First things first; if Hollywood so desires to cast black actors and actresses to period films taking place in 19th century (and before) to their productions, I honestly don’t care.
Being a committed capitalist, how the producers of these ventures invest their money is certainly their call. If they end-up turning a profit… more power to ’em.
But lately I’ve been noticing that actors and actresses of Sub-Saharan Black African lineage are being cast in more than a few period productions taking place in Europe.
In all fairness, Hollywood is casting so many black actors as European royalty, gentry and peasants, the unlearned (AKA: “White liberals who major in Lesbian Dance Theory“) would be under the impression that blacks were as numerous in 1820’s London, Paris and Berlin as they are present day.
Wouldn’t that qualify as cultural reappropriation? I would think so. At a minimum, this is re-writing history.
Now I know that naysayers would hammer me on the fact that there actually where Sub-Saharan Black Africans in a few Europeans courts. In all historical fairness, they would be right. But only to a certain degree.
Yes, there were blacks in some courts, but let’s be honest. They were usually slaves and were in all practicality, little more that oddities and royal playthings.
While I’m at it, please don’t cite that even William Shakespeare penned Othello as a black man who eventually rose to the rank of Venetian general.
No, the fictional Othello was actually a northwest African Moor (as in Morocco). In the larger sense, he was a Berber.
Like it or now, the Berbers are a Caucasian people. Usually with an olive complexion, but Caucasians, nonetheless.
Besides, Europeans prior to the 1960s were simply racist as hell.
A French girl dating a German boy, or a Serbian dude marrying a Slovene gal… back in the old days, that’s literally how some guys woke-up with their throats slit.
Well, some just might tell me that I’m in dire need to kwitchyerbitchin.
Maybe so. I’ll even go so far as to make a deal with the liberal elites running the entertainment industry.
Once you start casting Irishmen, Norwegians and Romanians as Zulu warriors or as everyday members of the royal courts of the Kingdom of Dahomey or the Lunda Empire, then I’ll stop calling you out for attempting to re-write history.