Inclusion Moving into Ridiculous

I recently postulated on a Facebook post that if Hollywood were to make a movie of Damnation Alley (not the bastardization they made in the 70s) they could ignore race and sex of the characters and cast Michelle Rodriguez as Hell Tanner.  Nothing in the book requires that he be a white male, after all.

I'm all for diversity.  Unless a character's sex, race, or religion is vital to the story, there is no reason for insisting that they have to be any particular one.  Recently, there was a lot of fuss because Hermione Granger isn't a white woman in the latest "Harry Potter" thing.  The books - and their author - never specify Hermione's race.  I saw her as a white gal because I saw the first movie before reading the books.

I can think of twice I saw a movie in which a character got race-swapped from the book.  In neither case was the race important to the story.  And one of them was James Earl Jones. If they made a movie of my "Ghosts" and James Earl Jones wanted to play Merlin...  OK, that's hyperbole, but JAMES EARL JONES!

Before Robotech.com killed the message boards, there were a lot of lively debates about the possible live-action movie.  One of the issues was, of course, casting.  Lynn Minmei is a Japanese/Chinese girl and her heritage is a part of her characterization - so she needs to remain that ethnicity.  A certain couple has to remain male/female for story line purposes.  Otherwise, I see no problem with James Earl Jones playing that white lady over there.

BUT... and you knew this was coming...  To cast an actor in a role that's historically inaccurate is wrong.  Yes, there were black slave owners in the antebellum Georgia, but if we remade Gone With The Wind, Scarlett's story is entirely different if we make her anything but a white female.  If you did toss a black slave owner in there, certainly take into account how society would interact with him.  Or her.

New Ghostbusters movie, in which they are all female and the eye-candy receptionist is male?  I certainly hope they're making fun of themselves with this, because anything seriously feminist about it is way off base.

When casting agents compromise characters and settings in order to be "inclusive", they're actually defeating the purpose.  Hell Tanner doesn't do anything a woman can't do.  Zelazny's physical description is vague - Tanner could be any ethnicity.  Making him a Hispanic female would be a good example of being inclusive.

But if the story calls for a certain race, a certain sex, and you ignore those realities, you have become the very thing you're working against.  Will Smith as Hamlet is as badly miscast as Orson Welles was when he played Othello.