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Accurate Representation of Ethnicity in Historical Fictions

Started by Funt Solo, 04 July, 2021, 05:10:44 PM

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sheridan

p.s. as you may or may not be able to tell, I'm not into sport, but everything I've heard about the current crop of national team players has been good* - which makes the contrast with the general behaviours of the locals all the more stark.

* off the field - no idea what they're like when they're working.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: sheridan on 16 July, 2021, 11:51:32 AMno idea what they're like when they're working.
\
From the evidence of this set of matches, they play as a team. Not much showboating. In the past, England has frequently had a lot of talent, but not since 1990 have the individuals really worked together as a team.

milstar

Uh... I am aware of and writing in this thread for days, only to forget about it in the meantime; now, I took the courage to write my thoughts on the matter with enough will and time because this is going to be a lengthy one.
First, I'll express my pleasure that someone opened a thread like this (so kudos to Funt) as we live in hot times where matters like this are not bedroom stories. Also, I'd like to suggest a minor modification to the thread, but I'll get there when the time is ripe. Anyway, I hope that commenting won't get out of hand as it did on conspiracy one (which is the only one that was locked during my tenure here, I think), but I must warn that this comment may not be up to someone's liking.

So...accurate representation in the media? On the point? Under-deserved, over-deserved? To me, media, at least when it comes to the telly and movies, followed closely social trends. That's why earlier films had to show black people, used (white) actors in the blackface. And this was even before when Sean Connery or Mickey Rooney played Japanese guys (I have to admit, I loved Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's), but at that point, at least when it comes to people of AfroAmerican heritage, have vastly improved. Actors got more recognition, and their stories got more coverage.
True, Hollywood has not always been on the spot when it comes to representation. From blackface, which was around 100 years ago to today, things changed, but occasional controversies remained. For example, Exodus. Hollywood has a certain standard on how they run things, and most of it revolves around bankability. So when Ridley Scott said he had to find actors with an (international) appeal to play Moses and Ramses, you better believe it. And speaking of, almost all of the Hollywood movies are done from the American point of view. History in movies often doesn't stray away from controversial material, where sometimes a fucking hair is a problem, least accurate representation and justice is done to a specific character. As I said, the reasons are few. Bankability, artistic choices, vanity of filmmakers... Sometimes the problem is the fucking hair. In not just biographical movies but historical fiction as well. But representation, if done right, is always welcome, instead of making rather political choices, and definitely some people deserve their story to be told appropriately. And it goes both ways (that is, if you want to sound like a hypocrite). A movie about Samuel Coleridge Taylor (not to be confused with the 18th century poet) is welcome but Jodie Turner-Smith as Anna Boleyn - bollocks no. Ofcourse, I always say that such issues shouldn't be taken into account; someone's ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation shouldn't be the most pertinent factor (none whatsoever), but rather if you have something under your belly to show. Show skill. It's definitely a tacky subject for sure.

Regarding black people specifically participating in ww2, I found this article:
http://lestweforget.hamptonu.edu/page.cfm?uuid=9FEC3345-FDE7-5326-01EF58424224C02E

Obviously, the situation for black people greatly improved in the 1940s, after post-slavery times, in where the most significant leap toward the rights of black people was land-owning (after abolition), and even that was for very seldom number of them and still had very little advanages to advance in life. Nor the conditions they were living were like in Song of the South. But the1940s were far from ideal. Segregation, violations of human rights, etc., affected even their plight during ww2. I'll still insist on that if you were a soldier somewhere on European soil, there was a fat chance you wouldn't stumble across a black person. Ofcourse, their contribution to defeating the German war machine, whether minor or significant, should be seen as admirable, at least. Even though I prefer they didn't take part in it, that I say for every soldier out there, but such statement belongs to an entirely different subject.

But cinematically, so far, at least I know about:
Red Tails
Miracle at St. Anna (which is historically half-accurate, and not because of the portrayal of black soldiers who participated there)
Tuskegee Airmen
Hart's War
The Affair (not much in representation matters, but more as an interracial love story.
And there is Windtalkers (glorious ww2 epic, but like most of Woo's films, weak on the characters).

Accurate representation doesn't affect just movies or Hollywood.  The following is the excerpt from the Wikipedia page on the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Some publications and websites accused the developers of "whitewashing" for not portraying people of color in the game, and for the game's portrayal of Cumans and Hungarians as cruel invaders.[34] The developers responded by asserting that the game is historically accurate since people of color did not inhabit early 15th-century Bohemia in significant numbers.[35]

European media also responded to some aspects of the criticism. A commentator at the Czech newspaper Lidové noviny called the accusations "out of place" and claimed that most Europeans would respond that there were very few, if any, black people in early 15th-century central Bohemia.[36] To evaluate if non-white people lived in 15th-century Bohemia, the German magazine M! Games asked scholars at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. According to them, there were at most Turkic peoples, like Cumans (who appear in the game as enemies), but otherwise the presence of non-whites is "questionable".[37]

Some of these publications also reproached the views held by the game's director Daniel Vávra, who has been a vocal critic of what he believes is a progressive bias in video game journalism. Vávra associates his views on video game journalism with #GamerGate.[38][39] Daniel Vávra and Martin Klíma responded to the accusations in an interview, stating that Vávra might be a little "quick with words", apologizing for anyone who felt offended.[35]


I'll let people make their own conclusions on the subject.

When it comes to the modification I suggested above, I'd like to see this thread expanded to the females as well, not just ethnicity because women were here and there in particular historical events, in minor or significant numbers. I already mentioned Flora Sandes as an example. Now, if there is a movie about soldiers in the trenches, and you know it's the battle in which Ms. Sandes participated, and all soldiers are male... hardly that would be malewashing for just one character. Unless you make a movie totally based on her persona.

About soccer/football players' racial abuse, I wonder if all those people would react the same if Rashford, Saka, and Sancho scored their goals. I bet those same people would hail them as national heroes.
Reyt, you lot. Shut up, belt up, 'n if ye can't see t' bloody exit, ye must be bloody blind.

Proudhuff

Regarding black people specifically participating in ww2, I found this article:
http://lestweforget.hamptonu.edu/page.cfm?uuid=9FEC3345-FDE7-5326-01EF58424224C02E
[/quote]

What an inspiring article, would love to see what Garth Ennis would make of that...
DDT did a job on me

Funt Solo

++ A-Z ++  coma ++

CalHab

QuoteThe post-war environment was a very different one, in Europe and in India. In Europe there was a need for physical reconstruction and for building new societies. The focus was on the future, and the elements of the war that lived on in popular memory were taken from a narrow field, usually involving those with white faces and posh backgrounds.

"In India, the process leading to independence and partition took precedence. History is always a moving and unfolding process.

And that sentence still reflects the British (and definitely the British media's) understanding of the war.