TheCatt wrote: Leisher wrote: and the fact that they clearly wanted to hire a black person for the role makes it a discriminatory hiring.
You're making an assumption.
They tried to hire a black female right out of the gate. This is before any auditions. They ended up with a black female, nobody else was ever rumored for the role, she's from within the Disney family, and I can't find any evidence of a casting call. It's an assumption, but the evidence is pointing me to that conclusion. the only evidence of any sort of search is Rob Marshall commenting about finding this girl. That doesn't prove anything either way. Feel free to prove it wrong, and I will withdraw the assumption.
Side note: There was (is?) a weird online casting call for a Little Mermaid movie by Universal directed by Sofia Coppola, which clearly never happened.
Also, Scuttle is being played by an Asian girl, Flouder by a white boy, and the villain by a white woman. Hopefully, they'll get Aziz Anzari to play Sebastian and a Muslim Prince Eric to complete the rainbow and get every person on Earth to come see the movie.
I honestly don't give a fuck about this casting, but I find it offensive for four reasons:
1. Forced diversity is not a good thing. It's especially bad when you do it for business reasons (trying to maximize audience), but claim to be doing it for equality. I am so sick and tired of people being called racist because something they grew up KNOWING gets completely changed and react negatively to it. That's not fucking racism! You're actually creating racism by claiming it is racism. People don't like change as a rule. It doesn't matter if you're changing back story, powers, skin color, or eye color, fans will be pissed. That doesn't mean they're racist.
(That doesn't excuse actual racists. Once someone says, "I don't want a nigger playing this role" they are clearly racist and their opinion no longer matters.)
2. Redheads have a legit complaint. As a fan of hot redhead women, this irritates me. I was looking forward to seeing a scantily clad redheaded woman. And why is it still ok to push redheads aside and be racist to them? They could have cast any of the princesses as black, but they went for the redhead...
3. Whitey is constantly told how they're racist and guilty of cultural appropriation if they enjoy rap music or a PB&J. Yet, somehow if black people commit cultural appropriation, whitey is still the racist.
4. Melanin being important for the skin of a creature that lives under the sea is some serious bullshit. That was my complaint about Aquaman's casting too and I dig Momoa. Dude was amazing as Drogo.