{"id":4342,"date":"2008-04-18T20:39:14","date_gmt":"2008-04-19T03:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/04\/18\/no-fat-chicks-allowed-in-the-dollhouse\/"},"modified":"2008-04-18T20:39:14","modified_gmt":"2008-04-19T03:59:02","slug":"no-fat-chicks-allowed-in-the-dollhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4342","title":{"rendered":"No Fat Chicks Allowed In The Dollhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joss Whedon’s new show, “Dollhouse,” released (or perhaps had leaked) this pre-casting description<\/a> of one of the recurring characters:<\/p>\n

November<\/strong>
\n20’s, any ethnicity, beautiful and heavy<\/strong>. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Photo of actress Miracle Laurie(Empahsis added). I remember reading that and thinking “cool.”<\/p>\n

Now the casting choice for November, Miracle Laurie<\/a>, has been announced. That’s a picture of Ms. Laurie to the right. Not exactly “heavy,” is she?<\/p>\n

I’m annoyed, but not surprised.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But. Four points.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 <\/em>— 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.<\/p>\n

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 <\/em>actors, and seasoned actors are better actors, all else held equal.<\/p>\n

4) I wonder how frequently “any ethnicity” on a casting call turns out to be “white” once they’ve actually cast the actor?<\/p>\n

(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.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,30,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buffy-whedon-etc","category-fat-fat-and-more-fat","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}