Gérard Depardieu playing Alexandre Dumas

[sanguinity]

Yanno, I wasn't ever expecting to be posting film news nor whitewashing news to this comm, but whaddaya know, this time it's an author of color being whitewashed.

Alexandre Dumas is being whitewashed:

The blond, blue-eyed Depardieu sports curly hair and darker skin to play the creator of The Three Musketeers in L’Autre Dumas.

Dumas, the world’s most-read French author and an exuberant, high-living celebrity, was the grandson of a former Haitian slave. His father, although a Napoleonic-era general, was referred to as a Caribbean “negro”.

In his lifetime the novelist was mocked for his African features and he called himself un nègre. [...]

Non-white celebrities, some Dumas experts and black organisations are angry because they say that the producers missed a chance to celebrate ethnic diversity in France and remind the world of the writer’s origins. “There is a mechanism of permanent discrimination by silence,” Jacques Martial, a black actor, said.

There is a mechanism of permanent discrimination by silence.

I find this casting choice especially unfortunate given that most people seem to already assume that Dumas was white. A couple hours of Depardieu in a curly wig (!) isn't going to dispel that association.

Comments

[cereta.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, they actually used the blue eyes argument!

[sanguinity]

I found that to be a bizzare statement, given the context: hello, Dumas is an example of a mixed-race man who had blue eyes. I know nothing about the director, but if he's mixed race himself, bwuh...?

At this point, I'm wondering if the ellipsis in that quote has something to do with how the film industry tends to define racial identities in a very narrow, prescriptive way. I wonder if "black and white mixed race" is defined in the film industry to be a certain look, and that look always precludes blue eyes. (For reference to what I'm talking about, this quote by Lala Vasquez about how, because she's a black Latina, she can't get cast for roles as Latinas -- because in the film industry, Latinas are assumed to have a certain look, and that look excludes black.)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

This topic came up on a forum I follow, and there were several people arguing, in all apparent seriousness, that because Dumas had three white grandparents and one black grandparent, it was more appropriate to have him played by a white actor than a black actor.

And then someone argued that having him played by an actor of similar body type was more important than having him played by an actor of similar racial composition, because Dumas being a gourmand and having a certain physical profile was important, unlike that minor race issue. Also used as an argument: all the big-name actors who could handle the part were white, so it would have been foolish for the producer to cast anyone black, who couldn't draw as much money for the movie.

I wish I'd posted something on that thread, but it made me so damn angry that I couldn't respond coherently.

[sanguinity]

Because it's so rare for black people to have three white grandparents and one black grandparent.

Because the race thing was completely separate from the gourmand thing (warning: racist cartoon about Dumas, published during his writing career).

Because no one ever becomes a big name actor, they're just born already being one. Also, all existing big name actors are white. (Too bad I have no familiarity with the French film industry, because I suspect there are far better people to reference.)



The argument about "other people are racist, so it's smart to be proactively racist in response" really burns me. I don't want to go too far with that here because the director is mixed-race and there may well have been a "how well-connected is he? how many strings can he pull? how many strings can Depardieu pull?" thing going on as a de facto condition of financing or something. But that questions like that even get asked, or that financing is dependent on the answers? That's systemic racism running loose, pure and simple. The director may well have been backed into this corner: that doesn't mean that there isn't a problem here. In fact, if true, it's evidence that there is one.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

There are some weird race issues in the French theater and film world.

For instance, the first black actor to be elected to the Comedie Francaise was Bakary Sangare (http://www.parisvoice.com/voicearchives/03/apr/html/showtime/theater.html) in 2003. Before that, white actors in blackface portrayed African characters in CF productions.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

so rare for black people to have three white grandparents and one black grandparent.


absolutely. i mean, i've never heard of such a thing.

well, except for where it happened in my own family.

a hundred years ago.

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

I love Dumas, and I have some respect for Depardieu as an actor, but this is just wrong.

[sanguinity]

Yes.

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

Over on Jezebel yesterday, a commenter said she thought it was appropriate that a "lightly bronzed" Depardieu play Dumas - and when I took issue with that idea, she complained (among other things) that Dumas' white ancestors were being "whitewashed" out of the picture.

*hands*

[sanguinity]

So, um. If you are white, and you or your kids have children with someone who's black, you cease to exist? Am I getting that right?

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

Apparently so!

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

If Gerard Depardieu looked enough like Alexandre Dumas to play him convincingly, he wouldn't have to be wearing blackface. The fact that they're putting him in blackface kind of throws the whole "but three of his grandparents were the same race as three of Dumas's grandparents" argument into disarray.

I can imagine an actor who did not self-identify as black being able to play Dumas without being in blackface--a Tahitian actor, for example--but clearly Depardieu isn't that actor.

[sanguinity]

:: The fact that they're putting him in blackface kind of throws the whole "but three of his grandparents were the same race as three of Dumas's grandparents" argument into disarray. ::

It really does.

And while I'm sure it's possible to debate and discuss the politics of particular POC self-identities playing this role, "white" should be right out of the running.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Safy Nebbou, the director and of mixed race himself, noted that Dumas had been one-quarter black. “It would have been an historic error to have chosen a mixed-blood actor ... He had blue eyes like Depardieu.”

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

[sanguinity]

I keep wondering what that ellipsis replaced. Also, what the surrounding, contextualizing sentences were. Also, what "mixed-blood" means in France. Because on the face of it, that quote really doesn't make any sense.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. Although given how many times I've seen similar things said in the U.S., I'm not sure context would necessarily lend it any more sense.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

::GLARES::

[sanguinity]

Your icon, it is fab.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Ta. sugargroupie made it for me during an early round of fail in Merlin fandom when people were declaring Gwen's presence, as a non-white woman, in a fantasy kingdom with a magical dragon "unrealistic" and ahistorical. ::wryly amused face::

[sanguinity]

... I don't think that word means what they think it means.

[scottwoods.livejournal.com]

This hurts my black soul.

Isn't it bad enough they had to move his body to a respectable grave a hundred years after the fact?

[sanguinity]

I wish that in the process of respecting and honoring him, they were respecting and honoring his blackness, too. It doesn't really feel like respect or honor when they have to whiten him to do it.

[the-willow.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Meanwhile, it comes across as if not only was Dumas not really black, but just a white person with an inborn Caribbean tan - but the premise of the whole damn movie is that he didn't even write what he wrote?

So no blackness, no genius, those negroes getting so upset over a nobody.

Yeah, I'm gonna go take deep breathes now and be glad that at least when I was in school, we learned about Dumas because he was Haitian (descended).

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

the premise of the whole damn movie is that he didn't even write what he wrote?

It's pretty well documented (from court cases and publishers' records of the time) that Dumas used ghostwriters; it wasn't that unusual in those days, any more than it's all that unusual today--cf. James Patterson.

I don't think Dumas was anything other than forthcoming about using ghostwriters in his day, again like James Patterson. He was an idea guy and a media celebrity, not the sort of person who could be bothered with writing chapter after chapter about D'Artagnan's horse.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I should say that Dumas said that he had collaborators "as Napoleon had generals" which is interesting especially considering his family history.

And that he won a lawsuit against someone who had published an attack pamphlet called "Novel Factory: Alexandre Dumas and Company," during the course of which he testified as to how he worked with his researchers and collaborators.

[sanguinity]

Yes, it does feel like a double insult. Of all the stories you could tell about Dumas, they chose this one.

[lilka.livejournal.com]

Ick. I disapprove, Depardieu. (And also the other people involved in this production, he's just the only one I recognise....)

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

I fully expect to see a blond wigged Vincent Cassell play Joseph Boulogne in a movie next.

[sanguinity]

'Twould be entirely in keeping with the way things are being done.