Anger about diverse casting on TV just shows people's ignorance

The rapid rise of diverse casting across a variety of genres has led to crazy backlash from viewers with actors on the receiving end of everything from boycotts to death threats.

It’s coming from mega fans who don’t want to see characters’ ethnicity change from the source material and folk who feel that diverse casting is ruining historical drama.

These fans are so angry that actors of colour have been forced to endure vile racism at their hands.

It feels as if there is a widening gap between a minority of viewers and the creators of some of our most popular media.

Why does diverse casting bother people so much and is there any merit in the frustration?

READ MORE: The UK needs a reckoning, not a few more minority ethnic MPs

Recently much of the debate has centred around racially diverse casting in the fantasy genre. It’s strange given it’s all made up in the first place.

When I tune into today’s new episode of Amazon Prime’s Rings Of Power, I won’t be thinking much about why some of the dwarves and elves are Black. I’ll be paying attention to the story and trying in earnest not to swoon over Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel.

But many in the fandom have been enraged by the inclusion of non-white characters which have never been seen in the franchise before. They argue that the long-dead JRR Tolkien, author of Lord Of The Rings never intended there to be Black characters so it’s wrong to change his source material.

Literary giant JRR Tolkien (Image: Andy Ffrench/PA)

Another argument is that audiences crave escapism from the genre and the introduction of people of colour into new content is somehow disrupting or spoiling this.

My suspicion is that this is because historically Black characters in film and TV have never been incidentally Black. Most often their blackness has been the object and subject of their performance.

Audiences are used to this to the point where the mere sight of a brown face is synonymous with a political statement.

While that type of media isn’t a problem for most of us, in The Rings Of Power diverse characters are unremarked upon and racism is not a feature of the plot.

This is an important portrayal that’s desperately needed to widen the horizons of fantasy audiences and challenge viewers to imagine new worlds that don’t replicate the values of our own.

But it’s not just fantasy content that gets this treatment. As a committed lover of period drama, the most common criticism I hear of diverse casting is that it’s ahistoric.

READ MORE: The 'Hate Monster' campaign fails to address the root causes of prejudice

Now, period dramas aren’t textbooks or documentaries for a reason but clearly people feel they should be accurate where they can. The problem is our perceptions of “accurate” history are not particularly objective. They are coloured by nationalism, propaganda and a healthy dose of out-and-out fibs.

Us Scots more than most understand this, depictions of Scottish history can lean heavily into fictitious stomach-turning stereotypes – and that’s just Outlander.

This is evident in the backlash against the newly released trailer for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II. Fans have accused the film of inaccuracy based on Denzel Washington’s appearance as a seemingly wealthy and powerful character.

But here is the thing, race as we understand it now didn’t exist in the Roman world.

US actor Denzel Washington appears in Gladiator II, with an American accent

Now history buffs don’t freak out. Romans of course had many ideas about ethnicity and cultural difference. But we have no evidence that they felt any type of affinity or shared identity based on skin colour.

Whiteness and blackness are categories of the modern era, around the 17th century. If you time-travelled back to ancient Rome and called Marcus Aurelius a white dude, he wouldn’t have a clue what you were on about – and not just because you don’t speak Latin.

In short, it was possible for Washington’s character to exist in that era, but it challenges audiences presumably because of our history of depicting Black characters as enslaved, oppressed and poor.

Make them multifaceted and even influential characters that challenge our perceptions of the past and suddenly there’s a problem.

Placing our values onto the past makes for flat, simplistic depictions of history. It’s not just that it makes for less interesting media, how we depict history matters.

It reproduces our ideas about the present and can normalise revisionist history.

When Robert Eggers’s Viking epic The Northman came to screens in 2022 American neo-Nazis showed up to cinemas and actually sieg heiled at the credits. They likely share no common ancestors with the film’s cast but have been led to believe from decades of fascist propaganda that white Americans are descended from Scandinavian Vikings.

READ MORE: Highland community marks buy-out success as population doubles in 25 years

Now that doesn’t mean we have to go around casting brown folk as Vikings to combat this. It is important that diversification of television and film doesn’t cleanse the past. Diverse casting with the wrong intentions can limit good storytelling, not allowing characters to be complex or flawed because they are forced to be stand-ins for historically excluded cultures.

Ultimately much of this comes down to an exaggerated fear of the so-called woke agenda, where blue-haired leftists ruin everything with our pronouns and human rights, forcing our politics down people’s throats. But whether or not we choose to accept it, all art is inherently political.

To depict all white characters in media is as political a choice as to depict diverse characters. We should focus on the fact that TV and film have become a dystopian nightmare where new content is pushed aside in favour of constant remakes, sequels and revivals. Casting diversely is a way to tell new and better stories that actually reflect the human experience.

So to the angry mega fans, I say this – race, much like Lord Of The Rings, is made up and you probably don’t know enough about history to judge if something is inaccurate. So, grab your popcorn and stop moaning.