Anne Boleyn and Color-Conscious Casting

Anne Boleyn is so dull that the lead’s race is the only worth discussing…as intended

The Channel 5 mini-series has attracted a lot of attention for its unconventional casting, but it is an underwhelming piece of television.

The first episode of the highly anticipated three-part drama, Anne Boleyn, which has generated a great deal of conversation because it cast Jodie Turner Smith, a black actress, in the titular role, premiered Tuesday night on BBC Channel 5.

The casting of a black actress to play a white historical figure has garnered much attention, which seems to be the point. I certainly wouldn’t have watched Anne Boleyn if it weren’t for the casting controversy…so mission accomplished.

This color-blind (casting without considering an actor’s race) or color-conscious (intentionally casting a minority because of their identity) casting approach has been a hot topic in recent years.

“Whitewashing”, where a white actor or actress plays a role that’s a minority in the source material, such as Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell or Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange, or where white actors/actresses play “people of color” like Emma Stone in Aloha, Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart or Jonathon Pryce in Miss Saigon, has been labelled culturally insensitive and all but banned.

In a case of “race-washing for me but not for thee”, during this same time-period “artists of color” playing characters that are white in the source material, even when that source material is actual history, has been met with cheers for being a sign of victory for “diversity” and “inclusion”.

A Wrinkle in Time, Hamilton and Mary, Queen of Scots(2018) are just a few of the examples of the race-washing of white characters, including white historical figures, with actors of color in recent years.

As a traditionalist who believes in respecting source material, particularly when the source is history itself, I always find it ironic that the woke are so enthralled with color-blind or color-conscious casting when it comes to white historical figures or originally white characters yet are so addicted to classifying people by their racial identity in real life.

Of course, the argument from the pro-color-blind/color-conscious side is rather disingenuous and unserious. Author Miranda Kaufman’s recent article on the subject in the Telegraph is a perfect representation of the vacuousness and vapidity of that position.

Kaufman opens her piece by declaring she is “always exasperated by the uproar when a new historical drama comes out with a cast that isn’t solely white” and then goes on to reveal her ignorance and stunningly obtuse perspective on the issue.

According to Kaufman, since there were blacks in England during the Tudor era that means it’s no big deal if a black actress plays Anne Boleyn.

There were white people in the civil rights movement, so should Joaquin Phoenix, Daniel Day Lewis and Meryl Streep play Malcolm X, MLK and Rosa Parks? There were white abolitionists so should Sean Penn and Jennifer Lawrence play Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman? This is obviously absurd.

Equally absurd is Kaufman’s reasoning that because there were 200 free blacks out of a total of between 2 and 4 million people living in Tudor England, then a black Anne Boleyn is perfectly reasonable even though, as Kaufman admits, “of course” Boleyn wasn’t black.

Kaufman’s article is titled, “Yes, there were black Tudors – and they lived fascinating lives”, so why not make a tv show about one of them and cast black artists in the roles instead of turning history into fantasy by casting Jodie Tuner Smith as Boleyn?

My opposition to color-blind and color-conscious casting is purely a function of wanting to see the very best film and television possible. Film and tv is all about ‘make believe’, as the actors are playing ‘make believe’ in order to make the audience believe what they are witnessing is genuine.

This is why movie and tv studios pay millions of dollars for top-notch CGI to make it look like superheroes are really flying and dragons actually exist, and why taller actors play Abe Lincoln and pretty actresses play Marylin Monroe.

By casting a black woman as Anne Boleyn, or any other white figure, the critically important suspension of disbelief needed to lose oneself in entertainment has one more obstacle to overcome in our jaded age, and the ‘make believe’ is made markedly less believable.

Which brings us to Anne Boleyn.

I wanted Anne Boleyn to be good because I want every-thing I see to be good, but unfortunately it isn’t just Anne’s head that will roll in relation to this show, but viewer’s eyes as well.

This drama is a rather flimsy and flaccid retelling of the Boleyn tale that brings nothing new to the table except for the race of its leading lady.

The show is not underwhelming because of Jodie Turner Smith, it would probably be anemic regardless of who played the titular role, but it isn’t helped by her presence either.

Smith is an undeniable beauty but she’s not particularly charismatic, and she certainly lacks the magnetism and skill to elevate this rather shallow and stilted drama.

The rest of the cast, be they white, black or other, don’t fare any better, as the production feels decidedly cheap and devoid of drama.  

Episode two and three of Anne Boleyn air over the next two nights and maybe it will find its dramatic rhythm and improve significantly, but I doubt it as the first episode was so dull it left me wanting to chop my own head off.

The bottom-line reality regarding Anne Boleyn is that the virtue signaling of color-blind or color-conscious casting may make pandering studio executives and the woke feel good, but it often doesn’t make for good art and entertainment.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Woke Philistines Taking Over Hollywood Hate White Men Considerably More Than They Love Cinema

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 29 seconds

Hollywood’s suffocating new wave of identity politics is targeting white men and movies and tv will suffer significantly because of it.

Hollywood, despite its reputation as a liberal bastion, has long been a hothouse of vicious reactionary sentiments.

For example, the anti-communist mania of the late 1940’s and 50’s was a particularly shameful time in Hollywood’s history. It was during this Red Scare that Hollywood studios created a blacklist where any person thought to be a communist or associated with communists, regardless of their ability, was barred from working in the industry.

Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee used the threat of the Hollywood Blacklist to force many artists to become informers on their colleagues in order to maintain their livelihoods.

Not surprisingly, as the Black Lives Matter panic now rages, Hollywood is once again succumbing to the hideous Siren’s call of dehumanization and discrimination. Except this time the accusation isn’t about communism, but rather, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a white man?”

The Red Scare is now the White Male Scare. In Hollywood’s current climate of rabid, politically correct, social-justice hysteria, the message is clear…group identity trumps individual talent, skill and artistry, always and every time.

The black dye has been cast, and the end result of adhering to this devout dogma of diversity is that white men need not apply...and any white men who raise issues with this mandate are racist and will, along with any one that openly associates with them, be cancelled.

A recent example of this was when black filmmaker Ri-Karlo Handy put out a call on a Facebook group of film professionals for “black Union editors”. When white editors took offense at this rank racialization, they were called racist, and one even lost his job over it.

Black filmmaker Ava DuVernay responded by tweeting “to the white men…if you don't get that job you were up for, kindly remember… bias can go both ways. This is 2020 speaking.”

This is reminiscent of black filmmaker Jordan Peele saying, “I don’t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie”. Imagine if someone said either of those things about black or Jewish people instead of “white men”.

Apparently DuVernay and Peele feel the best way to fight past racism is with more racism. How ethically and morally repugnant of them.

This whole anti-white male identity politics revolution began in the wake of the #MeToo movement, where studios, in their typical reactionary style, became adamant about telling female centric stories, regardless of their quality, and hiring women to either write, direct, star in or produce them, regardless of their talent level or ability.

This approach resulted in the murderer’s row of cinematic garbage that was Charlie’s Angels, Birds of Prey, Ocean’s 8, What Men Want, The Hustle, Late Night and Mary Queen of Scots.

Now, with Black Lives Matter the movement du jour, Hollywood is even more ferociously committed to disregarding individual talent, skill, experience and artistry (of white men in particular) in their hiring practices in favor of identity politics.

There are many who’ll cheer this anti-white male racism and say that white men have discriminated for years and they deserve the backlash. That may, or may not, be true, but regardless, these folks are cutting off their cinematic noses to spite their white-man-hating face.

The dark secret people working within the industry know, but are too scared to say publicly, is that this aggressive identity politics not only will destroy the careers and lives of completely innocent, ordinary working class folks in front of and behind the camera, but will be catastrophic for the art of cinema and the entertainment business.

Despite what the uninitiated think, making movies and tv shows is extremely difficult, making good ones is even more difficult, and making great ones is nearly impossible.

Industry professionals understand that talent and skill must be the absolute top priority when hiring or the end product will ultimately suffer greatly.

No one would dare say this publicly of course, at least not while the Woke Inquisition rages and cancel culture reigns supreme, but just like the vast majority of talented and skilled people in the NBA are black (despite black men making up only 6.5% of the population), the cold, hard truth is that not all, but the vast majority of skilled people in Hollywood are white men. That is not racist. That is reality.

Unlike the woke cultists, I’m not interested in sacrificing quality on the altar of identity. I don’t care about identity. I only care about cinema.

Like all true cinephiles, I want the most talented individuals to get hired, regardless of their group identity, in order to ensure the best movies get made.

Recently, black actor Anthony Mackie, the star of Marvel’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier, unintentionally admitted he felt the same way while, ironically, complaining about Marvel’s lack of diversity.

“My big push with Marvel is hire the best person for the job. Even if it means we are going to get the best two women, we’re going to get the best two men. Fine.”

I’d like to think that when Mr. Mackie says “we”, he means the human race and not the black race, and that he would be ”fine” if the “best person for the job” were a white man…but considering the sentiment in Hollywood right now…I sincerely doubt it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020