The Simpsons will no longer cast white actors in non-white roles, Family Guy's Cleveland steps down
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The Simpsons and Family Guy are now the two latest shows to address the issue of white actors playing non-white characters in the world of animation, with The Simpsons announcing today, per Variety, that it’ll no longer “have white actors voice non-white characters.” Meanwhile, Mike Henry—who’s voiced the character of Cleveland Brown for the last 21 years on both Family Guy and The Cleveland Show—has announced that he’s stepping down from the part. “I love this character,” he said on Twitter, “but persons of color should play characters of color.”
Henry’s statement lines up with similar comments made earlier this week by both Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell, who announced that they’d no longer be playing Black or biracial characters on Big Mouth or Central Park, respectively. So far, there’s no word yet on whether Family Guy itself will follow Henry’s lead and take a similar pledge to no longer feature any white actors in non-white roles.
Meanwhile, it’s not clear yet what this decision will mean for The Simpsons. Pretty much every Black or otherwise non-white character in the show’s roster of regular Springfield citizens—including Carl, Dr. Hibbert, Lou the policeman, fourth grade student Lewis, Bumblebee Man, Judge Snyder, Akira, and more—has been voiced by a white actor, most frequently Hank Azaria or Harry Shearer. When this issue came up in regards to Azaria voicing Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, of course, the show responded by essentially retiring the character, confining him to background roles. It’s not at all obvious how it’ll handle doing the same with pretty much every Black regular on its roster, or whether it’s finally time for the show to have a non-white person among its regular cast.
272 Comments
I think it’d be interesting to have a cartoon with a racially diverse cast of characters and equally diverse voice cast, but where they all voice someone of a different race.
Interesting naval gazing from Dino Ironbody: Defender of Blackface
Look, it’s his business if he wants to stare at aircraft carriers.
Well, clearly “naval” is a typo and they meant to write “navel”, referring of course to “navel oranges”. You see, Dino Ironbody teaches a class on how to eat an orange, and that requires intense visual analysis of the fruit as preparation.
“Naval”?
Wanna watch the submarine races?
First we need at least one show where most of the characters are white but all of the voice actors are black.
First we need at least one show where most of the characters are white but all of the voice actors are black.
That wouldn’t be a problem for you, right? Can we agree that what you describe should ideally be able to happen without controversy, without complaint?But the problem is (at least in great part) racism, by which I mean that there are assholes out there who would insist that if you have a white character, you need a white voice actor. They’re wrong.
If we agree on all of that — and sure, it’s a big “if,” so please correct me where I have you wrong — then my question in two parts is: 1) how do we get there; and 2) does the current trend of insisting that characters of color can only be voiced by a… “racially appropriate” voice actor (because I’m guessing that an Asian actor wouldn’t be appropriate for a black character, despite both being “actors of color”) bring us closer to what you’ve described — or further away?
It’s complicated. I think we could get there but there needs to be some public reconciliation regarding these past inequalities first. In theory it could be worth discussing where you put limits on reconciliation, but in practice it would probably be better to focus on making some progress towards it first
For the life of me, I cannot figure out what the hell you’re talking about.
As a white dude I am 100% on board with this idea
Hamilton.
Didn’t Boondocks do that? The two gangsta-thug characters were voiced by Sam Jackson (white guy) and Eminem (black guy). I thought it was a good little meta thing they had goin’ on.
It was Sam Jackson and Charlie Murphy.
And Ed III was voiced by Charlie Murphy!
I don’t disagree… but the issue has always been that they just cast white people for everything, and then only on rare, magical days, cast a person of color as a person of color.I mean… it’s just voice acting. It shouldn’t matter what they look like, right? So why do they always look white?
It is actually going to led to less diversity.
This is stupid, At least for cartoon. And for live action for small
parts. Is every actor going to actually be what they are. Whites
playing whites, blacks playing blacks, disabled playing disabled . Poor
transsexuals would never get a part becasue they are technically men.
All of this is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity.
You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit
parts. Henry on Family Guy also voiced Consuela, so now they are going
to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman
to say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no
idea where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is
Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not
handicapped? Fucking insanity.
Flip it to gender and “Bobs Burgers” does a pretty interesting job casting men for women’s roles, and vice-versa.
OK.
I’m sorry, but to me this just seems like we are stereotyping different races saying they have to sound black, or sound asian etc. I can see it in specifically written characters like Apu who is meant to speak with the Indian Accent but in the Case of Cleveland, he has a fairly non human high pitched whiny voice… its more generic than anything else.
They did try to hand wave Cleveland’s underlying whiteness by explaining that he was raised by a couple of white lesbians, but I think Mike Henry is right to step back.
This is stupid, At least for cartoon. And for live action
for small parts. Is every actor going to actually be what they are.
Whites playing whites, blacks playing blacks, disabled playing disabled .
Poor transsexuals would never get a part becasue they are technically
men.
All of this is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity.
You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit
parts. Henry on Family Guy also voiced Consuela, so now they are going
to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman to
say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no idea
where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is
Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not
handicapped? Fucking insanity.
Beyond that, it’s ultimately the pigeon-holing of minority actors. At the same time the door is cracked open to allow more minorities into these roles, they are simultaneously limited to playing roles which closely approximate their own real selves, especially once we go further on down the line from the big silos of race to more limiting aspects like sexuality, gender identity, disability, etc. I tend to agree with what you just stated, mostly seeing this as a problem when (typically white) actors are instructed to produce a stereotypical character of another race. If the accent, pronunciation, and speech pattern aren’t exaggerated and simply neutral, then I personally have no issue with whoever is playing the character. I just see this as something that will be celebrated in the short term (because it IS a positive step for Hollywood) but might end up being lamented in the future (“I can play more than ____ characters, you know?”).
I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at. An Asian actor might be irritated that they can only play characters of asian descent (as opposed to…?), so it would be better if a white person just did it?
Congratulations on powering through your confusion, making a huge leap in logic, and still sticking the landing with such a perfect distillation of what I wrote. You absolutely nailed it, 10/10.
It would be better? White person? Question marks?
It’s be nice to be offer these roles first to be able to turn them down….Also if the characters can then be assisted in writing by nonwhite writers, that can also help that tricky pigeonhole issue you bring up as they won’t be limited by the writing staff lack of confidence in writing what they don’t know. A win-win for everyone in equity.
The vastly superior alternative on all fronts is simple and obvious: hire more actors from marginalized groups and take a stand for the ability of a professional actor to pretend to be somebody (s)he’s not, because that’s the entire goddamn job description.It’s better in the short term because there’s still so many more white characters than nonwhite ones. It’s better in the long term because it shuts down the ghettoization problem that stems from leaning on a shitty argument in the first place. It also shuts down the logical consequences of the argument that nobody actually wants to think about… like how NPH let his privilege blind him to the fact that he couldn’t give an authentic voice to any straight character, or how Nancy Cartwright has been pissing in the eye of the authentic 10-year-old-boy life experience for 30+ years.
When everybody’s distracted by the next big thing after this, trust me, you’ll want to have used the limited capital you’ve accrued to normalize the idea that minority actors can play non-minority roles. That’s where the biggest dividend is, by far, and as a bonus you can avoid tossing the professions of acting and writing under the bus.
“you’ve accrued to normalize the idea that minority actors can play non-minority roles.”I get that this idea would be lucrative, but how feasible is it? How often do minorities voice non minority roles? It seems like the better prospect would be getting minorities to voice their own race AND make sure there are enough diverse roles. I get that that also might not be feasible.
“I don’t want non-white voice actors to only voice non-white or non-human roles like they almost entirely do now, so we should keep letting white voice actors voice non-white roles!”Seriously, beyond explicitly intentional examples like Samuel L. Jackson voicing a white character on the Boondocks, can anyone point to a number of cases where a non-white actor voiced a white character?
Almost all of Cree Summer’s roles are non-black.
Exactly! Like Hollywood was beating down the Asian actor’s door for him to play white characters and all of a sudden that’s going to stop. For fuck’s sake.
The guy with the ironic(?) Nazi avatar/username is definitely to be trusted on the subject of race relations.
Yes, an image of a Polish eagle and a username that plays on the name of today’s German Force are clearly Nazi-related. You keep trying with that one, but as usual, your trolling is still poor. Bye now!
“today’s German Force” lol who are you kidding
I don’t see how white actors stepping down from PoC roles means PoC actors can’t also play other kinds of characters. It doesn’t automatically go both ways. Still, this wouldn’t really be an issue if there were just more PoC roles in the first place. I think we can logically accept this sort of thing again in a decade or so after the playing field has been leveled.
Another thing to consider is that PoC actors are already pigeonholed anyway, so it’s all the more harmful that the much fewer opportunities they have are scooped up by people who could more easily get other roles.
I read a piece a week or two ago (maybe cross-posted from The Root?) about this very thing in journalism. Black writers have, by and large,successfully made the case to their media bosses that they were best equipped to handle stories about black issues. Now, however, they largely find themselves relegated to ONLY such stories and not regularly given assignments on more wide-ranging topics. If you don’t think the same thing will happen in another industry similarly dominated at the top by older white guys, well, you’re quite the optimist. It won’t be explicitly stated, but yes, the restriction WILL automatically go both ways in almost every instance. But yes, you are certainly correct that more minority character roles existing in the first goes a long way toward giving more such actors an opening and regular employment in the industry. I can just see the same dissatisfaction quickly setting in with the actors that the black journos are expressing at not being able to branch out in the careers. This is not in any way an argument that the industry just shouldn’t bother or that the actors themselves shouldn’t want this, but merely to say that there is a darker side to this bargain than many are anticipating, and there are no easy solutions.
That only works in a world where minority actors are often getting roles of white characters. They don’t. And instead white actors are taking up roles of minority characters. If there’s a chance to give minority actors more work, it would be for minority roles, at least.
Part of the reason it’s harder for minority actors to find work is that they’re *already* typecast. Then when straight white people are getting the roles minorities are already pigeonholed into, there’s nothing left.So while the broader solution is to make the industry more diverse overall, this is a short-term fix that can be achieved in the meantime.
It is actually going to led to less diversity.
This is stupid, At least for cartoon. And for live action
for small parts. Is every actor going to actually be what they are.
Whites playing whites, blacks playing blacks, disabled playing disabled .
Poor transsexuals would never get a part becasue they are technically
men.
All of this is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity.
You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit
parts. Henry on Family Guy also voiced Consuela, so now they are going
to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman to
say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no idea
where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is
Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not
handicapped? Fucking insanity.
“At the same time the door is cracked open to allow more minorities into these roles, they are simultaneously limited to playing roles which closely approximate their own real selves”.I don’t think that makes any real sense. Why would an actor of colour be any more limited in the kind of roles they’d get by sticking to characters of their race than a white actor? Unless the person writing them just writes stereotypes, in which case that’s just bad writing no matter who plays the voice.Take ‘The Simpsons’ as an example. If they hired just one black voice actor, that person would be playing a somewhat insensitive, upper middle class doctor who laughs at inappropriate times, a corrupt cop, a laid back nuclear power plant technician who’s also part of a secret society, a solemn judge, and any number of other characters the show might create now and then. Are you telling me there’s an actor out there who would find all these separate roles close approximations of their actual life?
lol WTF? How is it pigeon-holing minority actors? You act like minority actors are out there getting offered white roles left and right.I love how y’all’s response to moves that increase the chances for minority hiring is this fake ass fear. Where was this fear when minority actors were (are) getting doors slammed in their faces? We do not need or want this “concern.” Please save it.
What does sound black or asian even mean?
We’re not actually doing that. Hope that clears things up.
Apu doesn’t have a real Indian accent though (note that, India being a pretty big country, there are a whole bunch of different accents people have in English). That’s one of the big things Kondabolu calls out iirc.
I think the entire point is that you have to give these roles to people who are marginalized and not have the doors more open to them due to their skin color. If 2 actors are competing for a role and that role is a POC, you should give the role to the POC voice actor because the white voice actor has much more opportunity for him, due to him being white and more roles are white characters. It’s basically the same meme movement of casting John Cho in everything. Why not give a POC role to a POC actor instead of to the white person since the white person has more roles he could get. No one is complaining the Ken Jeong, who is not Chinese, is playing a Chinese in Crazy Rich Asians. But people would complain if a white actor got the role because Ken Jeong is not in nearly enough roles for anything.
presumably white writers will still be allowed to write lines for black characters. so white people can still put words in their mouths, as long as they have a real black person saying them. because either…that context somehow isn’t irrelevant on arrival due to the very medium of cartoon not needing more than a voice from an actor to perform those lines, or…you can just tell, y’know?while we’re at it, we should consider recasting David Cross in Sorry To Bother You. big oversight, that one
Or maybe we could also hire minority writers, numbnuts. Who says increased minority hiring has to stop at actors?
a writing staff with minority writers and white writers for a cartoon with white and minority characters is allowed to write cross-character. many of these shows exist, including every cartoon this is happening on.
What’s your point? Everyone already knows these things are “allowed.” That has nothing at all to do with what I said, or with what you said, for that matter.
yes you are so close. that is the point. writing for black characters is allowed (i.e. speaking for them) but literally speaking the lines is not. i am pointing out that it seems likely the writing should fall under the same line of criticism, which leads to absurd thinking.
Of course it’s allowed. And where do you get the idea that having white people speak the lines is not allowed? It has been going on for generations. I assure you it is allowed. And writing does fall under the same line of criticism. What world do you live in where you haven’t seen complaints about the underrepresentation of female, minority, and LGBT writers? About female characters being unbelievable because they are written by men? About LGBT characters falling directly into stereotype because they are written by straight writers? About Black stories ending up as The Blind Side with a white lady as the hero because our stories are written by white people? Pay attention.
And where do you get the idea that having white people speak the lines is not allowed?
hi welcome to the present momentAnd writing does fall under the same line of criticism
good point. we should segregate all artistic expression.
And in the present moment, there are still tons of white people playing minority roles. And it’s neat that you feel you can silo the present away from the past, but for generations minorities have not been considered for these roles AT ALL. And I’d love to see where you ever expressed a problem with that in the last 20 years. But all of a sudden you are very vocal about minority actors.Artistic expression is already segregated. That’s the part you are willfully ignoring. And since no one is arguing in favor of that, this stupid point is moot.
so let’s segregate it more to fix it? everyone stick to their race and that’s how we’ll understand each other better? think.art is there to illustrate. you’re trying to make it like real life. it loses its potency to make a point that way.for the record i have not expressed a concern about minority voice actors playing roles because i grew up watching sonic the hedgehog and samurai jack so i understood them to hold a level of representation which was not limited to their skin color but their talents as VAs. your aim is to reduce that in the name of…expanding their opportunities. ok.
Yeah, you can keep banging this stupid segregation drum, but again, since no one is arguing in favor of segregation it’s still moot.And yes, thank you for confirming that you never gave a shit about minority actors until now when they are finally on their way to a victory they’ve wanted for a long time and you oppose it.
i know you care but this isn’t helping.
Exactly. This is stupid, At least for cartoon. And for live action for small parts. Is every actor going to actually be what they are. Whites playing whites, blacks playing blacks, disabled playing disabled . Poor transsexuals would never get a part becasue they are technically men.
All of this is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity.
You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit
parts. Henry on Family Guy also voiced Consuela, so now they are going
to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman to
say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no idea
where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is
Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not
handicapped? Fucking insanity.
I think it seems like that to you because you haven’t bothered to read about and understand the issue at all.
It’s not so much about how they sound as it is about who gets hired. Most of these shows casts are almost all white and non-white people are being excluded from getting jobs doing VO acting, so they want to open that up to them by no longer letting white actors do voices for non-white characters.
Again with black with a capital b. Why?
Because Black describes a culture now and not just a skin color, but white only describes skin color. So a white baby can become a Black person if they are adopted and raised by a black family, but the baby can never become a black person.
So Steve Martin in The Jerk was Black but not black because he stayed that colour. You don’t really believe this bullshit do you?
Fascinating. This seems like a really great reason to just go ahead and retire the Simpsons. I always thought it would take the death of one of family’s voice actors to end the show, but if they move to retire the other background characters the way they have Apu, it might be best just to put it to bed. On the other hand, maybe a whole new background cast could save the show.
Disney just paid big money, in part, to own The Simpsons they’re not going anywhere.
fuck no
Mike Henry stepping down is a start, but there are other people associated with Family Guy that should be held accountable. Alex Borstein, a supervising producer and former writer for the show has also voiced non-white characters on the show.She has a history of portraying Asian characters but people mistakenly thought she had at least some Asian ancestry. In reality, she is Jewish on both sides of her family.
she should not be fired, absolute fearmongering nonsense
ms. swan isnt asian, shes a parody of bjork
They were lying.To anyone of Asian descent, however, Ms. Swan was painfully recognizable as a crude stereotype. She had a severe bowl cut; her porcelain skin was flushed with rouge; she worked at a nail salon; she wore the sexless muu-muus of many grandmothers; and her accent immediately evoked every callous impersonation of an Asian woman.
I find that woman hilarious to this day but I never see her without thinking of Ms. Swan, followed by “that was some fucked up shit”.
I saw someone online (here maybe?) once mention they had done improv classes or something with Mike Henry. Apparently the voice he uses for Cleveland was like the one voice he could do and he thought it was hilarious, and he irritatingly tried to shoehorn it into many scenes even if it wasn’t appropriate to the scene/character. I am now imagining how bummed out he is that he will no longer have a reason to do that voice.Apparently he also voices Herbert the Pervert and Consuela (and now I can actually hear in my head how similar they sound, adding to the idea that he is not exactly a voice acting virtuoso). He doesn’t say anything about no longer voicing a Hispanic woman, I wonder if they are just assuming no one will care about that because this cultural “moment” is focused on black people.
It seems to be way, way more common and accepted for different gender voice actors than different race actors. Also seems true for sketch comedy. Black/yellow/brownface is bad, drag is OK and can even be a joke on its own.
My point wasn’t so much him playing a woman as it was him playing a Hispanic woman, but only mentioning the black character he was stepping back from. Although there has been some noise about different gender voice casting recently, Loren Bouchard got criticized for casting male voice actors in female roles in his new show Central Park (which he had also done on Bob’s Burgers). There has also been some discussion of drag in sketch over the years, with most people not having a problem with guys in drag as a concept, but with the fact that its often described as “necessary” because sketch groups/shows don’t have enough female performers (the argument being well then hire more female performers and make the scenes/institutions that lead to success in sketch/comedy more female friendly). Personally I grew up with so much comedy drag that its hard to imagine it not being done, but as I got older the idea of “drag as the joke” started to seem lazy and unnecessary, and I preferred the approach of something like Kids in the Hall where they always said they were playing women, not men in drag, and they wanted the laughs to come from the scene or the character instead of just a guy in a dress.
I don’t see why that has to be so. I for one am offended that Bart is voiced by an adult woman instead of a prepubescent boy. This is unacceptable and discriminatory against little boys. This isn’t how acting should work, that people should be allowed to pretend to be something they aren’t. They really should change this to avoid offending me.
idiot
I think. Cleveland is considered more of a main part of the show.It wouldn’t surprise me if Consuela is quietly retired.
I mean, if Family Guy was going to stop doing all offensive stereotypes and racial humor they might as well just shut it down right? What’s left, go all in on Herbert the pedophile and Conway Twitty clips?
He said he is not doing Consuela anymore either.It is actually going to led to less diversity.
This is stupid, At least for cartoon. And for live action for small
parts. Is every actor going to actually be what they are. Whites
playing whites, blacks playing blacks, disabled playing disabled . Poor
transsexuals would never get a part becasue they are technically men.
All of this is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity.
You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit
parts. Henry on Family Guy also voiced Consuela, so now they are going
to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman
to say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no
idea where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is
Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not
handicapped? Fucking insanity.
I think it’d be fun if they went with completely different voices that sound nothing like the originals. Don’t just give us a black voice actor doing an impression of Harry Shearer doing an impression of Cosby. Give JB Smoove the role and let him use his normal voice. It would give us a reason to look forward to the next season just to see how different it would be.
And have an episode where Springfield is hit with a cloud of toxic gas, and all the characters that get recast were caught in it, explaining why they sound different.
AV Club, Fall 2020: “Simpsons writers use ‘toxic gas’ metaphor to comment on racial justice reckoning”
Lunch Lady Doris: “Ya whimps, I’ve been huffing that gas for years”
Eh, after “Armin Tamzarian” there’s no need for The Simpson’s to adhere to a strict canon where things like this need to be “explained”.
Can’t do that yet. They need to save that for when one of the Simpson voice actors/actresses die.
I stand by my original statement from last year, when they were talking about recasting Apu, that all Springfield characters should finally manage to pull that last crayon out of their nose.
Give JB Smoove ALL the roles.
You gotta get up in that ass, Homer.
He’s great as Frank the plant on Harley Quinn!
i really don’t care for jb smoove in anything i’ve ever seen him in but he is great as the plant on harley quinn and i absolutely love him as ‘that frog kurtis’ on black dynamite so i second your suggestion. it’s too bad that the simpsons sucks now cause it’s still my favorite show of all time.
Yes he is!
Hey that’s something.I would actually try watching the show again if we got a fresh set of voice actors on there.
Writers. It’s the writers that suck.
You had me at JB Smoove
I REALLY need to watch this show, but I can’t succumb to getting a D/C sub.
I believe S1 is on SyFy, and there was more JB Smoove in the first season.
I think the right move would be to hand those characters over to Kevin Michael Richardson who’s been a longtime regular voice for incidental characters but has never really been given a major character.
But what will happen if an FG episode ever goes back to Stoolbend and they run into Lester, who was also voiced by KMR? I always figured they asked KMR voice the white redneck Lester since Mike Henry was doing Cleveland and Rollo.
His voice is too deep for some of them, and he does like every male Black character in animation right now. We need more than one!
It isn’t. At least for cartoon. And it isn’t in live action either for small parts. Is every actor going to actually be what they are. Whites playing whites, blacks playing blacks, disabled playing disabled . Poor transsexuals would never get a part becasue they are technically men.
All of this is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity.
You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit
parts. Henry on Family Guy also voiced Consuela, so now they are going
to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman to
say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no idea
where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is
Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not
handicapped? Fucking insanity.
Kevin Michael Richardson will inherit the earth.
Yeah, both The Simpsons and Family Guy use Kevin Michael Richardson when they need someone to fill in for a black character, he needs some help.
hey , Green is a colour , so technically ..still counts!
There’s a black guy with “Michael Richards” in the middle of his name? What a fascinating world we live in.
Is this confirmation that the yellow characters on The Simpsons are actually white?
The whole town is doing yellow face.
I mean:
The reverend’s daughter once described Bart as “yellow trash”, so it’s hard to say.
Also, as always whenever some bit of news or trouble comes along that makes it seem even more financially/socially/creatively difficult to keep the Simpsons on the air for another year, I can only respond:
The Simpsons has been dead since season 10. I have no clue how anyone could watch this shit or the god awful movie for 20 years long than it should have been around.
I think its just inertia. I literally grew up watching the show. I was born in ‘85, my family watched it new every week from the premiere and then we watched it every night when it hit syndication before I was out of elementary school. It was the one family activity that we always kept up until my parents divorced, and even after that we usually watched new eps with my dad. I just kept watching after high school out of habit as it declined until around season 16 or 17, reasoning that “bad Simpsons is still better than most other TV.” I will even cop to enjoying the movie when I saw it in theaters, but I did not watch the show any more after that and have not re-watched the movie.
Please just inject his misery right into my veins. This is gold.
Put it in my VAAAAAAINS!
Hey, he aggressively screams some interesting points.
I’m more curious about why this has been so prevalent. How do the shows carry the motivation to wanting to make animated cast diverse, but seem to have a lack of motivation in extending that diversity to the actual cast?
The Cleveland Show cast was actually pretty diverse. Just not the main character.
White people feel more comfortable working with other white people
I wonder why.
It’s not entirely that.I mean, it’s partially that. Duh. But it’s also that, when lots of money’s involved, people like working with experienced actors.And because of subdued (verging on the overt) inclinations towards primarily hiring white people for roles regardless of character or talent, it’s the while voice actors who become experienced.So, they’re not explicitly hired because they’re white, just because they’re experienced… even though one of the major reasons they were able to become experience is because they’re white.
For The Simpsons, the show began 30 years ago when nobody ever thought about this issue and the main cast would voice random characters since it was cheaper than hiring more voice actors.
I’m… I’m sorry, are you trying to imply that racial equality is a NEW issue?
when nobody ever thought about this issue*when white people didn’t think about this issue
I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read about anyone of any race caring about this issue in the last 30 years
I’m a white person and when I was a younger fan of the Simpsons I thought it was silly that black people were played by white people in the same way I thought it was silly that boys like Bart Simpson were often voiced by women. Nowadays I recognise that anyone can and should voice anyone if they have the talent and the main problem is that POC talent is wrongfully ignored unless it’s to play a ridiculous stereotype. Black people can and should be used to voice black parts but they should also not be excluded from playing white roles – a good voice talent is a good voice talent. There will be a black equivalent of Hank Azaria out there who can voice 100s of different characters but who is marginalized because they’re expected to only play marginalized stereotypes.
There will be a black equivalent of Hank Azaria out there who can voice 100s of different charactersYeah, his name is Phil LaMarr.
What’s interesting is that Springfield was a lot more diverse in earlier seasons. Crowd shots were full of a mix of characters from different races (all strangers), but as the minor cast filled out these crowd shots were replaced by ones full of characters we already know (who are predominately yellow).
they are cartoon characters on shows that may have dozens of characters, but some with only a few lines an episode and it’s common sense to have one person voice multiple characters.
I forget who it was, but it was a prominent voice actor, say on a podcast that it’s essentially a closed ecosystem and the same players generally got offered roles first and it was hard to break into, unless you came up on a show that became an unexpected hit.You see the same dozen or so names on all shows.
Because 90% of the characters on the show are voiced by the same pool of 5 or 6 people.
It isn’t. At least for cartoon. And it isn’t in live action either for small parts. Is every actor going to actually be what they are. Whites playing whites, blacks playing blacks, disabled playing disabled . Poor transsexuals would never get a part becasue they are technically men.
All of this is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity.
You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit
parts. Henry on Family Guy also voiced Consuela, so now they are going
to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman to
say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no idea
where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is
Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not
handicapped? Fucking insanity.
The voice actor made the choice on his own. Relax. White Male Rage is becoming just as bad as cancel culture. Everyone get a grip. At the end of the day it’s just a cartoon.
Does that mean the entire cast of Simpson’s are being replaced with yellow voice actors?
Oh man, this comment is so funny one would think you were on the Simpsons writing staff.
Most of The Simpsons’s characters outside of Carl (and previously Apu) have been little used in recent seasons so I doubt much will be notice tbh. I also imagine that not only can you find a person of color to do the voice, but you can also likely find a person of color who can approximate the existing voices — Didn’t Fox threaten the entire voice cast 15 years ago that they could just hire impersonators? I’m sure that’s still true if they really feel like they have a necessary Dr. Hibbert episode. Cleveland will likely be a more obvious change. Could be a similar situation of getting a sound alike or I wonder if they’ll write the character out again.
Having to be exactly like the character you’re playing goes against the very concept of acting. Voice acting especially since the only thing that matters IS THE VOICE.
All things being equal, I would agree. But things aren’t remotely equal.
I want to know why people voicing characters of other races is a problem. I know that sounds trolling but I’m sincere. When I grew up, Cree Summer voiced every cartoon. Why not have black actors voicing Asian characters, Jews voicing Latinos, whatever. It’s a cartoon and it’s professional actors. If the concern is stereotypical affect (like Apu) then is it any worse if he’s voiced by Aziz Ansari? If the concern is diversity in casting, why not just hire more voice actors (writers etc) of colour? Cartoons being ink suit actors misses the point of animation.
why not just hire more voice actors (writers etc) of colour?
I mean, that’s the idea here.
why not just hire more voice actors (writers etc) of colour? I mean, that’s the idea here.But it’s NOT achieving that. You’d end up hiring more diverse creatives with an ethos of ethnicity-blind casting than you would with accuracy. If you’re (as in the Jenny Slate situation) writing a half black, half Jewish character, and Maya Rudolph isn’t available, you have to scrap the character. It limits creative flexibility (you won’t want to write diverse or minority characters because it will make casting harder, you won’t want to change and develop your ideas because it will be a casting headache) and encourage tokenism.
Imagine thinking there’s only one Jewish black actress out there. There’s even more than one famous Jewish black actress.
Imagine thinking there’s only one Jewish black actress out there. There’s even more than one famous Jewish black actress.The point is the more specific your characters (normally a good thing) the less likely you’ll get a voice actor. You start to develop the show, the actors are under contract, and you decide maybe a character makes more sense as a different ethnicity? Too bad. And how many shows have one actor doing multiple characters? Ugly Betty, one of the few shows to feature a non-white family as a lead (and have nonwhite creators and producers), had a Honduran, a Cuban, a Puerto Rican and a mostly Italian all play a Mexican family. Can’t do that any more? If Louis CK were still being cast in stuff, you’d have to write a Hungarian/Mexican/Jewish character?I can’t find it right now, but Sandra Oh once said years ago that this standard actually hurts minorities. If you’re a white guy with dark hair you can play Irish, Cuban, Persian, Latino, Greek, generic white, whatever. If you’re Korean and the media only lets you play Korean, you never get cast. They just decide it’s easier to avoid the trouble and make everyone white. This is more true in a cartoon that allows for fantastic elements, alternate universe stuff, whatever. I want more diversity at every step of the creative process. I don’t think this achieves it. And it hurts minority actors in that it puts them in a box and doesn’t let them show their range.
“If you’re Korean and the media only lets you play Korean, you never get
cast. They just decide it’s easier to avoid the trouble and make
everyone white.”What is ‘Korean,’ though? How come when a ‘white’ person is cast, no one goes ‘hey we need to make sure to explore white privilege with this character,’ but if they’re any other ethnicity/race they’re expected to be more representative?I’m not asking you specifically this – these are rhetorical problems – but IMO that’s the structural problem whose first step is casting appropriate to onscreen depictions. Minorities need to have their foot in the door, and the mostly-white industry mainstays need to be used to diverse rooms, before progress can be achieved.
Margaret Cho’s American Girl sitcom had a similarly diverse Asian cast as her Korean family in the 90s.James Kyson Lee, of Korean background, gained fame as the Japanese Ando Masahashi on Heroes, and appeared on Justified as a Japanese-Mexican gangster. I didn’t even realize that was an actual subset of cultural ethnicity before he did that role!Hell, Voyager’s Robert Beltran brought attention to the Mexican-Indians of the US Southwest/Mexico area when he took the role of Chakotay.
That’s actually an interesting point – should Kim’s Convenience be #cancelled because the actors playing Jung and Kimchee aren’t Korean?Or is the idea that all Asian people are exactly the same, regardless of ethnic background?
None of the Alvarezes on the One Day at a Time reboot are from Cuba and at least on the Netflix version, the grandmother being from Cuba was part of the show.
You gotta remember – to the white people who are focusing their attention on this, rather than systemic police violence, all Latinos are exactly the same!
You gotta remember – to the white people who are focusing their attention on this, rather than systemic police violence, all Latinos are exactly the same!Obviously systemic violence is more important. But this is an entertainment website. An article about casting in cartoons on which we’re all commenting. Anyone commenting here including you, is focusing on cartoon voices rather than systemic violence from the police.
My focus is largely to say “We do need to improve opportunities for POC VA’s…but let’s focus on more important things.”
You can’t be aware of two topics at once? I think police violence is a major problem and reform is necessary. I also think replacing actors for being a different race than a drawing that They’re making up a voice for is pointless, performative nonsense. Are those things mutually exclusive? Why are you focusing attention onto this?
You…don’t actually disagree with me on this, mate.Re-read what I wrote.
Yup, upon further review it appears that I miss understood your intention. My mistake.
“If you’re a white guy with dark hair you can play Irish, Cuban, Persian, Latino, Greek”She’s right , but damn I wish they’d stop doing that , …so many mangled Oirish accents..sigh**(I know that this is way , way way way WAY down the list of importance ,but I do have to gripe)
Clearly the solution is a lot less parts for white people then
Sandra Oh talked about the idea of casting bias during promotion of Killing Eve, but your interpretation is taking it wildly out of context — Her discussion was around the fact that when reading a script the assumption is that every character is white unless otherwise stated. So the character of Cristina on Grey’s originally had no last name and executives assumed that the character was white. Because of this, she assumed during the Killing Eve casting that she was being looked at for someone else. Her takeaway was that Hollywood needs to move away from assuming characters with no specified race must be played by white actors as opposed to characters who are described as a specific race being played by white actors. This is more in line with the notion that Hermione Granger could be played by a black actress on stage because nothing ever explicitly stated otherwise. It is not saying that white actresses should be cast in The Joy Luck Club or Crazy Rich Asians where racial identity is a major plot point.
Now I need to watch Oh in DOUBLE HAPPINESS again.
No one has said the character ethnicity has to exactly match. Certainly not all parts of a multiracial character. Just that people are tired of connected white people being crammed into every role. There were plenty of chances to do ethnicity-blind casting. It never happened and wasn’t going to. So this is the best that could be done for diversity.
“Colorblind hiring” doesn’t work. Because none of us are actually colorblind and we can’t just shut off the part of our brain that sees differences in people. Businesses that attempt to hire without considering race or gender usually end up with more people who look like whoever’s doing the hiring anyway because human beings naturally gravitate towards people who they feel a kinship with and race and gender are a quick way to feel similar to someone you don’t know. In order for workplaces to become more diverse, it has to be done intentionally. It’s not going to happen by accident.
“Colorblind hiring” doesn’t work. Because none of us are actually colorblind and we can’t just shut off the part of our brain that sees differences in people.That’s my point. Hire diverse people at every level. Hiring BIPOC actors for BIPOC roles limits the number of BIPOC people on the show. I don’t want Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell to step down from a voice role. I want them to have inclusion riders.
Of course we should be hiring people of color for all sorts of roles and jobs. But if we can’t even hire them for roles portraying people within their demographics, we’re never going to get to the point where we truly have equality of opportunity. It’s like Scarlett Johansson starring in Ghost in the Shell. As an isolated incident, it would be no big deal. But when there’s an overall trend of white actors playing roles that were written for people of color, at some point you have to stop and say, “This ends here.” Obviously, animated roles are a bit different, but minority actors are still underrepresented. Given that, it makes sense to say “Let’s reserve these roles for them as at least a step in the right direction until we reach a point when things are more equitable.”
Tiffany Haddish, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Nicole Thurman all have Jewish and African American Heritage, the latter two are also biracial. The notion that no one is possibly available is foolish.Jenny Slate was Missy because it’s her friends show and not surprisingly they want to work with their friends. She came on early enough in development that Missy’s clothes and stature were modeled after her. So why make her biracial at all? Was it because they wanted Jordan Peele to play her dad? Was it because they had some punchlines in their pocket already? Or was it meant to be an important trait of the character? If the latter is the truth then you should want to collaborate with someone who has a closer experience to that character.
Because it is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity. You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit parts. Henry also voiced Consuela, so now they are going to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman to say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no idea where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not handicapped? Fucking insanity.
Oh, I see. So it’s not that you sincerely want to know, as you claimed. It’s that you want to argue with people who explain it. Got it.
The point is to not have so many non-white characters voiced by white actors. Once we reach a point where things are not so skewed white, maybe we can have a white actor voice a non-white character now and then, but until then, no white actors should voice any white character.Otherwise, mix and match if you have to, but the point is getting diverse actors in there and having it not be so danged white.
Because in voice acting, what matters ABOVE ALL ELSE is the voice. It’s the one industry that should be colourblind in terms of casting.
That’s not the specific goal being advanced, though. Hiring more people of color ought to be, I agree, but it can’t start with, “okay, only black people can voice black characters”, for, at the very least, that this still lends itself toward tokenism. How many black characters are played by white actors in live-action TV? I can’t think of any. How often do black characters get reduced to token status in spite of this? Unless the show is black-produced, it’s “almost always”.
I think most of the problems that need to be solved can be directly attributed to what isn’t shown on the screen: the conceptual process behind characters and scripts and the people behind them. The industry needs to hire more black talent for the creative process, and it needs to do that proactively, because the usual streams that produce writers are still racially biased. I’d much rather see a white actor voice a black character whose lines were written by black writers than to insist that all characters must be voiced only by people who are the same color (or the same gender or sex or sexual orientation).
Because it is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity. You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit parts. Henry also voiced Consuela, so now they are going to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman to say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no idea where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not handicapped? Fucking insanity.
it’s one of those stupid assumptions where you believe the world is filled with voice actors.
If you had diverse casts voicing diverse characters written by diverse staffs it wouldn’t matter. Jenny Slate could voice Missy if Cree Summer was voicing Jessie. It is not what has happened, and it wasn’t going to happen, especially for the major voice roles for the major shows. The voice casts tend to be overwhelmingly white, especially with the lead roles. Cree Summer has had a nice career, but you are overstating her prominence. And she was a bit of an outlier as a famous biracial voiceover star. A white show patting itself on the back for having an animated black character is not authentic diversity.There have been a host of problems holding back meaningful representation on TV and Film. This is an attempt to remedy that. Is it perfect? Not at all. I am sure Kevin Michael Richardson would love to voice Homer Simpson, But until then, it is better that he can voice Dr. Hibbert and Carl.Of course now we might just see minority major characters fade away as creators with production deals write for their friends knowing they can’t voice minorities.
(Family Guy has been straight up racist. No self respecting Hispanic would voice Consuela.)
I want to know why people voicing characters of other races is a problem.Name me five white characters that are voiced by non-white voice actors.Boondocks doesn’t count.
Is Frylock white? Boxy Brown at one point called him, “Fry-cracka,” but that might be just because he’s not black enough for Boxy Brown.
Arguably some of Lauren Toms work has been voicing non Asian characters ,but she’s really good at what she does (plus it basically falls into the Women in Voice Acting who can voice boy characters ) . But yeah its very very rare.(I am agreeing with you by the way , just to be clear!)
nobody knows. they keep repeating it but you’ll never get a response because it’s illogical. the closest you ever get to an explanation is a sarcastic dismissal.
Everyone who can read knows.
as evidenced by you not answering just now, no, they do not.
If the deck weren’t so stacked against actors of color, I would think that voice over would be a fantastic opportunity for any actor of any age, race or gender to play someone completely different from themselves. Cree Summer is a fantastic voice actor, after all, who did not always play a character that matched her ethnicity. But the deck is stacked and so the current changes are a good and necessary thing. Maybe in a few generations when things are evened out, it won’t be thing. I get the people who are saying this pigeon-holes actors (and actors of color have said so themselves) but right now this is the right thing. I’m also thinking that when it comes to gender, adult women often play little boys to avoid having to recast when the boy hits puberty. I don’t see that changing anytime soon and I know the actors who do it love it because it does give them a chance to play someone so different. In sum, racism sucks and it would be fun if the playing field were even, but it isn’t.
“right now this is the right thing” this just seems an odd thing to say after two really good reasons that might not be true.
The problem is, thanks to systemic bias it’s easier for white actors etc. to find work, than POC, who may also be typecast (as with trans actors).This is a move to tip the scales back a bit, it’s a step towards a more diverse industry in general. It’s not about “ink suit actors” so much as the broader numbers.
For me, it should be an issue addressed going forward, not retroactive but whatever. If the change makes characters like Cleveland more entertaining and with more presence, all the better.
Samurai Jack was voiced by Phil LaMarr. Were people offended by that?
It isn’t. At least for cartoon. And it isn’t in live action either for small parts. Is every actor going to actually be what they are. Whites playing whites, blacks playing blacks, disabled playing disabled . Poor transsexuals would never get a part becasue they are technically men.
All of this is insanity and it is just going to led to less diversity. You are going to have to hire so many different actors for so many bit parts. Henry on Family Guy also voiced Consuela, so now they are going to have to hire a black guy to replace Cleveland and a Mexican woman to say “No, No, No,” and “We need more Lemon Pledge”. And I have no idea where they are going to get a talking dog and a gay baby from? Is Patrick Warburton still going to be able to voice Joe since he is not handicapped? Fucking insanity.
Because the result is that BIPOC are considered good enough for their images and life experiences to be used in production and profited from, but BIPOC themselves are excluded from participating.
It isn’t. The outrage crowd won this time. I hate it but I guess we all have to say we agree with it now or we are racists pigs. As an artist, a shitty one admittedly, I find it reprehensible to have others direct your vision. If they don’t like it, tune out. Some of the best portrayed Jews were played by Italians and vice-versa. Its only a level of intelligence so low that would be offended by by being portrayed by someone other than themselves
OMG Henry was wearing inkface??? We must destroy him!!1!bbq!1!
If you really want to know why, there is tons and tons about it on the internet. Have you tried doing some research?
I hope this also means they stop running The Cleveland Show on Comedy Central. (Not so much because of the racism as because it’s aggressively unfunny, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.)
You don’t like happy mustache face? There’s even a bear!BTW, who voices the bear?
The bear is Seth MacFarlane, isn’t it?
Completely agree. It’s unfunny to the point of being actively irritating! I was so glad when it left Adult Swim.
This being the same Simpsons that spent the last couple years being all edgy out of touch reactionary that sought to portray these very concerns as PC Gone Mad?
Interesting that the narrative – for some people – has shifted to “I can understand the Apu issue, but this is a bit too much.” When the debate over Apu first began, both the crew and fans were remarkably dismissive of it. Hindsight is an intriguing thing.I think, ultimately, we should be listening to people affected by racial (and other socio-cultural) issues with genuine attention when they speak up, as opposed to listening with an intent to respond, or responding in a way that alleviates our discomfort.
plenty of Indians thought it was dumb as well, I didn’t see the point in that documentary considering Apu had already been retired from speaking roles a whole year before it came out, so it made the whole thing come off as pointless.
I’m pretty sure he hadn’t, actually. He might not have talked for a while, but the thing with a show like The Simpsons is that you can practically disappear characters for years by mistake, just by virtue of having a stretch of episodes where the story just happens to not check in with them. With a small central voice cast playing a lot of characters it isn’t even hard to do, because… well, Harry Shearer’s still turning up every day, is anyone really going to notice that they haven’t had him voice Reverend Lovejoy for months?
oh it wasn’t a mistake, Matt Groening specifically said in an interview that he realized the issues with Apu long before that documentary ever came out and he specifically decided to retire him from speaking roles as a result with his final speaking role being “Much Apu About Something” which has his nephew visiting and confronting Apu about his stereotypical behavior.
“Indians” aren’t a monolithic group, though. There are Black people who are against the BLM movement, LGBT+ folk against pride (and some were against marriage equality), etc.If you look at the reaction from white actors speaking out against past voice acting roles and the ones retracting themselves from voicing those roles today, you’ll see the Simpsons/Apu issue wasn’t pointless, and was perhaps ahead of the curve. Acknowledging a mistake to do better in the future doesn’t constitute a rebuke of the entire process.Going through the comments and upvotes here, it seems comfort has won out for now. We’ll see how things change over time, I guess.
i didn’t say the issue wasn’t pointless, I said that documentary was pointless, because it was since it was basically a plea for the Simpsons creators to acknowledge the issues with Apu and do something about it, which they’d already done a whole year before the doc even came out.
It was not at all pointless. Matt Groening continued to defend Apu after the documentary, saying in May 2, 2018, “I think it’s a time in our culture where people love to pretend they’re offended”. And as late as August 2019 “Yes. We love Apu. We’re proud of Apu.”.Lest we all forget this incredibly tone deaf response post the documentary:Lisa turns to face the viewer: “It’s hard to say. Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?”She then gestures to a photograph of Apu by her bed, inscribed with Bart Simpson’s catchphrase – “Don’t have a cow” – a directive to relax.“Some things will be dealt with at a later date,” Marge promises. “If at all,” Lisa deadpans.It was Azaria who decided against continuing to voice Apu this year. Azaria had followed the debate over the previous years since Kondabolu’s essay and documentary, and had read up on and attended seminars on racism and social consciousness, and spoke to Indian-American colleagues including fellow actor Utkarsh Ambudkar (who had performed as Apu’s nephew in “Much Apu About Something”) about the situation. He came to understand the issues around the character of Apu compared to the other stereotypical characters on The Simpsons was the idea of permissible use, leading to his decision to quit voicing Apu.
Fact remains that he still hadn’t had a speaking since 2016, Hank was essentially just confirming what had already been decided years ago.
I literally said that it WASN’T decided years ago. August 2019, less than a year ago: “Are you keeping Apu?” “Yes. We love Apu. We’re proud of Apu.”.
They could keep the existing voice actors and just have an episode where it is revealed that Hibbert, Carl, etc, have actually been white characters shamelessly doing blackface for 31 years.
Maybe instead of worrying about casting The Simpsons could just finally end. As far as Cleveland goes, I’m (not too) curious how it took so long. I could easily see Family Guy making a joke about how he sounds different now though.
nah
S does this mean black men also no longer voice roles of different races? Man it’s gonna be weird hearing a different voice for Samurai Jack.
That Kirsten Bell bit is unfortunate. I liked her in Central Park, and that seemed like an okay way to handle biracial roles: Tituss Burggess for the son, Kirsten Bell for the daughter. Obvious Bell disagrees, and that’s what matters.
I can understand feeling like you need to step down so someone in a traditionally underrepresented group can can have an opportunity, but… is it weird that Bell thinks biracial should default to biracial -or black-?
I’ve had enough of this. I’ve bit my tongue long enough and I don’t care if its controversial to say it or not so you wannabe woke warriors can stfu.
I liked The Cleveland Show. It’s underrated.
I like it too but i’m wondering why all these shows are suddenly scrambling over this sort of thing.
Not that I give a shit about cartoons that should have stopped after three seasons, but having a white person voice someone who isn’t white is logically just as racist as a white person writing the personality and character of someone who isn’t white. Is that the next step in the plan?
This is idiotic. More and more hysterical decisions.
I’m very glad that a PoC will get to say and be the target of all the terrible race jokes on fucking Family Guy. Big win.
troll
Maybe this will mean the Simpsons will just end. Honestly getting angry over a show so far past its prime is a little maddening.
This has been your helpful reminder that The Simpsons, contrary to all logic, didn’t finish twenty years ago.
I think the better solution would have just been to suddenly change all the minority characters to be white. Surprise! I was just wearing blackface this whole time!It’s fine to cast Idris Elba in a white role that really doesn’t work with a black man, is cool and progressive, but white people imitating black voices, oh no that’s racist! We need to put a stop to this. Chappelle doing the white voice? Nah he gets a pass. Only one race can do racist things, and that’s not racist at all.
I’ll be curious whether this filters into the anime dub industry.
Which is certainly ironic given Simpsons was defending the continued presence of Apu just a year ago.
Pathetic…
How about we call things straight down the middle by having all characters be voiced by people from the same race as them?
Does this mean Martian Manhunter will no longer be voiced/played by primarily black actors?Where are we gonna find green actors? Lima, Peru?
very funny you claim he’s voiced ‘primarily’ by black actors, then post a picture with five white actors and four black ones.
TWO pictures, one featuring the JL/JLU voice actor, who also plays his father on Supergirl. Also Miguel (mid/Rt) is Hispanic.The white guys are mostly video games, not cartoon voices.and obviously, this post was done tongue firmly in cheek, as we have no actual Martian or green actors. I mean, I could have demanded full robot voices for all Transformers, but that would be illogical.
(also, I know one, and he still packs a mean wallop.)
Whatever, Scarlett.
I fucked up assuming a Hispanic actor was white. That was ignorant of me but my point still stands.
No, it doesn’t! You see, Martian Manhunter does not feature in the popular cartoon The Simpsons, which is the subject of this article.
and yet other animated shows are doing the same. @_@
To think, I thought change never happens as long as the status quo is maintained.
Phil LaMarr is going to be very busy!
Actually probably not since he should only be voicing black characters for the sake of equality.
I feel like “persons of color should play characters of color” has a strong potential to go very, very wrong in a big hurry.
Slippery slope. If we take away white people’s unchecked power and influence, sooner or later white people won’t have unchecked power and influence
I’m not sure you got my point. If we’re saying that black characters can only be voiced by black actors, others are going to flip this argument around and use it as an excuse to never cast black actors in non-black roles.
it’s ok. it’ll have to happen for them to see why it’s wrong. learn by experience.
Presumably they’ll be recasting Brian with an actual dog now?
This purity spiral has got to stop. They just banned the D&D episode of community for “blackface”.
Holy fuck… seriously!? That is probably the best episode of the series and features a wonderful theme of inclusion, support for a fellow human, and forgiveness… but sure let’s take it down for a fuckin Dark Elf joke!And in other stupid ass Dark Elf related news: https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd
THAT WAS A FUCKING DROW!!Shit , they better not take down The Amazing world of Gumball
In case you missed the memo, Drows are racial stereotypes, as acknowledged by Wizards of the Coast.
So by this rationale Nancy Cartwright should stop voicing Bart because she is voicing a male.
Oh fuck ….we’re going to lose Bobs Burgers ..
Huh, I guess I never realized that Azaria voiced Akira in his subsequent appearances after Takei originally voiced him in the fugu episode… I just assumed he showed up so infrequently that they got Takei back each time.
Im amazed on how people react to this (or any) kind of change. I still cant believe someone pointed out how strange was that in Star Wars 9 Wedge Antilles dont have the same accent he had in the other films. We can barely hear when he speaks his only line. And somehow we should think on what happened in those 30 year gap to his voice.
The shows themselves should just be retired if they’ve got that much baggage. The Simpsons should have been canceled like 20 years ago and Family Guy shouldn’t have survived past it’s first or second revival season. I guess money is money, though.
At this point I think its time for the Simpsons to ride off into the sunset. They’ve had a good run but time has come. I grew up on the show and they are still making good to decent episodes. However the last season was proof enough of why its time to end.
Police still funded
Unrepentant murderers still protected by corrupt police unions and qualified immunity
But I’m glad we’re taking care of the important stuff
Feel like when it comes to voice acting, be nice to have people of that race play that role but it’s fine to have other people to do so as well so long as it doesn’t devolve into a stereotype. You can also cast non white people into white VO roles as well. Look at Samurai Jack, the voice actor is amazing and I could never hear “Jack” as another voice but the voice actor is an African American and not anyone of Japanese decent or even Asian ancestry.
number of actual POC who have weighed in on this:
Does this mean they will stop casting live action actors for roles based on their performance and instead by their skin? Like Samuel L Jacksson as Nick Fury, since that character was white from the start in the comics? As an example.It’s a dangerous way to lower quality of the work. Instead of picking the best person for the job (no matter what colour or gender) they have to go with someone that matches the character and being forced to pick a possible worse option….
All lot of sh*t sucks right now but don’t loose sight of how neat this is.
Petition for Mr T to take over the role of Cleveland.
So this is white people who originally deciding on these cast/voice actors and then the same white people realizing its wrong and changing it and still no black people involved in these decisions, while they can pat their self on the back as a job well done. I kinda get that black actors should voice black characters, but then again it’s voice acting. Unless you are doing a stereotype of what a black person sounds like , why does it really matter ? It’s not like me a as black person can voice a cartoon and dig deep into my “ blackness” and make character seem more believable. This is Cleveland where Carl from the Simpson’s not something with depth.
…A lot of these characters were literally based on imitations of real people of color, though. Dr. Hibbert was always a Cosby impression. Apu was actually even worse, I believe his voice was based on a yellowface performance.
All true but Dr Hibbert isn’t a stereotype of a black man , it’s a satire or making fun of Cosby Show and also Nick Kroll played a Mexican DJ in Reno 911, with a horrible Mexican accent so is he a racist hypocrite? tone deaf? People love Big Mouth but that’s never mentioned. So only now people see where someone crossed the line? S There was an episode of Cleveland Show where they did a joke about Trayvon Martin and nobody said shit. Are they gonna go after Bob’s Burgers too? Why can’t they make some real change and get more black shows, more black people making decisions and creating shows, because they are a bunch of black people not online or commenting on AV Club who love these shows or don’t care about this issue. We want real meaningful change
Yeah, Nick Kroll shouldn’t have done that. And Big Mouth (which I personally don’t like for other reasons) is actually what STARTED this one, with Jenny Slate declaring she wouldn’t keep playing a black character without being black herself. So yeah, we’re mentioning that.
Yes, they should hire more people of color in creative and managerial roles. But you have to move what you can, and it’s gonna take a hell of a lot to get the top of the pyramid to change like that. But what these established shows can do is force positions for people of color at all, which is exactly what they’re doing. By making sure these black roles are actually played by black people, it guarantees an actual black voice in the room. The voice actor has a lot of control over the character, so that does a lot more than you think at first.
I’m sure that this is a well meaning decision, but for me personally this isn’t the issue that western media needs to prioritize when it comes to inclusion.Take for example this scene from Uncharted:
As an Indonesian I do appreciate that at least Naughty Dog’s writers did some amount of research to write passable Indonesian dialogues, but the pronunciation is so downright atrocious and awkward it becomes quite a laughing stock in my own gaming community. It begs to question as to why they didn’t just find native speakers for those bits of dialogue. They’re not really big roles and it’s not like Indonesians are that hard to find in America. I’m not too crazy about James Sie’s performance as Eddy Raja either. Sure, I guess finding a professional Indonesian-American voice actor is hard simply because there had been absolutely zero demand for one but if you look at Laura Bailey’s performance in Uncharted 4 where as a white person she voiced the black South African Nadine Ross rather splendidly with the help of a dialect coach, I don’t see why they couldn’t do the same by consulting actual Indonesians to make the character feel more authentic. At the end of the day I don’t really care who voices these characters, I just care how well they portray it.
I believe they did cast an actual Tibetan voice actor for Uncharted 2’s Tenzin, but it’s possible they just figured they couldn’t really “fake” it even up to the low standards of “foreign language for English speakers” with Tibetan.
unfortunately the protest against police brutality has entered the “stupid bullshit” phase
I demand The Simpsons fire Harry Shearer and hire an actual Christian to play Ned Flanders!!!!
Why is any of this an issue in cartoons? I get it with stereotypes, but they wouldn’t stop being stereotypes because of the performer. They’re acting. To put it another way – why is this only a concern for performers? Should the characters be written and drawn by people of the correct race too? At what point does every character have to be portrayed in all respects by creatives who fit the ancestry perfectly? More diversity on and off screen, yes please. More carefully thought out depictions of people of different ethnicities and cultures. But pigeonholing like this doesn’t seem like it’ll increase either. It’ll just mean that a cast of 6 can play 6 characters rather than 150.
To quote the renowned acting coach Geramima St. Frostfirst “Acting is the art of pretending you’re someone that you’re not.”
So will they now also have characters voiced by people of the same gender?
Ridiculous cowardice and virtue signalling. Next stop – all comedies cancelled, because someone might feel they’re being laughed at it, and oh the humanity.
Does the color of their skin have anything to do with their ability to do the job? If not, then you should not be taking it into acc0unt when doing hiring. By using skin color as a measure of whether to hire someone when their skin color is not relevant to the job, you are being extremely racist. And in any other industry would be breaking the law in a pretty big way.
For voice acting, a persons skin color has absolutely nothing to do with their ability. And the people watching have no idea and do not care who the voice actor is.
So…a white person shouldn’t play a biracial character because…that character is only part white?
Doesn’t this kind of play into the racist “one drop” ideology? That if you have even “one drop” of black “blood” in your ancestry, you can never be considered anything but black because your white purity has been destroyed?
Obama wasn’t our first black president, he was our first biracial president…
Of course the whole fucking house of cards collapses because so many white slave owners raped their slaves and made lots of biracial babies…
“…it’ll no longer ‘have white actors voice non-white characters.’” So no non-white actors playing white roles, then to be utterly “fair” about it about the racially-motivated role casting, right? (IE: for example, no black Perry White or Kingpin in future comic book movies.)
This is a direct result of people not having any way to touch the actual levers of power, so they desperately grasp for whatever justice they can
I thought George Takei voiced Akira.
What about black voice actors playing non black roles such as samurai jack.
Just give all the roles to JB Smoove.
Thats fine. Racist but fine. I mean, Bart Simpson is a male character voiced by a female person of colour but let’s consider the colour of voices. Seriously, its Mr. Burns kinda evil reminiscent of Little Lisa’s recycling plant but…hey…do what you gotta do.
I recently watched through Avatar: The Last Airbender. It had some great storytelling and character arcs, and the animation was a lot of fun. I largely have nothing but great things to say about the show.But I am kinda curious how nobody brings up Avatar in regards to this voice actor conversation. Sokka and Katara are voiced by Jack De Sena and Mae Whitman, respectively, and both at least appear very White compared to their Inuit-inspired characters. Mark Hamil played Firelord Ozai, who seems like a non-White character. Clancy Brown played Long Feng leader of the Dai Li, and Rene Auberjonois voiced a couple of characters of color.