Who can Play?

[steepholm]

The "Who can play what kind of role?" question is, I suppose, a cousin of the "Who can write about what sort of experience?" question that crops up on LJ fairly regularly. But does it get the same answers? And are the answers internally consistent anyway? I suspect that neither is the case.

The following is no more than a brief mental tally based on my own viewing experience rather than facts and figures, and since I'm by no means the biggest film or TV watcher out there, I'm very open to correction. (I'm putting theatre to one side, as I have a feeling the answers may be significantly different there because of the history of the genre.)

Are women played by women? Pretty much 100% of the time.
Are black people played by black people? Pretty much 100% of the time (and the same goes for other racial groups, although not nationalities).
Are working class people played by working class people? Often, but by no means invariably.
Are gay people played by gay people? Sometimes, but by no means invariably.
Are trans people played by trans people? Very occasionally, but never in major roles and often for the purposes of fetishistic transploitation.
Are wheelchair users played by wheelchair users? Increasingly so, but I would guess still less than half the time.
Are blind people played by blind people? I actually have no idea how often this happens.
Are dwarfs played by dwarfs? Sometimes, but see the caveat for trans people above.
Are people with Down's Syndrome played by people with Down's Syndrome. Invariably, I think.


Obviously other categrories could be added, but even getting this far makes me aware of a) how little I actually know about casting practices, and b) the wide and puzzling variations within the list. Why is it unthinkable to have a character with Down's played by anyone other than an actor with Down's, but perfectly thinkable to do this with blind people or wheelchair users, for example? Fairly common to have gay characters played by gay actors, but almost unheard of to have trans characters played by trans actors? Is there any rationale at all here? Or is the landscape as confused as it looks at first glance?

Comments

[jadelennox]

Are wheelchair users played by wheelchair users? Almost never.
Are blind people played by blind people? Ditto.
Are dwarfs played by dwarfs? The most offensive part for little people is how often they're played by CGI non-little people actors, as if little people == special effects.

In the US, there seems to be an assumption that "light brown" is a generic pool, so Indians play Latinos play Israelis play very tanned people play Egyptians.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Most of it, I expect, is down to pragmatic factors like what will look authentic to the audience and how easy is it to get hold of a suitable actor. Also there is the question of what can be faked convincingly (via makeup, prosthetics etc) or portrayed by acting and what needs to be real. There have probably been more gay actors playing straight roles than straight ones playing gay roles. However, though a sighted person can act being blind, it must be far harder for a blind actor to fake being sighted and thus they will have a limited number of roles available and are less likely to have become an actor in the first place. Similarly, how many trans actors are there out there?

It gets even more complicated if the actor has to portray having a disability and being able-bodied, for example if there are flashback scenes showing the character before the accident or illness that caused the disability.

[gair.livejournal.com]

how many trans actors are there out there?

More than there are roles for trans characters!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I honestly had no idea. Though considering how many trans characters I've seen in dramas on TV, "more than there are roles" doesn't have to be very many. :(

Of course there is also the point that actors usually go into acting in order to be someone other than themselves. In a recent episode of Accused, Sean Bean played a transvestite. Now I don't have the experience to judge whether he made a convincing job of it, but I bet he absolutely loved the role because it was so different to most of the stuff he gets.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

One thing to remember is that you may have seen trans actors and actresses, just not playing trans characters.

You're right of course, that there aren't many trans roles, and we can cut that number in half again, at least, if we subtract the ones where the character is a serial killer or a murder victim.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

How do the pants roles in opera figure in this? Are you upset they aren't played by members of the castrati community?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, there is no castrati community, so that's not really a question that needs an answer. But in any case, I don't think I've expressed any upset?

Otherwise, the exception I made about discussing theatre extends to opera. It's not that there's nothing relevant to say about these forms, but that their long history, particularly of cross-gender roles and of genres such as pantomime that depend on such roles, complicates the issues. For the purpose of this post I want to keep things as simple as a complicated world will permit.

[sovay]

However, though a sighted person can act being blind, it must be far harder for a blind actor to fake being sighted and thus they will have a limited number of roles available and are less likely to have become an actor in the first place.

The only example I know off the top of my head is Esmond Knight, and he'd been acting professionally for fifteen years before he was blinded: he was returning disabled, not starting his career from scratch. To the best of my knowledge, though, he never played a blind role.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

On the radio, however, Ryan Kelly plays Jazzer McCreary in The Archers.

Of course radio opens up all kinds of possibilities, and I do hear actors I know to be non-white in white roles there.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

The other way round as well. Amos and Andy were played by white actors.

[gair.livejournal.com]

Are black people played by black people? Pretty much 100% of the time (and the same goes for other racial groups, although not nationalities).

I don't think this is true, eg Naveen Andrews (a British Indian actor) played the Iraqi character Sayid Jarrah on Lost, Anil Kapoor (an Indian actor) played a Middle Eastern terrorist on 24, Angelina Jolie played the Afro-Chinese-Cuban-Dutch Mariane Pearl, etc, etc. I have no idea of the statistics, but it's certainly nowhere near 100%, even when you discount 'racebending' (rewriting non-white characters as white in movie adaptations, as with the originally Filipino lead of Starship Troopers, the main characters in The Last Airbender, etc).

The rationale is fairly clear: it's a mixture of cultural fantasies about which identities are the most indelibly inscribed on the body and/or which characteristics are 'visible' (we're very invested in thinking that no-one could ever 'read' a non-Down syndrome person as having Down syndrome; most non-wheelchair users don't have the skills to 'read' whether an actor is using a wheelchair convincingly; most gay people and working-class people do not believe that sexuality and/or class are legible on the body), and the length of time that any particular minority group has been objecting to discriminatory casting practices. Black and minority ethnic actors have been objecting to losing the (very few) roles available to them for decades (and, as I say, they haven't got all that far yet); as far as I know, trans actors have only been organizing about this for a few years.

, and the length of time that a particular

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You're right: certain racial groups are seen as interchangeable for casting purposes, and Arab/Indian is certainly one such pairing. I'm sure there are others, especially where the cultures concerned are ones with which Westerners are not generally familiar. (Obviously rewriting the role as white, a la The Last Airbender, etc, is a problem too, but a slightly different one.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

There's also a tendency to cast Chinese actors in Japanese roles and vice versa. Same with Korean characters and actors.
And it's vanishingly rare to see an Arab character played by an Arab actor. Particularly if they're positive characters. This worries me.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Heinlein often made major characters racial minorities, but he would just mention it in passing at the end because he had to slip it by his publishers--if they had noticed, they would have forbidden it. If I recall correctly, the main character of Have space suit will travel was black (not black in the sense that an Iraqi can be called black).

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Other people have already said, I think (I'm still sick and didn't read all the comments) but it seems like it's mostly about what are visible physical characteristics and which are internal. Internal things--well, in theory it shouldn't matter because the actor is playing a character and not themselves and that's the point, though obviously that argument falls flat when used to keep various minorities out of acting jobs.

Then things like trans actors/parts gets more complicated, since there AREN'T many parts written that aren't fetishised, like you said--and then again you get to 'person playing a part, so what do they most LOOK like'. And at what level does the acting part kick in? I think Hollywood tends to try to avoid this whole issue, but I seem to recall a different state of affairs in Sweden. But I cannot remember where I read this so cannot be quoted.

It is probably a bad thing I cannot think of any trans or blind actors, though I can think of deaf ones (and Switched at Birth has mostly deaf characters played by deaf actors.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

There are some unfetishized trans parts - Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street springs to mind - but as far as I can see, none of them is played by a trans actor. (Julie Hesmondhalgh, who plays Cropper, is a very active ally, though, I understand.) Then (off the top of my head) there's Transamerica (starring Felicity Huffman), Boys Don't Cry (Hilary Swank), and recently the series Hit or Miss (Chloe Sevigny). All of these leading trans roles were played by cis actresses.

I can see the argument with physical characteristics, but the exception that puzzles me is the fact that the major dwarf roles of recent years have gone to non-dwarf actors (e.g. John Rhys-Davies and Ray Winstone), with all the consequent necessity for trick photography, etc. There are certainly dwarf actors, although they usually get parts that objectify and (to some extent) mock their condition: were they not considered? Now, I realize that the dwarves in Middle-earth and the dwarfs in Snow White are separate races of people rather than human beings of restricted height, but even so, it seems odd to me that this was not apparently a telling consideration.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I did think of Boys Don't Cry, but it's quite an old film now; I couldn't think of anything more recent. I don't know the others--I've never actually even watched Corrie, though that's more about my total lack of exposure to popular culture I think.

I remember there being a bit of a protest about the parts in The Hobbit not going to dwarf actors as they have a union (I think started, or at least heavily influenced, by Warwick Davis). The one film I thought of there was Willow and of course it's also quite old--I remember Billy Barty being in a lot of things back in the 80s as well, but it's not really relevant for 2012, is it?

I've always thought this was a reason they should not ever make The Grey King as a film, as finding the right actor for Bran would be basically impossible.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've always thought this was a reason they should not ever make The Grey King as a film, as finding the right actor for Bran would be basically impossible.

Given the casting practices on The Seeker, I think that would be the least of our worries. Cafall would have been played by a comedy orangutan.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Eh, I think the identification of Little People (a term I'm not specially fond of, but that is preferred by many in the community) with fantasy roles is a bit problematic too. One thing that's pissed me off for a very long time is that Library of Congress subject headings make no distinction between fairy-tale dwarfs and actual Little People. Same with giants, IIRC.

I think it made some sense for the Narnian dwarfs to be played by Little People and the Middle-earth ones not -- that seemed to be in accordance with the authors' descriptions. The goblins in Harry Potter were also played by actors with dwarfism, as was Professor Flitwick.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Some things are obvious. A person of short staturec or one with Down's syndrome has a visible disability, a blind or wheelhair-bound character is more easily faked by an able-bodied actor.

I wish there were more roles where people just happen to be disabled - the best example I know is Marlee Matlin as the pollster in the West Wing.

If people or trans, or gay, or working class - well those are not disabilities so gay people can play straight ones and vice versa. Nothing wrong with Sean Bean playing a transgender role although you'd like to think he did it with sensitivity.

I did laugh at a radio interview the other day where some daft southerner asked the actor from "Good Cop" whether he could manage a convincing Scouse accent for his role as a Liverpool policeman. He replied that as he was born and raised in Warrington, it wasn't too much of a stretch.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I think the point is though that although cis actors can play trans parts, trans actors would get inside the part more convincingly. Julie Hesmondalgh mentioned above moved heaven and earth to get that part right and talked to a shedload of trans people- most don't. Hayley is a sympathetic and realistic portrayal. The guy, whose name escapes me, who played the trans woman in 'Different for Girls' also did a good job, but their are so many dreadful portrayals out there.

Trans people can (I have at an amateur level) play cis parts too, so it's not a matter of desperately needing typecast parts.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

In Different for Girls, that actor's name is Steven Mackintosh. I happen to have watched it yesterday.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's him! Thanks. :o)

What did you think of the film? For a low budget production I thought it knocked posts off Hollywood's offerings, but then I am a trans woman of the straight persuasion and in a long term relationship so I was a bit miffed by those who said it pandered to the binary.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Oh I love that movie. I own it. Which is saying something, because on my dvd shelf, only about eight things are movies rather than tv shows. I've never heard of "knocked posts off" :) but I think it knocks the socks off Hollywood offerings (even aside from budget).

Binary-pandering in this case strikes me as a case of "no book film can be every book film" -- ie, in the perfect future where there are tons and tons of trans characters in movies, we'll have some relationships more towards the binary and some more towards gender and role queerness/fluidity. That said, I do think it nods to non-binaryness where the bike is involved, esp that excellent dialogue at the very end.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

As it happens, I also like big bikes! :o)

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

There was a fair amount of controversy when Glee cast an able-bodied actor as Artie, rather than a wheelchair-mobile actor. The reason given was that Kevin McHale was the best wheelchair dancer out of the auditioners.

[(Anonymous)]

From: Susan Ward.

I don't like your list of categories.
What the hell are "working class people"? Is this an inborn, or acquired trait like being a Down's person, or a Trans person, or a paraplegic? When a non "working class" actor is portraying a "working class person " is it a question of accent or dialect, as might be the case were they playing the role of someone of another nationality, or would the skill be in aping poor table manners, affinity with whippets, questionable personal hygiene?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

There are different ways of defining "working class" to be sure, but I don't think it's a meaningless concept. Do you?

Being inborn or acquired isn't a common factor in my list of categories, and in fact I've not asserted any basis of commonality between them, although if I were to do so it would be that these categories of people have tended to be at a systematic disadvantage within Western society (and in most cases, most other societies too).