The best way to talk about diverse casting is not to talk about it

It was only two years ago when The Personal History of David Copperfield was released. It was during an early pandemic lull in June, when we Victorians thought we might try to sneak back out and see a few movies. The cinemas had tentatively reopened after the first wave of COVID. They were on the verge of closing again for a much longer period of time, but while they were open, Copperfield was one of two movies I snuck out and saw.

The significance of this was that it was one of the first times I remembered seeing a period piece in which the ethnicity of the performers was entirely disregarded in the casting decisions. Victorian England (different Victorian) was, in reality, composed exclusively of white people, but the cinematic depictions of it needn't be. Not only was there Indian Dev Patel in the lead role, but the supporting cast had as many Blacks as it had whites, and at least one Asian. 

It was, of course, not the first instance of casting without regard for race. As just one example that comes to mind, it was as long ago as 1993 that Denzel Washington appeared in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, though that would have hardly been the first instance either. Oh, Black people got to appear in Shakespeare, but it was usually as Othello.

Even though this sort of casting has continued in the 30 years since then, it has largely been of the token variety. We all know this. The Personal History of David Copperfield was the first time I remembered this sort of thing not seeming like tokenism.

It's crazy that that was only two years ago, because nowadays it is simply not tenable to make a movie, or a TV show, that does not have a significant percentage of its cast representing diverse ethnic backgrounds. That goes for any sort of film, though you might notice it more in a period piece because it more strikingly cuts against what you know to have been the ethnicity of the characters during the time period being depicted.

Fans of Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings have certainly noticed it.

I've been fortunate not to have been too exposed to this, since I don't spend any time on reddit or other channels where fans can air their grievances. Nor have I seen either The House of the Dragon nor The Rings of Power. I do know, however, that there is diverse casting in both projects, and that some percentage -- maybe even a significant percentage -- of the fan base is not too happy about it.

The first time I encountered this was related to The Rings of Power. Although I don't hang out on reddit, I do get email notifications from Quora, having looked up something on there once and unwittingly become a subscriber to these notifications. One guy was complaining about the casting of Black elf characters, going into some deep mythology about skin tones in Tolkien and how there's an opportunity to cast Black actors as some certain race of mythological creatures who were known to be Black. I immediately downvoted the article. I hope others have too.

I should have assumed the same thing was happening with House of the Dragon, and indeed, it is. An ad for the podcast Beyond Black History plays during inning breaks when I listen to baseball games, and the host teased one upcoming topic about why Game of Thrones fans can't accept a Black Targaryen. 

Sigh.

Without listing all the reasons the arguments of these haters are ignorant -- you already know those reasons -- I thought instead I would address my own approach to talking about diverse skin colors in the movies I review:

I don't.

Oh, I did back when The Personal History of David Copperfield came out. Here is what I wrote at the time:

However, there is one major step forward – if not for Iannucci himself, then certainly for society – which makes The Personal History of David Copperfield worth not only watching, but also celebrating. And that is the film’s joyous embrace of race-blind casting. While other films content themselves making token gestures in this regard, Iannucci jumps in whole hog.

In the title role, Dev Patel is of Indian descent. His love interest, Agnes, is played by Rosalind Eleazar, whose father is Ghanian. Her father in the film is played by Benedict Wong, a Brit of Chinese descent. If I don’t go on listing, it’s only because there are too many more examples to count. The effect is to be watching a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds in every composition of three or more characters, as the film cheerfully mirrors an idealised version of our modern society. Whereas Iannucci’s usual cynicism is missed from some parts of the film, its absence here is most welcome.

That perspective has held up over the past two years. I'm proud of what I wrote back then, at that cultural moment.

However, now I write nothing, and I think that's better.

Here are the problems with mentioning diverse casting:

1) At best, you run the risk of sounding condescending, or simply of virtual signaling. "Black people get to play roles that used to always be played by white people. Good for them." You risk sounding like you are patting someone on the head.

2) At worst, you look racist, if you stumble into an accidental criticism of the choice -- or especially an intentional criticism of the choice. "In the novel, the author describes the snow white skin of the protagonist, a detail that tends to be lost when they cast a Peruvian actress in the role." I think most of us would know to stay away from this, but not all of us.

3) The whole point of diverse casting is that eventually, one day, we are supposed to not notice it.

As critics, the least we can do is help that day arrive sooner. 

It's not like I don't notice it. Oh I notice it. Every time. 

But what purpose does it serve for me to draw attention to the fact that Cynthia Erivo, who plays the blue fairy in Disney's terrible Pinocchio remake, is Black? Even if I am trying to credit Disney for its good sense, I've already set back the cause by devoting 25 words to it. If the reader knows that Cynthia Erivo is Black, they will conclude that Disney has paid attention to diverse casting and they will either reward Disney or punish Disney for it in their own head. (The latter is not a group of people I'd really want to hang out with, though.) 

Besides, I don't think any critic needs to congratulate a studio for making a decision that is most in line with current righteous thinking, and thereby is not the riskiest decision they could make, but rather, the safest. 

So instead, in my plot synopsis portion of the review, I just put Erivo's name in parenthesis next to the character name, and made no further mention of her in the rest of the review. (She appears only in that one scene and doesn't ultimately play much of a role in the success or failure of the film.)

Ditto for the diverse casting in Bodies Bodies Bodies. Ditto for the diverse casting in Lou. Ditto for the diverse casting in Persuasion, which is probably the most direct corollary to David Copperfield. Since my reviews have pictures with them, and since these diverse cast members usually appear in those pictures, readers can figure it out for themselves if they care about it at all.

Neither do I want some sort of medal for telling you that I no longer mention diverse casting in my reviews. I just want you to, maybe, if you also write reviews or discuss entertainment online in any fashion, consider following my lead. (Nor do I actually think I am a "leader" here, just to be clear.)

The great thing about the prevalence of diverse casting is that, if I myself am to be taken as evidence, it has become commonplace enough to accelerate the very thing it is trying to accomplish. If I were to mention it every time it happened, I'd be writing about it in every review, and that would not serve a purpose for anybody. In reality, it is not, or should not be, any significant factor in why a film does or does not work. And tackling this core question is what you're supposed to spend your entire review doing. 

There is one exception to this rule: if the film itself talks about it. If the diverse skin tones of the cast is text within the film -- something it openly grapples with, something that contributes significantly to the themes being discussed -- then yes, of course, talk about it. You'd be wrong not to.

But it the film doesn't care what color the characters' skin is, why should you? 

The year of endings

Given that 2019 is the last year of the 2010s, it seems only natural that we’d be thinking about endings.

What doesn’t necessarily follow, though, is that so many popular franchises would have been geared toward a natural 2019 endpoint in their own chronologies.

No popular cultural commodity can be packed away for good, so in many cases, what we’re talking about here is a pause in the action. But it’s a big pause with a big symbolic value, even if it ends up proving to be a short one.

That this should coincide with the end of a decade is, to be certain, a coincidence. It must be. No franchise starts with the idea of wrapping it up by a certain symbolic date, if only because most franchises can’t be sure they will endure long enough to get there. The point it starts is entirely a function of when its perceived viability has reached a critical threshold in order to make it into a film (or a TV show, as we shall see). The point it finishes, then, is usually a function of x number of consecutive production schedules until the entirety of the story has been told.

For whatever reason, that entirety really descended on us in 2019.

SOME SPOILERS, TREAD CAREFULLY

Let’s look at the examples:

Star Wars – This is the big one, as a story dating back 42 years, with many of the same actors, finally reached its conclusion in 2019. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is not, of course, the last Star Wars movie we will ever see. In fact, it’s almost certain that 20 years from now, we’ll already have as many more Star Wars movies as we’ve gotten in the last 42. But as the end of the Skywalker saga, or at least the end of the actual Skywalker bloodline, it’s a pretty big deal. Sure, Daisy Ridley may say now that she’s done with Star Wars, but I also read that she went and cried alone in her car after seeing the final cut. Emotionally, she’s susceptible to returning, and she adopted the name Skywalker after all. But there’s no doubt that for now, this is an ending, and it’s a big one.

Avengers – It’s hard to feel like a saga has come to an end when a new movie featuring some of the same characters comes out scarcely two months later. But there’s no arguing that Avengers: Endgame represented a real culmination of 11 years’ worth of movies that had preceded it, and that you definitively draw a line when you halve the total of six original Avengers in one fell swoop. Of course, in the perfect example of pop culture’s perennial self-rejuvenation, one of the deceased Avengers is actually getting her own movie just a couple short months from now, albeit a prequel (or so it would seem). Still, to measure just how much of an effect the MCU has had on us, many of us (myself included?) were sadder to see the end of this story than the end of Star Wars. And walking out of that theater back in April, it sure did feel like an ending.

Game of Thrones – Apologies if I switch to TV on a film blog, but GOT is one of the most cinematic TV shows we’ve ever gotten, and in the past decade, its cultural cachet came to rival the two mentioned above and the likes of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. That too came to an end in 2019, though I’m sure we’ll get The Further Adventures of Tyrion Lannister at some point in the next decade. The final season of Game of Thrones was heavily criticized in certain corners of the internet, as well as off it, as you didn’t have to be a geek to get involved in this epic of swords and dragons, breasts and beheadings. For me, the final season flashed moments of brilliance and moments of great disappointment, though more disappointment in the way our heroes can let us down than the way the writers botched the job of telling their story. And for me, it was another sentimental end to a saga I’d been living with for years.

Breaking Bad – While we're on TV ... Breaking Bad should have ended years ago, but since Vince Gilligan decided we needed a conclusion to the story of Jesse Pinkman, we got a movie that did that in 2019. Although the movie was received well in most circles (though not this circle), I suspect Gilligan won't decide he needs to wrap up any more characters, making this the final chapter in the story of these characters, in any case. Unless he gets the bad idea for Breaking Bad: Alaska, which, I hope not. 

Toy Story – So if Toy Story 3 wasn’t really the end, then Toy Story 4 surely is, isn’t it? Never say never, but for now, it does seem like Pixar is ready to move on from the story of Buzz, Woody, Bo Peep et al, delivering the final installment of their story in 2019. There’s nothing that states this has to be the end, except for the perceived catcalls of Pixar fans who thought a fourth movie was already a bridge too far. But at the very least, it’ll be hard to imagine how Woody will reunite with the legacy of Andy and his family friends, represented most distinctly by the gaggle of toys who do remain together at the end of this one.

X-Men – Not all conclusions had a sentimental quality to them. Given the general response of sheer exhaustion and disinterest by fans, they didn’t want to let the door hit X-Men on the ass on its way out. Dark Phoenix was always envisioned as the end point to this particular iteration of the X-Men franchise, but after the way the last two films were resoundingly rejected, it could be a stake to the heart of the franchise on the whole. If so, it’ll leave a bad taste.

It – Okay, so the first chapter of It was only two years ago. But this is definitely the last chapter, unless someone wants to pull some silly stunt like getting these actors together again in three decades, Before Sunrise style, to have them fight Pennywise as 70-year-olds. I include it here more for the way the poster added to the symbolic trend I’m exploring today. The tagline reads simply: “It ends.”

How to Train Your Dragon – Okay, I didn’t even see The Hidden World, which came out in early January in Australia (I was invited to a preview screening in 2018, as a matter of fact). I guess I tired of seeing these movies before they tired of making them. However, they have now tired of that, as producer Dean DeBlois confirmed they don’t intend to make any more. Right, and Sylvester Stallone didn’t intend to make any more Rocky movies after Rocky IV.

Rambo – Another one I didn’t see, but since the aforementioned Sylvester Stallone is now 73, it’s reasonable to believe the promise implicit in the title Last Blood. And since I didn’t see it, I have no idea if Last Blood puts a definitive ending to the story of John Rambo. But whether it does or not, this is actually a pretty big one, as the character has cinematic origins older than any other character on this list save Luke Skywalker.

And this is to say nothing of the franchises that may have practically ended due to poor box office, whether they intended to or not (Terminator, Charlie’s Angels), and the movies that felt like they were career summations based on the age of the director (The Irishman, Pain and Glory).

So yeah, it seems that 2019 was a year for us to look back on the past and kill it, to quote Rian Johnson’s version of Kylo Ren.

But 2020 is not only the start of a new year, it’s the start of a new decade. It seems likely that we’ll get more recycling of franchises that haven’t yet worn out their welcome. But don’t forget that when the last decade started, most of us hadn’t even heard of Game of Thrones or How to Train Your Dragon, and the MCU was in its comparative infancy at only two years old.

Ten years from now, we might be mourning the endings of things we haven’t yet imagined.

Game of Thrones finally cheats

SPOILER WARNING: This post contains major spoilers about Game of Thrones from season one onward, but most particularly seasons five and six.

NON-SPOILER WARNING: This post is about television, not movies.

I wanted desperately to write about something that happened in Game of Thrones in the just-completed season six, which we are only just starting to watch (we're three episodes in, in case you're wondering what you can spoil in the comments and what you should avoid). But I didn't know where to find my perfect soapbox.

But then I thought, "Wait, I have a blog! So what if it's a movie blog, not a TV blog. It's my soapbox and I'll stand on it however I want to stand on it!"

Without further ado ...

From the penultimate episode of season one, Game of Thrones has been letting us know what kind of show it is. And that is, different from any show you've ever seen before.

As you may recall, that episode ends with the beheading of one Ned Stark (Sean Bean), heretofore assumed to be the show's hero whom we will follow for the next 12 or 13 seasons.

As that moment arrived, those of us weaned on traditional television and movies -- that is to say, all of us -- expected a deus ex machina to swoop in and save Ned from the executioner's axe. (Or was it a sword? That part I don't remember.) There was no way that the guy whose name appeared first in the credits was actually going to buy it less than one full season into the show.

Yet that's what happened. And from that moment, we knew we were in virigin territory. This show had cast us out into the unknown without a safety net. In short, anything could happen. No one was safe.

George R. R. Martin continued to maintain this unusual new status quo by killing off other characters we never thought could die. I mean, he'd already done it in the books, but for most of us that was not a consideration as we encountered A Song of Ice and Fire first and foremost as a television program called Game of Thrones.

But it wasn't just the killing of the characters. It was the impossibility of saving them through artificial last-minute plot devices. When a character was in danger, more often than not, that was it for them. Martin scoffed at the very idea of a deus ex machina, a hand of God that was going to come in and save our hero from certain doom at the last possible minute in the least credible way imaginable.

Well, Game of Thrones has finally given up this hard-fought conviction, this hard-fought distinction from other shows.

In other words, it has finally cheated.

SPOILERS HAPPENING NOW WATCH OUT

Season five of Game of Thrones famously ended (I say "famously" because you had to work hard to avoid these spoilers) with Jon Snow stabbed in the chest four times, Caesar-style, and bleeding out in the snow. Given the lack of urgent medical care in Westeros, you assumed he was going to die, but just to leave no doubt, the light had pretty much left his eyes even by the time the credits rolled.

Shock. Horror. Sorrow. Amazement.

We didn't think Jon Snow was going to die, because even though Martin likes killing off the handsome pretty boys that profile as your typical hero (see: Rob Stark), he has expressed a kinship to the likes of someone like Snow -- he's the bastard in Martin's quote referencing his soft spot for "cripples and bastards and broken things." So when this happened, it looked like Martin was trying to out-Martin himself. It looked like he had decided that the show was one big game to him, one big exercise in trying to frustrate our assumptions. "You don't think I'll kill Arya Stark? You don't think I'll kill Tyrion Lannister? Well watch THIS!" And then maniacal laughter. (Note: those things have not actually happened. Not yet, anyway.)

Well, he didn't disdain us as much as we thought. But I'm kind of wondering if that's a good thing.

When Kit Harington's name appeared in the opening credits of the first episode of season six, I wasn't surprised. I mean, in the timeline of the show, Jon Snow's death had just happened. We'd at least need to see the corpse. And that corpse would be played by Kit Harington.

When it appeared in the second episode, I was a bit more taken aback -- but I thought, "Well, perhaps this is the episode with the wake."

As "the red-haired woman" (I don't know what her name is) attempted a spell that would bring him back from the dead, I started to doubt Martin's commitment to his own harshly realistic world view. But then I thought "It would be the ultimate Martin move -- giving us a bunch of attempts to revive him as a red herring, and ultimately ending with someone saying 'Yep, he's really dead.'"

So when I saw Snow make that time-worn "gasp awake, usually after everyone thinks you've drowned" move, I greeted it with a bit of a gasp myself.

Martin had done it. He'd capitulated. He'd brought a character back from the dead. He'd saved a character with an unbelievable Hail Mary that should have had no reason for existing in the plot.

Yeah, I was happy to have Jon Snow back. But I was more than a little surprised.

And I'm of two minds on how I feel about it. As I said, I like having Jon Snow be a character on Game of Thrones. (And seeing the traitors who killed him hanged until they were dead provided a certain measure of sweet revenge.) But it does seem like a case of Martin slouching toward the traditional. Yeah, this is a world where dragons exist and magic is a thing and not everything that happens can be explained. But it used to be a world that obeyed basic laws of biology pretty stingently.

The way the whole thing was staged seemed to lack a certain conviction as well. Sure, the red-haired woman is a bit of a shell of herself after all of her premonitions about Stannis Baratheon prove false. (And this post is making me realize that I don't know how to spell any of these character names -- except, er, Jon Snow.) But I expected a bit more fire and brimstone in an incantation that brings someone back to life. The whole thing seemed a bit limp and unconvincing.

This may not seem so much like a deus ex machina, since traditionally, that's to save someone right when all seems lost. But the same episode contained an instance of Sir Davus, holed up in that room inside Castle Black with a few loyal Snow supporters, about to be slaughtered until a cavalry of wildlings arrives at the last moment to save the day. I suppose stuff like that has been slightly more common on the show -- more common than, you know, bringing people back from the dead -- but the timing of this one highlighted its essential artirficiality.

Did Martin bow to pressure? Did someone at HBO say to him "You can't kill off Jon Snow, it's bad for ratings"? How much of this was written already, anyway? I can never keep track of where this show is relative to the books -- as far as I'm aware, fans have been waiting for a new book from Martin for something like 15 years.

It also makes me wonder if this means that Snow is now immortal. Once you've brought somebody back once, doesn't that undermine any future attempt to kill him? If they have to kill him again, someone really will need to step up and say "Yep, he's really dead this time."

Perhaps if his head gets stuck on a spike in King's Landing and his body is dumped somewhere in Mereen, only then will we have our definitive closure.

Well, I'll be glued to my TV to find out. And something tells me that the next seven episodes will go a ways toward making it all clear.

Game of Thrones gets cinematic

We're finally caught up on Game of Thrones.

(No significant spoilers to follow.)

We've navigated the seas of not being able to find a working pirated copy, as well as internet service that was causing constant buffering, and chewed threw about four episodes in two nights, catching us up to the present date. And yes indeed, this season has finally "gotten good."

Not only that, but it's put it all out there in terms of budget.

One thing you can't help but notice if you are a Thrones fan is that it only pretends to be cinematic quality entertainment. I don't mean this as a slight against the show; I merely mean to put my finger on a certainty reality. Namely, if you are producing 10 full hours of programming per season, you simply can't spend as much money as you would on a two-hour movie of the same subject matter. Or, you can, but it has to be stretched out over those 10 hours.

This is why Thrones has always skimped on showing us the battles. I tended to especially notice in the first few seasons, that we would come in right after a battle had ended. Although some might consider battle sequences as an indispensable aspect of a fantasy TV show, the more perceptive of us -- as well as those actually in charge of making the show -- know that battle scenes can be a dime a dozen. We've all seen two armies run at each other and engage in a large skirmish composed entirely of close-combat fighting with swords and axes. It's a bit of a yawn at this point, frankly. Game of Thrones smartly figured out that the character development was what would keep us coming back to this show.

Which makes the occasional battle scene the show does give us all the more enthralling.

At the start of Sunday's episode, "The Watchers on the Wall," I finally noticed the name of a director I was familiar with: Neil Marshall. And even though I didn't like this movie, I immediately recognized Marshall as the director of the 2010 film Centurion, a Michael Fassbender vehicle involving, well, lots of Game of Thrones-type fantasy sword fighting. Except, with the actual sword fighting included.

I knew at that point that we were in for a treat.

Okay, any mild spoilers there may be are in the next paragraph, but I assure you, they are not really all that spoilery.

The battle between the wildlings and the knight's watch at Castle Black was a simply enthralling spectacle. At times I even got a bit of a Helm's Deep vibe from the thing, which is high praise, considering that the Helm's Deep sequence in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is a big part of what makes that my favorite Jackson Tolkien movie. That sense of trying to stave off an impossible onslaught from an undefeatable army gave the scene massive stakes, especially when the wildlings are actually inside the castle (how could this happen??), engaging in that aforementioned close combat. How could it have come to this?

And here we see one of the clear advantages of television over the movies. If we had been watching one two-hour movie called Game of Thrones, we wouldn't have a sense of how catastrophic it is that Castle Black has actually been penetrated and is at the risk of falling. But having seen men walking through its seemingly impregnable halls for close to four seasons now, we do indeed think of it as a fortress that's above the fray. In Sunday's episode, "the fray" made its presence felt on Castle Black.

It wasn't just the typical "this guy fights that guy until one of them falls" stuff that made Sunday's episode both so impressive, and such a departure from the usual Thrones template. What really drove the episode home for me was this one audacious shot by Marshall that takes us through the whole battle. It was not without digital aids, of course, but this one shot sweeps through nearly 360 degrees of the battle inside that courtyard, upstairs and downstairs and capturing all the little nooks and crannies where men are clashing. A chill went down my spine as I thought:

"Finally, Game of Thrones really feels like ... a movie."

Interestingly, the other Thrones episode this one reminded me of was "Blackwater" from season 2, the other time I could remember the show pulling out the stops and actually giving us a battle. That episode happens to have been directed by ... Neil Marshall.

Game of Thrones already gives me what television does best, which is to build up our investment in characters over a number of seasons, so their fates feel all the more personal to us. The season finale this Sunday, in fact, figures to place one beloved character's fate in the kind of peril it may require a deus ex machina to get out of. And this is a show that fundamentally despises the deus ex machina ... so I'm a bit on the edge of my seat here.

When it can also feel like a movie ... well, then it's nearly impossible to beat.