Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: jwarrenw13

Dune. I just want to see the new Dune. Not concerned about race of this character or another. Just want it to be a good movie. Been so long since I've read Dune that I only remember the general plot.

Changing race of characters. I have no problem in most cases. Sometimes it doesn't work when a conversion of a play or novel absolutely has to have a character of a certain race for central plot and theme reasons. Let's see Black Panther with a white man playing the Black Panther. [Though I did read just yesterday a good discussion about who needs to be Black Panther in the apparent Black Panther sequel, with some good arguments for Okoye, a black female warrior.] Atticus Finish of To Kill a Mockingbird can't really be played by anything but a white man. Othello can't really be played by anything but a black man. Though sometimes roles can be reversed or altered for good effect. Hamilton is an example. I think Hamilton will in the end be recorded as a mediocre musical, but the character decisions were interesting and worked. I taught high school English in my second career after my Army career. I taught Othello a few times before state curriculum requirement basically mandated I teach certain texts for uniformity for state standardized tests and other reasons. In one case I was teaching it with a class that was all black with one white guy. The white guy wanted to read the Othello parts. We had a class discussion. All the black kids agreed that was cool. So all the black kids got the white parts and the white kid read Othello, and everyone loved it. I think they got more out of it than any of my other classes that year.

That turned into a long digression. Sorry.

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

ORIGINAL: bomccarthy

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69



Dune was written by Frank Herbert, who was American, but they just had to race&gender&age swap Liet-Kynes - a white old man with dark complexion (like a Greek or a Sicilian) in the book. Of course the real point of contention about the book, i.e. the problematic use of the trope of the "White Saviour" - something debated about since the book was published in 1965 - isn't touched here. [8|]

Okay .... This is getting a little ridiculous, complaining about switching the gender/race identity of a character in a science fiction work. A film based on a novel is a creative interpretation of the story - some elements are changed. Stephen King had no problem with the most recent film version of Pet Sematary, where the fates of the two children in the story were swapped; he did have a problem with Stanley Kubrick replacing the entire underlying theme of The Shining. Having a young Black female actor play a character whose race and gender is not vital to the story (set on a planet far in the future) does not seem to be a reason for old White men to start staring dejectedly at the reflection in their soup.

I have no problem with changing the source material - if done for a reason. Kubrick did it all the times but the results were not masterpieces by chance. "Barry Lyndon" - my favourite Kubrick movie - starts as a picaresque novel written in first person by someone who hypocritically blames the world for his misfortunes. The movie is a drama told in third person; and yet the satirical undertones are all there and Barry remains the main actor of his own downfall. Maybe Kubrick knew that he had already used the novel's approach in "A Clockwork Orange", but you can easily see the logic underneath the changes. Regarding "The Shining", it is known that Kubrick didn't really like the novel. What he liked were the building blocks and he used them to do his own very successful tale.

But the point is that Kubrick and others worked hard to bring their visions on the screen and all this work is there to be seen - because it is there for a reason. In "Foundation" you race&gender swap Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin... Why? Maybe you want to modernise the tale by including topics that are relevant today. After all "Foundation" had always been about politics and the evolution of societies. But this is not what happens here. Dornic is mostly used to show a young black female mathematician (who, we are already shown, is almost better than Hari Seldon just like that) to patronise a group of older scientists who are trying to decide "what to save of mathematics" (???) by reminding them that all mathematics is important. I mean... For real? This was written and approved?

Then we have Salvor Hardin, who has been gender&race&age&job&mind swapped. When Anacreon menaces the Foundation we are shown that she is the only one looking for weapons. What? Hardin's motto, most famously, was "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent". Hardin knew very well that a scientific foundation could not hope to survive the belligerent planets surrounding it by using violence. The beauty and undying relevance of "Bridle & Saddle" (which is the title of the original tale) is how Hardin understands how science is the key in that crisis - and how things at the end play out in a surprising but logical way. Here... dunno. Maybe she will wise up. After all she is a black woman, so, in this kind of production, gifted with superintelligence by default (we already saw her discovering things she couldn't possibly know, over and over, thanks to "hunches" - which breaks the whole "Foundation" bedrock: no character has mental powers...)

I have nothing against movies who present relevant topics in a honest way. Among the movies that I liked the most in the last few years I can cite "Moonlight", "Tangerine" (and, by the same director, "The Florida Project"), "The Dallas Buyers Club", "Hidden Figures", "Get Out", "His House"... (the last two using horror in a strongly symbolic way). My youngest daughter (whose informal surname is "La Pasionaria") suggested me to check out "Transamerica" and "The Normal Heart", and both were wonderful.

Here? "Let's show that we are relevant by putting on screen how many women and people of color as it is humanly possible - the reason why the character was written in a certain way be damned. Also, let's make them the best in everything and everybody else a lesser stupid, so we can then parade around and show how socially conscious we are! " This is not "being socially conscious": it is being lazy - and hypocrites.

Like a friend of mine said after "Dune", should they remake 'Training Day' today, it would be Denzel Washington's character the white one, and Ethan Hawke's the black cop.

ORIGINAL: bomccarthy

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

ORIGINAL: bomccarthy




Okay .... This is getting a little ridiculous, complaining about switching the gender/race identity of a character in a science fiction work. A film based on a novel is a creative interpretation of the story - some elements are changed. Stephen King had no problem with the most recent film version of Pet Sematary, where the fates of the two children in the story were swapped; he did have a problem with Stanley Kubrick replacing the entire underlying theme of The Shining. Having a young Black female actor play a character whose race and gender is not vital to the story (set on a planet far in the future) does not seem to be a reason for old White men to start staring dejectedly at the reflection in their soup.

I have no problem with changing the source material - if done for a reason. Kubrick did it all the times but the results were not masterpieces by chance. "Barry Lyndon" - my favourite Kubrick movie - starts as a picaresque novel written in first person by someone who hypocritically blames the world for his misfortunes. The movie is a drama told in third person; and yet the satirical undertones are all there and Barry remains the main actor of his own downfall. Maybe Kubrick knew that he had already used the novel's approach in "A Clockwork Orange", but you can easily see the logic underneath the changes. Regarding "The Shining", it is known that Kubrick didn't really like the novel. What he liked were the building blocks and he used them to do his own very successful tale.

But the point is that Kubrick and others worked hard to bring their visions on the screen and all this work is there to be seen - because it is there for a reason. In "Foundation" you race&gender swap Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin... Why? Maybe you want to modernise the tale by including topics that are relevant today. After all "Foundation" had always been about politics and the evolution of societies. But this is not what happens here. Dornic is mostly used to show a young black female mathematician (who, we are already shown, is almost better than Hari Seldon just like that) to patronise a group of older scientists who are trying to decide "what to save of mathematics" (???) by reminding them that all mathematics is important. I mean... For real? This was written and approved?

Then we have Salvor Hardin, who has been gender&race&age&job&mind swapped. When Anacreon menaces the Foundation we are shown that she is the only one looking for weapons. What? Hardin's motto, most famously, was "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent". Hardin knew very well that a scientific foundation could not hope to survive the belligerent planets surrounding it by using violence. The beauty and undying relevance of "Bridle & Saddle" (which is the title of the original tale) is how Hardin understands how science is the key in that crisis - and how things at the end play out in a surprising but logical way. Here... dunno. Maybe she will wise up. After all she is a black woman, so, in this kind of production, gifted with superintelligence by default (we already saw her discovering things she couldn't possibly know, over and over, thanks to "hunches" - which breaks the whole "Foundation" bedrock: no character has mental powers...)

I have nothing against movies who present relevant topics in a honest way. Among the movies that I liked the most in the last few years I can cite "Moonlight", "Tangerine" (and, by the same director, "The Florida Project"), "The Dallas Buyers Club", "Hidden Figures", "Get Out", "His House"... (the last two using horror in a strongly symbolic way). My youngest daughter (whose informal surname is "La Pasionaria") suggested me to check out "Transamerica" and "The Normal Heart", and both were wonderful.

Here? "Let's show that we are relevant by putting on screen how many women and people of color as it is humanly possible - the reason why the character was written in a certain way be damned. Also, let's make them the best in everything and everybody else a lesser stupid, so we can then parade around and show how socially conscious we are! " This is not "being socially conscious": it is being lazy - and hypocrites.

Like a friend of mine said after "Dune", should they remake 'Training Day' today, it would be Denzel Washington's character the white one, and Ethan Hawke's the black cop.

You seem to be mixing up stories where race is the essential theme and stories where it is incidental. I can't comment on Foundation, having never read the book(s) or watched the show. I did read all of the Dune books, albeit almost 40 years ago, and don't recall 20th Century race definitions as a theme.

The tone of many comments in this thread really exposes the irrational fear of White men being replaced or reduced in status, whether onscreen or in the workplace.

I admit that as a professional writer in a Fortune 500-sized consulting firm, I work in a world that prizes diversity and so rarely sees commentary like that displayed here.

Reading some of the recently locked threads in this forum, I gather that this type of discussion is something that Slitherine is still working through.

ORIGINAL: jwarrenw13

I was teaching it with a class that was all black with one white guy. The white guy wanted to read the Othello parts. We had a class discussion. All the black kids agreed that was cool. So all the black kids got the white parts and the white kid read Othello, and everyone loved it. I think they got more out of it than any of my other classes that year.

ORIGINAL: gamer78

And may I ask do the both blacks and white student know where "Moors" was geographically or know their people.

ORIGINAL: jwarrenw13

ORIGINAL: gamer78

And may I ask do the both blacks and white student know where "Moors" was geographically or know their people.

Oh my. I will reluctantly reply, since your question is directed at me and suggests academic negligence on my part.

First Othello describes himself as black twice in the play, for example, from Act 3, Scene 3, "...I am black

And have not those soft parts of conversation..."

And other characters in the play refer to Othello as "black" numerous times.

But as you know, Shakespeare doesn't use the word "black" in the same way we use it today to describe a race, which is what you are getting at. And in fact, Shakespeare uses it with a double meaning in this play, as he did with many words in his plays, in this case meaning Othello is a Moor (I'll get to that in a second.) and Othello has a dark or "black" heart. That is a concept we might be uncomfortable with today, though many negative things are described as "black," as in "a black mark" or "Black Tuesday" [US stock market crash, 1929].

As for race, Shakespeare would have used the term as pretty much a synonym for Moor, as you note, which would mean someone from north Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, or perhaps even Spain. And the Moors in London when Shakespeare was writing were mostly merchants. It did not have the same meaning as when we use it today. It could have included anyone who was darker skinned than the typical Londoner of that time.

As for my students, I would give them a brief explanation of what the word would have meant to Shakespeare and the people who went to see his plays circa 1600 in London and the double meaning in the play. They found that interesting, but they still registered the word when hearing or reading it in the play as having the meaning we give it today.

I hope this answers your question.

For a deeper look at the topic, anyone interested can read this.

Why is Othello black?

ORIGINAL: jwarrenw13


For a deeper look at the topic, anyone interested can read this.

Why is Othello black?

ORIGINAL: gamer78

ORIGINAL: jwarrenw13


For a deeper look at the topic, anyone interested can read this.

Why is Othello black?

I take a look at your text and concluded pro-English written text shouldn't be historically document or reference point. As I've mentioned before in another topic "Emrah Sefa Gürkan wrote a book about about "Pirates for the Sultan: Holy War, Booty and Slavery in the Ottoman Mediterranean, 1500 – 1700, İstanbul: Kronik, 2018 (Italian, Spanish and Bâb-ı Âli (Constantinople) archieves are used.)

Pirates in Ottoman Empire was mercenaries from Europe (from nations with sailing skill and have no jobs) and also some have Barbary origin, Muslim ones eating pork and celebrating others religion holy dates not typical religious practices we see today. There were many converts just like we see in politics and Inquisition was after them. They catch some of them, some change religion 3 times. And for Janissary land force as Balkan origin Christians some of them didn't see them as slaves. Some families did want wealth and career and they send their kids voluntarily.