Discovery Showrunners fired; Kurtzman takes over
- Thread starter StCoop
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I think Martin-Green had the hardest job in season one. From episode to episode they had her constantly changing how she acted. Act Vulcan! No, this week act human! No act Vulcan!
The writing and direction fucking sucked and I tend to think Martin-Green is being blamed because she is a minority actress. Just like we're seeing here where people are accusing her of getting the role because of being a minority and not based on talent. Much like people blaming Kelly Ann Tran for them not like The Last Jedi.
The poor white man not getting enough jobs in entertainment is just tiresome bullshit at this point.
Yes they are, everyone involved was qualified, why wouldn't they be? Your dislike of the show doesn't somehow mean that encouraging diversity is to blame for an objectively substandard performance. Do you honestly believe it would have been better with an all white cast?
You are conflating two separate concepts here, "judgement" and "representation".
No one is judging a performer by casting them in a role, they are meeting the requirements of the show as written. Discovery is the latest iteration of a franchise which focuses on the activities of an organisation within which the whole human race is equally represented in universe. It would run against the grain not to base casting on some reasonable and realistic measure of diversity.
There is no reason to suppose a diverse cast should be any less talented or capable than a more monochrome one, nor is there any reason to suppose deliberately introducing diversity should detract from quality.
So did I to be fair, but that has nothing to do with her being black or female, nor is it because of some "forced diversity" policy. It was simply a subjective response to a performance and script which were underwhelming when placed next to a more charismatic and interesting ensemble.
Again, slight strawman here, judging and representing are two different concepts.
But you're not 'pointing it out' , you're making it up. There is no indication that more talented white hetero men were turned down in favour of the people who were cast. None whatsoever. This is entirely in your head. And very noticeable that you don't post stuff like this about all white male cast members, fretting over whether they were picked for superficial reasons. They're just the default.
Indeed. As well as sex blind and orientation blind. If you end up with an all black, or white cast, as long as it's based on talent, and capability, then there should be acceptance of it. Focus on anything else is going back to superficial reasons which again. Is racist, sexist, and orientation bias.
Except when the character outline calls for those aspects.
If the story is about a gay person overcoming prejudice, they're not going to be looking for a straight person.
So who in the Discovery cast was hired based on superficial reasons? Martin-Green, from what my wife tells me, was fantastic on The Walking Dead.
Again, we haven't gone to white males not being qualified, if you want to debate that. Sure. There's plenty of films and shows that could have hired a better actor who "just happens" to be black or non white. But your trying very hard to paint me as a racist here. And I'm telling you, your focus on this discussion is barking up the wrong tree.
I'm saying the studio who touts hiring based on just racial, sexist, or orientation lines is doing so to their detriment.
And again, that is in your head. Hiring talented people of colour, or gay people, is not hiring just based on those characteristics, it is hiring a talented person who has historically not had the opportunities because of that characteristic.
They hired an actor from a popular show to head up their new show. That has been going on in Hollywood for decades now. Why is it such a big deal when it is a minority actor?
You just keep digging your hole deeper...
Dodge was saying that there is enough talent across the spectrum.
The problem is that we have expectations and imbue patterns with unwarranted meanings.
King had to reiterate the content of the character bit to a supposedly moral country that purposely paid less attention to it than other factors.
And if you're going for pure talent, then you should be the hands-down biggest fan of the series that's 95% black trans female, but I doubt you would be. I know I wouldn't.
Xena was clearly conceived as a show for a mostly female audience though - it was the gender-bent version of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys after all.
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No actor who was unqualified for the job was hired to work on DSC, and the suggestion is offensive, but pretty standard for you.
And not that affirmative action has anything to do with the hiring practices on DSC, but opponents of affirmative action have been ignorantly or deliberately misusing and abusing Dr. King's I Have a Dream Speech for their own ends for decades while ignoring his larger body of work and commentary.
https://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2014/04/martin_luther_king_jr_explicit.html
Please cast your racist aspersions elsewhere; the only actual "ism" on display is right in your post in assuming my race, gender, and motivation. I'm blaming her for bad acting in DISCO because her acting IMO was bad in DISCO. As I said (and you convientently left out of your quote), I thought she was fine in TWD. Hollywood's history is full of good actors who perform badly at one point or another and they shouldn't get a free pass for their part in the blame because of their skin color and/or gender. Hollywood is also full of actors who were given shitty dialog who were standouts in otherwise bad productions. Unfortunately, Martin-Green is a part of the former category.
No it isn't.
Supposing I were to cast for the role of MLK, should I consider white actors?
The idea that the talent pool out there is so small that casting quality and casting diversity are somehow at odds is simply false and the idea that you are being sexist, racist, heterophobic by choosing to have a role be specifically female, black, asian, gay, is equally just false.
Characters are written and conceptualised a certain way within a certain context, in this case that context is an organisation which represents entire worlds and by it's very nature values the diversity that goes with it. To show the resultant crew as being anything other than a widely mixed bag would be strange and out of step with both the concept of the show and it's audience, not to mention the political stance it is entirely supposed to have inherent to it's fabric.
I was talking generally about people who bring up race and sexuality. Not specifically you.
I mostly agree with this. However, in general, I think SMG would have been better off in a supporting role on Discovery. In general, you want the lead to be the strongest actor on the show, because they look...well...weak if they're in one-on-one scenes with another cast member who is owning the screen. Isaacs and Latif are both just much stronger actors than SMG, and it showed in every scene they were together.
DS9 figured out how to deal with Avery Brooks being one of the weaker main cast members - it relegated him more to the background than any other captain in Trek history, having entire episodes where he only showed up for a brief 3-minute scene in his office near the opening or closing. DIS can't do that with Burnham however because she's not "The Captain," meaning she is not the focus of the show even when she is absent from the screen.
I think she did well when the material was there. Unfortunately, more often than not it wasn't.
Sure, but if the creators cast a black woman, based on a good performance history they don't deserve to later be accused of hiring based on looks, which is an accusation that is later justified by some (I'm not saying that you're doing that) based on her performance in the show.
