There was definitely a very improved reaction time from the higher ups. And it's definitely being handled better than the Airbender racefail. I'm impressed that they responded to the incident this quickly. I also hope they end up casting the woman as a Hobbit extra, especially after she went through that.
I do think there's a difference of whether he was fired because he was following someone else's instructions, or if he was acting on his own judgment of what a Hobbit "should" look like. In casting, the agents ARE told what to look for, and their only job is to fill the request. Sometimes, ethnicity is part of what they're looking for in a casting call, so there's a chance he didn't even think it was odd because it's so common to head-hunt based on appearance. (It's Hollywood, after all - EVERYTHING is about appearance.) It's the nature of the job. He may have thought he had firmly in his mind what the directors were looking for, and was trying to fill it. I can honestly see why, IF he was following instructions, he might not have seen the inherent racism in the situation.
Ideally, instead of just turning the woman away, if he wasn't sure, he should have contacted the director/producer folks and asked for clarification, then challenged them if they told him "light-skinned only." Sadly, more people are inclined to just plow through and not think.
So if someone else told him what to look for, but then they pulled a PR stunt when someone took them to task on it... it's a different sort of problem in my eyes. And, of course, if he was acting completely on his own and adding his own racial restrictions to the casting instructions, THEN he got exactly what he deserved.
But with casting... it's really common to be hunting for a certain look, and race can be part of it. It's not lack of virtue - it's the nature of the job to find exactly what the directors/producers want.
tl:dr: It was a definite fail, but I'm glad they resolved it quickly. It's being handled much better than the Airbender fail. I hope the woman gets the job if she still wants it. I still wonder where the blame lies, and wonder how fandom will react. And I'm sad that this will taint the movie in my mind when I go to watch it.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 06:59 pm (UTC)I do think there's a difference of whether he was fired because he was following someone else's instructions, or if he was acting on his own judgment of what a Hobbit "should" look like. In casting, the agents ARE told what to look for, and their only job is to fill the request. Sometimes, ethnicity is part of what they're looking for in a casting call, so there's a chance he didn't even think it was odd because it's so common to head-hunt based on appearance. (It's Hollywood, after all - EVERYTHING is about appearance.) It's the nature of the job. He may have thought he had firmly in his mind what the directors were looking for, and was trying to fill it. I can honestly see why, IF he was following instructions, he might not have seen the inherent racism in the situation.
Ideally, instead of just turning the woman away, if he wasn't sure, he should have contacted the director/producer folks and asked for clarification, then challenged them if they told him "light-skinned only." Sadly, more people are inclined to just plow through and not think.
So if someone else told him what to look for, but then they pulled a PR stunt when someone took them to task on it... it's a different sort of problem in my eyes. And, of course, if he was acting completely on his own and adding his own racial restrictions to the casting instructions, THEN he got exactly what he deserved.
But with casting... it's really common to be hunting for a certain look, and race can be part of it. It's not lack of virtue - it's the nature of the job to find exactly what the directors/producers want.
tl:dr:
It was a definite fail, but I'm glad they resolved it quickly. It's being handled much better than the Airbender fail. I hope the woman gets the job if she still wants it. I still wonder where the blame lies, and wonder how fandom will react. And I'm sad that this will taint the movie in my mind when I go to watch it.
I hope that made some sense.