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

[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.