Caught (I wish I didn’t) ‘cast reveal’ posts for upcoming ‘Bridgerton’ series on the author’s instagram…(who, of course, also promptly had to disable comments for most of them).
I wanted to sigh, shake my head, think something in terms of ‘Well, it’s not like I really actually expected to be able to watch it anyway…’ and forget about the whole thing, but…
Unfortunately, I had been spiralling down the mental stability scale all day, and, instead, this little thing happened to be the ‘lust crumb’ that practically drove me to tears on the topic of ‘why this world has to be so idiotic and how am I supposed to live in it let me out‘, as I was falling asleep.
I started telling myself that it should be a well-known and accepted for me fact that I don’t watch (and hate) book ecranisations, so I shouldn’t have expected anything different. That, in fact, “Lord of the Rings” might be the only one I actually liked.
-> Which then led to the thought of ‘Yeahright, if they were filming it now, I bet half of hobbits would be played by actors from South America, Legolas would be played by a Chinese actor, and Arven or Eowyn (or both) by African-American women.’
I have absolutely nothing against racial diversity.
What I am against is stories and books losing their integrity. It matters.
Characters should be played by people who match what the characters were written to be.
When a white American actress plays Japanese character it is wrong and ugly.
When African actors plays a role of English Duke from early 1800s it is wrong and ugly.
When Chinese actors made to play Japanese people and speak in some broken resemblance of a language it is wrong and ugly.
When a character was written to be a person of a certain ethnicity and culture, and someone from a completely different ethnicity and culture is forced to play that character, like neither of their ethnicity and cultures even matter, it is just wrong and ugly. It just shouldn’t be.
(and complaining that there are no characters of colour in Soviet Ukraine in Chernobyl is simply idiotic. And ugly.)
The fact that, in this world, it’s fine and acceptable to say ‘A story about Georgian/Regency England? Who cares what ethnicity the actors are! Lets just bring whoever and appear be cool, inclusive, and progressive!!’ just burns my my mind like acid.
If you want to be ‘cool, inclusive, and progressive’, write a story that is written for a ethnically diverse cast of characters. Write more stories about characters from different ethnicity and make tv series based on them.
Stop ruining already existing stories.
And as someone who writes… I would sooner see all my works burn than let some tv producers decide that the integrity of my story world and characters don’t matter or mean anything. Racial diversity is important and all, but not where it’s there just to be, and stands against what the story is about.