So in a time in which white actresses can be nudged aside from playing long established white female characters for the sake of diversity, its Scarlet who is tone deaf for not wanting restrictions? When people rush to the defense of Disney casting a black actress for Little Mermaid are they not also asking the same thing by wanting to do away with any preconceived restrictions on who could play what? Or is the selective outrage limited to only white folks who want to benefit from some race-bended casting as well?
I'm African American and a progressive. I have been keeping up with the casting of black people in film and television for nearly 20 years. I even used to write articles at times for a black entertainment website. I say this only as a preemptive strike towards any who would dismiss my two cents by presuming I'm white or I'm a bigot or I'm hardcore right-wing or that I'm all of the above. I'm none of those things. I just can't abide by double standards. And I see such double standards when people cheer on Disney making a movie out of the old, popular novel A Wrinkle In Time and call anyone who question the casting for that film as racist or stuck in the past. When you point out to them how offended they may be if a white actor is chosen for a role meant for a person of color, like Scarlet in Ghost In the Shell, they claim that's different; they act as if appropriation, cultural or otherwise, can only be applied only if white people are doing it.
Last year I was upset to see left-leaning people practically stalk all of Naomi Scott's tweets and Instagram posts because they were upset about her casting as Jasmine in Aladdin. They insulted her and claimed she should walk away from the role because she wasn 't ethnically or racially right for the role in their minds. She was half Indian and thus didn't meet the standards in their eyes. Some even denied that part of her heritage and emphasized how she was white (she is half white). A year later we have people on my side of the political aisle stressing how the casting of a black Ariel doesn't matter because mermaids don't exist and the story was just a piece of fiction written by some European man. Well, Aladdin is also a piece of fiction based upon work by a European man that takes place in a kingdom that doesn't exist. So tell me why the different reactions by the left on social media for these two separate casting decisions? And why is it that the media is doing pushback against those complaining about the casting for Little Mermaid but conveniently remained unaware of all the vitriol that was directed Scott's way when she got the role in Aladdin? Apparently Scarlet Johansson isn't the only who is tone deaf.
We can't ever make up for all the lost time and lost chances of decades worth of Hollywood 's apartheid casting. All we can or should do is give everyone equal opportunities going forward. Equal opportunities means equal treatment too. Thinking it's okay for people of color to go after roles of established white characters because it makes up for past digressions while at the same time frowning on the idea of white people taking roles playing established non-white characters may be understandable. But it is still hypocritical.