The Resident Xander-Shaped Friend

threestories:

catnipsoup:

captxandri:

xlivvielockex:

prestimion:

Nigella damascena: One last chance

wingnutlady:

Okay fandom. One last chance.

When M. Night cast white protagonists in his adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender, a lot of people got angry…

Y’all should read this particular reblog. SO MUCH EXCELLENT COMMENTARY ON BANE.

(via clari-clyde)

threestories:

wingnutlady:

Okay fandom. One last chance.

When M. Night cast white protagonists in his adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender, a lot of people got angry about that. And when a blonde white girl got cast as Katniss, I got plenty of articles on my dash about how a white Katniss undermines…

Two things:

Javier Bardem is not Latino, he’s a white European Spaniard, from, in fact, the whitest region of Spain, making him about as Latino as Tom Hardy. Spaniards do not think of themselves as Hispanic or Latino or having the same ethnicity as someone from Colombia, Cuba or Mexico. This is somewhat like telling a British person you consider them the same ethnic group as Jamaicans.

With that out of the way, Hollywood historically has always thought absolutely nothing of casting white people to play Hispanics instead of casting actual Latino actors. The reality is that white actors playing Latinos of any racial makeup is the unquestioned norm in Hollywood. Hell, Al Pacino has made a veritable side career out of it.

I think it must be so easy to rationalize this because white directors and studio execs have a total disconnect from the subtleties of Latino representation in the media, so they think things along the lines of “Some Hispanics look white, or are predominantly of white racial makeup, or could pass for white, so the reverse must be both true and okay! Whew! Glad that’s settled. Get me Tom Hardy on the phone, y’all.” This is absolutely nothing against Tom Hardy as a person, because he’s a good actor, seems like a nice guy and it’s not his fault that he was offered that role. The point is, Hollywood may consider itself post-racial (though it is absolutely not), but they have no concept of being anywhere near post-ethnic, and because Latinos aren’t easily pigeonholed by phenotype or cultural tropes.

So that’s my answer to why Christopher Nolan cast a white British guy as a Hispanic character. Because he could, and because it’s a non-issue to him and everyone associated with the film and everyone he knows, and because that’s what you do when you’re making movies. Anglo actors are the default, even when they shouldn’t be.

Here are some actual Hispanic actors that could have been hired for this role. (I disagree with Danny Trejo - he’s just not the right age, despite being amazing in general.)

Puerto Rican-American David Zayas (“Dexter”)

Cuban-American Danny Pino (“Law and Order: Special Victims Unit”)

Half-Peruvian Benjamin Bratt

My personal favorite choice for the part, Puerto Rican-American Jon Huertas (“Generation Kill” and “Castle”)

Mexican actor-director Gael García Bernal

Puerto Rican/Cuban-American Adam Rodriguez

This is just off the top of my head. These guys are all a) fine as hell, b) the right age range for the role, c) awesome actors and d) actual Latinos. But maybe they were all busy or something, and that’s why Nolan had to cast yet another white actor instead. Who knows.

likebadhorse:

wingnutlady:

Okay fandom. One last chance.

When M. Night cast white protagonists in his adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender, a lot of people got angry about that. And when a blonde white girl got cast as Katniss, I got plenty of articles on my dash about how a white Katniss undermines…

Another one that the fandom kinda glossed over was Maria Hill in the Avengers movie. Count me in as someone who was very excited when I learned that Cobie Smulders got the role because I happen to be a huge fan of How I Met Your Mother and I have a bit of a girl-crush on her. I had not read any comics at the time and was unfamiliar with Maria’s character and for whatever reason I did not associate her name as Latina (I’m not sure what if it’s because I’ve known so many Marias and am sorta desensitized to the name or if it’s because Hill is a generic last name). It wasn’t until I started reading a few comics that I realized that Maria Hill is portrayed as Latina and that the casting for the movie was whitewashing.

Again, I love Cobie Smulders and I think she did a great job as Maria, but that role should have been given to a WOC, especially because we see so few WOC in comics/superhero movies/Hollywood in general. And I have to fault Joss Whedon for this because it’s not the first time he has failed to bring in POC for roles that should have required actors who are POC. But Joss Whedon, like Nolan, has a rabid fanbase who believes that he does no wrong. I’m a fan, but I’m not willing to ignore   his faults when it comes to casting or portrayals of women and POC.

Yeah, as a member of the rabid Whedon fanbase, I have to admit his skills at intersectionality suck. There’s an excellent article from racebending that discusses the lack of Asian characters in Firefly, which is centered on a culture with primarily American/Chinese influences (I think the Tams and Kaylee were originally supposed to be Asian, but for whatever reason they turned out white).

I did adore Smulder’s portrayal of Hill, but the casting process sounds like nobody really took her race into account at all: of the final four Hill candidates, only one of them was a WOC, Jessica Lucas, and she is decidedly NOT Latina (she’s half African-Canadian and caucasian).

So, yeah, while Joss Whedon excels not only at writing characters (something Nolan kind of sucks at), and in particular really developed female characters (something Nolan really sucks at), Whedon definitely needs to start racially diversifying his casts.

wingnutlady:

Okay fandom. One last chance.

When M. Night cast white protagonists in his adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender, a lot of people got angry about that. And when a blonde white girl got cast as Katniss, I got plenty of articles on my dash about how a white Katniss undermines…

From measuringinlove:

“SPOILER ALERT

Pretty sure that Marion Cotillard also plays a character who is usually a WoC.

What the fuck, Nolan?”

Yup, it’s been confirmed. Nolan whitewashed Ra’s Al Ghul and Talia al Ghul. I can see why it’d be chock full of unfortunate implications to keep those characters Arabic, seeing as Nolan has portrayed them as little more than terrorists, but you know what the answer to that is: MAKE THEM FULLY REALIZED CHARACTERS/INCLUDE SOME HEROES OF COLOR.

But Nolan/Hollywood thinks that is too hard.

prestimion:

wingnutlady:

Okay fandom. One last chance.

When M. Night cast white protagonists in his adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender, a lot of people got angry about that. And when a blonde white girl got cast as Katniss, I got plenty of articles on my dash about how a white Katniss undermines…

I haven’t seen DKR, so I can’t comment on how Bane is portrayed and how that could or could not have been improved by a more accurate depiction of his ethnicity.  I think it’s fair to say that given the obvious themes of the film - proletarian/bourgeois, chaos/order, elitism/populism and all the gnarly problems of those dualities taken to their extreme - and the contemporary resonance of those themes, playing up Bane’s identity as a Latino would add extra layers of resonance that might or might not enhance Nolan’s overall point, if he has one.  There’s a strong possibility it could be counterproductive.

Bane in the comics was a former prisoner from the fictional Latin American state of Pena Duro.  There’s an intense geopolitical element to his quest to control Gotham because of this, and it taps into a rich and frightening vein of cultural paranoia.  It’s fun to read the original Bane as some sort of third world avenger, an avatar of the rage and resentment of an economically and politically subjugated Latin America come to seize control of the elite systems of oppression that made him an animal.  However, there isn’t much backing for this in the original Knightfall story; Bane has no nationalistic motives and his ethnicity plays a minor role, aside from his luchador-inspired costume and the occasional Spanish phrase thrown into his dialogue.  He’s a xeno creature, really: a mysterious, vicious, unstoppable force working toward terrifying goals for unfathomable reasons.  He’s the Other come home to roost, a hulking amalgamation of all our xenophobic fears, our primal dread that there are terrible people lurking out there in the world ready to do us harm.

It’s also worth noting that none of Bane’s compatriots in Knightfall have any national or ethnic affiliation: they’re basically a cast of circus freaks.  A cadaverous white knife thrower, an acrobatic bird handler with a blonde mullet, an honest-to-god neanderthal in combat fatigues; there’s no ethnic element to this cast of goons, just a general fear of the weird and the dispossessed, the things that go bump in the night, the somethings wicked coming this way.  There’s no question that Bane is revolutionary chaos made flesh, but when his ethnicity is taken alongside the characteristics of his henchmen, it becomes just another piece of exoticism, ominous and rather racist.  Scary ethnics from south of the border and carnival monstrosities out for blood, come to upset the nice clean order of America.

So in summation, I’m not sure that Bane as Latino matters nearly as much as Bane as the Other.  The parts of the character that are ethnically identifiable exist for the same reason Trogg (the neanderthal) has fangs: it’s scary and alien.  There’s a conversation to be had about how we as a society view the citizens of the “global south,” but I don’t know if it’s the right conversation to have in this film.  I’m not even sure that portraying a vicious, violent revolutionary bent on destruction as strongly Latino is a net positive in today’s climate.  It could very well backfire, enhancing all the wrong fears at precisely the wrong time.

Awesome commentary is awesome.

From what I’m hearing about the film, Nolan didn’t give a shit about the class conflict and it’s better from the POV of the film that Bane was pasty and British.

Whatevs. Imma go read me some Secret Six. Bane was awesome in that series.

katefatale:

As of this morning, I think it’s safe to say that Marion Cotillard is, in fact, playing Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises. Not that anyone really believed “Miranda Tate” wasn’t really Talia to begin with.

My initial reaction to leaked photos that would seem to confirm Talia being in the…