Joss Whedon’s new show, “Dollhouse,” released (or perhaps had leaked) this pre-casting description of one of the recurring characters:
November
20’s, any ethnicity, beautiful and heavy. Another Doll, a hopeful child in the house and everyone else you need her to be outside. A comforting, radiant presence, who tends to get fewer of the criminal gigs and more of the personal ones. Recurring.
(Empahsis added). I remember reading that and thinking “cool.”
Now the casting choice for November, Miracle Laurie, has been announced. That’s a picture of Ms. Laurie to the right. Not exactly “heavy,” is she?
I’m annoyed, but not surprised.
To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with casting a thin actress in a part originally written as fat. I’ve done a little theater, and I know that often minds change once actors read for parts. No doubt Miracle Laurie hit just the right notes for November, better than anyone else who auditioned, and that’s why she got the part.
But. Four points.
1) This sort of casting choice is a one-way street. By which I mean, producers will decide that a thin actor is right for a character who was originally concieved of as fat, and so rethink the character. But it will virtually never be the case that a fat actor is seen as right for a character originally concieved of as thin.
2) If a thin actor has the right “look,” then producers will make allowences for them being less than perfect in other ways. So, for instance, David Boreanaz — who wasn’t much of an actor on the first season of Buffy — was cast for his looks and his potential. And he grew in the role, and became a lot better as an actor. Fat actors are rarely given that chance to develop.
3) Because of who gets a chance to develop, I suspect that frequently thin actors are, objectively, better actors. This is because they get bigger parts early on and become seasoned actors, and seasoned actors are better actors, all else held equal.
4) I wonder how frequently “any ethnicity” on a casting call turns out to be “white” once they’ve actually cast the actor?
(I suspect that points 1-3, above, apply as much to actors of color as they do to fat actors. When the musical Miss Saigon originally opened on Broadway, they cast a white actor in an important Asian role, because the role required a star and there weren’t any Asian actors with that stature. Casting decisions like that become self-fulfilling prophesies.)
Why, sure she’s heavy. Hollywood-style heavy.
Why, as I look around the Land of Make-believe, I see nothing but diversity, from white to off-white, from American to Acceptably Asian, Not Too Pacific Islander, Old But Not Too Old, and Nonthreateningly Black.
I just love our modern times.
Those people I work with every day must be figments of my imagination.
Idunno, I always remember a story from the Star Trek TNG producers – they had originally planned for the ship to have a bar staffed by somebody sexy (probably a skinny white woman) … and then Whoopi Goldberg fell into their laps, and they ran with that. Not to say that Whoopi couldn’t be sexy when she wants to be, but Guinan obviously wasn’t the sexy character they originally had planned.
And yeah, apparently “Felicity” was similar to Amp’s story – the titular character was supposed to be kinda dumpy and bland looking… and then they got Keri Russel with her perfect innocent face and the most awesome curly hair on the face of the Earth, and ran with that.
Wow. Based on the stats on the website you linked, her BMI is 21.4. Now, I realise BMI is a flawed measure, but someone with a BMI of 21 isn’t likely to be “heavy” by any reasonable standard.
The folks at http://community.livejournal.com/deadbrowalking have been keeping an eye on the racial aspects of the casting; it’s looking somewhat problematic, on the evidence to date.
I support the post. I’m just making a grumpy side-note.
From the pilot of Firefly:
“KAYLEE rolls into frame from underneath a huge engine part, ups and runs to the com. She is young, zaftig – as cheery as she is sexy. She and her jumpsuit are, as usual, speckled with grease.”
Ms. Staite was asked to gain 20 pounds for the role and the result was someone who looked like she was on the light side of a healthy weight. I could barely watch the following movie, as the actress had lost the 20 pounds and just… looked emaciated. I’ll still be hoping for someone who isn’t worried about casting zaftig and sexy together. And while it’s nice that I see these notes about casting -heavy-, -zaftig- on Whedon scripts, I still have to wonder if Whedon’s idea of zaftig really is what Ms. Staite portrayed while acting as Kaylee.
I guess this leads to a Whedon question for me. I haven’t looked at any of the comics, and I know that there are at least Buffy comics. Are there any new, untelevised characters that could be described as heavy or zaftig?
Whedon has always had a skewed view of weight. I still remember him talking about picturing Tara as thin and bird-like, but when the “zaftig” Amber Benson came and read, she was so perfect that he threw the “thin” Tara concept out the window. Great–except that Amber Benson is not zaftig. At all.
Whedon does not get what heavy women actually look like, and I think the only one who he’s ever cast has been the original Willow, who was booted after the pilot.
Regarding your other points about acting, as someone who acts for a hobby, I am inclined to agree. At 24, having been doing theatre since I was twelve, as a size 16 woman, I haven’t had more than a handful of large roles. I’ve done lots of ensemble/chorus work, lots of one or two scene characters, but not many big meaty roles, even when I’ve given great auditions–I’ve not gotten cast in favor of a thinner, prettier actress. Often, these women were very talented as well, and equally deserving of the role–so it seems like the choice came down to appearance. And you would be surprised how many scripts, even in plays, describe the characters–and how often “thin” and “beautiful” are pre-requisites, even when they’re not essential to the character at all. And how many directors take these words as gospel.
And when a weight is unspecified–thin is the assumed default. I do see a similar thing happening with ethnicity–“any ethnicity” or an unspecified ethnicity too often means white to directors and producers. I’ve even seen it go the other way. I’ve been called back and considered for roles that were explicitly women of color (Anita in West Side Story, Bloody Mary in South Pacific). Now, I have dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin, but I’m pretty obviously white, regardless. It’s pretty frustrating that the “we’ll cast the best person for the job” often comes down to “a white, thin person is best for the job.”
But yes, my acting has suffered for it. I haven’t had many roles that have given me a chance to grow. I haven’t gotten roles because–hey, at least she looks enough like the character that people will believe it, even if she’s not the best actor.
As for a solution to this–I really don’t know. One “solution” is to lose weight. When I lost twenty pounds (from being in a heavy dance show), I found myself getting more roles, and better ones, because I was thinner, although I was still fat. But obviously, this is not a real solution, because it does not solve the larger issues of biases about fat people.
In fairness to Whedon, he’s spent most of his life in LA. It’s not exactly a chubby-person Mecca. Persistent perceptions do affect assumptions, even with the best will in the world. He probably thinks a BMI of 21 is borderline obese.
@ Robert: Oy. He’d probably suggest stomach-stapling for me then.
Whedon is continually frustrating to me. He’s got this serious reputation as a genrefic feminist when actually most of his work slaps a thin veneer of progressiveness over a core of unanalyzed societal bullshit. In Buffy he played up the “conventionally hot girl as social outcast” and “sex = death” tropes; in Firefly it’s the “hooker with the heart of gold” and the “confederates as Civil War heroes” tropes. In none of these cases is any of this stuff actually subverted or deconstructed; it’s just hanging out there with the assumption that it’s somehow “okay” as long as there are strong female and/or POC roles in the show.
“Dollhouse” has a pretty outrageously sexist premise on its face, and I don’t have any trust at all that Joss will use that premise to actually confront concepts of patriarchy and gender relations in an interesting way — so I’m not particularly surprised that the show is being cast with generically skinny chicks.
…Whedon is continually frustrating to me. He’s got this serious reputation as a genrefic feminist when actually most of his work slaps a thin veneer of progressiveness over a core of unanalyzed societal bullshit. In Buffy he played up the “conventionally hot girl as social outcast….”
Oh, Glory be. It’s NOT JUST ME !!
:D
I enjoyed Firefly — but basically, I feel this way, too.
Well, I don’t know very much about Whedon, besides being the occasional watcher of Buffy back in the day, but I think even having that last part would set any casting director apart. Perfect, meet Good, and do get along.
Plaid – I agree that this is very similar to what happened to Kaylee, and it just seems weird. In an interview I was reading once he made an off-handed comment: “And if you want a heavy actress then just forget about it, because there don’t seem to be any in Hollywood.” If that’s a priority for him he should look. So it’s clearly not a priority for him, then why does he write these characters and chicken out.
The comic books are comic books. According to people who know more about comics than I do, they’re better than your average comic book. But the art-work of existing characters drives me crazy, and all the new characters look the same (except one who has a punk haircut and is evil). I think it’s interesting that we’ve never seen the large woman from the trailer in the comic books, or indeed anyone who looked anything like her. And by interesting I mean ‘I hate comic books’
Sciencegrrl – I think ‘womanly’ was the word he used to describe Amber Benson, which is all sorts of problematic. I was like ‘how are you going to find someone who looks ‘bird-like’ next to Buffy and Willow – you’re going ot need an actual bird.
Chalequin – While I have problems with the way Buffy portrays teenage sexuality, I’m not sure about what you mean by the sex=death trope. As in I don’t know what you’re referring to as the original trope, and I don’t know what events in Buffy you are referring to.
For the Buffy and feminism sceptics – The strong female characters thing always bugs me – it’s as limited view of what makes good feminist fiction, as looking for a female president is of what makes good feminist politics . To me what makes Buffy feminist is that it values relationships between women, that it’s premise that growing up female is an epic battle and htat women’s lives are worth fighting for, it depicts sexism and misogyny and how they affect women’s lives and that it suggests women work together to fight this oppression.
But I started watching Buffy when I was 19. Each bit of feminism, each bit of politics worth a damn, came as a revelation to me, because I was just watching a TV show and suddenly it was awesome, rather than escapist.
Sylphead:
Perfect, meet Good, and do get along.
[snerk] Now that you mention this, I’m reminded of what a brother malcontent once said about Dennis Kucinich: He’s the best for what he is, which is a shame;Because that means he’s still not up to scratch.
Wheedon strikes me as essentially American TV’s Kucinich. :p
Maia, it’s not true that comic books are like that. What’s true is that mainstream comic books are like that.
The only barriers to including more diverse body types in the Buffy comic is what the creators want, and how important it is to them that they be commercial.
>Maia, it’s not true that comic books are like that. What’s true is that mainstream comic books are like that.
Case in point: Strangers In Paradise.
Good gosh, someone mentioned Strangers In Paradise! Yes! I love SIP, and Francine is one of my favorite characters in all comicdom … hopeful, big heart, flawed, weight problems, getting to know herself.
I’m in love with Francine, true enough. She’s the most normal comic character I’ve ever seen.
You’re right, Maia, I think it was womanly. Which is a whole other dimension of screwy.
I second the SIP mention. I love that series so much.
And thank GOD that others have similar problems with Whedon. I’ve always felt ambivalent about him. I love Buffy and Firefly, but there is so much shit underneath the surface that I feel gets ignored sometimes. There are some great points to what he does (such as Maia’s assessment of the female-female relationships in Buffy), but there are a whole lot of problems, too.
“And if you want a heavy actress then just forget about it, because there don’t seem to be any in Hollywood.”
And that, Mr. Whedon, is complete bullshit. I live in the SoCal area, and I know heavy actresses. I am one. If directors who say they want heavier actresses really mean it, they need to put their money where their mouths are and actually cast some. And not, you know, encourage any actress who is even remotely large to lose as much weight as possible. Which is the other problem, even when heavier actresses do get cast, they get so much pressure to lose weight (Margaret Cho, for example).
It seemed to me that sometime between season 2 and season 5, the main characters on Buffy got thinner. Buffy went from being a little thinner than I like to being painful to look at. Tara, who was sort of presented as heavy (though I think most of it was her clothes) at the beginning, lost weight. Even Spike started looking a little underfed (though that might be reasonable, considering that iirc he was a vampire that couldn’t feed).
Were my perceptions accurate?
Well she does look a bit tough, maybe they meant heavy as in, likes a tear up!
Nancy, I’m not sure about the others, but it’s definitely true that Sarah Michelle Geller (Buffy) lost weight as the series went on.
Hmmm. Miracle Laurie. Is she related to Piper Laurie? Hugh Laurie?
/oblique nepotism references
Sciencegrrl, the cynic in me says that, in part, that’s because these directors, as men, aren’t willing to see any other type of women in their own little personal universes, so there’s no way they’re going to stand for seeing that on the film/TV screens of the “realization of their artistic visions”.
*rolleyes*
Also, I’m sure there’s a lot of pressure from studios et al along the “sex sells” lines. So even if you have a director with some vision and daring, if they’re being distributed by a major (or, like, Harvey Weinstein, and we’re not going to get into the hypocrisy of that right now), they’re going to face pressure from the studio.
Remember Margaret Cho and her bleeding kidneys as a result of her producer threatening her to lose 30 pounds in 2 weeks or lose her series? Remember when they adapted Jen Weiner’s “In Her Shoes” and they cast Toni Collette — and had her gain weight for the part — instead of casting, oh, let’s say, Camryn Manheim?
Plus, in the face of insanity like this
http://gawker.com/381582/emily-brill-ex+fattie-i-do-feel-like-a-cancer-survivor
flowing through the current cultural zeitgeist, well …
I’m working on my little current theory about how the punishment of differences used to exclude from economic and social rewards is vastly exacerbated in periods of a given culture’s economic instability. You’ve got to call it clearly before you can stop it.
In the meantime, though, I’m not sure what we should do.
Hollywood is screwy.
Whedon is progressive for Hollywood, which makes some of the standards in his shows come off completely screwed up vs. real life.
And yet Hollywood sets a lot of the standards that end up applying to people’s perceptions of each other in real life.
“Acceptably Asian” really struck a note for me, as I’m currently in China and the range of features here is vastly more diverse than, well, the range of features you see on TV here, and the range of features you see on TV here is similarly vastly more diverse than what you see on American TV, to the point of where the Chinese you see in American TV/film media look like a tenth of a percent of actual Chinese people look. And I’m talking ethnicity, not weight, as everyone here is really thin.
This sounds familiar. The road to hell is, after all, paved with Joss Whedon’s good intentions. In fact, I think all of hell is, he has so many of them. Of course he doesn’t realize he’s punishing his female characters for having sex. Of course he doesn’t realize that he others characters of color. Of course he doesn’t realize, “lesbian goes psycho after losing her girlfriend” is one of the most ubiquitous and offensive queer stereotypes out there.
Even my hyper-racially-unaware Buffy-fan friend, when she was setting up the Buffy households in her Sims 2 game, said, “Hey, all my characters are white,” and I said, “Well, that’s Buffy all right.”
“Acceptably Asian”
UGH.
I can’t believe I forgot to address the #4 bullet in Amp’s original post. There was a big dust-up about the “21 Movie” or whatever it’s called — the one about the MIT students counting cards to the tune of millions in Vegas — and there were a lot of upset people in the Asian community, as apparently the students on which the book (from which the movie was optioned) was based were almost all Asian, and the principal protagonist in the movie was Caucasian.
The protagonist is supposed to be some up and coming star (James something?) who was sufficiently well known from “Atonement” (or something) that he’d draw a major audience, but not so expensive that they couldn’t afford to make the movie.
The fact that box office draw would be used to rationalize such a decision — in the face of the fact that I’d lay Vegas odds that the target demo for “Atonement” and “21 the Movie” are SO NOT the same …
*throws up on Hollywood’s Gucci shoes*
I feel, at least they’re being honest up front instead of asking the actress to wear a fat-suit.
“The protagonist is supposed to be some up and coming star (James something?) who was sufficiently well known from “Atonement” (or something) that he’d draw a major audience, but not so expensive that they couldn’t afford to make the movie.”
littlem:
It wasn’t ‘Atonement’, it was ‘Across the Universe’, and the actor is Jim Sturgess, not James McAvoy, but your point still stands.
I was not particularly too impressed with the last few seasons of Buffy. The stories were not that good, and a lot of it was odd and didn’t make me laugh or say WOW like Seasons 1-4 did. But when it ended, it ended. You know? I actually felt it end, and I was sad to see my number one show go off the air for good. I wanted to have it continue for longer, but with Spike, Faith, or even Willow in the lead role. All three are too old to be bothered now.
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Oh, I think you are all vastly underestimating how extreme the Hollywood idea of “normal” weight is. Go back and see that Henry Jagloom (sp?) film, Eating. It is full of these thin Hollywood women going on about how tortured they are about eating and their size, and then it gets explained to you that these women, who are thin by any real world standard, are in fact too fat to get work in Hollywood. That film was made a few years ago, and the standards have gotten 10 times worse since then.
I can think of some cases that go against this rule.
In I am Legend Will smith was cast for the roll of Robert Neville who in the novel was originally a white british origins man.
Antonio Banderas was cast in the roll of Armand in Interview with a Vampire even though the character in the novel was supposed to have been ‘turned’ at sixteen have red hair and be of russian origin. I can think of several ways Antonio didn’t apply….
Of course both these individuals have significant star power on their side. So they probably don’t count.