Worst case of a character changing race?

Ripcord was made black for the live action GIJoe movie. When they rebooted the comics and made a new cartoon they based the Ripcord off of the live action one rather than the original.

 

I understand that, sometimes, whitewashing has to happen in movies because they can't find enough actors of other races to fill the appropriate roles. And, honestly, I don't mind if they make a previously white character black, because as I see it, it's a form of affirmative action. Who complained when they made Nick Fury black for the Marvel movies? Not this guy, that's for sure. (Getting off the subject for a moment, wouldn't it be awesome to see both the white and black Nick Fury in an upcoming Avengers movie?)

The reason I voted "Other" is because of a pet peeve of mine when it comes to whitewashing in movies: Jesus was not white. At all. And nobody in the Middle East at that time spoke with a British accent. I was watching The Bible on the History channel (which is already on shaky ground as far as historical accuracy goes these days), and I absolutely could not get over the fact that everyone spoke with a British accent. There was a scene where Judas was negotiating his pay for outing Jesus, and I turned to my wife and said, very plainly, "I can't take this anymore. My suspension of disbelief has been stretched too thin. Turn it off."

I understand that perhaps Aramaic is not the easiest language to learn, or translate, but would it be too much to ask to not have everyone be British? Perhaps throw in an Israeli or Iranian, or I dunno...a Palestinian accent. Anything would be closer than f-n British.

 

Yeah, I find the portrayal of Jesus as a white guy strange too; It's so common in popular culture that it's become the norm, despite the fact that if you stopped and thought about it for a minute, it is completely ridiculous. It would be quite interesting to see how it came about; my guess would be that it was done to make Jesus more relatable to Westerners.

 

It's not the fact that the new Annie is black that bugs me, so much as it is her not being a redhead.

 

It's really only in the last couple of decades that Jesus has been depicted in a historically accurate manner.

For hundreds of years, he was depicted in paintings as having blonde hair and blue eyes, presumably to make it easier for European Christians to identify with him.

 

Correct. Even in many modern depictions this is so.

 

Hey, I thought it was funny.

+1 for joke

 

I'm not saying that I'm upset because the characters are portrayed as being white, I'm saying that I find it annoying that it seems like everyone speaks with a British accent when there are a dozen or more better accents they could use.

For instance, when you watch a movie that takes place in Germany, the actors speak English, but with a German accent. In France, the speak with a French accent, and so on. I don't even mind that they're speaking English, as I'm one of those people who don't really like reading subtitles, I just think that they could use a better accent is all.

 

I just realized how silly this sounds. Tolkien had a specific language that was the equivalent of English in Middle-Earth, which he referred to as the Common Tongue in his writings. That language coincidentally parallels English in the same way that Basic from Star Wars does.

 

Not only is that not the most accurate way of saying that, but wow was that ever condescending.

The Common Tongue is not just "supposed to sound" like English, it is supposed to translate perfectly to English, meaning that it contains all of English's necessary grammar, parts of speech and even many of its idioms and set phrases. The Common Tongue is therefore likely a different collection of sounds than English but arranged using the same structure (which is evident because other languages encounter various grammatical and connotative difficulties when translating to English). It is, therefore, a perfect translation, and thus it is quite ridiculous to insist that all Middle-Earth writings, films and performances use the Common Tongue over English, since they are functionally identical in their communicative patterns.

This is different than suggesting that German films, for example, might gain something by being recording using German only as opposed to English. If the characters are speaking German, then a speaker who does not speak German but instead reads subtitles will always lose some portion of the meaning or context. This is because the translations are not perfect. Now, this does not make the films more inclusive (quite the opposite) but principles of inclusion and exclusion are a huge part of what governs communication through language. I imagine most people would rather feel informed than ignorant, and subtitles or translations can be helpful for this. But you will nearly always lose a portion of the meaning. This can even happen within the context of two speakers speaking the same language but applying different connotations to their words.

Your analogy was poor. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with using translations, but if you're going to use them it can also be important to talk about their difficiencies and learn from them.


EDIT: For the sake of clarity, let me just say that my viewpoint is somewhere in-between yours and the view of the person you responded to, but I think your comment about Middle-Earth was as false of an analogy as there ever was. Your original response didn't really even observe the key point that the person you responded to was trying to make about diversity in cinema, especially since Middle-Earth is a fantasy universe anyway.

 

This bull**** movie:



The worst part is that this crap may actually get a sequel.

 

^^^

QFT

 

Sorry, but you don't get to be that condescending and then tell the person you offended to chill.

You were the rude one.