No 'Everyman'

I've not seen Noah yet and I doubt if I ever will because it's a high price to pay for a couple of hours sleep in a dark room.

The comments of this screenwriter are interesting though. Ari Handel, speaking to The High Calling, says:

“From the beginning, we were concerned about casting, the issue of race. What we realized is that this story is functioning at the level of myth, and as a mythical story, the race of the individuals doesn’t matter"

So it's strange then to note that the race of individuals didn't matter to the extent that no black people appear in the film. Seems odd to me.

They discussed it, according to his own words, they were 'concerned' about it and then decided that the right way to address the 'everyman' issue was to exclude anyone who isn't white and male and speaking in an 'acceptable' Hollywood accent. Because when you think of 'everyman' you think 'pretty, shiny, straight, white, english speaking manly men'. It's not the world I live in and it doesn't reflect the 'everyman' round me.

His comments reminded me of Geena Davis' words about women in family rated films. She pointed to the quite shocking statistic that there are 3 male speaking parts for every 1 female speaking part and that crowd scenes are, on average, 83% male. She says:

"we are in effect enculturating kids from the very beginning to see women and girls as not taking up half of the space."

Looking a bit objectively at the fantasy world of movie making, women and non white people are not the only ones who are not allowed the luxury of taking up half of the space. Working class people are rarely depicted as being 'normal', gay people are rarely just part of the rich tapestry of life, fat people don't exist unless they are part of a message or the object of humour, apart from a few rare appearances i can think of, transgender people are not central characters in films (and are they played by transgender actors?) Even the very clothes they wear are almost immediately identifiable as 'normal' in the Hollywood sense.

And it's not just in the film world, our political world, work world, pub world, music world, literary world... all skewed away from the world of 'everyman'.Even on radio, where we can't see the faces, there is a 'type'. I get in a right aul' stamping rant about accents and voices on radio 4 - no matter what they are talking about, it's the same old same old providing us with a pretty two dimensional picture of how the world is. I am beginning to pine for the return of Nadine Coyle to give a bit of balance to the proceedings.

I don't know if life reflects art or if art reflects life but there must be some truth in the view that by bombarding people with a particular picture of 'everyman', we're enculturating on a grand scale.