Race and Representation in Prince of Persia
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- Looking back at 2010's Prince of Persia starring Jake Gyllenhaal and exploring the controversial casting choices made in the film, as well as exploring the concept of "whiteness" in American culture, and whether or not Persians are, in fact, white.
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Music-
Ether Vox by Kevin MacLeod
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Actually Jake Gyllenhaal is the closest persian looking actor, and that's mainly because of his Jewish/middle eastern features.
What an interesting and nuanced take on representation in film, TOHOF. I bristled a tidge at the first part of your commentary because I STRONGLY believe the ethnicity of an actor needn't be the basis of casting decisions to insure they match the ethnicity of the role. I mean, how is that even possible? Can DNA test be far behind? Along with a resume, headshot, and bio, should actors be required to present their 23 'n' Me results? And, of course, that would inevitable result in FEWER roles for people of color and for women than the already-woeful percentages, since the majority of roles are written by and for while males of European descent. But truly, sometimes it seems like directors or producers, or whoever makes casting decisions on any particular movie doesn't make the slightest effort to look beyond whoever is 'hot' at the moment, and then there is no way that any more interesting choices will ever be made as to who is cast, let alone whether the cast makes sense ethnically or racially.
Your point about the box office draw dictating casting is certainly the biggest obstacle to both greater representation, more casting diversity, and generally better movies. Bigger stars really do garner more attention, which really does result in more eyeballs on the movie, whether at home (as everything these days) or back in the before-times of theaters. Guess it's up to us, the viewing public, to make of point of lending our attention to (thereby making profitable) filmmakers who expand their thinking in casting, who are thoughtful regarding representation...in other words, who make better movies as a result of such efforts.
Clearly your channel here, TOHOF, is intended to do just that. Looking forward to your next commentary.
I don’t believe Tohof was suggesting that an actor’s ethnicity must match that of the character they are portraying, just that being so underrepresented, when a character would likely be a person of color, that the least a studio could do would be to make an effort to cast a person of color. Compare Disney’s casting choices in The Prince of Persia -nearly every one being a very white person with tan makeup, to the new Aladdin live action remake, where they selected a diverse cast from various backgrounds and ethnicities! So great to see! -not the movie though, it was trash XD.
Regarding your point about actors not needing to match the ethnicity of the characters they play... I think you're right, to an extent. I'm planning on making a video about this soon, but I think that movies like Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1997 Cinderella and more recently The Personal History of David Copperfield show us a sort of race-blind casting done right. Where the color of the actor's skin is not relevant to the characters they play. I think there is something very beautiful about that, and I connect to that quite deeply, as someone with a mixed-race background. But Prince of Persia exhibited an erasure of West Asian identity. It wasn't race blind, it purposefully didn't cast any actors of color in the Persian roles, because to do so would be to highlight how white the rest of the cast is. They essentially wanted to fool the audience into thinking that everyone in the Persian Empire looked like they just got off the plane from jolly old England. They've been playing the same game with Aryan Jesus for the last 2000 years.
I truly get so frustrated at things like this. I even thought it was a little bit weird when they got a half-Indian woman to play an Arabian princess in the live-action movie of aladdin. don't even get me started on this bullshit. we're already such a minority in itself, I think it's ludicrous to cast WHITE PEOPLE in a movie about PERSIANS. it's crazy. it's like they're purposefully trying to make it as though we don't exist. and the way they darkened everybody's skin for the roles? that was a step too far. in my opinion, the casting for this movie did not get enough backlash as it should have. and you know why? because people don't care. when it comes to black people or east Asians or Latinos, then uh oh! (I'm not saying that's not important too! it absolutely is, but as a Persian woman myself, I think Persian representation is just as important). but when it's about Persians or other small minorities in the community, people don't care because they don't KNOW. they don't know anything about us. they don't teach this stuff in school. they focus on the larger groups of races and ethnicities when they should also be teaching us about the minorities that stand alongside with them.
Persian are historically related to "Caucasian" people. You should do some research before you speak.
th-cam.com/video/sMdhcpjNHLk/w-d-xo.html
Ancient persians were more white than Scandinavians. Dude just google meaning of the word iran
"Land of Aryans" doesn't explain shit, Aryan simply meant noble in Indo-Iranian languages, it didn't mean fair skinned/blue eyed. Real Iranians had olive skin tone and black hair.
@@mahmoudhaji give me the evidences that it simply meant noble
@@mahmoudhaji come on. Give me the evidences
You know nothing about what you speak of.
Search Indo-European to educate yourself on this. People from all of Europe to Persia to India share relevant genetic and linguistic links. This virtue signaling is craven and ignorant.
Dude, you are absolutely right! What I'm getting from this is that you agree that race is a construct. Europeans, Persians, Indians. We're all just human, right? But why then would most people, most Americans at least, not consider most Indians to be white? And why are people so confused on whether, say, middle eastern people are white? Or Latinos? That's the question that I was (poorly) trying to explore in this video.
Thank you for the input! I sincerely appreciate it.
@@theotherhalfoffilm If you are going to wade into these waters and seek to educate or gain some profit or recognition on a topic then you have a responsibility to be educated on it. That goes extra when you're getting into ethnic issues especially in this group identity obessesed, collectivistic, day and age. One might wonder what your goal was here.
Yes, evidence strongly suggests we are all originally from Africa with the first major migrations within and out of Africa taking place around the Toba volcanic explosion 70,000 years ago. Various hunter and gather groups spread across Eurasia and into the South Pacific. Ice Ages came and went over tens of thousands of years, people were forced to adapt and survive. This led to distinct physical characteristics, ethnicities and even some important genetic distinctions that are relevent to things like lactose toleration and health. We are all of the same human race and each of us is an individual. Ethnic and cultural heritage remains a flashpoint and these issues are personal to people as well as to the broader communities involved. More than ten thousand years ago agriculture was invented in the Levant, including the area from Egypt to Turkey and into Mesopotamia. The farmers spread out across ancient Europe and through trade and conflict mixed in with the previous hunter gatherers. Around 7,000 years ago a pastoral horse riding herding society began to develop in the area above the caucus mountains. These people eventually spread across the continent in various distant but related groups. Today we are speaking in a language distantly related to theirs, as are all the Iranian Languages which are part of the broader Indo European language family.
The Ancient Persians were invaded and conquered first by the distantly related Greeks and it was also a Hellenistic state for centuries. Then there were various invasions including Semitic speaking people from Arabia, Mongols, Tamerlane, Turks and so on. Before each Arabic and Asiatic population invaded the people in Persia and other nearby places would have had more "Caucasian" physical characteristics not less. Even today there are plenty of blue and green eyed Persians and all people in this area have some genetic and cultural admixture from this ancient people. People from Persia were and are unique but these actors aren't engaged in "Whitewashing" and to suggest so is wrong, historically and with respect to various cultures. For the sake of your audience and your own credibility research these things beforehand.
The video below illustrates Indo European expansion.
th-cam.com/video/sMdhcpjNHLk/w-d-xo.html
@@S.J.Lwhy only persians? What about other Iranians?
@@Elya-ou3kf Of course, all the Iranians.
We're speaking about the historical empire, specifically founded by the Persians.