Hollywood 'removes black actress' from Dune poster in China

[cadoman]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Omaha Steve (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: The Times UK

As an ecologist-turned-diplomat who helps a noble house take control of a mining planet in a distant galaxy, she plays a crucial role in the blockbuster Dune.

Yet in a marketing push for audiences in China to see the science-fiction epic, there is little evidence of Sharon Duncan-Brewster, a British actress of Trinidadian heritage.

Duncan-Brewster, 45, featured prominently in the original US poster for the Warner Bros adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel. However, according to reports, she has been removed for the promotion in the film in China.

Read more: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hollywood-removes-black-actress-from-dune-film-poster-in-china-lgbqqx2vh

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They did add some other people to the poster too so it may have just been marketing for the region. I'm not sure we're in any position to cast stones at China w/respect to racism.

[Skittles]

1. ridiculous

WTF

[LiberalFighter]

2. If they had any stones they would keep the movie out of China.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

3. Did they leave Zendaya on? Nt

[Grokenstein]

7. Both posters are displayed side-by-side at the link.

As an ecologist-turned-diplomat who helps a noble house take control of a mining planet in a distant galaxy, she plays a crucial role in the blockbuster Dune.

Yeeeeeah, not that crucial. Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) does not appear on the US poster, and I would suggest that his role is somewhat more "crucial." The Chinese poster has many of the same elements, rearranged, plus a lot of additional elements. Nobody was "airbrushed out" as the article claims; Duncan-Brewster's image simply wasn't used in the compilation.

The Times is just trying to stir some shit.

[Marcuse]

4. After death threats from a far-right group, Russian restaurant pulls ad featuring Black man

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-restaurant-chain-apologizes-ad-offending-public-photo-black-man/

[Igel]

14. Annoying.

On the other hand, in 2009 there were about 50,000 black Russian citizens.

Population, 143 million.

0.035%.

Get 10,000 random people random people together, there's a decent chance 3 would be black. But still a good chance that 4 or 5 (or 1 or 2) would be black.

Moreover, Russia has no legacy of slavery. Almost all Russian blacks were immigrants that went there to study communism/socialism (or maybe something else, but not mostly), married a Russian, and stayed. Or went there as diplomatic corps, married a Russian and stayed. Or in a few cases moved there out of love for the CP USSR or was oppressed because he (usually) was a revolutionary and wanted for crimes in his homeland.

Easy to carry American attitudes into other contexts. When Russians abolished their version of slavery it meant not freeing Tatars or Greeks or Abkhazians or Yakuts but Slavs. It went as badly.

They're racist, sure. But again, it's easy to colonize others from afar. Putin actually squelched a lot of this by declaring that a real Russian bore Russian culture. Assimilationist, to be sure. But it revalued cultural identity over skin color.

[IronLionZion]

27. That ad doesn't make much sense without context

I guess the implication that he's dating all 3 of them and racists can't handle it

[MontanaMama]

5. JFC.

It seems things are not getting better in this regard.

[viva la]

6. Well, if "Hollywood" removed the actress's picture, it's not China's racism to blame--

It's the production company's cravenness.

[spudspud]

10. Why not both? /nt

[TomCADem]

8. Is Hollywood a New Studio? Does It Compete With Disney or Universal?

Also, talk about the gall of calling a studio Hollywood. It would be like a church going by the name "Heaven."

[jcmaine72]

9. "I'm not sure we're in any position to cast stones at China w/respect to racism."

Sure we are.

When there are equivalents to the ACLU, ADL, BLM, or the SPLC fighting against systemic racism from within Chinese society then we can merrily (and IMO, ridiculously) draw parallels.

The sad, simple truth of the matter is that the Chinese government, and Chinese society as a whole, is virulently racist, especially against those of Sub-Saharan African origin.

[Dr. Strange]

11. Damn Harkonnens!

[PerceptionManagement]

12. she might of been the best actor in the whole cast

honestly it was a dumb movie. by the end, it melted into a shitty star trek episode, complete with Shatner like performances.

[DonCoquixote]

13. funny China

is psuihignn the silk road through Africa, so it seems odd that their racism would cause an issue

[AZLD4Candidate]

15. Considering Chinaa brought us this ad, I'm not shocked.

And if you understand Mandarin, the Chinese word for the n-bomb is used like the word "the" on the streets every time they see a black person.

When you get angry at the racism, they say "it's just our way."

[SpankMe]

16. Yes, we're in a position to cast stones at China

Here in the US, we talk about racism openly. We know we have a problem. We largely admit it and we struggle every day to find ways to try and deal with it. We discuss it online, in meetings, with neighbors, in schools, in government, in media, everywhere. We talk about it here on DU without getting banned, censored or arrested by the government.

In China, they flatly deny any racism exists. They don't talk about Blacks, Uighurs or ethnic minorities anywhere. In fact, they censor and sanitize their media, schools, government proceedings, social media and their whole Internet of any and all vocabulary used in race discussions.

I know we have huge problems with race here. But, we don't have to wait until it's completely resolved before we bring up the fact that it is far worse in much of the rest of the world.

[Jimvanhise]

17. HOLLYWOOD DOESN'T LIKE TALKING ABOUT THIS

Only when George Lucas was trying to get backing for his largely black cast film Red Tails did it come out that Lucas had to self-finance because the studios casually admitted that films with black characters are hard to sell in many countries. Especially China. The Chinese American co-production The Great Wall had only three non-Asian actors, none of them black. I have seen many Chinese language films and none of them had black actors in them. Villains in Chinese films are either Americans (white) or Japanese (China still hates Japan due to that nation's war crimes during World War Two when they invaded China and raped and murdered many Chinese people). I think the only black actor the Chinese like is Idris Elba as Pacific Rim was very popular there (not so much the sequel). There's a reason the three new Star Wars films under performed in China. China is a major market now (and only accepts a limited number of American films per year) so Hollywood plays to their preferences.

[Jose Garcia]

28. Black Panther pulled in over $100,000,000 in China

I think that there may have been some black actors in that movie.

[soryang]

18. this story is nonsense

"according to reports?" You mean from disinfo youtube experts on China Winston Sterzel & Matthew Tye?

[cadoman]

21. you can try searching for it on Baidu

https://image.baidu.com/search/index?tn=baiduimage&ipn=r&ct=201326592&cl=2&lm=-1&st=-1&sf=1&fmq=&pv=&ic=0&nc=1&z=&se=1&showtab=0&fb=0&width=&height=&face=0&istype=2&ie=utf-8&fm=index&pos=history&word=dune%20poster%202021

I found it with "dune poster 2021". I did find another wider-format image though (with Chinese characters) with the actress so maybe they are showing her on some material.

[soryang]

22. Oh you mean like these

The China Africa Project removed their tweet after Daniel Dumbrill proved them wrong. Yet the UK press went ahead with their anti China propaganda anyway.

[cadoman]

23. from what I can gather both posters seem to be in circulation

https://movie.douban.com/subject/3001114/photos?type=R

It's actually kind of funny to read the comments on this poster (use a translate service):

https://movie.douban.com/photos/photo/2699940193/

EDIT: What I gather from the comments is the version with Duncan-Brewster removed is the "domestic" version.

[Behind the Aegis]

19. This is history repeating.

I would guess many don't know this bit of movie history, but this is very similar to the start of Hollywood when they started renaming Jewish actors, removing Jewish themes (or disguising them), and doing anything and everything to erase Jews from the equation, despite more than a few being behind the scenes in top positions, because they didn't want to "offend" Nazi German, the biggest market outside of the US.

This is a nasty echo from history!

[cadoman]

20. the history isn't even that old, Jon Stewart didn't even host the Daily Show under his birth name

And that's always irked me. Is that just execs being shallow, or are we the people really that lousy that we wouldn't give a show a chance because of the host's name?

It's been implied that he changed it of his own volition, but I think he did it because he had low expectations for how he'd be treated as a Leibowitz, and that sucks.

[IronLionZion]

26. He claimed people couldn't pronounce Liebowitz back in the day

which some find hard to believe but I know Christians who anglicized their long last names for similar reasons.

He certainly is quite open about being Jewish on the Daily Show and his current Problem with Jon Stewart show.

[Auggie]

24. 1930s-40s: scenes featuring black performances were removed for some southern white U.S. audiences

[ruet]

31. Do You Think That's What It Is?

Or do you think they wanted to swap out one bit part (in the movie) character who is not Asian for another bit part (again, in the movie) actor who is. You know, for the Asian market? Also, as posted in this thread, there are several versions of the poster being shown in the same market with different characters. One can find "isms" everywhere one looks if they look hard enough. In the Book and in the Lynch adaptation, the Harkonnens all have red hair. In the Villeneuve version they are all bald. Hey, I have red hair! WTF, are they discriminating against red heads?

[BumRushDaShow]

25. Seems to be different versions of that poster

One Chinese wide-screen version -



And a different one -



I am just surprised that there is even yet another remake of Dune.

Original (1984)



TV miniseries (2000)

[Martin68]

30. The original Dune movie was a laughable failure.

[Martin68]

29. We are in a position to call out racism wherever it sticks up its ugly head.

If we fight racism in the US, we should draw attention to it and criticize it in China or wherever else we see it.

[Omaha Steve]

32. After a review by forum hosts....LOCKING

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