I haven't read through this whole thread yet, so I apologize if this point has already been made, but wouldn't having Roland be black take some of the impact out of Detta's raging against her "white boy, honkey mafa" captors when she is first drawn?
I don't really like the idea of this casting choice, but I could probably get used to it.
Yeah, it's been discussed. Short version: one side says this is a crucial character trait and critical scenes and shouldn't be lost. The other side says it's a b-story, probably too controversial to be included anyway and should be dumped.
I'll be honest, I'm at a point where I'm so tired of hearing about race in general. Up until the last seven or eight years or so, race relations weren't perfect, but for the most part we were getting along. I had friends and co-workers that were every racial variety under the sun, and we all got along fine and race was hardly if ever mentioned. Suddenly the United States has been declared the most racist country in the world, and you are not allowed to have a problem of any sort with a person of color under any circumstances or you are unquestionably hiding a white hood somewhere in your closet.
I don't know how much I should go into. This is the wrong section to get into it (and I avoid the proper section like the plague) but I've seen this way too often: a popular bit of source material, be it a comic or novel or what have you, is about to get a movie (or an updated movie) and a person of color is about to be cast, or might be cast, or has been cast, in a role that's traditionally white. Fanboys hate it, and scream that it shouldn't be allowed under any circumstances, even if it really isn't that big a deal (such as Nick Fury or Heimdall). The SJW brigade trots out to denounce all the fanboys as a bunch of racists. The cycle has begun.
Normally I'm on the side that doesn't get too worked up. I didn't have a problem with a black Nick Fury, a black Heimdall, a black Perry White, a black Electro, etc. But I didn't write off the people who did as racists, either, because I knew what they really were upset about; any and all changes to the source material. About the only one I had a problem with was the latest Human Torch, and that was because they didn't make his sister black, too. It was clearly a PC "token black" move.
But I do have an issue with this idea that any and all white characters not only can but
should be updated to be black. Sure, most of the time it's not a problem, but does that mean it's
never an issue? All of a sudden preferring that one character be left as written is the same thing as being racist?
I've made the argument before that some characters cross the line of just being a fictional character and become almost a treasured friend to the reader. The characters in
The Lord of the Rings and
Harry Potter are like that, and to a great degree
The Chronicles of Narnia as well. The characters from
The Dark Tower are certainly becoming that, if they aren't already. The role of Roland, of all the characters King created, has to be done
right. There can't be compromise. He's not just a character, and I don't want to see a "re-interpretation" or whatever you want to call it, of him. I want to see
him. I want the same experience I had when I saw Ian McKellen as Gandalf. It was as if Gandalf had walked right out of the book and into real life. I want that with Roland as well. I don't want an actor that forces the role to be reshaped for him. I want an actor who can reshape himself to fit the role.
But apparently that makes me racist. Or something, I can never tell if they all feel that way about it.
A while back, when it was announced that they were re-casting Spider-Man again, the SJW's took to the internet to let everyone know that this time they needed to make Spider-Man black, and if they didn't, it was racism. These people then announced that they would boycott the movie when it was announced that Tom Holland had been hired. They'd hired another "boring white guy".
So it's now racism if you keep a white character white. I just plain don't get it. Now, you can't change black to white, and this I do get because it's been done in the past, and it was indeed because film producers thought (and might have been right) that white audiences wouldn't see a film with a black lead. I understand the implications of turning a black character white, and I'm also against that. But now, if you
don't change white to black, it's racist? Or it's racist to have a problem with it?
Sure, there aren't as many black iconic characters out there. So...go create some! They won't be iconic right away, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try, or that instead of creating more black characters, you instead demand that classically white characters now all have to be black, and that "race is incidental."
Race isn't always incidental. It's not always a "surface issue" or whatever words are used to suggest that it's a trivial concern. I'm sorry, but it's just not. And this attitude that a white character can always be changed to black, and that in fact such a change is automatically a change for the better, is one that I'm distinctly uncomfortable with, not because I'm threatened by the idea of more black characters on screen, but I have a big problem with the idea that being white is the same as being "nothing", having no history or heritage of your own that isn't bad history or heritage (as if there's an ethnicity on this planet without skeletons in its closet).