[ SECRET POST #6432 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6432 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Another Eden]















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #919.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

02. https://i.imgur.com/Tgh52Q1.png

[(Anonymous)]

Being Romani and his whole family being persecuted/victimized for it is part of his origin story IIRC, so there's some standing for it on a story level.

OTOH they had non-Jewish actors play Magneto the Holocaust survivor so idk where the outrage was back then.

[(Anonymous)]

Times change, people become more aware of things they weren’t before. There probably would be outrage about Magneto if it happened today.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, hopefully. I would agree there should be criticism, just saying I can also see why OP is confused when there were previous examples like that.

[(Anonymous)]

Outrage about Jewish characters being played by gentiles (or canonically Jewish characters being the first choice for race-lifting to more "obvious" minorities) tends to be written off by fandom at large. It's a source of great frustration in Jewish circles.

[(Anonymous)]

And Julian McMahon isn't Romani either. So even if it's a matter of the mentality changing with time, I wonder a little if part of the outrage is not intensified by a previous dislike of RDJ/MCU!Tony Stark (for some of the people hating on the idea of RDJ as Doom). That saying, I do think it would have been best to find a Romani actor to play the role; and have RDJ come back as a Tony Stark variant. Also, I think it's good to take a risk on less well-known actors.

[(Anonymous)]

Romani aren't "white" in the sense that they don't enjoy the privileges of whiteness.

[(Anonymous)]

maybe more accurate to say that their whiteness is partial or conditional or complex or dependent on specific circumstances or contingent

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I don't talk to people who type like tumblrites pretending to be bell hooks.

[(Anonymous)]

Or rather, American understanding of racism (white Vs non-white) doesn't apply to Romani. This is European racism (you're not from the right, central European country, but even if you are, we still reserve the right to be racist if we don't like your way of living).

[(Anonymous)]

I have met Americans who thought that "G~" was, like, a nearly entirely fictional group of people, instead of a variously reclaimed-and-otherwise slur for a specific European cultural and ethnic group.

[(Anonymous)]

Romani are heavily discriminated against and have been for centuries. They barely qualify as white to most "white" people in Europe. And they were killed by the millions during the Holocaust.

True, Romani bigotry is largely a European thing, but it's still weird Disney/Marvel hired a non-Romani to portray a famously Romani character like Doom.

Sorta famously Romani...

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not a comic book guy, just like the vast majority of MCU watchers. I am a nerd and do a lot of comic book adjacent stuff (TTRPGs and such), and have a lot of comic book reading friends. I'm pushing 50.

It wasn't until RDJ was cast as Dr. Doom that I heard the character was of Romani origin. I certainly knew of him, and that he was an eastern European dictator, but his heritage never came up. Famous character, relatively minor detail.

Re: Sorta famously Romani...

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

It's a small detail to—and I mean no disrespect—normies. Which you (I mean a general 'you') likely are if you don't know that vital background info about Dr. Doom.

Doom's pride in his family and tribe is one of his few redeeming qualities, IMO, along with his drive to rescue his explicitly Romani mother's soul from hell.

[(Anonymous)]

Ehhhhhh, I mean the RDJ casting is a bad casting for other reasons. It would be nice to hire a Romani actor for the role but I don't think it's an absolute necessity; after all, Doctor Doom is a technological and magical supergenius who is the absolute king of a fictional country, he is very far from any kind of reality in how he is depicted.

[erinptah]

RDJ was barely known when Iron Man came out, right? The MCU made him a star.

So I think it's extra-frustrating for fans to see the contrast. If Marvel put in the effort, they could've found a Romani actor who was barely known, and given him the chance to rise to the same stardom. (It's worked with other characters! Ms. Marvel is Iman Vellani's acting debut, and look how fantastic she is. One of the treasures of the current MCU.)

Instead, they're just...going back to a guy who's gotten all that benefit and exposure and opportunity already.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with your conclusion that they should have taken the chance with an unknown Romani actor. I'm just going to put some nuances on the idea that RDJ was "barely known" and that "The MCU made him a star". It's partially true, but the reality is more complex. RDJ had previously (before his downfall) proven that he had the chops to be a lead actor (he already had won several prestigious awards and had been nominated for an Academy Award). He played alongside several A-list actors as a co-star. I think in terms of fame, he would have been a B+ to A(minus) star for a while, heading up towards a straight-up A-list before his addiction caught up to him for a time. So the MCU did make him a star after he had already been on his way to becoming one previously. They took a risk because of his past, not because he was an unknown.

[erinptah]

Yeah, I had an idea it was more complicated than that, but I didn't care enough to look up all the details just for an F!S comment! Thank you for breaking them down so I didn't have to.

[(Anonymous)]

No, that's not right. RDJ was very well known and already a star before he was in Iron Man.

His reputation and career were definitely at a low point due to substance abuse and mental health problems, and Iron Man helped him basically restart his career after that. But he was very much a big name at the time he was cast.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

RDJ has been a star since I was a kid, he was og Brat Pack. Cmon now.

[(Anonymous)]

...RDJ had already gone from typical 70s nepo baby to Brat Pack auxiliary member to respected actor with a BAFTA and an Oscar nod under his belt to "one of those troubled grown up child actors" well before he even did his stint on Ally McBeal.

The MCU definitely added the rocket fuel to his big post-prison comeback, but RDJ was far from an unknown when they picked him up.

[(Anonymous)]

Part of the reason they picked Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man was because of his fame before that point. Not just from his acting, but the infamy from his substance abuse and imprisonment. But Weird Science, Less than Zero, and Chaplin all made waves in their own ways. I'd say his stint on Ally McBeal is probably more remembered for his problems with substance use than his acting, but I don't know. His storied career began long before 2008 and includes: being a cast member on Saturday Night Live for a season, Short Cuts, Only You (not a very substantial movie, but he costarred with Marisa Tomei, which was part of the joke in Stark's interactions with Aunt May), Natural Born Killers, U.S. Marshals, The Singing Detective, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, A Scanner Darkly, Zodiac (a very substantial movie, that also starred Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal), and many others. Though he definitely had some low points, I'm not really sure how you thought he was barely known before Iron Man.

[(Anonymous)]

RDJ was definitely known, and was on his way back up when he was cast as Iron Man. In particular in my crowd, Tropic Thunder was very popular, and his character's lines were among the most quoted.

[(Anonymous)]

I remember some dust up about Elizabeth Olson as Wanda since Wanda is also Romani. Not so much about Pedro's actor though.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah I can see why you kept this one a secret. Jesus.