarlett Johansson play a Japanese manga character, or a transgender man, and the shaming begins. Let a black actress play Anne Boleyn or a black actor play Achilles, and how dare you object you racist! It's a double standard, and it's an
obvious double standard.
No amount of justification, like this absurd argument of yours will erase the very obvious fact of it's being a double standard, and yes, we're tired of the hypocrisy.
Robert Eggers is known for making films that are accurate down to the fine details. It's very much his trademark. Even the cloak pins on the costumes have to be just so. He even explicitly stated this aim in an interview at the London premiere "There really hasn't been an accurate Viking movie ever before, and I was working with the greatest historians and archaeologists in the field and, one thing is for sure, this is the most accurate Viking movie that's ever been made."
Guess what? The people being "triggered" are the ones demanding a director abandon his
signature stylistic touch --
strict historical accuracy -- for the sake of forced diversity.
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FootOfDavros (8238)
3 years ago
mmm, I don't know - that's a fairly lengthy response for someone not being triggered much...
Anyway, perhaps, given all your deflective blacks being replaced by whites comments, you've misunderstood the people I am lampooning. It's not that they don't want to see historical white leads replaced, it's that they don't want to see any blacks in their films whatsoever. No even a minor role as that would ruin their experience.
It's a kind of funny modern take on when people used to say "It's not that I'm racist, I just don't want them living in my neighborhood.
So to be fair maybe you aren't quite like that (?) given your worries on losing leading white roles...
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Darren (1344)
3 years ago
that's a fairly lengthy response for someone not being triggered much...
And that's a fairly arrogant and presumptuous comment for someone who's already been provided an alternate explanation.
No even a minor role as that would ruin their experience.
Yeah, a black actor in even a minor role
would ruin this experience, because the film is set in Viking Age Scandinavia,
and there were no blacks there. It ruins verisimilitude. Now if you want to set a film in the same period -- let's say a biopic about Norwegian King Harald Hardrada, who as a young man served in the Varangian Guard in Constantinople, then the crossroads of the world -- and there have him encounter blacks from sub-Saharan Africa, Arabs, Persians, central Asian peoples, etc. Great. That fits. It's historically accurate.
It's a kind of funny modern take on when people used to say "It's not that I'm racist, I just don't want them living in my neighborhood.
No it isn't. Wanting historical accuracy is not racist. I don't want to see black characters in Viking Norway or Iceland,
because it's wrong for the period, and I didn't want to see Keanu Reeves in "47 Ronin" for the same reason. And being told we are racist for wanting historical accuracy is, in fact, one of the very things that people are so sick and tired of.
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FootOfDavros (8238)
3 years ago
How about gender swapping in Shakespearian works? That's pretty common. Is that something you're dead against?
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Darren (1344)
3 years ago
Not comparable. You're comparing cheese and chalk. Yes, I know the female parts were all played by male actors in Shakespeare's day. They also did in ancient Greece, Qing dynasty China, and Japanese kabuki (where men still play the female parts). That's because acting was considered a highly disreputable profession, and not suitable for women, hence, it was illegal for women to act on stage in England until 1660. That's a question of particular societies' notions of public morality, not historical accuracy.
The actors playing the roles may have been male, but the characters were female. And since our society is not plagued with puritanical moral ideas about acting as a profession, there is no reason to follow that custom, and indeed, good reason not to follow it: accuracy. Women are women, and should be played by women on screen or stage.
That said, when the replica of the Globe Theater was built in London, they did take the opportunity to stage plays with "original practices" and hired boys to play the female roles, just as in Elizabethan times (and replicate the stage direction, lack of stage dressing, etc. as well). As an immersive experiment, to see plays just as Elizabethan audiences would have experienced them, that's great. Not something we need to readopt across the board though.
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FootOfDavros (8238)
3 years ago
So, history aside, you don't have an issue with that?
As an immersive experiment, to see plays just as Elizabethan audiences would have experienced them, that's great.
But only immersive in terms of imagining what it would have been like "back in the day"? i.e. You couldn't be immersed in the theatrical experience purely in it's own right?
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Darren (1344)
3 years ago
No, history aside, I don't have a problem with that. I like and want historical accuracy in movies. I notice when the details are wrong, and it pulls me out of the film. Take another Viking movie: "The 13th Warrior." Overall, I enjoyed the film, despite its flaws, but I noticed that the swords used by the Viking characters were much cruder in appearance than historical ones really were, and I really noticed that one character wore a 17th century-style breastplate, and another one had (so help me!) a Roman gladiator's helmet! In the recent TV series "Vikings" and "The Last Kingdom" the details of costumes, weapons, etc. are so off base that I find it really frustrating. I know what these eras are supposed to look like and I'd like to see them depicted properly.
That's why I'm pleased to see Robert Eggers is apparently being over backward to get these details correct. But I have a master's degree in history, and my thesis was about the Viking settlements of the British Isles, so I'm apt to catch a lot of mistakes that would fly right over the heads of general audiences.
But you know what kind of mistake anyone can spot, one no one needs a degree for? A totally anachronistic, race-swapped character. I'm sure there are some actual racists who object on racist grounds, but most of us in the audience are simply frustrated at the inaccuracy, especially because it is so clearly one-way, and so clearly politically motivated. Woke politics are invading our entertainment, and we don't want that.
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FootOfDavros (8238)
3 years ago
Sorry, this is beginning to get too thin now.
Thanks for your thoughts though, I do find it very interesting to get one's psychological take on this, how one could watch and be immersed in gender swapped historical plays - which I guess anyone should be able to because if the drama is compelling enough it becomes about character rather than race, sex, whatever...
But I do find this a key comment:-
Woke politics are invading our entertainment, and we don't want that.
Entertainment in particular being the key word.
From what I understand this film is very much an action entertainment, with a particularly stylised color palette to boot. Different if we were talking a documentary take but personally I just can't wrap my head around for this "historical accuracy" requirement in specifically this type of production.
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Darren (1344)
3 years ago
Entertainment comes in great variety. Different artists prioritize different aspects. Robert Eggers prizes fine-detail historical accuracy. I like that, so his work appeals to me on that score. I don't care about race in and of itself, and I don't need characters to look like me to "feel represented." One of my favorite action movies is "Apocalypto," and not only am I fine with the fact that the protagonist is a "POC" despite my being white, if the actor were not someone who could physically pass for a 16th century Mesoamerican, that would bother me, because it would be historically wrong. Likewise, when I watch a Kurosawa film, I don't find my enjoyment diminished because the characters are all Japanese and I'm not. My enjoyment of "47 Ronin" was diminished because they so obviously shoehorned a non-Japanese character into this quintessentially Japanese story, where he flat out didn't belong (though the reason here was not political, just to get a Hollywood movie star in).
Personally, what I can't wrap my head around is people having a problem with prioritizing historical accuracy in historical films. That really makes no sense at all from my point of view.
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FootOfDavros (8238)
3 years ago
Personally, what I can't wrap my head around is people having a problem with prioritizing historical accuracy in historical films. That really makes no sense at all from my point of view.
Yeah, I guess that's the key difference.
If you were talking a historical video being produced for the Viking Visitors Centre in Oslo or somewhere then yeah maybe I could see the validity of such an argument perhaps.
But for a blockbuster Hollywood action production with quite a few star names it's a different matter.
Not that I'm arguing that there should have to be diversity in the casting, simply that to claim the converse is required seems somewhat disingenuous.
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Darren (1344)
3 years ago
But this is the first of Eggers's movies that might have blockbuster status. His previous films "The Witch" and "The Lighthouse," were fairly small budget, and were art films. I've read that the initial cuts of this movie was not well received, because it was more esoteric and harder for general audiences enjoy. When one test audience member wrote "You need to have a masterβs degree in Viking history to understand, like, anything in this movie," Eggers said he responded with βLike, ahhh, fuck.β (Lucky for me, it just so happens I do have one of those.)
The studio put up a lot of money this time, and they wanted something with the appeal of "Braveheart" or "Gladiator," and it needs to have that kind of popular appeal to make back its budget plus a profit, so apparently they re-edited the film to make it a bit more accessible, and early reviews are very good, so I am hopeful. But at bottom, this is the production of an auteur director who really, really likes to go for detailed, rigorous, painstakingly researched historical accuracy, and if he can deliver that, as well as really great, enjoyable entertainment, that is just qualitatively better.
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