dreamer_easy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamer_easy) wrote2006-04-20 05:30 pm
dreamer_easy) wrote2006-04-20 05:30 pm
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Remark on New Earth and race from Lloyd Rose, posted at her request:
I was relieved to see, when the zombies swarmed the hospital, that at least one black person was still alive 5 billion years from now. Especially as there were no Asians, no Latin or Central Americans, no Pakistanis, no Arabs--groups among whom, for non-speaking, boil-infested roles, actors could probably have been found. I was reminded of Richard Pryor's comment after seeing "Star Wars" : "They [white people] finally got rid of us!"
Interesting point, especially since the show has generally been doing reasonably well on that front. Comments, folks? (Lloyd can read 'em here.)
I was relieved to see, when the zombies swarmed the hospital, that at least one black person was still alive 5 billion years from now. Especially as there were no Asians, no Latin or Central Americans, no Pakistanis, no Arabs--groups among whom, for non-speaking, boil-infested roles, actors could probably have been found. I was reminded of Richard Pryor's comment after seeing "Star Wars" : "They [white people] finally got rid of us!"
Interesting point, especially since the show has generally been doing reasonably well on that front. Comments, folks? (Lloyd can read 'em here.)
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The BBC being the sort of compnay it is, there must be some sort of published policy *somewhere*.
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Given that the program has been pretty careful about casting a mix of people in supporting roles, this may be just one of those things.
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From a purely aesthetic point, the paler the face to begin with, the easer it is to make people look like death. Unless you go for pretty major prosthetics. Yeah that probably sounds racist, but look at it from a makeup POV.
Of course, we could possibly be making far more of this than there actually is. And whats there is whats there because they're the people who passed the shuffling and moaning audition...
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Admittedly, they did look very white.
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The year five billion should feature not only a roughly equal mix of all known ethnicities in the human population but also a whole bunch of brand new ones, and yet the "new humans" - and all the humans seen in the episode - look exactly like modern humans. Of course this is the cheap way to do it, but while we've barely been around on Earth now long enough for biological evolution to affect us, five billion years is a stretch to believe we still exist, let alone that the humans who everyone keeps saying have evolved all still look and sound the same as we do now.
From a practical point of view, if they didn't think to specifically ask for a mix of skin colours and looks, then what they get is dependant on the "background artists" available at whatever extras agency they contacted. It's not the sort of situation where I can imagine the casting director looking at head shots, especially not with the turn-around time of television (and Doctor Who in particular).
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Actually, you've made me think of something that almost contradicts that, and maybe someone who knows more about genetics than I do can correct me if I'm wrong...
If race became a non-issue as far as cohabiting and marrying and reproducing were concerned, and technology allowed people to zip all over a planet instantaneously so different cultures weren't confined to different areas, would you get some kind of racial smoothing? Would more mixing mean less variation?
For the record, I didn't think the people in New Earth looked particularly 'white' -- I couldn't tell what colour their skins were supposed to be, and plenty of them had dark hair and features that struck me as Middle Eastern or Indian.
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That's a tough one. I immediately think of cats. They've been mixing for millenia and there are still all-white kitties, all-black kitties, siamese kitties, angoras, calicos, tabbies, etc. Some of these traits have been exagerrated due to human intervention, but even with indiscrimimate mixing they still persist. And I suspect human racial traits would too, to some extent, even if/when geographic, planetary and cultural barriers are eliminated.
Of course humans aren't cats and neither are the aliens they might find themselves, erm, mingling with in the far future except maybe cat-faced nuns so I might be completely wrong here. Wouldn't be the first time.
Never has my default icon been more appropriate!
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In EoTW it was "They [blue people] finally got rid of us!". Except for Cassandra, who was nothing but skin and it was rather pale skin at that. But she said something about having her blood bleached, so it's reasonable she might have had other things bleached too. Perhaps the whiteness wasn't her natural skin tone.
Did I just use the word natural in a sentence about Cassandra? Ooops.
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A sketch alluded to by yours truly not too long ago :-)
I have to admit, I hadn't noticed, but considering overall New Who has been pretty integrated, to the extent of Rose being in an interracial relationship (something still very much a bugbear for a scary amount of people), I'm not thinking that there's much in the way of bias.
Then again, look at it this way -- someone, somewhere out there, would complain, if there WERE quite a number of Black, Asian, Indian, etc., persons in that makeup that "Why are there only [minorities] in these non-speaking roles playing zombies?!"
You can't win, basically.
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I'll tell you what does make me just slightly uncomfortable: The sole, single, only Black character in the recurring cast is also the sole, single, only character to be portrayed as a dense, pratfalling coward. (To be fair, Rose's mother is even dumber... but she's never gotten a bucket stuck to her foot while chasing a Slitheen, been eaten by a belching trash bin, or run straight into a wall while chasing the TARDIS.) It's possibly I'm just being overly sensitive here, having seen a lot of old movies and old comic strips where the only Black people to be seen were the comic relief.
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Jon pointed out that the "zombies" are cut-and-pasted to make it look as though there are far more of them. I wonder if a relatively homogenous group of people are easier to get away with when using this method?
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it makes you sick :(
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In support of smoothing...
(Anonymous) 2007-08-20 09:09 am (UTC)(link)OUR BLONDES ARE DYING!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2284783.stm
b/k
Re: In support of smoothing...