Also, Slavic accents are usually shorthand for “this is the bad guy.”
Kind of doubt they’ll hire Cavill and then make him do an slavic accent… Really worried this show is going to feel like a Hercules reboot.
Intellectually i realize that both the game and this series are based on the book. If the book was my only experience with the story, i would have likely been more forgiving of them taking… extreme liberties with the casting.
Emotionally, the game is one of, if not the, best game i’ve ever played. I have a very specific image of Ciri and they are probably going to intentionally destroy it for the sake of “being more diverse.” It also makes me wonder what other changes they will make for the same reason. To add to this, even though the tv series is based on the books, it is coming directly after the success of the game, so it feels like it is based on the game. Ciri’s likeness was also in a ton of marketing materials and a large part of the game, probably as much as Geralt’s.
My love for the game is such that anything that diverts from its portrayal of the world of witcher will instantly make me dislike it.
I never had high hopes for this tv series to start with. I thought it would be a low budget exploitation of the IP after the success of the video games. Now my hype level is even lower since i don’t feel like it is being made by fans of the game.
It is being made by fans of the books.
I really hope the series doesn’t lose the Polish nature of the source. As far as representations of Polish culture… there’s Chopin, there’s stereotypical jokes, and… that was all. Until the Witcher.
The very act of attempting to diversify The Witcher is more likely to make it a more bland, more generic, more Hollywood experience.
Lauren Hissrich claims to be both. So does Henry Cavill. To be honest, it’s hard to be a fan of only one and not the other, unless you’re Sapkowski, heh
I have to say I was super enthusiastic about the show - it was spearheaded by Tom Baginski, who is talented director, Pole and a guy who directed all Witcher game intros and outros, it was supposed to be shot in central Europe, it had an official blessing of Sapkowski and Lauren seems to have been saying all the right things, regarding her understanding of the books.
I hope all this remains true and we will get even better show than Game of Thrones (which I love, though I never read those books, admittedly) and true to source material, steeped in slavic lore and legends and setting.
Direct quote from Cavill before he got the role: “ The Witcher 3 I just replayed, all the way through. Love that game, really good game.”
Polygon had a good article back about the Witcher 3 and the lack of any characters of color. Author put my thoughts into a much more coherent frame:
" Because Slavic people are predominantly white, it therefore is in keeping with nods to that mythology to only feature white people in the game’s world. Just as you would feature Indian people if you were making a game based on Indian mythology, so you would do the same for Slavic.
But this misses a crucial point: Things are not equal. We are not in a medium that features predominantly Indian men, Chinese women, or focuses on stories from Africa. We’re part of an industry that frequently tells the stories of white people and stars white people.
That’s why whitewashing — casting a white actor to play a character of color — is not the same as race-bending — casting a black actor to play a white character."
I personally don’t see how Ciri’s “whiteness” adds a ton to her character. As long as the actress nails her personality and can hold up in action scenes I think it’s a fine switch.
Yea, I wonder why this has to be repeated that often.
Why should these things be “equal”? Why is it wrong, illogical or “unequal” for artworks made by (ex)european caucasians to predominantly feature caucasians? To me it seems like common sense. Speaking generally here. Should movies, books, TV shows etc made in China, Nigeria or India have equal representation of the world’s ethnicities too? Does anyone care? I doubt it.
To me, true diversity is when people of any culture/race/religion/anything make an artwork they want to make and if good, it is embraced regardless of who it portrays.
This doesn’t address your question, but generally when Indian movies do get foreign actors included, their accents are so bad, they’re bordering on not being understandable. And when they are understandable, they’re still laughably bad. It’s just really jarring. It’s not the same as English, where nearly every culture in the world can speak it and be fairly well understood even with an accent.
Anyway, that didn’t have anything to do with the current discussion. I apologize for the interjection. Carry on.
There’s “made by” and “made for.” The Netflix adaptation of one of the most popular, biggest-selling videogames of the last several years is going to have a worldwide audience. Why shouldn’t it reflect that audience?
If those things were expected to have worldwide appeal or a worldwide audience, I think they’d be more successful if they did reflect that audience. But those countries (for what I’m sure are a variety of reasons) don’t really create things for the worldwide audience – they tend to make entertainment for their own (very homogenous) audiences.
I think I generally agree. The creators of the Netflix show are making art they want to make in the way they want to make it. I hope it’s fantastic – they certainly are passionate, and I love to see passion projects pay off.
And for what it’s worth, there are other reasons than just “forced diversity” to make Ciri non-white. From a filmmaking perspective, it’s good visual shorthand for “adopted.” If you took a random poll of people who played Witcher 3 without knowing the previous books and games, I think the vast majority would assume that Ciri was Geralt’s biological daughter – She looks like him, down to the hair and scars. If the Netflix storyline in any way relates to their relationship, there’s good reason to have her look markedly different.
Lauren has a good discussion about race – linking to her tweet chain and quoting below for ease of reading:
Part of it might be Sapkowski still being salty about the games, but it looks like he’s generally fine with how the Netflix show is going.
I also think this bit about adaptation/author intent interesting too:
Yeah, if that’s what we end up with then Ciri’s ethnicity will be the least of anyone’s worries.
What??
Perhaps you mean a random poll of people who have NOT played W3, but only 1 or 2? (can’t remember if / how much Ciri is mentioned in those games) OR seriously people who have just skipped all cutscenes or story aspects of W3. Because its pretty clear from the game that she is not his actual daughter…
You’re right, that’s a bad example on my part. To my knowledge, Ciri was a sidequest in Witcher 2, and that was her only role before Witcher 3. It’s been a while since I played Witcher 3. I remember having understanding of the adopted relationship but I don’t remember it being made super explicit.
I was trying to illustrate that from a filmmaker’s perspective, a reason to have two characters in a father-daughter/mentor-ward/master-apprentice relationship look that similar would be to imply blood relation. In a medium where you want to communicate as much information visually as possible, if you want to avoid that implication, you would want to make them as visually distinct as possible.
I mean, you’re not wrong, it’s mentioned specifically that Ciri (goddamn iOS thinks that word is CitiGroup for some reason) is the emperor’s daughter and that both Witcher’s and sorceress are sterile. But I could see someone getting flooded with all the characters and information and just deducing Geralt is Ciri’s father. He’s definitely a father figure and they do look oddly similar.
And there is a lot to absorb. Witcher 3 is a 60-100 hour game. Even a generous assessment puts the show at 10-15 hours for the season. Now, clearly, the mechanical leveling and combat takes a large amount of time the show can cut largely.
But there is still a lax approach to time that the show can not match. How many hours was it from the game opening until Ciri’s relationship vis a vis Geralt and Emperor Emrhys was established? 5? 10? They’ll not be able to match that in the show.
As long as there is logic and consistency to the casting, it’s fine. And making Ciri visually distinct does make sense as a shorthand, because at first glance I thought Ciri was somehow a blood relative of Geralt.
I wish I wasn’t on a phone so I could properly reply. Anyway,
Regarding first paragraph, reflecting your audience’s racial make-up of course doesn’t hurt, but not reflecting it doesn’t harm, either. Witcher 3 is almost all white, and is bestseller everywhere, from US to japan among all racial/national/any groups. People relate to people perfectly fine regardless of skin color. I had no problem enjoying Mafia 3 or GTA San Andreas and identifying with their protagonists either and I honestly think that’s the case for most people. I very much doubt TW3 would have sold any better than it had if only it had more NPCs in it based on the Chinese or Lebanese or Ethiopian people.
RE second paragraph, the difference is that Netflix is not making an original work here, they are adapting existing one. If they wish to introduce more ethnicities, great - create interesting, well written new characters for them.
The last point, I think you are underestimating the audience a lot here :)
These comments by Lauren are encouraging and I wholeheartedly agree with them. If she follows them and keeps the work faithful to the books, everyone will be happy.
While I’m very glad that you enjoyed those titles, there are countless people here and elsewhere all around the net who’ve noted that seeing people “like them” in movies, television, games, books, etc., has been enormously inspirational, uplifting, humanizing, etc.
Representation really matters a great deal. If you’ve been raised as a member of a historically marginalized group, sometimes seeing someone “like you” succeeding and earning respect in a fictional property might very well be your first significant encounter with that kind of thing. It can be enormously formative for some people.
For what it’s worth, I do get that, esp. in, say, European politics and history, Eastern European groups like Poles, Slavs (vis a vis Kingdom Come), etc. haven’t always exactly made out like bandits, and that, in that realm, therefore, having a distinctly, say, Polish property can very much be a kind of representation, too!
But, for what it’s worth, although one of the production companies listed for The Witcher is a Polish group, it is (from what I can gather) by and large an American production. And with its Netflix pedigree, a lot of its potential viewership is American, too (just under half, apparently).
And in America, we’ve got our own crazy complicated and deeply unpleasant history re: race, gender, and sexual identity. It might feel “Hollywood” to some, but the effort to increase representation in fictional spaces of historically marginalized groups is, by and large, a good thing overall. Especially in fantastical settings where there are rarely absolute historical truths to be dealt with.
I mean, ideally it’s a program that manages to feel distinctly Polish in its identity while also managing to continue broadening the spectrum of representation in film and television for all. It might be a tough balance to strike, for sure. But they’re both at heart good things to work toward, and I am glad that the filmmakers are at least making an effort at both. It might not always be perfect (I call to mind the sort of sadly stereotype-laden black character Leslie Jones played in the often-derided-as-too-diverse-for-angry-whiteboi-fans Ghostbusters remake), but it’s also how we all improve at this stuff.
. . .
Armando writes, at length, about a fictional property he’s spent all of about 11 minutes exploring over the last decade.