July 01, 2010

New Spider-Man is...white!

'Spider-Man' finds its new Peter Parker: Andrew GarfieldComment:  In a shocking development, Sony didn't go with "color-blind casting" and choose a black, Asian, or Native actor. Instead, it picked someone who looks a lot like Peter Parker in the comics.

What does this say about how much authenticity matters when the franchise and characters are white? A lot.

For more on the subject, see Dismissing the Pro-Airbender Arguments and Denzel Washington as JFK?

2 comments:

dmarks said...

One example of when the casting went the other way was African-American Michael Clark Duncan being cast as the white Kingpin in "Daredevil". I thought the casting decision could not be better.

Casting African-American Billy Dee Williams as the white Two Face/ Harvey Dent character in 1989 "Batman" was an interesting choice, but he was only in for a little bit. When push came to shove, and Two-Face got major screen time in later "Batman" movies, they used white actors.

Rob said...

I tend to agree. For more on the subject, see Black Batman in First Wave Universe?