The collapse of the performing arts industry in the wake of the pandemic is the least of its problems in some quarters. The Prom, a new Netflix film based on the Broadway hit, is the latest production to run afoul of the current casting controversies causing angst from Hollywood to Sydney.
Even before it dropped on the subscription service last weekend, the cheesy musical about LGBTIQ inclusion was subject to criticism for the decision to cast James Corden in a key role.
While Corden is currently best known as a late-night host on US television, the English actor also appeared in the TV show Gavin and Stacey and won acclaim in the hit West End play One Man, Two Guvnors.
His casting in The Prom should not have been a controversial choice given he is also an accomplished singer — as anyone who has watched his popular carpool karaoke can testify.
But James Corden is straight and the character of Barry Glickman in The Prom is gay.
“James Corden proves why straight actors should think twice before playing gay” read one headline.
“Offensive gay stereotype” said another.
It’s not about cancel culture claim some of the critics — but it comes on top of a rash of similar controversies in the artistic community of late.
Only last month Australian theatre had a similar problem when well-known television actor Hugh Sheridan was cast in the lead role in the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch for the upcoming Sydney Festival.
The character, who has been described as a “complex genderqueer character”, has been played by many queer cis men in the past — including by the musical’s creator John Cameron Mitchell, who has said he does not believe Hedwig is trans.
Nevertheless, a petition was started criticising the casting of “a cisgender male as a transgender character”.
The controversy was enough to make the producers postpone the entire project. So actors of all persuasions miss a much-needed opportunity to perform at all.
Journalists too are in revolt over coverage of transgender issues, with the publication by The Age of an anonymous piece by the parent of a child in gender transition sparking internal newsroom tensions. The article was later pulled.
Meanwhile international singer Sia has been pilloried for her new film Music, in which a non-autistic girl plays an autistic character. Some critics claim the role should have gone to an actor on the spectrum.
Sia failed to back down, tweeting “fuckity fuck. Why don’t you watch my film before you judge it. FURY”.
When one autistic actress tweeted about the problems getting roles, Sia fired back “maybe you’re just a bad actor”. It only incited more outrage.
There was also plenty of support for Sia, with one Twitter user pointing out that Dustin Hoffman would have to hand back his Oscar for Rain Man on this basis.
Not to mention Tom Hanks who won an Oscar for playing a gay man in Philadelphia.
It’s called acting.
For several years now theatre companies and producers in Australia and overseas have successfully embraced colour-blind and gender-blind casting. This has provided numerous opportunities for non-Caucasian actors to be cast in notionally Caucasian roles based on merit. Against this is the increased demand that casting be based on the identity of the character. If we take this to its logical conclusion, only a Dane could play Hamlet, only teenage residents born and living in Verona could play Romeo and Juliet, gay and lesbian actors should not play straight characters and indeed people who have a specific identity should only play characters with that identity. Taking this even further, young actors should not play characters older than themselves, and older actors should not play characters younger than themselves.
The real solution is for directors, producers, theatre companies and casting consultants to not only embrace colour-blind and gender-blind casting, but identity-blind casting as well.
“It’s called acting.”
Exactly.
Maybe all those who are outraged only want rapists to play rapists, mass murderers to play … you get the picture.
Some people are way to precious.
What about the hundreds of gay men who played straight men over the last 100 years? Obvious why up to 30 years ago, but after that?
A very valid point! And I bet many of them deserved Ocars for those performances..
Just off the top of a non film buff’s head – Gielgud, McKellen (pretty sure that the avuncular Gandalph was pater familias to all), Bogarde (Dirk) and Rock Hudson.
“It’s called acting” – spare me the trite final attempt at wit and the growing chorus of fellow traveller supporters.
Will you be as fulsome of Caucasian actors playing Asian roles, after all “It’s called acting”
Will you be as full throated in support of a cisgender male playing a woman because, after all “it’s called acting”
Shall we all raise a toast to any performer of any ethnicity, orientation, gender, able-bodied who can play anything and everything at all because, you know, “it’s called acting”
The problem with Corden is – he is an appalling actor for starters, and somehow Americans think he is just “fabulous”. His attempt at the role is embarrassingly bad – camp stereotype laid on with a brush as broad as his ability to perform credibly is narrow. It is unwise casting and badly excuted.
Beyond this though is the complete ignorance of people by not understanding what “holding space” and “visual representation” means.
No one is asking for ALL gay roles to by played by gay actors only. We would just like to have a fair share of the opportunities please, and those opportunities are already so limited that we don’t want the dominant cisgender hets being allowed to have everything. A little more sharing and consideration would be appreciated.
The industry is slowly (very slowly) moving on from such travesties as Mickey Rooney screwing his face up to play Asian or NZlander James Laurenson pretending to be a FN Australian. But hey, “it’s called acting”….
“Will you be as full throated in support of a cisgender male playing a woman because, after all “it’s called acting””
I don’t know cisgender is, and can’t be bothered Googling. Maybe you’ve never watched Monty Python ?
cis is a prefix that is the opposite of trans, it is from latin. Cisgender means you haven’t changed gender.
More precisely, from wikipedia, cis is latin for ‘this side of’ and trans is ‘other side of’. Obviously, you don’t come across it in English often because the concept is usually communicated with a lack of affixes. I hope that helps if you encounter it again. In your defense I had to look it up years ago.
Anyway in the case of gender there had to be a term for not trans and this is what people went with. I don’t have a better one handy but one that doesn’t require trivia about a dead language to decipher might help. It is, however, extremely neutral.
No, there was not a need for a term for non trans.
It behooves those who would assert difference to do so without attempting to co-opt everyone else.
Think of a smoker expecting everyone else to leave the room when they light up.
Did you not find a need to communicate the difference, just then? Consider that your alternative is a double prefix, like ‘anti pro’.
Say the undecorated part of ‘transgendered’ out loud. Gendered. Sounds odd doesn’t it? Like being ‘whelmed’? Not only that, it is really imprecise. Aren’t transpeople also ‘gendered’ if they aren’t ‘non-binary’?
The term only gets used in contrast to ‘transgendered’, as well. It really isn’t anything to get upset about, no one is co-opting you into anything and you can safely live your life not saying ‘cisgendered’ out loud.
I didn’t propose an alternative.
What is ‘non trans’, as in non-trans-gendered, other than a longer way to say the exact same thing as ‘cisgendered’, or simply ‘cis’ for short?
It was your word-choice, opening your final paragraph.
Fair enough. I still think you are being unreasonable about one piece of jargon, though.
I don’t care about the abuse of language – plenty of that in what passes for modern writing & churnalism.
The crux of this matter is that A decides something and obliges everyone else to (pretend to) believe their delusion.
As with religion, the mania should remian private and not clog up the public space.
The term “cisgender” (common emphasis on “cis”, like “hiss”) is certainly relatively new, and for that reason, has been very easily weaponised. The word is only ever used by trans people, and is typically used to assert the argument “you are not like us, you can never understand us”, ergo, your arguments are lesser than mine. Even when used in benign contexts, its primary purpose is to divide.
If you followed this logic across the English language you’d end up with a very small vocabulary. Anything is a slur if you throw enough contempt or malice behind it. Categories by definition divide up subjects into categories.
At the end of the day, you are complaining about a really dry academic term. It is the blandest and least offensive way to communicate the difference. If you find yourself offended by it remember these 2 facts about the person using it in an attempt to burn you:
1) They are too cowardly to use a real slur
2) They sound like a bit of a dork
Let it flow like water off a duck’s back!
I don’t have a dog in this race, as I am not a performing artist or even a massive consumer of western film, but I do care about the employment prospects of my fellows so I can’t help but ask: isn’t this a bad place to make a stand on inclusion of LGBTI actors? As other commenters point out, there have been gay men playing het characters. While I doubt it would lead to a cishet identitarian push to stop casting homosexuals in heterosexual roles, the appearance of trying to have your cake and eat it too doesn’t seem conductive to securing work in general, considering not every production is a queer story.
I mean, how many roles are you going to get due to preferential casting of a subset of the available roles vs vigorously promoting LGBTI actors to all productions?
You’d need to quantify “fair share”, and to that end, where does it end? At least 50% of gay roles must be played by actual gays? 70%? 90%? Where is the line? Well, there is no line. You can’t define that any more than the person sitting next to you. Or indeed the casting agent that screws up and casts someone you don’t like.
“Shall we all raise a toast to any performer of any ethnicity, orientation, gender, able-bodied who can play anything and everything at all because, you know, “it’s called acting”? Well, yes – if they can play the role – that’s exactly what’s called acting. But there’s good acting and bad. From what I’ve read, criticism of Cordon is two things: that he is straight playing gay, and that he plays gay badly. I personally think the latter is the worst of the two, and I’d suspect that there’d be any number of gay actors that could have done greater justice to the role, so in this case, the first criticism is obvious too. I do think that particular characterisations should always be offered to actors who can offer life experience, if I can put it that way, or actual identity – so that characterisation doesn’t descend in to caricature … but it’s a very wide field. But I do think playing cross-ethnic is wrong – Mickey Rooney’s Japanese landlord was a true abomination, James Laurenson was at least respectful of his character; but playing variations on one’s own ethnicity seems fair enough. And across genders – Glenda Jackson as King Lear? Couldn’t find an old white man? No, that’s acting.
I wouldn’t discount cross-ethnic acting entirely, while often not ideal, it has opened up the idea of, say, a black actor playing a character that is usually depicted as white. I don’t always agree with such casting decisions, but nothing wrong with it in principle, and I am happy to see non white actors get that paid work. Good for them.
Really, the problem is just crap white actors playing roles badly written by a white writer and signed off by a chain of white execs, especially the white producer.
IMO there is a lot of merit to filling a role with someone of the same background as the character. It is why I prefer foreign media subtitled. But as a hard and fast rule? Nah. Type casting can be stifling.
David Carradine in Kung Fu, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, Cruise whenever he plays a human being.
Some people can act, some cannot.
Some can ride bicycles.
Oh, and Anthony Quinn in just about every role he’s ever had.
It’s fair enough to criticise Corden if you feel his acting/singing is not up to par, although my personal “bad singing” highlight is Pierce Brosnan in “Mamma Mia”. Corden’s nowhere near that bad. But I digress…
Actors should be cast in roles according to their ability and suitability for the part. By that last bit, I mean that Meryl Streep is a gifted actor but probably not the best pick for a 20-something male. But beyond the basics of a role description, who cares? Restricting roles to those with the same life experience is, to put it bluntly, idiotic. A woman can’t play a mother unless she is one? A man can’t play a Nazi unless he’s…you get the idea.
The blatant foot-shooting stupidity of this is clear from the Hugh Sheridan/Hedwig issue. Sheridan was chosen for a role, presumably on merit, and because he isn’t a particular gender, complaints are made and the whole thing is cancelled. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of people out of work, and the public never gets to see it. What a waste.
Yup. Plus, Hedwig is not trans or conceived of as trans in the original. The text very clearly tells us that he is a gay man who is forced into a gender reassignment by an oppressive regime. It’s the only way he can be with his partner. The surgery is botched. Hence the “angry inch”. Some textual and historical knowledge would be great before people start raging.
Apposite handle – the Pretender.
And this is where the left loses me. How does one play a homosexual without affecting some obvious campsite traits? It’s not that it wouldn’t be acting, it’s actually true that a large number of gay men aren’t particularly ‘camp’ at all, but finding out how to display that in acting while playing a homosexual character would equally find fault with them not being camp enough. There is no ‘win’ here, just people who are largely no longer marginalised finding fault.
And what if the character is quite ‘camp’, and a homosexual who isn’t quite so ‘camp’ played that, wouldn’t that be ‘dishonest acting’?
The LGBTIQ community have my support, but only with substantive issues. This isn’t one of them.