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[Inferno313]

Case in point, Finn From the new Star Wars movie.

I don't think anyone has a real problem with Finn, I've only seen a small amount of people annoyed that the marketing made it seem like he'd be the potential Jedi in the film, not with the film itself.

 

[EdibleKnife]

Just asking the question elicits a response that lumps Blacks, Chinese, and Martians together. It's pretty amazing how it's always White people over here and everybody else over there. LOL And they never seem to realize how condescending it is.

Yeah. That response isn't the "Well in my artistic vision" type and more the "These people talking about diversity piss me off" type. It just makes it seem like they have deeper issues with their bubble being poked more than anything artistic.

 

[Ikuu]

Yes, but considering the fact that the only times they've cast minorities in significant roles in their films are Javier Bardem in No Country, Irma P. Hall and Marlon Wayans in “The Ladykillers”, and a white-washed Oscar Isaac in "Inside Llewyn Davis," it's a little troubling that they barely even seem to be aware of this issue.

What minority is Javier Bardem?

 

[DontBeThatGuy]

"Why they would single out a particular movie"? Yeah, just one.

 

[Shaanyboi]

Wow, such an empathetic response! /s

 

[Slayven]

amazing they lump black and asian with dog and martian, like being a minority is absurd or science fiction.


But Hollywoodd is all about merit

 

[Kenshin001]

Thread title is pretty misleading. They were referring to her specific question about that particular film, which frankly, was idiotic. It's a film about 1950s Hollywood.

 

[Spehornoob]

What minority is Javier Bardem?

Javier Bardem is Spanish

 

[JTripper]

To be fair, they say it's idiotic to single out a particular movie, not that the question of diversity in general is idiotic.

Yeah, people are missing the point here by a long shot. Disappointed by the comments I'm seeing here honestly.

There's not a quota to making stories.

 

[hokahey]

People generally create stories that reflect themselves to some extent. Hollywood needs more minority filmmakers. Pestering non minorities about fulfilling some arbitrary quota is not the path forward.

 

[Courage]

Why? Is there some mandate? Maybe they don't have any stories about black people to tell. Maybe all the stories they have in them are about white people.

None of their movies explicitly tackle race though. Sure, some of their characters are defined by a historical period and fit in certain archetypes, but there's still a problematic lack of minority actors in their films, major and minor roles alike.

 

[Moff]

It really doesn't even matter if they "write" the characters with a race in mind, which would not make sense in most of their movies, or if they simply pick non-black actors in the casting process.
The Coens are easily big enough to do whatever they want so they bear full responsibility.

 

[Trokil]

What? A symptom is what's happening with the Oscars. Filmmakers actually play a huge role in who gets cast in a movie. This is going for one of the sources of the problem.

But don't you think the Coen Brothers are the wrong people for this discussion, because of the movies they make. They don't whitewash, they just tend to use stories, which are timepieces and in this context artificial minority casting would just be weird. Of course there is a lot of whitewashing in Hollywood, but I don't think the Coens are the problem.

 

[Arkeband]

Were the Coen brothers involved in casting the Fargo TV series at all? Because the best character in S2 was a black guy.

 

[captainnapalm]

So when people like Idris Elba, or Ava Duvernay speak about diversity and inclusion, it's because they don't understand the creative process?

Well firstly, I don't know what they said so I can't comment, but there is a clear distinction between what the Coen Brothers do, and say, Hollywood slapping together another White House Down or something.

If you want to talk about Hollywood as an industry and some of the decisions it takes, that is a very different discussion to one about the Coen Brothers as independent artists.

 

[Gordon Shumway]

Martians..it's the new green.

 

[TronLight]

Have the Coen brothers cast minority actors other than in Lady Killers and Bardem for No Country For Old Men? Their explanation doesn't help their case that much.

How is Bardem a minority actor? Serious question.

 

[Dr. Letz Shake]

In my own case, I'm pretty certain I would know if I had a Martian in my story by the end of the first draft.

 

[SomedayTheFire]

People generally create stories that reflect themselves to some extent. Hollywood needs more minority filmmakers. Pestering non minorities about fulfilling some arbitrary quota is not the path forward.

Is this real?

 

[richiek]

Yeah, people are missing the point here by a long shot. Disappointed by the comments I'm seeing here honestly.

There's not a quota to making stories.

But if you look at the filmography of the Coen brothers, it is undeniable that their actors are overwhelmingly white, which is pretty disappointing considering their comments, and I say this as a huge fan of their work.

 

[jond76]

They're right though. Even if the reductio ad absurdum with the Martians seems weird.

Coming to expect diversity from a movie about 50's Hollywood written by a couple of middle aged white guys from Minessota is stupid. The solution to this lies in opening up avenues for diverse creators to make their stuff. Not running around with quotas, pestering people already making stuff.

Agreed

 

[Slayven]

Martians..it's the new green.

People do say Piccolo is black....

 

[xenist]

But then they're not writing characters without race in mind. They're writing white characters, which was not their answer.

You write what's in your head. They don't set out to write about white people. They write the stories they want to tell. Their life experience is white so they write about that. I must be messing up something becuase I can't understand why this is not getting through.

What you're saying their process is: "Let's write about a bunch of white guys."
What it probably is: "Let's write this cool story."

The whiteness, if you want, is a product of their upbringing and cultural influences.

 

[BronsonLee]

How is Bardem a minority actor? Serious question.

Because he's Spanish as fuck

So white European?

Kill me now

 

[ReplacementPelican]

Javier Bardem is Spanish

So white European?

 

[Trokil]

None of their movies explicitly tackle race though. Sure, some of their characters are defined by a historical period and fit in certain archetypes, but there's still a problematic lack of minority actors in their films, major and minor roles alike.

But it's their right to choose what movies they want to make. You can't just order them to pick a story were more minorities are included. It's not like the rest of Hollywood where they take stories and just cast them white.

 

[Ikuu]

Javier Bardem is Spanish

I know he is, how is a white European actor a minority?

 

[The Kree]

Yeah, people are missing the point here by a long shot. Disappointed by the comments I'm seeing here honestly.

There's not a quota to making stories.

It's probably disrespectful to minorities to dismiss their asking for inclusion into things as merely begging for quotas.

 

[Foggy]

“It’s an absolute, absurd misunderstanding of how things get made to single out any particular story and say, ‘Why isn’t this, that or the other thing [included]?’” answered Joel. “It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how stories are written. So you have to start there and say, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’“

“You don’t sit down and write a story and say, ‘I’m going to write a story that involves four black people, three Jews, and a dog,’ right? That’s not how stories get written. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand anything about how stories get written and you don’t realize that the question you’re asking is idiotic.

This is really at the heart of it all when it comes to criticizing an individual element that is part of a much larger trend, especially when it comes to storytelling. For many storytellers, especially ones as esoteric as them, these kinds of questions about "why" for creative decisions are asinine.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

They really just compared black people to chinese people (you can be chinese and white, or chinese and black) to dogs and a non existant species though?

 

[Dali]

Not really a fan of their movies and im honestly surprised they have such acclaim here.

For such "original" people it's funny they went to a version of the old "I don't care if you're black, white, or purple..." They understand the fucking question. You write fucking characters, not ethnicities. You cast characters, not ethnicities. Can other ethnicities fill these roles? I don't know and don't have any intention of watching another shitty coen movie to find out.

 

[TronLight]

I know he is, how is a white European actor a minority?

This. I'm confused.

 

[kruis]

1940s Hollywood wasn't all-white.

Same when people look at some period piece getting criticized and say "but that's how it was". No it wasn't. America, England, multicultural for ages. People have a skewed impression of certain periods exactly because of popular culture (mis-)representation.

What false mis-representation? Until the 1950/60ies, England (actually the whole of Europe) wasn't multi cultural in the modern sense. No doubt there were blacks and indians in Europe since the 16th century, but in all of those cases we're talking about a small number of people compared to the entire population.

 

[ReplacementPelican]

Kill me now

Spanish people aren't white now? Damn, I'm going to have to call up some of my family and let them know.

Or is your implication that not American is a minority for Hollywood? I feel like I've gone insane.

 

[Michael F. Assbender]

It's coming off a little weird and aggressive, but since it's a film set in the Hollywood studio system in the 50s, I don't think it's actually at all improper to have a predominantly white cast since, well, it was pretty goddamned white in that era of Hollywood.

I was thinking the same thing.

 

[Trokil]

So white European?

Oh dear, maybe you should think a little bit about the history of Spain, the Arab World and Latin America.

 

[Jacobi]

But if you look at the filmography of the Coen brothers, it is undeniable that their actors are overwhelmingly white, which is pretty disappointing considering their comments, and I say this as a huge fan of their work.

Why do white people have to make stories about minority characters? You could argue they can't write from their point of view.

Oh, and their new movie has minority characters, Ralph Fiennes is British and Tilda Swinton is Scottish.

 

[Blood Diamonds]

They really just compared black people to chinese people (you can be chinese and white, or chinese and black) to dogs and a non existant species though?

we're just going to ignore that though and concentrate on 1940's hollywood, back when minorities didn't exist.

 

[Shaanyboi]

The thing is, I think it sort of is. Not that it SHOULD be that way, but I feel like nowadays the inclusion of any minority character in media creates an expectation that the said work (book/movie/etc) will deal with that minority's backstory because they're a minority. White characters don't create that expectation. That's my interpretation of it though.

Also, due to the prevalence of white roles, it's possible that people subconsciously assign whiteness to a default role.

I think increasing representation of minorities is a good thing to do, but isn't mandatory. Having an overwhelming majority of characters be white or black doesn't make the work worse, IMO.

Pretty much, it's like there's always this supposed need to justify making a character a minority or something. You can never just make a character brown "just because" or black "just because." Instead there needs to be some statement attached to it, a burden white roles are rarely ever saddled with.

 

[Moppeh]

To be fair, they say it's idiotic to single out a particular movie, not that the question of diversity in general is idiotic.

Yeah, exactly.

Their reaction could have been better said, but the issue of diversity shouldn't be thrown at individual films, this is something that needs to be hammered to executives and producers, the kinds of people who choose what projects to greenlight. Guilt tripping creative types to throw in more minorities isn't the way to do it.

I understand the frustration at the issue, but white writers and directors should be answering questions like these better.

1940s Hollywood wasn't all-white.

Yeah, but 1940s Hollywood movies were very white. This film isn't going for a historic representation of Hollywood, rather it is very much leaning on the tone of films and filmmaking of that period.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

What false mis-representation? Until the 1950/60ies, England (actually the whole of Europe) wasn't multi cultural in the modern sense. No doubt there were blacks and indians in Europe since the 16th century, but in all of those cases we're talking about a small number of people compared to the entire population.

That's just false, after WW2 in France at least, there has been a huge amount of immigration coming from Africa to rebuild the country. Immigration favored by the government.

 

[xenist]

The Spanish are a minority now? I love the US cosmopolitanism.

I dare someone to travel to Madrid and go around telling that to Spanish people.

 

[Stitch]

Chinese, Black, Jewish, Martian and dog, there's something wrong with this "diversity" list

But that movie about four black people, three Jews, and a dog sounds cool.

 

[poppabk]

I know he is, how is a white European actor a minority?

Because no-one has figured out how to define descendants of Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South America in a way that excludes the Spanish and Portuguese without confusing everyone.

 

[BronsonLee]

The Spanish are a minority now? I love the US cosmopolitanism.

I dare someone to travel to Madrid and go around telling that to Spanish people.

I don't think that's how that works

 

[JTripper]

It's probably disrespectful to minorities to dismiss their asking for inclusion into things as merely begging for quotas.

It's also probably disrespectful to beg storytellers to include something their story might not necessarily need to improve and/or force a justification out of them as to why they didn't include them.

 

[Hagi]

Why do white people have to make stories about minority characters? You could argue they can't write from their point of view.

Oh, and their new movie has minority characters, Ralph Fiennes is British and Tilda Swinton is Scottish.

Holy shit I'm a minority? fuck me it all makes sense now.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

"Should they just check boxes to satisfy people?"

Uh sure, I'm fine with that given 95% of stories could use any ethnicity and it wouldn't matter. Quite honestly, fuck their creative process. They have had all eternity to include others and not done it. Why the fuck do I give a shit about the creative process at this point?

 

[stupei]

Why do white people have to make stories about minority characters? You could argue they can't write from their point of view.

Oh, and their new movie has minority characters, Ralph Fiennes is British and Tilda Swinton is Scottish.

You aren't helping their cause. Just fyi.

 

[Inferno313]

The Spanish are a minority now? I love the US cosmopolitanism.

I dare someone to travel to Madrid and go around telling that to Spanish people.

I've edited him out of my post. I mentioned him primarily because the article in question also mentioned him. My mistake.