[CJ] Is Hamilton Next?

"Pressuring Halle Berry To Resign From Transgender Role Typecasts LGBT Actors":

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/0...-from-transgender-role-typecasts-lgbt-actors/

excerpt:

Halle Berry became the first black woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress in 2001 for her role in “Monster’s Ball.” In 2020, however, Berry found herself bullied into apologizing for accepting a role to play a transgender man in a movie, turning it down after backlash from LGBT activists.

“Over the weekend I had the opportunity to discuss my consideration of an upcoming role as a transgender man, and I’d like to apologize for those remarks,” Berry posted on her social media. “As a cisgender woman, I now understand that I should not have considered this role, and that the transgender community should undeniably have the opportunity to tell their own stories.”

Despite her apology, LGBT media complained that beforehand, while describing the upcoming role, Berry had “misgendered” the character and called it a “female” story she felt was important to tell. Berry had previously said, “Who this woman was is so interesting to me, and that will probably be my next project, and that will require me cutting all of my hair off.”

She continued, “It changes to a man, but I want to understand the why and how of that. I want to get into it.” The role involved the character transitioning, which would make a female actor going through the process seem reasonable.

The backlash came not only from Berry being a cisgender actor — meaning one who lives consistently with her sex — but also her mistake in referring to a biological female as “she” prior to transition. The resounding argument was that only transgender actors should play transgender characters or, as Berry expressed, “tell their own stories.” This argument undermines much of not only Berry’s career but LGBT representation in media until recently.
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"Common Sense Doesn’t Matter Either: The 'Woke' Acting Profession Is Betraying Audiences And Dooming Itself (Part I: 'The Simpsons')":

https://ethicsalarms.com/2020/07/11...ences-and-dooming-itself-part-i-the-simpsons/

Common Sense Doesn’t Matter Either: The “Woke” Acting Profession Is Betraying Audiences And Dooming Itself (Part I: “The Simpsons”)
JULY 11, 2020

Item: Fox’s apparently immortal animated series The Simpsons released a statement last month regarding casting for non-white characters, including black characters like Dr. Julius Hibbert: “Moving forward, ‘The Simpsons’ will no longer have white actors voice non-white characters.”

This, stupid as it is, follows the non-logic of recent white actresses who dropped their gigs as the voices of grayish-brown inked “mixed-race” cartoon characters. How will that “only people of the same race can play roles of characters of that race” be reconciled with the objective of non-traditional casting, which was devised in part (many decades ago) to open up more opportunities for black and minority actors, allowing them to take on roles written as white?

It can’t. It’s as simple as that. The two approaches eventually clash, and are mutually exclusive. “The Simpsons” policy is wrong and destructive in every conceivable way, and its ethical values, as in competent, fair or responsible, are non-existent.

• If white actors can only play white characters, then white characters cannot be played (or voiced) by black performers. Oh, I’m sure that while in the grip of fear during the George Floyd Freakout and overwhelmed with the desire to signal virtue to one’s peers, white performers will tolerate such an obviously unfair and absurd double standard for a while, but show business is a brutal and competitive field, and the vast majority of actors of any color have scant financial resources and no job security. The arrangement being pushed by black performers and activists as they sense a window of opportunity created by the Freak-out and the concomitant intimidation of decision-makers will eventually engender resentment and conflict. If the BLM lackeys in the entertainment field really think that this double-standard “solution” to “systemic racism”—which means installing a new system of systemic anti-white racism—will prevail, they are deluded.
• Moreover, the idea is anti-art, as is the “non-traditional casting as affirmative action” fallacy. If the performing arts aren’t a meritocracy driven by the market—does the performance entertain, or doesn’t it?—then they are doomed. Even with all the brainwashing and bullying to come, the public will never have enough people who will like a show (or a novel, or a painting, or a song)—or pay money to see it— based on its demographics and diversity rather than the quality of the performances
• To “The Simpsons” and similar products, if the authentically black voice of Dr. Hibbert isn’t as funny, well-timed and deft as white Harry Shearer’s performance, the character won’t be as effective.

I look at all productions this way: a perfect show has 1000 points. Everything that isn’t perfect loses points for that production—a bad accent here, an ill-fitting costume there, missed lines–they all count. One flaw that loses a few points won’t kill the show; it might not even be noticed. But all of those lost points add up, and when the points sink below a certain level, the production is no longer viable.

“The Simpsons” is voluntarily giving up points, which is simply bad show business and terrible art. If Harry Shearer is the best voice for the Simpsons’ family doctor, then it can’t matter what color he is. The audience doesn’t care. Every show loses points no matter how perfect it tries to be; giving them up intentionally is unethical, because the artist’s duty is to present the best, most popular and most profitable work possible, not to meet EEOC quotas.

A related incident occurred last week, as actress Halle Berry, following the usual Twitter mob abuse, announced that she is no longer considering portraying a transgender man in an upcoming film. Of course she apologized, because she has no guts nor the ability to defend artistic freedom.

She wrote on Twitter:

Translation:

‘She loved Big Brother.’

How nauseating. Unfortunately, and I speak from experience, show business of all kinds and at all levels is not teeming with smart people. This was a replay of the “Rub and Tug” controversy from 2018 (EA post here), when Scarlett Johansson, buffeted by social media attacks when she announced that she would be playing a trans male in a film called “Rub and Tug,” similarly dropped out. Because she is a big star and there ARE no trans male stars, the project died, just as Barry’s project will die. Many actors, technicians and other artists won’t have jobs as a result, and the film industry is hurting. Do no films about trans characters help trans individuals more than films about trans characters that make money and that audiences actually see? That’s the kind of incompetent trade-off the “woke” in Hollywood and New York are making, failing their duties to their audiences and their art.​

 

"‘Hamilton,’ ‘The Simpsons’ and the Problem With Colorblind Casting":

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/arts/television/hamilton-colorblind-casting.html

‘Hamilton,’ ‘The Simpsons’ and the Problem With Colorblind Casting
Egalitarian in theory, the practice is more often used to exclude performers of color. But even well-intentioned efforts at increasing diversity create complications.

By Maya Phillips
Published July 8, 2020 Updated July 10, 2020

Late June brought news that the animated shows “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” “Big Mouth” and “Central Park” would recast characters of color who have been played by white actors.

A week later “Hamilton” dominated the cultural chatter on Independence Day weekend when Disney+ premiered the film version of the Broadway phenomenon.

In both situations performers inhabited characters of racial backgrounds that were different from their own, often referred to as “colorblind casting.” But one provoked the usual apologies and promises to do better while the other was celebrated anew as being a bold exemplar of diversity — though it ultimately presents a set of more complex concerns.

Still, the difference between the two lies in their approaches to the all-encompassing nature of whiteness in American industries and narratives. Whereas the world of voice-acting for animation is just another dominated by white workers, casting a person of color as a typically white character is an act of subversion, a normalization of something other than the white standard. The Black and brown founding fathers of “Hamilton” make the story of America something that can finally be owned by people of color, as opposed to the reality, which so often refutes the relevancy of their lives and contributions.

Though egalitarian in theory, colorblind casting in practice is more often used to exclude performers of color. It’s a high-minded-sounding concept that producers and creators use to free themselves of any social responsibility they may feel toward representing a diverse set of performers.

The history of the practice in live-action takes is more egregious, and has been well-documented: Mickey Rooney’s notorious Asian landlord in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”; Alec Guinness’s Arab prince in “Lawrence of Arabia”; Laurence Olivier in blackface as Othello. In the past decade alone, Natalie Portman, Emma Stone and Scarlett Johansson, among others, played characters onscreen who were of Asian descent in the source material.

And though this trend so often favors white actors — if you have a few hours, or days, to kill, Google “whitewashing controversy” — it certainly isn’t limited to them. People of color are often tagged in to represent an identity different from their own, as though Chinese is synonymous with Korean or Mexican is synonymous with Indian.

It seems needless to say, and yet, here it is: Any casting of a performer in the role of a race other than their own assumes that the artist step into the lived experience of a person whose culture isn’t theirs, and so every choice made in that performance will inevitably be an approximation. It is an act of minstrelsy.

Kristen Bell, who voiced the biracial Molly Tillerman in the Apple TV+ show “Central Park”; Jenny Slate, who voiced the biracial Missy Foreman-Greenwald in “Big Mouth”; and Mike Henry, the voice of the Black “Family Guy” and “The Cleveland Show” character Cleveland Brown, each announced their decisions to gracefully bow out in the name of proper representation. Hank Azaria, who for years voiced the Indian “Simpsons” character Apu, stepped away from the role earlier this year — last month the show announced that it will no longer use any white actors to play characters of color.

Despite this recent trend, actors and creators have defended such choices with purportedly merit-based arguments. Earlier this year, in fact, Loren Bouchard, one of the creators of “Central Park,” explained Bell’s casting by saying “Kristen needed to be Molly; we couldn’t not make her Molly.”

More often than not, when the defense rings out in the chord of “they were the best person for the job,” that “best person” is white. That is no coincidence.

Another popular defense that pops up, most often in internet discourse, involves canon: The story, the holy text, must be preserved as written. Even if this defense didn’t presuppose that anything canon should not be open to challenge or reinterpretation, it would still fail to recognize that in many stories the character’s whiteness is incidental to the narrative. So why not use that opportunity to re-create the character as someone who doesn’t fall into the majority?

The fact that Ariel is white has nothing to do with her story about wanting to be with her love and walk on land. The casting of a Black actress to play Hermione Granger in the play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” provoked howls from many fans, but the character’s whiteness never had any bearing on her brilliance. In fact, stories that do not take their characters’ whiteness as a given may find fresh relevance and invite new audiences into their sphere, because for so many people of color, they don’t get to see themselves represented in the media they consume.

For me, it was “The Wiz,” starring Diana Ross as a Black Dorothy; I loved it so much more than the original “Wizard of Oz.” And in 1997, it was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “Cinderella” film, which was completely colorblind. The singer-actress Brandy was a Black Cinderella, with a white stepmother (Bernadette Peters) and a Black stepsister, as well as a white one. The prince was of Filipino descent, with parents who were Black and white (Whoopi Goldberg and Victor Garber). And Whitney Houston was a glamorous fairy godmother.

The whole movie was a visual feast, with bright costumes and playful dance numbers, and it never explained the puzzling genealogies of its characters. It simply allowed the audience to soak in the story and characters as they were.

But however well-intentioned, there are complications that come with works that aim to use colorblind casting to highlight people of color who wouldn’t otherwise be represented. Creators may cast blind, thinking their job done, failing to consider that a Black man cast as a criminal or a Latina woman cast as a saucy seductress — even when cast without any regard to their race — can still be problematic. One kind of blindness can lead to another.

And then there’s also the “Hamilton” problem. The show may place diverse bodies on the stage, but productions that would subvert a narrative traditionally owned by white characters must not just tag in actors of color but reconsider the fundamental way the new casting changes the story. In “Hamilton,” the revision of American history is dazzling and important, but it also neglects and negates the parts of the original story that don’t fit so nicely into this narrow model. The characters’ relationship to slavery, for example, is scarcely mentioned, because it would be incongruous with the triumphant recasting of our country’s first leaders. (The “Hamilton” star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda responded to this criticism this week, calling it “valid.”)

The trouble of a colorblind production might not be the casting itself, but the fact that the casting may still erase the reimagined characters’ identities. (If Willy Loman is Black, wouldn’t he have a more complex understanding of the American dream?) Careless colorblind casting — in animated roles, in live-action roles on TV, movies or the stage — assumes that identities amount to nothing and that all experiences are transferable, which is far from the reality.
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conclusion:

1996 speech, the playwright August Wilson spoke out against colorblind casting overall, saying:

Wilson called not for colorblind casting, but for institutions that invite art by and for people of color, to tell their own stories and not simply ones adapted for them. He doesn’t call for blindness, but visibility: people of color seen on stages and behind the curtains. This applies to all art forms — people of color should be on movie screens, on the TV and in recording booths giving voice to stories about them.

It’s hard not to see his point. Even times when it’s employed with good intentions, colorblind casting often fails in the execution. It’s a larger problem of the narrative of our nation, which frequently refuses people of color their own stories, reflexively opting for a white purview or offering stories written for white characters but with people of color haphazardly slotted in. We’re forever fighting our America’s racial default.

Blindness is no excuse. In a moment when we’re reassessing everything surrounding representation, perhaps it’s time for all of us to finally open our eyes.​

 

"Why Gen Z Turned on Lin-Manuel Miranda":

https://www.rollingstone.com/cultur...-manuel-miranda-hamilton-tiktok-meme-1036975/

excerpt:

To teens and early-twentysomethings, Miranda is “sort of like the ultimate millennial,” says Joseph Longo, who covers Gen Z culture and wrote about the lip-biting meme for MEL Magazine. That’s not just due to his overly earnest, goofy, high school-teacher demeanor, but also to the praise Hamilton garnered during the Obama era for its diverse cast and hip-hop influences, both of which were, at the time, unprecedented in lily-white Broadway. “He created a musical that is valued for its representational politics,” says Longo. “And that feels very millennial in the same way Girls was valued as transgressive for that same reason.”

What Longo is referring to here is an emerging consensus on Hamilton that has been growing louder by increments since its premiere in 2015: that the show is problematic, or at least not entirely beyond reproach. The musical, for instance, fails to acknowledge that most of the Founding Fathers were slave owners (indeed, Phillip Schuyler, Hamilton’s father-in-law, owned so many slaves that a monument to him in Albany, NY, was recently removed). It also erases historical black figures and glosses over the fact that Hamilton did not push back against the three-fifths compromise, which created a union in which the North profited off the labor of enslaved people in the South, while simultaneously claiming some sort of moral high ground. There’s also something to be said for the fact that, while the show has a predominantly BIPOC cast, it still prioritizes a white-male perspective, pushing more marginalized voices, such as those of the female characters in the show, to the background. (The fact that every female character, almost without exception, is defined solely by their desire to bang Hamilton, as played by Miranda, does not help matters.)
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