Also a friend to his concert musician girlfiend watch Master & Commander, where she proceeded to criticise the instruments used by the Captain and Doctor in their duets as being inappropriate for the period.

Knowledge is great :D

You’re right, it is an interesting distinction; racism of any kind should avoided equally. However this assumes that the movie industry operates in a “post-race” vacuum where the playing field is equal. It’s unilaterally not.

http://www.racebending.com/v4/about/what-is-racebending/

Something on the order of 81% of lead roles in American movies go to white actors (75% to white male). This leaves 19% for everyone else.*  When roles are given to white male actors that are either written as ethnically diverse in the source material (The Mandarin, The Cloud Atlas, Avatar:TLA), or even based on real people who are non-white (The Social Network, 21), it drives the number of roles available to actors of color even further down.

Casting people of color in traditionally white roles, like Heimdall above, is more novelty and has never made a young… Asgardian feel excluded. Casting a white actor in a non-white role, either by rewriting the character as white or using blackface / yellowface, exacerbates a historical inequality that was present as Hollywood began and continues to this day. I don’t think that Hollywood should be held to some sort of quota, but you can almost hear ethnic communities throw their hands up in disgust when the year starts with a 2— and we still have Hugo Weaving and Jim Sturgess playing Asian with their eyes taped back.

* Compared to the demographics of the US, while one-sided it isn’t dramatically so, with 72% of people white, 13% black, and 5% Asian. However thinking about where many movies are made, CA, the variance from the demographic makeup is much more pronounced, at 40% white, 6.2% black, and 13% Asian.

Although, remember, they made a big thing about the movie being based off of the comic book, and neither of them really tried to be historically accurate.

Not sure about Kingsley as a Chinese character, but since he’s at least part Indian, at least that’s something. Honestly, in this case, some actors just transcend race. Denzel Washington in The Pelican Brief wasn’t a black character, it was just a guy being played by a good actor.

I haven’t read the comic books, but they’re doing a Lot of rewriting of events, backgrounds, etc., in this movie series, so perhaps they’re changing this character’s background too.