BBC / PBS race quotas for actors in TV shows.

[clintonhater]

BBC, the network that banned its reporters & commentators from using "terrorist" to describe members of ISIS, Taliban, etc., telling them to use "militant" instead.

Now BBC has announced its intention to impose a 15% quota for non-white actors in all dramatizations of historic novels, such as the new production of Les Miserables that's currently being ballyhooed on PBS (which, indirectly, pays for most of these BBC productions). One of the two leading roles has been given to a black actor, despite the indisputable fact that the novel portrays him as white, & that the fictional character is based partially on a real, white, & celebrated police detective famous in French history.

From the Spectator: "Anyway, to Les Misérables and the casting of David Oyelowo as Javert. Can anyone point me to any evidence that there were black police inspectors in early 19th- century France; or that a gentleman of West African extraction was what Victor Hugo had in mind when he created this son of a galley slave? Otherwise, I’ll have to assume that this is another depressing example of the BBC’s woke quota targets — 15 per cent representation of black and minority ethnic actors on screen by 2020 — being given precedence over verisimilitude, artistic integrity and viewer satisfaction. Very few of us, I am sure, would consider ourselves to be racist. But the BBC would appear to be on a mission to make us feel as though we are by forcing us to notice stuff we shouldn’t have to notice.

The complete article: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/01/...quota-targets/

[blackhawknj]

Sounds very Socialist. What was it Erich Honecker said ?
"Artist and writers are free to create as they wish so long as they start from the Socialist point of view."
Sounds like the attempts in academia to impose quotas on certain groups to keep them from being overrepresented.
Stalin insisted that the actors who portrayed him had to be noticeably taller and trimmer in the waist.

[togor]

If I am going to cast an Englishman in the role of a Frenchman, does it have to be a white one in order for the story to be effectively told? In honesty there is no single right answer, that it may depend on the specifics. In India, they produce Death of a Salesman and no one is white. Ultimately the opposite of racial quotas is not having quotas and letting the casting chips fall as they may, as opposed to having quotas of zero.

[clintonhater]

If I am going to cast an Englishman in the role of a Frenchman, does it have to be a white one in order for the story to be effectively told?

OF COURSE, if an absurd mockery is not to be made, not only of the original, classic, story, but more importantly, of French history! Any white man can obviously impersonate another white man, & the language of the dialog MUST be one that the home audience understands, or why make the movie? When French films are made about stories set in other parts of Europe, they're made IN French.

Do you suppose any white actors were auditioned for the role of the King of Demagogues when casting for Selma was being conducted? The casting chips fall in only ONE direction when films about blacks are being made.

[togor]

So blackface?

And blacks can't perform Shakespeare's plays? God only knows how CH would cast The King and I with his policy of ethno-realism.

Quotas are not good I agree, but the answer isn't different quotas.