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There are different ways of making historical productions. It depends on how sincere you want to be. Hamilton featured an all black cast but was superb because it wasn't meant to be a sincere portrayal. Operas have long been diverse in casting because it was the music that mattered. Shakespeare has always been about poetry, not casting.
But many people watch historical dramas because they enjoy watching the past brought to life. Accuracy is important. Just as we wouldn't believe the existence of a car in the 18th century, throwing in very different races in an all-white world also isn't believable. It becomes fantasy, but it's history, not fantasy, that attracts people like me to historical dramas or productions.
While Bridgerton has always made clear it's fantasy, there's been a significant push to diversify historical productions in the last decade, especially the last few years. On a certain level I understand why for in today's diverse world it's a bit unfair to make productions of the 19th century or earlier that are all white as it excludes non-white actors. But the attempt at throwing in minority figures into different times is also a form of "whitewashing" history to satisfy woke sensibilities, which includes these revisionist history books like Black Tudors and so forth.
I am now starting to hear impressionable people passionately claim that there were big populations of Africans in old England that were entirely ignored (nope, sorry, the occasional black/Moor trader or visitor doesn't mean a hidden population of Africans, just as there were no hidden populations of white traders or settlers in pre 17th century Africa or India or China). A growing number of impressionable people now genuinely believe Queen Charlotte was black due to Bridgerton.... which is utterly laughable given the claims of her African ancestry rests upon an ancestor who died 500 years before she was born.... that's how bad it's become.
The simple reality is that countries like Britain were extremely white just as China is extremely Asian. The 1940 census in Britain was the first to ask for race and counted less than 40,000 non-whites in the entire country, out of a population of 40 million. That puts things in perspective.
And the woke whitewashing of history results in portraying everything on racial terms, which means it ends up glossing over the real dividing factors of the past. For most of European history it was religion that divided people. Catholic versus Protestant meant everything and was far more important than even race (if because race just didn't exist in a meaningful sense due to the lack of non-whites). And class, of course. Class was very pervasive and divided people bitterly. But watching most of these historical productions you now barely see any of these real and heavily meaningful issues that dominated and divided people. How many of today's woke youngsters even know that having a Catholic president was still anathema to so many Americans in the 1960s and that Kennedy had to publicly explain his faith on television to assure people the Pope wouldn't dominate his presidency? Very few, I'm sure, because all they care about is black versus white.
It doesn't mean that one can't have a non-white role in an European historical drama, but if it's not accurately done, it means it's not accurate, just fantasy. It's when the attempt to make it serious while also having black roles without showing any of the racial implications that were very real that is when these productions fall flat. It's hard for me to watch a Dickens production with the token minority candidate who is treated no differently because that's is historically not true. A production that does show accurate portrayals of how non-whites were treated is truthful.
My other problem with diverse casting is that it's not equally done. No one would dare attempt a diverse casting in a movie about an African tribe. No one would dare diverse casting in a movie about the imperial Chinese court. So there's definitely double standards involved.
Truth be told, it's been a long time since good historical productions were made, probably the 1980s/early 1990s were the peak because accuracy was clearly something meaningful and sincere on the part of the producers (BBC productions in particular). But by the late 1990s standards were already starting to slip. The first changes had to do with women. You now no longer could have accurate portrayals of women, they all had to be feisty feminists challenging male authority and so forth. And I suppose this racial diversity is the new version of it.
But what can you say. Woke people rarely care for truth and accuracy.
When the kids were young I took them to our University's production of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" one October. It startled me when Dr. Van Helsing from the Netherlands spoke his first line with a thick Asian accent.
I can do the mental gymnastics. Holland, East Asia. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Or deserving theater student with no good roles for his resume before graduation. But there was enough absurdity to the situation that I struggled to stifle a snort when his well-delivered and essential lines pulled me from the chilling ambiance.
The kids, of course, didn't notice. In fact, they're probably going to spend the Easter holiday arguing with some ignorant friend of theirs that, yes, Van Helsing really was born and educated in the Dutch East Indies. Because a University wouldn't misrepresent the truth to them, would it? LOL
It wasn't so much a matter of "rising above his race." I'm not sure what that even means. It was a matter of portraying the character as the author wrote him. Especially at such a basic level of acting as University is. Maybe leave the more controversial leaps for the masters?
Should it have been a change made as an educational experience then I would have liked to have seen it presented as such - an explanation given for why the change was made and what the change was designed to accomplish.
It seems to me that a lot of these "historical" films on Netflix are not intended to be historically correct.
But rather politically correct.
Don't like it, don't watch it.
It's not trying to be a Band of Brothers or whatever. It's a totally fictional story told in a quasi-historical setting. Anybody with more than a 5th grade education will take it as such.
When the kids were young I took them to our University's production of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" one October. It startled me when Dr. Van Helsing from the Netherlands spoke his first line with a thick Asian accent.
I can do the mental gymnastics. Holland, East Asia. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Or deserving theater student with no good roles for his resume before graduation. But there was enough absurdity to the situation that I struggled to stifle a snort when his well-delivered and essential lines pulled me from the chilling ambiance.
The kids, of course, didn't notice. In fact, they're probably going to spend the Easter holiday arguing with some ignorant friend of theirs that, yes, Van Helsing really was born and educated in the Dutch East Indies. Because a University wouldn't misrepresent the truth to them, would it? LOL
It wasn't so much a matter of "rising above his race." I'm not sure what that even means. It was a matter of portraying the character as the author wrote him. Especially at such a basic level of acting as University is. Maybe leave the more controversial leaps for the masters?
Should it have been a change made as an educational experience then I would have liked to have seen it presented as such - an explanation given for why the change was made and what the change was designed to accomplish.
Perhaps a relevant question is whether a university performance is primarily designed for the students or the public. I would say the former.
But I'm curious how you feel about the vast majority of old Westerns where the Indians are played by whites, or Asians are portrayed by Whites? let's see...John Wayne as Ghengis Khan?
Perhaps a relevant question is whether a university performance is primarily designed for the students or the public. I would say the former.
But I'm curious how you feel about the vast majority of old Westerns where the Indians are played by whites, or Asians are portrayed by Whites? let's see...John Wayne as Ghengis Khan?
I'm hoping we're moving beyond mistakes of the past and not justifying future errors with a "tit for tat" attitude.
Let's see. You made John Wayne into Ghengis Khan so now we're going to make that kid from Beijing into Van Helsing. How do you like that?
I doubt it will accomplish much other than more dissonance.
Or, like I said, give us a reason why it's a valuable thing to do. I don't want to live in the Fifties anymore. And I no longer think it's necessary.
It seems to me that a lot of these "historical" films on Netflix are not intended to be historically correct.
It's not just Netflix. Historical films in general aren't intended to be historically correct (unless it's a documentary). They all take artistic liberties and stretch the truth to varying degrees in an effort to be entertaining. People need to stop getting their education from Hollywood. If someone finds the subject of a historical movie interesting, they should see it as a jumping off point for them to do further research to get the real story.
Please correct me if I am wrong on the historical accuracy but recently i have seen two historical dramas, one based on fact (Mary Queen of Scots) and the other fiction, Bridgerton.
In both there were Black and/or Asian actors cast in roles that surprised me. I am all for equal opportunities workwise for actors but to cast a black actor into a role from 16th century Scotland when surely there were no black people there seems strange to me. It might be a sign of an inherent racist side to my mindset, and I am laying myself wide open with this, to criticism on that subject. I dont see it as wrong only that it is historically incorrect. In the same way as casting a blonde in the role of Elizabeth I would be wrong as she was famous for her red hair. I am reminded of Downton Abbey and the painstaking research done by historians to make that 100% accurate and how impressed I was with that show
You need to read more history. Queen Charlotte is noted as being Black. That's the character represented by the Bridgerton characters. Did you know that Alexandre Dumas was Black (The Three Musketeers)?
I don't know the Asian character but it could be accurate if one researches it out.
So, it's not Hollywood forcing in diversity. It's Hollywood showing reality.
You need to read more history. Queen Charlotte is noted as being Black. That's the character represented by the Bridgerton characters. Did you know that Alexandre Dumas was Black (The Three Musketeers)?
I don't know the Asian character but it could be accurate if one researches it out.
So, it's not Hollywood forcing in diversity. It's Hollywood showing reality.
You just proved my point about how revisionist history is distorting truth and brainwashing people.
It's clear you didn't read the post I wrote a few posts up.
Queen Charlotte was born in 1744 and died in 1818.
The claims that she was black rests solely upon the following:
He claims that the queen, though German, was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family, related to Margarita de Castro e Souza, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman nine generations removed, whose ancestry she traces from the 13th-century ruler Alfonso III and his lover Madragana, whom Valdes takes to have been a Moor and thus a black African. Source: the Guardian.
The 15th century is 300-400 years before Charlotte's lifetime. And that is the first identifiable possible biracial ancestor, who in turn is traced back to a Moor in the 13th century (200 years earlier, or 500 years before Charlotte's lifetime).
I'm sure all of us have at least one black ancestor if we go back 500 years.
Do her parents look like Africans? No. They were Germans.
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