Itchysphincter said:
Plenty of white men have played Jesus.
Déjà vu?
I've never seen a description of Jesus, as in colour, he was supposed to be a Jew, what colour are Jewish people in general? To some of us he's a work of fiction anyway.
Through cinematic history, white actors have played the parts of ethnic minority characters. Mainly Hollywood where they made movies for the American public and therefore wanted names that people would place their bums on seats for. Minority actors were only used as minor characters or extra's mainly.
Who was the first major black actor, Sidney Poitier? late 1950's. Black actors have slowly raised in prominence since.
Of course this was always wrong and saying it was the way of times cuts no mustard with some, but realistically it was.
Nowadays we're quite righty past that type of thing, we should no longer seeing people blacking up for parts or having their eyes stretched etc.
But the issue here though is not people changing their appearance but playing parts of real historical people, where people actually have paintings etc of these people taken during their lifetime. Is it a good thing? Should it matter?
Nowadays if a white person plays a real person of an ethnic background a fuss is made.
I believe the casting for this was meant to be controversial, maybe to raise the awareness and get people talking or maybe just to get people talking to get people watching it.
