Ethnicity, Cinema, and the Fanbase: Let Us Reason Together

With the advent of the teaser trailer for Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (LOTRTROP or TROP for my sanity) and the resultant internet flame-wars between diehard Tolkien-fans and their cousins in the Peter Jackson camp, the issue of race remains center-stage in a polarized pop-culture society. Some might argue that the best route forward is to drop the issue entirely, for one camp or the other to cease their foul sputtering and cede ground to the side with the greater moral clout. However, to marry Rahm Emanuel’s infamous quotation “never let a serious crisis go to waste” with St. Paul’s injunction to “overcome evil with good,” it is my persistent belief that honest and articulate discussion encourages mutual understanding and is anathema to the rampant, nonsensical, and counter-productive race baiting so pervasive in today’s social discourse. 

One perspective commonly argued is that more representation in media cannot be a bad thing. Art for art’s sake, as it were. I question this assumption on a number of grounds, but if the fundamental issue is that of hiring and firing actors based on their merits, then I find myself in total agreement. But an ancillary consideration should not be lost in the argument that all and sundry ought to be welcome to the casting couch: that a person’s appearance can be of as much substance as their acting caliber. Let me explain.

It should go without saying that casting actors appropriate to the role is of equal importance to casting actors whose abilities measure up to the producers’ very high expectations. One would not cast a woman in the role of Abraham Lincoln, for instance, unless the intent is to subvert tropes in a specific way that requires the casting of a woman. Now, I know nothing about show-biz, but I have been advised to surround myself with people whose expertise make up for my lack. For which I now turn to comedian and sometimes actor Gabriel Iglesias. In recounting his first casting call, Iglesias observed that the producers were clearly looking for a type because competitors for the slot all looked like him—to the point where he described the atmosphere in the room as that of everyone trying to show how they were more like themselves than the next fellow. The producers clearly knew the sort of person they wanted to represent a character; thus, appearance took on equal if not more precedence than acting chops. 

So perhaps a discussion of race in film is to mischaracterize the central argument: it is not the ethnicity of the actor, but their appearance that ought to be considered. One can blithely argue that it should not matter that a given performer’s complexion is darker than Pantone 727, but the altruism of that enlightened sentiment falls rather flat if a 5’3” Inuit is considered for the role of Lincoln. But neither should the role be denied a man who can convincingly portray the sixteenth president. An historical example: I have a vague memory from high school of having read excerpts from the diary of a black man who wanted very much to fight for the Union in the days before that was legal. Happily, all he needed to do was tuck his hair into his cap and, like Clark Kent donning glasses, he suddenly looked like a completely different person. So complete the transformation, in fact, that he not only served at the Battle of Gettysburg but also acted as the unit’s scribe (being the only literate soldier available to transcribe his comrades’ letters), which required close-quarters interaction with the other men, who remained none the wiser. Could not this man, were he dropped into the present day, walk into a studio and offer his acting services in the role of a white character? Perhaps one need only reference the cast of Broadway’s Hamilton for validation here. 

In a world riven with racial angst, it is perfectly reasonable to expect proponents of representation-in-media to argue in favor of breaking any glass ceiling that may exist for actors of color. Yet it remains essential to temper that elevated desire with the realistic expectation that producers can and should cast only those actors who can accurately interpret the characters that they are hired to represent. And meanwhile among the fanbase, it is equally important that frank discussions of race, ethnicity, and representation be held frequently and freely, because if the culture is really as divided as some would have the rest of us believe, then honest talk can do nothing but good.

~~~

*I hope to make this the first of several blog entries exploring diversity in cinema—where it succeeds, where it fails, and how its implementation contributes to or detracts from storytelling. This need not be about race alone, but cultures, women, accents, and anything else employed by producers to best bring their world to life.

The Saga of Lagerthof Gostaberling

The storm’s swift retreat left the streets mud  slicked, with leaves driven into heaps low against the houses’ timber frames.  Goodmen of the town stepped out of their homes to see to animals and sent their sons to look to the thatching, while the goodwives swept their stoops and threw out bedpans and buckets placed beneath leaking rafters, and chased their little ones out to play in the puddles, or gossiped across low fences.  A yellowing sun threw hot rays against the rooftops as it drew to setting, promising a clear night after the chill day of sleet and rain.  A peaceful night, apart from the woman screaming in the street. 

She ran hither and thither, this woman, too well-bred for such carrying-on, the goodwives thought, to judge by her dress and that of the stately man who hurried after her, half entreating her to quiet herself, half begging passers by to give her ear.  At first the goodwives thought to draw the poor woman in to a warm hearth and the satisfaction of their own curiosity, while the goodmen puffed through their mustaches and put a kindly, if gruff arm about the stately man’s shoulders in a genial, sensible manner as though to say “here, let’s have less of that and more action! What’s to be done about all this?”  But upon hearing the woman’s tale the goodwives called to their children and tut-tutted their way indoors; the goodmen suddenly stood off and grumbled into their beards about some work that needed doing out back; so that before long the  poor woman was left to kneel, sobbing, upon the cobblestones, her husband’s arms tight about her, and the street nearly empty but for the driven leaves. 

Evening came on; there was nothing for it but to retreat indoors. The stately man sat beside a fire in the grate of the fine room hired in the best inn, his wife lying full upon the bed beside him, wetting the pillow with tears amid her groans.  Now and again the man would venture a word of encouragement or pity, sometimes pleading with his wife to eat of the food brought in by the curious barmaid, herself gone taciturn the moment she too heard their story.  So now they were alone for the night, as neither innkeep nor maid had the slightest inclination to disturb them or even to wait upon their needs longer than was strictly necessary.  So the woman wept and her husband fretted until the sun was well down and the stars high, and no one disturbed them.

That is, until the door abruptly shook upon its hinges under fist blows thunderous enough to fell a portcullis.  Man and wife fell perfectly silent at that, exchanging fearful and wondering looks as the hammering began again, a burst of heavy, demanding knocks.  That stirred the man, who rose up and set hands to the latch and drew it back to crack open the door.  In her hysteria his wife could scarcely suppress a startled scream at the enormous figure that stood looming without.  Pale eyes glinted in the firelight, brows shaded by the lintel, so tall was he; and broad lips beneath a hawk beak of a nose parted when he spoke to reveal flat, white teeth and were more those of a horse than a man’s. 

“You are being very loud.”

His voice was a growl that gathered itself together in the caverns and hollows of his broad chest and came rumbling and boiling up his throat with all the resonance of the storm’s anger, were it contained in a barrel.  The stately man cleared his throat weakly, which found new strength in a wracking cough that shook him head to well-stockinged toes.  The giant said no more until the man reached a half-choked conclusion, then intoned heavily, “You are unwell, little uncle, and you’ve been dealt with poorly today.”

Something in his tone seemed to have softened and the woman sat up upon the bed and reached out her hands, imploring.

“Come in, sir, please do come in - we are so sorry, Elrik and I, for any distress we’ve caused.  Only do come in and do not turn your back on us!”

The giant looked a little puzzled at this, but obliged, bowing his great head and shouldering past the door before the alarmed Elrik could sufficiently recover himself.  A giant indeed, the old man thought; their visitor was half again as tall as a man, with shoulders built to fill out a doorframe.  He had no hair on his pale face or upon his head; even his brows were clean-shaven.  He came to stand in the middle of the room, looking like a stone monument and as garrulous.  Elrik grimaced and went to stand over his wife, placing a protective hand upon her shoulder.

“Elrik, Lord Orczy, & Lady Emmuska,” said he, then added with a wince, “and you are right, mine guest: I am not well.  This infernal storm...” he trailed off, weariness and grief stifling any sense of protocol.  Unperturbed, the giant bluntly filled the silence.

“The storm did not do that,” he said, pointing a heavy finger.

Milord Orczy gently touched his blacked eye and the fresh gash below it, saying, “ah, this.  This came to me by a brigand’s hand.”

“We started early this morning,” Lady Orczy interrupted.  “We meant to come down to Drakeswold for the spring; our son does love mountains, and my lord husband is so busy with the estates.  Only, he isn’t really our son, you see; our grandson by way of a daughter, gone these eleven years, gods release her.  He’s all the family we’ve left in our old age; we call him our son.”

The giant said nothing, though if it were possible for impassive statues to look tedious, his was the expression for it.

“In short, good mine guest,” Lord Orczy said hastily, “a brigand came upon us over a lonely stretch of road.  Gave me this and this”—touching fingers gingerly to his face—“then as I lay in the mud he took our boy onto his saddle and rode away without having said a word.”

Lady Orczy was weeping again as her husband fell silent.

“He took the boy, but nothing else?” the giant  asked.  “You didn’t know him?”

“No,” Orczy answered.  “Although it might well cross your mind—it has ours—that he knows us; a public figure I am, and wealthy too, traveling alone with my wife and son along a country road.  But no, I cannot say I know him.  He was a great brute of a man, and appeared a knight for his armor.  His face I did not see; he wore a helm and war mask like a horned skull.  A towering man,” he repeated.

“What did you do then?”

“We came here, called upon the watch, only...”

Lady Orczy was cut off by a loud scoff from her lord husband: “Only the Watch Master is a demmed fool!  He called the knight a ghost, a wight cole up from the barrows or some such—that he’s taken our Dereck to squire, and him not the first.  The Death Knight, he called him!

“There was no help from the guard after that; and when we looked elsewhere, people turned up their noses and muttered inanities about ghosts and squires until their doors shut in our faces.  Ghosts!  He was real enough, by my eyes.  Lud! but I’ll have our boy back from him, be he madman or risen ghost.”

“Then you will die for it,” the giant interposed suddenly.  “But I will not.”

Struck dumb by the promise spoken so forcefully in so voluminous a voice, Milord and Lady Orczy gazed as at a descending deva at the giant of a man, as his voice rose to shake the rafters: 

“I am Lagerthof Gostaberling—and I will kill your Death Knight!”

————

Mind...blown

I'm probably the last person on the net to notice this:

Videos for class

Western Civilization I: Paradiso/Purgatorio

Below is a map of the Land of Eden that I created for my Western Civ class.  I wanted to show them visually what Genesis has to say about the land and the Garden, but could not find a satisfactory map online.  Most were either too cryptic to follow or blatant attempts to match the text of Genesis with modern landmarks (this despite a global flood that included water spouts exploding from under the earth).  Most assumed that the Tigris and Euphrates were the same as those rivers of the same names today, never mind that there's a Lebanon, Missouri; a Paris, Arkansas; and New York, and despite the fact that the modern rivers do not match the geographical description of the one river forking into four rivers as it leaves the Garden (one map even tried to make the Nile one of these rivers, even though its headwaters are Lake Victoria in the middle of Africa).  So I decided to take matters into my own hands.

This is totally hypothetical, of course, but I strove to meet the criteria listed in the Genesis text.  We know that the land of Eden was distinct from the Garden, which God planted in the east of the Land itself.  A river flowed either from or through the Garden (I've opted for the former) and that it split into four rivers, the Pishon and Gihon seeming to encircle or otherwise encompass the lands of Havilah and Cush, respectively.  The Hiddekel, meanwhile, flowed towards Ashshur, while the Parah (or Euphrates, depending on the translation) is only mentioned.  To the east also is Nod, which I've walled off with mountains in an effort to emphasize the restless exile imposed upon Cain.  I've given Havilah a mountain range because the land was rich in gold and minerals.

The Garden I've walled off with mountains to emphasize its isolation following the Fall, while also adhering to the dictates of gravity; if the river did indeed flow from the Garden, then it would be elevated land with a narrow exit from which the river might flow, and which is guarded by the flaming sword and cherubim.

Western Civilization I: Chapter 1: "The Reason Why"

In October of 1854, the British Light Cavalry attacked a battery of Russian cannons in a suicidal charge that cost the British army its mobile striking and scouting force for the rest of the war.  Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalized the brave soldiers in verse, and also captured the bewilderment of onlookers both on the battlefield and the home front.   To these and modern students of history this mad action made no sense and can hardly be understood satisfactorily because the immediate events leading up to the charge offer insufficient explanation.  However, when one researches the lives of two of the principle officers, Lord Lucan and his brother-in-law the Earl of Cardigan (who led the light brigade), and begins to comprehend the mutual frustration and enmity that had simmered for decades, the root cause, the origin of the now-infamous Charge of the Light Brigade becomes a little clearer.  

The same holds true today.  In a world saturated with information, we run the risk of misunderstanding the truth, what with blogs and 1000 news channels delivering sound bites and whole worldviews summed up in 140 characters or less.  When faced with information overload, how can we, without understanding the backgrounds of people, events, and social movements, without understanding national and international history, without understanding origins, hope to understand what happens in our day to day, or why it happens?  

WHY?

That is the most fundamental question about human existence--it encompasses all that we are and everything that we have done.  In ascertaining the reasons for why, we better understand ourselves and the world in which we live.  Some students might shrug or scoff at such a claim, as I did in freshman biology.  I quickly changed my mind, however, when my professor began speaking in the first lecture, and said in his compelling western drawl, "Some of you may be asking yourself why you must take biology.  The way I see it, with few exceptions everyone in this room is alive.  Now biology is the study of life and if you are alive then it behooves you to understand something about biology.  Let's begin."

That too is the point of Western Civ I.  With few exceptions, the history covered in this class impacts us all, and it therefore behooves us to understand something about where we've been and where we are.  It is well-said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, but I would add that those who do not understand origins are doomed to misunderstand their history, doomed to charge as did the Light Brigade, blindly and courageously into oblivion.  "Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why..."

In a way, this class could be titled "The Reason Why."  The timeframe of this class covers the origins of everything that we each know and hold dear: the US Constitution, Civil Rights, the War on Terror, the Internet, Christianity; all of these things, or the root cause of these things, are are introduced in the years from Creation until the 14th century.    

In the Beginning--God created.  On the 6th day, He created a farmer.