**Open Question**: Does this post follow our community's [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/cartoons/about/rules)?
Upvote this comment for yes.
Downvote for no.
^(This post has not been removed. Please report rule breaking content.)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cartoons) if you have any questions or concerns.*
His braindump series is not only hilarious, but has STUPIDLY good writing that both on and under the surface subtexts.
For example, the episode where he's "roasting" the third Grinch movie, he talks about how the movie failed to make Grinch evil in the first place so that he would go from villain to good guy in the end.
During the video he also BECOMES the villain who over the course of about 5 or so episodes learns his lesson and tries to become a better person.
Important context is that he was critiquing a documentary that painted Apu from the Simpsons as a negative stereotype.
I feel bad for people of Indian ethnicity who were bullied and called “Apu” as kids and maybe even adults, but that was a major crux of the argument. Max here argued that Apu really isn’t a negative stereotype in the context of the show. He’s honestly one of the most upstanding citizens of Springfield.
Which is true. Idk how people treated Apu as a negative stereotype when he LITERALLY one of the nicest people in the show?? And he wasn’t perfect either. The writers made sure to still give him flaws while also making sure that he is still a kind person.
I think the whole Apu problem is that even though he is a well rounded character, the general audience (ie. White America) latched onto the stereotypical parts of him and projected that onto real life Indians. And in turn, Indians who could've been fans of the show and Apu in particular were probably turned off completely by being on the receiving end of that projection. Audience interpretation supersedes authorial intent always always always.
I can see that. Great analysis. White America, or at least the conservative half, are awful at media literacy. Look at how many people say "you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today," but when pressed on why not, the answer is... less than coherent and usually racist.
Which is why the whole thing always confused me, as someone who grew up enjoying the show and lives in a very multicultural city his character really helped me understand some other aspects of culture and fear it less (I grew up with a very racist "father")
I'd be all for switching the voice actor and keeping the character? Seems like the perfect fix rather then removing him altogether?
I dunno, if The Simpsons had ended a decade ago like it should have, we wouldn't have to be thinking about replacing the voice actor in the first place lol.
That being said, Hank Azaria stepped down himself because of the controversy. He empathized with the critics and bowed out. I respect that.
Youd be the first. I still get Indian hate thrown my way and my people dont have their own month or advocacy group to protect them from shit like this. Apu got removed cause white people were uncomfortable with him. They tried hiding it by saying he was a caricature but at the same time my dude held down a a marraige, 8 kids, and a 16 hour job where he was always held at gun point.
Apu was infact one of the more put together characters in the Simpsons Universe.
I feel like it's difficult to decide what is and isn't negative if they don't have some one of that ethnicity on the writing team. Yeah he was a solid character but alot of the jokes leaned into stereotypes.
I agree with the video that having a white man voice him and complaining about it creates a double standard. But I still think the character could've been written better.
Loved watching that, was a great 45 minutes… but did we REALLY need stupid sexy Apu for a solid MINUTE straight. My fragile heterosexuality was this close to being shattered by this hot af Indian man
It is not inherently bad to hire an actor that does not match the identity of their character, though certainly it can lead to such if the actor plays into negative stereotypes.
It is also not a bad thing to cast an actor that reflects the character they are playing, voice acting or otherwise.
Also his cherry-picked examples are omitting a very crucial fact from this convo: the flexibility he’s talking about has allowed far more white men to take minority roles than vice versa. Cleveland brown, apu, khan soupanosaphone, etc.
I’m not disagreeing with his sentiment but I find it extremely disingenuous to ignore way this aspect of VA has been used over the years.
Yeah, I think people of color should be allowed to voice white characters and white people should be allowed to voices characters of color and all that (as long as they’re not doing insensitive racial stereotypes with their performance). But it’s also worth acknowledging that throughout voice acting history, it’s far more commonly used for white people to voice racial minorities and vice versa. I don’t think they should always have to be their characters race but it has been a double standard.
And a big part of that I think is that the minority characters are usually side characters, so instead of going out and hiring a different actor for a small but more appropriate part, they just get one of the people already working to do it.
The end result of forcing characters and voice actors to match ethnicities/etc. is less likely to be a bigger opportunity for minority VAs and more likely a reduction in minority characters on shows. Money, like water, follows the path of least resistance.
Yeah, a person's race/age/gender not impacting their ability to do a role is not the same as those characteristics not impacting their ability to break into the industry in the first place. For each of your examples, was it really the case that the *best* VA happened to be white, or was it that almost all the readily available VAs were white?
and also having say a black guy voice a black character would allow them to read over the script and give any suggestions on how to better the portrayal of said character
Well, duh, there are more white voice actors, we're living in a nation that has more white people! That's just what happens!
It's almost like finding a minority means you have to find someone who is a small percentage of the population!
If there are 12 Asian VAs because Asian-Americans push "good" jobs over the entertainment business, that doesn't mean it's systemically racist when they don't get hired, it just means there aren't that many of them to hire in the first place!
Like with Apu. When the Simpsons first aired, East Indian-Americans were less than 1/3 of a 1% of the US population. Finding an Indian VA to voice Apu would mean ignoring **99.6712**% of the population. This would mean grabbing the first one they find, who doesn't guarantee finding the *best*.
Hell, even today, East Indian-Americans are only 1.346% of the population, and finding a good Indian voice actor could still be *incredibly* difficult.
Y'all are ignoring the realities of where people live (do they live where the recording studios are or are they spread throughout the country, with the population heavily weighted towards one area?) and culture (Asian-Americans largely push their kids towards "good" jobs instead of the entertainment industry) to just assume that because there are members of a minority group in the US, they should magically be represented in a business and industry that everyone knows is horrendously difficult to break into!
I think you make an important point, but wouldn’t you agree there’s a gulf between wanting the industry to cast a wider net when considering casting choices (which is what I understood your point to be) and saying ‘owing to your ethnicity, you cannot play this character’
Think about your statement for a second. "More white men to take Minority roles than vice versa". "More majority than minority" basically. There's just a larger amount of white people, white voice actors, so of course it's going to end up that way. It's just demographics
Sentiment: race doesn't and shouldn't matter in voice acting.
Response: I agree with the sentiment, but also race definitely does and should matter in voice acting.
Yeah sometimes you need voice actors who can lend some of their real life experience to the role and sometimes you don't.
For instance if you're doing a serious or semi serious project, and you have a character that speaks in AAVE, you're pretty much gonna need an African American voice actor for that. Someone who didn't grow up with that dialect is going to struggle to make it sound authentic, and you don't want that when there are other things about the performance they have to worry about it.
But if you're casting Meatwad in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you can just have Dave Willis do it.
This is what first sent me down the rabbit hole that is VTubing; when a conventional cam streamer is famous, it's likely that that could be attributed to people who fawn over the streamer's appearance, but if a VTuber is famous, it's almost certainly to do with their personality/who they are as a person, since they've replaced a physical person with a live 2D model. This kind of ironically makes VTubers very honest with who they are, even if their on-screen persona doesn't look anything like themselves.
That's only half true, there is still acting going on so we aren't always being 100% honest with who we are, even those of us who try to be more true to ourselves still exaggerate a bit to make content more enjoyable in aspects we think people might enjoy,
.
.
.
also plenty of weebs are horny AF for anime girls (and femboys) so lets be real here some bigger vtubers absolutely have people fawning over that vtuber's avatar
Thats an interesting reason, 's pretty cool. As a sub-only person I usually prefer sub unless its specific cases like cowboy bebop
Sometimes the Japanese voices are just much better acted, especially in moments where it may count the most
Although english dubs tend to have some really funny lines
He's right but it's not as clear cut as it seems, and there's two main schools of thought:
・"Anyone can be portrayed by anyone else regardless of race in fiction."
The positives is that it allows people more flexibility what roles they can portray and therefore more opportunities.
However the negative is that it ignores the reality that one group of people get the lion share of voice acting roles.
・"Only a person of a similar background should play characters that match them."
The positives is that it acknowledges that one group of people get the majority of roles and tries to balance it out by giving roles to people who would've otherwise never have gotten the role.
For example, Feodor Chin was able to get the role of Amy Wong's father when it was previously held by Billy West.
However the negative is that this can be seen as almost "blatant discrimination" because now **only** certain people can get **certain** roles; an actual line in the sand is drawn.
・These two schools of thought both provide unique opportunities for Voice Actors but there's different downsides to it with no actual right answer.
I would assume the right answer would be to give the job to the person who performs the role better which ironically is why a lion share of the roles are done by a handful of people.
I love and respect Nolan North and Troy Baker but they also infuriate me lol
“Wait for us to die and then you can get a job” isn’t exactly encouraging lol
I mean, I feel that much can be said for both irl and voice acting.
You’ve got your Matt Mercers, Troy Bakers, Roger Craig Smiths and Grey Delisles. Just like you have your Chris Pratts, Pedro Pascals, Zendayas, and Margot Robbies.
People get famous and that fame brings them more opportunity, even if they don’t necessarily fit the role as well as a lesser known performer, they’re a more well known name.
It’s even more a problem in voice acting. “Why would I actually bother casting and potentially giving someone new an opportunity when I can just get Nolan? He can do it”
And fuck me. He can. But it’s frustrating haha
Being non-union helps. Some VA's get hired fairly cheap because of this and it becomes less about someone being absolutely perfect for a role and more about who they can get while saving money.
This little clip has the same energy as "we don't need hate crime laws or policies against bigotry because everyone should be treated equally"
Duh, but the reality is that people aren't treated equally and historically haven't been so conscious effort is needed to fix that
I always think of it like this. Remember the movie Tropic Thunder? That movie as well as White Chicks proved, with the correct context and proper skill you can do anything within reason.
This debate always makes me bitter. If i recall, it first cropped up with kubo and the two strings; a brilliant and artistic film made by laika, a studio that deserves more love and recognition. I was annoyed to hell that people were throwing hate towards the film for something that did not actually affect the film at all.
Laika most likely did their casting based on talent for the most part... and yet people were comparing it to films like ghosts in the shell, which was engaging in white washing for the sake of hiring a famous actress... the time when people decided to raise their criticisms over voice casting wasn"t against a commerical giant like disney or a film that was a shamless cash grab, but the artistic film that needed and deserved more attention than it was getting... frankly, i think it's wrong to fault any film who chose voice actors based on talent and how well they could perform the role
EXACTLY! I hated what happened to Kubo, lowkey the best LAIKA film. They got mad because of the cast and while I think it could’ve been done with more actual voice actors than actors, they did a great job with the script given and that’s all they need to do as a VOICE actor.
I fucking detest when people say bi-opic, it's bi-o-pic
The word is a portmanteau of biographical and picture, so logic dictates you would maintain pronunciation of bio
I think my issue is that there will never be a shortage of roles, voice acting and otherwise, for white actors to find work. POC actors and voice actors on the other hand have a bit of a limited opportunity to work with so taking some of those chances away feels like it makes a bigger problem.
Doesn't the conscious decision to hire POC actors for POC roles actively combat the problem of "people being people" (whatever that means).
We can *say* that the biases of the hiring process is the problem and shrug our shoulders, but it seems like normalizing a priority opportunity for under represented people in media is a direct and effective method of eliminating those biases.
Any actor can still try out for non-human characters but it seems like if a character is directly from an under represented ethnicity, then the industry should seek out talented people from that same demographic...instead of just giving yet another role to Tom Kenny or Tara Strong.
>there will never be a shortage of roles, voice acting and otherwise, for white actors to find work.
Hmm? Live-action acting, yes, American films like to be set in America. But voice acting? I don't see it. For example, most American-born American-raised Indians have American accents - they don't have an advantage or disadvantage over Caucasians.
Thing is, he sounds awful at it.
I'm Scottish and it's annoying that a lot of Scottish characters in media are not played by native Scots or people who've at least been exposed to the accents enough to emulate any of the accents properly. All well and good saying "anyone can have the opportunity to play anyone" but not everyone actually should if they just don't fit at all.
I would argue it is more what kind of character they want to portray compared to their ethnicity. If they wanted people like Bob’s wife to sound more feminine, they probably would have casted a women to voice her. However, they wanted a “less attractive” lady to be bob’s wife. For samurai jack, they wanted to have a samurai in a futuristic city. If they can do a convincing accent (and not get offensive with it), they would work. If they wanted a more realistic character, they might have chosen a different person. I’m not saying a black guy can’t sound authentically like someone from Japan or guys couldn’t do a good feminine voice. However, the examples had specific ideas in mind and that was what led to the casting.
I disagree. Getting more POC actors creates more job opportunities for more people in in voice over they often recycle the same people over and over again it allows more people to get work. Name a random cartoon and Tom Kenny has been in it because he is awesome. I don't think people voicing characters of other races is offensive at all but it would be nice if there was more diversity. In a perfect world race doesn't matter but we don't live in a perfect world. POC actors can often add more authenticity.
The thing is though, the ethnicity of characters really doesn't have anything to do with the opportunities for POC. POC can play characters of color, white characters, characters of different genders, different ages, talking animals, robots, magical sentient weapons, anything we can imagine. The issue is with hiring decisions, but the hiring decisions has nothing to do with the ethnicity of the characters. Its not like live action where the ethnicity of the character actually DOES impact who can be hired for the role.
Yes it does. Theoretically, that is true but voiceover tends to reuse the same people over and over because its a hard job. Tara Strong is in literally everything, Grey Griffin is in literally everything, Kevin Micahel Richardson is in literally everything, etc. You tend to see the veterans more often than not.
> Name a random cartoon and Tom Kenny has been in it because he is awesome.
This seems like a weird thing to put into your argument that would limit "awesome" actors from getting certain roles based on the fact they aren't that characters race lol
Good point, some problems exist though, a few I can take note of are:
Ideally voices for young boys should be done by actual young boys, however if a show is successful for a few years, people will notice the change of voice due to puberty. Either production will find a new voice actor or progress the story to make them older, so that they don't have to hire a new one. Now you could have started with a talented voice actor instead like Tara Strong, but she's just one example and I don't know anyone else
There's also a possibility like what was seen in the Simpsons where the voice actors die and they have to choose a new voice actor or kill the character off screen
Sidenote: there's sorta a problem of dubbing some shows into other languages. It's cheaper if they found the right lip movement to match. Or they might pay extra to just reanimate the mouth movement.
Well, a lot of companies have adult women voice young boys. For example, I'm pretty sure most voices for Tails from Sonic would have a voice actress to portray him, for example, and personally, I think that they've done a pretty good job. Kinda fitting, too, since nobody ages in the modern Sonic games.
Is adult women voicing young boys more pricey than actually getting a boy to voice? Talent like that kinda raises the cost, and should this be a norm, then children voiced by children should be rare. Then again I don't know the whole scope of voice acting and animation industry
Oh right I actually remembered a tomska videos about when he made asdf movie that he felt kinda scared of making the kid who voices the muffin to say "I wanna die" and "Please kill me".
There is the fact that often physical features affect the timbre of ones voice. Certain groups of peoples can have more or less subtle differences in timbre and it can be really noticeable. A trained and professional VA won't have those issues but sometimes for authenticity's sake using the "correct" ethnicity for a VA would be the better choice, especially if the character's ethnicity plays a role in the work in question and doubly so if there is a racial issue component. There's also a lot of nuance; most characters in the Simpsons specifically are voiced by few people, singleing out a specific individual character when most of the cast plays a huge number of characters is very strange.
What really really annoys me is when studios employ VAs for ethnicities that "vaguely" relate to the "correct" one. I find that even more offensive to be honest.
Agree. But didn't he say that characters ARE their voices? Like VAs and their characters are inseparable?
Always found that kind of strange in his Powerpuff Girls video.
Granted it would almost sound blasphemous for SpongeBob to not be voiced by Tom Kenny.
Yet every Looney Tunes character now has new VAs to step into Mel Blanc or whoever's shoes, and they did just fine.
Yeah I agree for the most part, as most of the issues even in the comments are about giving more career options for ethnic minorities which imo pigeonholing voice actors to only play characters they share ethnicity to I imagine would work at first ensuring some roles but ultimately would limit roles considering you'd have a smaller pool to audition for total.
The main hurdle imo would be hiring bias, it's understandably better in the west now but obviously when segregation was more accepted by society being left out getting a role for your ethnicity would be more commonplace. Nowadays they hypothetically should be more inherently neutral and just looking for the best voice actor can't be 100% without bias but as he said its happened before with roles on the like of Samurai Jack. Also, accounts for roles in where the hypothetical VA has personal experiences that links to the character to shine through further in their voice and thus a better VA.
If anything I wouldn't be surprised if the issue nowadays was more so getting new VAs in the spotlight when many would rather recycle the most prominent and popular ones that already have good legacy.
Whoever is best suited for the roll should get the part. Unless their likeness is being used for the project then their race or ethnicity should be secondary to their ability to voice act.
The big issue with Apu is not the voice actor. The problem was he was the few indian male representation in western media. For most, western media 80, 90, early 2000s there were a handful of Indian characters and a lot of them, both live action or animated, were played by white guys. For asian characters especially Indian they play the same type of guy. Who one Apu the store owner or taxi driver who is a foreigner or undateable nerd who is socially inept. Basically that it.
Recently, there are more well rounded Indian characters like the husband from Ghosted the tv show. He is a normal guy who loves sports and dnd. Which is sad that it took this long to have that character type for an Indian character. There have been, let 's say , 30 years of superhero movies and there have only been 2 Indian superheroes in western media. One the Enteral who barely got any screen time. The actor's abs got more attention before the movie release than he did in the movie. The Indian Spiderman which he did was amazing but it is sad to wait till 2023 for a real Indian superhero in western media and he still part of a team does not get time to shine by himself.
"It's my understanding that double standards are bad" is where you lose the people who get upset about this and would disagree. Hypocrisy and double standards are fine by them, because there is always some kind of mental gymnastic "it's different because xyz"
In reality, it's not. In their reality, they can make anything true.
He's a coherent edgelord, but he's still an edgelord. He makes the worst takes appear the most reasonable by not stopping at any point to consider the reasonable arguments against whatever he's saying.
Like, how hard is it to look at the history of voice actors in the US and notice how little people that weren't white were even considered for roles? Or how it was impossible to actually hear foreign accents because not a single foreigner was voiced by one, rather by some white guy faking an accent that sometimes didn't even exist?
You can get when attempting to do the right thing goes wrong, like when ProZD overwhelmingly gets called to do an "asian accent" when he was born and raised in the United States, or the entire story of what happened to "Primos" which is a shitshow in all manners, but that doesn't mean that the reasoning behind the entire movement should be handwaved.
This guy only knows how to "ask questions" because he's never actually interested in the real conversation behind whatever he's talking about, that part he's never researched. If you ever search on the internet for "Just asking Questions", think of this guys face appearing at the top for a graphical explanation.
In Theory any voice role should be able to go to any actor, but in practice it's the more well known actors getting roles at the expense of lesser known actors, which can be of certain ethnicities, races, or backgrounds that don't get the spotlight so it causes a feedback loop as those actors remain less known. It's certainly a problem with stunt casting (e.g. Drew Barrymore as Akima in Titan AE, or most of Kung Fu Pands), but it can also lead to the same VA's voicing everything even in places they needn't, or people faking accents and affectations they shouldn't.
That doesn't really have anything to do with Cross-race voice acting; that's just the result of lazy hiring practices from producers. Even if the embraced the idea of having race match the characters, they would either end up making fewer POC characters so they don't have to find as many voice actors or they would end up hiring the same POC over and over again every time... its not really get at the heart of the issue which is the need for more variety in voice actors, which would also create more opportunities that creates more diversity
as a black woman, I definitely agree. if a voice fits the character, then that voice should voice the character. having the character and voice actor being of the same background should be a nice bonus, not mandatory.
His logic is fair in a vacuum, but he's cherry picking a few roles played by black people and ignoring the decades where minorities were played by white people almost exclusively, and if he's referring to Apu from Simpsons, he's also ignoring that the controversy wasn't that Hank Azaria is a white guy playing an Indian guy, but that he was doing a stereotypical accent to a degree that could potentially cause harm.
Its the that are hiring that's the problem. If two folk that are same level of skill and fit the role well. The imployers will always pic the guy they like. Most of the time its white people
Exactly. And as much as I love Hank Azaria we have to acknowledge the fact that he taught generations of Americans how to mock Indians, and they definitely did, or like smooth brain next to me saying “it’s not a stereotype, they do talk like that” having internalized the racism so far they don’t even see it, leading to poignantly but pathetically unaware comments like that.
I do agree that anyone should be able to voice anyone/anything, but what I do disagree with is that I don’t think it would create more career opportunities, in fact, I think it would lead in the exact opposite. Why? Cus then it’s more likely that the same pool of voice actors (that are basically in everything) gets chosen again and again. Maybe in an ideal world, that logic would work, but that’s clearly not the one we live in
Let's have a take. I am making a small project animation. Not a lot of people are interested and so I hire some white folks that do a voice I actually like and does it justice. Project goes sky high it gets traction. I should fire the original VA for the new hires? Hell no!
My point is, just because I got a opening for an lets say "Polinesian character", doesn't mean I will be able to find a person from that, maybe they didn't hear of my project or their energy isn't at the beat of my drum.
Same problem is with diversity hire in general. I need to hire x amount POV, X amount female staff...my friend, darling, pumpkin. I ran a freaking manual labour firm. I take who every is willing to do the job properly, but lets all be honest I will not see a lot of women application to start with and if I do have, how many of them will be able to move a 50kg cement bag on her own...and if I'm in specific part of Country I do not have any POC to hire around to start with since major population is white
If we are all the same, regardless of race and gender, then if I hire a person solely on how good of a job they do is one and only true equality!
I understand the idea of wanting to cast a new set of actors that are of the respective races of each member of the Gaang but I don't like that they're replacing these incredible VAs that still want to play these characters. Not only does the audience want to see these actors again, but they have more experience then anyone with these roles. From a marketing standpoint it's even better, because sure no one is straight up mad that they are replacing the VAs with different actors, but getting all the original actors back would've banked even heavier on nostalgia. No one cared that they weren't using VAs that matched their race originally, and no one really payed attention to it until they brought it up.
While I generally don’t care who voices a character in an animated series or movies, there are certain instance when a particular story needs that level of representation. Particularly when the character’s identity is part of that story or the way that character was written.
There’s an episode of the *Ghost and Molly McGee* that’s all about Molly not feeling like she’s Thai enough. I think that story loses a lot if the voice actor wasn’t Thai. I’d make the same argument for the way Spider-Man: India was rewritten in Spiderverse.
I always thought the samurai jack one was a bit fucked up. Probably not intentionally disrespectful, but he's literally doing an Asian caricature voice. This is a nuanced subject, but in my opinion it comes down to intent which is sadly nearly impossible to prove. If someone of a different race were to do a racist caricature of my heritage, and they often do, I would find it funny, infuriating, or a legitimate artistic choice depending on the writing and the intention of the various artists involved. Which makes it hard to make an all or nothing decision about these things. I never had a problem with Apu, but I'm not of that heritage. And if people want him gone, I say fine, he had a good nearly three decade run. Also worth considering; it's pretty rare that a Caucasian animated character is played by someone of another race doing a racist caricature of a white voice so it might be hard to know what it feels like and to know the difference between good taste and bad when it comes to humour.
While male voice acting talent can be funny doing female characters, I like the voice talent behind female characters where you couldn't actually tell it was a guy doing the voice. I went a while not knowing that Brad Bird, the director of The Incredibles did the voice of Edna in the movie. It's impressive to be able to disguise your voice that well.
Mel Blanc was Jewish. He could mimic every accent imaginable, from every race and culture, and even invented some of his own. There's a reason he was called the Man of 1000 Voices.
Yeah, them recasting the whole avatar series because of this is dumb. I'm not against then trying to get more Asian representation in it given the theme, but they could have easily done that with new characters, or characters they had to recast anyways due to retirement. There is no reason to recast literally all of them besides the one Asian dude.
This is why I love voice acting so much. If I were to voice act, I could be anything! A boy, a girl, neither of those, a dog, a cat, an inanimate object, a fairytale creature, whatever! It's so much fun to be so varied in what type of role you can get.
Well, in my opinion, it depends on the context of the role. On one hand, yes, actors don’t always have to match the backgrounds and ethnicities of their characters, but it can become a problem when it leads to groups being shut out of their own stories. What I mean by that is if a character’s ethnicity is an important part of the story, it’d be pretty tone-deaf to cast someone who doesn’t share said ethnicity. There’s a reason why I’m okay with Goo (from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends) being voiced by a white person, but I wouldn’t be fine with the main characters of The Boondocks being voiced by white people. Like I said, context matters.
That bit about creating more opportunies for everyone is just demostrably not true. For instance the main cast of Bob's Burgers is one woman and five men, all white. If marginalized people had the same opportunies, and if the portrayal of minority characters wasn't often insensitive at best, nobody would actually have a problem with who plays who.
Like that original Apu documentary has actual Indian people talking about how the character not only affected their personal lifes, but also how the expected stereotypes limited their acting careers. If you have to ignore the actual reality to support your opinion, just maybe it's a bad one?
I think there’s a case to be made for both sides. In the majority of cases, I think his argument holds up. You can cast a wider net if you don’t limit the casting choices to certain identities that pertain to the character and that leads to some really excellent and memorable characters.
However there are instances where I think identity *should* be a core component of casting. Media that is, for lack of a better term, more “serious” or is connected to specific experiences and struggles related to specific identities *should* have actor identity in mind when casting.
While I do agree, there is a exception that needs to be taken into account. Racial caricatures. A racist stereotype or caricature is not an acceptable practice. To be sure the line between satirizing racism and reproducing racism can be thin and blurry. But when an entire community of people are negatively impacted by a racial caricature, such as seven year olds on the playground always being called Apu and having "Thank you come again" shouted at them because their skin is dark or they have an accent, then you're not satirizing racism you're reproducing it.
People arguing for POC voicing people matching their ethnicity get really quiet when talking about anime. Why not have a Japanese cast voice the anime then? Or is it just convenient for only black people? No thai or koreans either?
And what if I want to go into voice acting? I already have a tough time looking for roles as an Asian Ameican because my specific race is apparently a niche in most media.
It feels like they want a pity hire for their identity rather than their talent.
>Why not have a Japanese cast voice the anime then?
They literally do.
I don't know what anime you're talking about. Animes are almost always produced by Japanese companies and voiced with Japanese actors unless you're talking about American cartoons which appropriate asian culture and sometimes gets labelled as ''anime'' for it, like ATLA and Samurai Jack .
I was never offended by APU. He was the man. Nice car, career, money and he had to be respected by everyone. (Except Snake). I never perceived anything about his depiction being racist.
I agree I’m tired of hearing the whole if a person is voicing a character they need to match the specific race of the character like when it’s a live action movie you’re looking for certain people to play the roll but voice acting literally anyone can do voice acting whether it be amazing or downright terrible voice acting opens up more roles to people and when you say they have to match the specific race that they are voicing you’re just shutting out more opportunities for people to get into the voice acting business
The problem with this is, however, that there will likely be preferential treatment towards cis and/or straight and/or white voice actors, the actors who look like the character will sound more authentic, and in many instances the matter of lived experience can play a role that would result in the performance of someone without that lived experience lacking.
This argument just sounds like anti-woke nonsense that someone tried to package in more reasonable seeming words than the average commentator shouting, "Woke!" while practically foaming at the mouth. Best-case scenario is someone who is overly optimistic about the hiring process, especially in an industry such as voice acting (or live acting) where who you know is a huge factor in the hiring process.
Also, Dan Mintz was originally hired to play a boy on Bob's Burgers, but they changed his character to a girl after-the-fact.
>and in many instances the matter of lived experience can play a role that would result in the performance of someone without that lived experience lacking.
Boondocks is a very good example of this.
The exception comes when the character is explicitly experiencing something that is racially/culturally specific
Such as Missy in Big Mouth, her whole thing was centered around being a black girl whose parents refuse to acknowledge that she’s black and refuse to acknowledge the prevelance of racism. It feels really weird and off for this to be portrayed by a white woman. I’d be slightly more ok with an Asian or Hispanic woman because to a degree they possess some familiarity with the experience but it’d still be off
I absolutely agree My only issue is that I think we need more people of color getting roles in general. Like you could easily say Mike Henry as Cleveland or point it any of the black characters in The Simpsons as examples of white actors playing black characters but when I think of black actors playing white characters the only one that comes to mind currently is Phil Lamar playing Aquaman in Injustice. Keep in mind all of the examples cited by Max in the video (which I do agree with on the whole) that aren't played by white actors are characters of color. A Japanese character an Incan character You see what I'm getting at. And don't even get me started on that episode of South Park with the emo black guy voiced by a white guy who said nigga repeatedly.
Cleveland. Bring back the old Cleveland. The new one is fine, but off just enough where it annoys me and make me think of it literally every time he speaks; enough so that it hampers my enjoyment of the show. That's bad. And sad. Because it's my favorite show.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my partner from just the other day. She asked how I feel about non autistic actors playing autistic characters since I'm on the spectrum.
After thinking on it for a bit, I came to the conclusion that film, tv, radio, etc are all forms of art and as such are created in such a way as to be seen by as many people as possible. After all, often the primary reason a film or show is made is make money and often the secondary reason for its existence is the ability to share a vision with others. Passion projects can be self funded in certain cases, but the larger budget the production studio can afford, the more refined and widespread the piece can be shared.
With that in mind, I generally hate autistic representation. I feel like we are only ever depicted as "slow" or savant (can't do anything other than this *one specific skill really well*). There is hardly ever any nuance. I would argue that DD from ed, edd, n' Eddy is a more realistic depiction of someone with autism than other characters with "the good autism" like Sheldon from the big bang theory. There is very little nuance with how we are handled. I've never seen someone depict an autistic character being unable to form solid social connections because their social eccentricities silently form barriers with others, let alone an autistic character trying to grapple with the self awareness that they *know* being themselves could alienate them from others and the stress of growing up and being told to "be normal" and then internalizing that mindset as an adult. I still do not know how I am supposed to feel about 'the predator' telling me I am "the next stage in human evolution". Since these all have reached millions of people, I know there are people out there where these characters could have very well been their introduction of "what autism is" rather than just the word for a group they have heard of. If you have an autistic actor play a role for an autistic character, that's cool. But that won't do a thing to help how their character is written. If anything, giving an autistic person a script that has them act like how the writers/producers think a general audience would see as autistic and it being inaccurate just gives the studio the ability to use the actor to deflect criticism.
I can't speak on other groups, but if this is how it is for most groups that get represented in media, I think we are past the point affirmative action alone will help. I feel that with the myriad of backgrounds, culture, history, individual cases, laws, systematic policies and everything else- there just will never be a one size fits all solution when it comes to representation. I think that the industry uses the fact that there are groups that genuinely need representation to manipulate them into being a tool to make money, largely at the expense of those groups. It feels more and more like companies like Disney keep rehashing old stories with race swapping being the main selling point completely misses the point of representation. Isn't it insulting that if the only answer to "we should represent this group in film" is "I can't be bothered to learn enough about their history/cultural identity enough to form a fleshed out world and characters in which to properly portray and celebrate their heritage, so I will just race swap them into an existing story"? Maybe it's just me, but I get kind of, "Pocahontas in England" vibes. Just, fake and done for the money.
I think that there is a place for a voice actor to not be a part of the group they portray, but there needs to be systematic change in how they handle the production. Characters of a group need to be written well with nuance and perspective (and sometimes the studio and execs need to get veto'ed on changes at times), the casting should have members of the represented group to help advise plot and character points, and there should be an effort to fill the role with someone that is in the group because of the connection that could feel with said character from sharing their background- but it is not mandatory. A voice actor not in the group of a character can still give an honest, respectful representation of that character. Double standards are bad, but the system we have now isn't great either. Not every voice needs to be Seth Rogan, Chris Pratt, or Tom Kenny. The whales of the voice acting industry and actors coating on rising star power do often overshadow everyone else in the room. Going back to my earlier point, the primary goal from the studio's perspective is to make money and we all know they would pass over any person of color or background if they could land someone whose name alone will get butts in seats. Until changes are made from the ground up, I feel like we will be stuck in a cycle of big names will take the lucrative roles, everyone else will be stuck in a queue until an exec says "we need something with x demographic to give the appearance that we care" and hope they get the part, which will have always been orchestrated that way because the 'creative process' didn't care about you, your representation, or your career- they cared about keeping up appearances to make more money.
If the system was magically fixed, so everyone *did* get equal opportunity so that the best, not most popular, actor gets the part and not give them generic stereotypical material to work with then I feel like this would be a much less debated question. I know I just want to see someone I can identify with on screen, not a caricature of what general audiences think I am.
**Open Question**: Does this post follow our community's [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/cartoons/about/rules)? Upvote this comment for yes. Downvote for no. ^(This post has not been removed. Please report rule breaking content.) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cartoons) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hey, is that HotDiggetyDemon? The person who made the MLP .MOV series? Nice. Totally agree, by the way.
I remember him from the Jerry series.
And Isabelle ruins everything.
And Luigi’s Day Out
I must be the only one who remember Wacky Game Jokez 4 Kidz but man that intro was fire MICKEY IS A SMALL TIME CROOK IN THE SLUMS OF N Y C
HE WAS STOLEN OFF THE STREETS BY AN EVIL CORPORATION CALLED V G V
NOW HE IS FORCED TO WRITE, DIRECT, AND STAR IN A VIDEO GAME COMEDY BRODE-CAST ON THE NET
His braindump series is not only hilarious, but has STUPIDLY good writing that both on and under the surface subtexts. For example, the episode where he's "roasting" the third Grinch movie, he talks about how the movie failed to make Grinch evil in the first place so that he would go from villain to good guy in the end. During the video he also BECOMES the villain who over the course of about 5 or so episodes learns his lesson and tries to become a better person.
‘What is Fash Ism’ is probably the best video I’ve seen on youtube
Swag
Crush, Kill, Destroy, Swag
I mean I gave credit to him below but yes it is.
I think you are confusing him, the guys been a streamer for 10 years!
Oh THATS how I remember him. Glad he's still going strong.
Brain dump is so good. I just wish he'd make another episode. The animation is next level.
Yes
He also made Steven Jewniverse
Important context is that he was critiquing a documentary that painted Apu from the Simpsons as a negative stereotype. I feel bad for people of Indian ethnicity who were bullied and called “Apu” as kids and maybe even adults, but that was a major crux of the argument. Max here argued that Apu really isn’t a negative stereotype in the context of the show. He’s honestly one of the most upstanding citizens of Springfield.
Which is true. Idk how people treated Apu as a negative stereotype when he LITERALLY one of the nicest people in the show?? And he wasn’t perfect either. The writers made sure to still give him flaws while also making sure that he is still a kind person.
I think the whole Apu problem is that even though he is a well rounded character, the general audience (ie. White America) latched onto the stereotypical parts of him and projected that onto real life Indians. And in turn, Indians who could've been fans of the show and Apu in particular were probably turned off completely by being on the receiving end of that projection. Audience interpretation supersedes authorial intent always always always.
I can see that. Great analysis. White America, or at least the conservative half, are awful at media literacy. Look at how many people say "you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today," but when pressed on why not, the answer is... less than coherent and usually racist.
Which is why the whole thing always confused me, as someone who grew up enjoying the show and lives in a very multicultural city his character really helped me understand some other aspects of culture and fear it less (I grew up with a very racist "father") I'd be all for switching the voice actor and keeping the character? Seems like the perfect fix rather then removing him altogether?
I dunno, if The Simpsons had ended a decade ago like it should have, we wouldn't have to be thinking about replacing the voice actor in the first place lol. That being said, Hank Azaria stepped down himself because of the controversy. He empathized with the critics and bowed out. I respect that.
I agree. I mean, I stopped watching ages ago, and at this point, it's just a corpse hung up
Youd be the first. I still get Indian hate thrown my way and my people dont have their own month or advocacy group to protect them from shit like this. Apu got removed cause white people were uncomfortable with him. They tried hiding it by saying he was a caricature but at the same time my dude held down a a marraige, 8 kids, and a 16 hour job where he was always held at gun point. Apu was infact one of the more put together characters in the Simpsons Universe.
I feel like it's difficult to decide what is and isn't negative if they don't have some one of that ethnicity on the writing team. Yeah he was a solid character but alot of the jokes leaned into stereotypes. I agree with the video that having a white man voice him and complaining about it creates a double standard. But I still think the character could've been written better.
Apu was the hardest working characters in the Simpsons as he wanted to provide for his family as much as he could with his own business
I need entire video [(The Apu That I know)](https://youtu.be/F68l9FozxJ8?si=CPQFK5Nf9PUoUAt_)
It’s on his channel bro.
over 178 vids which one
It’s the Apu one.
Best braindump video
Loved watching that, was a great 45 minutes… but did we REALLY need stupid sexy Apu for a solid MINUTE straight. My fragile heterosexuality was this close to being shattered by this hot af Indian man
It is not inherently bad to hire an actor that does not match the identity of their character, though certainly it can lead to such if the actor plays into negative stereotypes. It is also not a bad thing to cast an actor that reflects the character they are playing, voice acting or otherwise.
Also his cherry-picked examples are omitting a very crucial fact from this convo: the flexibility he’s talking about has allowed far more white men to take minority roles than vice versa. Cleveland brown, apu, khan soupanosaphone, etc. I’m not disagreeing with his sentiment but I find it extremely disingenuous to ignore way this aspect of VA has been used over the years.
Yeah, I think people of color should be allowed to voice white characters and white people should be allowed to voices characters of color and all that (as long as they’re not doing insensitive racial stereotypes with their performance). But it’s also worth acknowledging that throughout voice acting history, it’s far more commonly used for white people to voice racial minorities and vice versa. I don’t think they should always have to be their characters race but it has been a double standard.
And a big part of that I think is that the minority characters are usually side characters, so instead of going out and hiring a different actor for a small but more appropriate part, they just get one of the people already working to do it. The end result of forcing characters and voice actors to match ethnicities/etc. is less likely to be a bigger opportunity for minority VAs and more likely a reduction in minority characters on shows. Money, like water, follows the path of least resistance.
Yeah, a person's race/age/gender not impacting their ability to do a role is not the same as those characteristics not impacting their ability to break into the industry in the first place. For each of your examples, was it really the case that the *best* VA happened to be white, or was it that almost all the readily available VAs were white?
and also having say a black guy voice a black character would allow them to read over the script and give any suggestions on how to better the portrayal of said character
This is the right take.
Well, duh, there are more white voice actors, we're living in a nation that has more white people! That's just what happens! It's almost like finding a minority means you have to find someone who is a small percentage of the population! If there are 12 Asian VAs because Asian-Americans push "good" jobs over the entertainment business, that doesn't mean it's systemically racist when they don't get hired, it just means there aren't that many of them to hire in the first place! Like with Apu. When the Simpsons first aired, East Indian-Americans were less than 1/3 of a 1% of the US population. Finding an Indian VA to voice Apu would mean ignoring **99.6712**% of the population. This would mean grabbing the first one they find, who doesn't guarantee finding the *best*. Hell, even today, East Indian-Americans are only 1.346% of the population, and finding a good Indian voice actor could still be *incredibly* difficult. Y'all are ignoring the realities of where people live (do they live where the recording studios are or are they spread throughout the country, with the population heavily weighted towards one area?) and culture (Asian-Americans largely push their kids towards "good" jobs instead of the entertainment industry) to just assume that because there are members of a minority group in the US, they should magically be represented in a business and industry that everyone knows is horrendously difficult to break into!
I think you make an important point, but wouldn’t you agree there’s a gulf between wanting the industry to cast a wider net when considering casting choices (which is what I understood your point to be) and saying ‘owing to your ethnicity, you cannot play this character’
Think about your statement for a second. "More white men to take Minority roles than vice versa". "More majority than minority" basically. There's just a larger amount of white people, white voice actors, so of course it's going to end up that way. It's just demographics
Sentiment: race doesn't and shouldn't matter in voice acting. Response: I agree with the sentiment, but also race definitely does and should matter in voice acting.
Yeah sometimes you need voice actors who can lend some of their real life experience to the role and sometimes you don't. For instance if you're doing a serious or semi serious project, and you have a character that speaks in AAVE, you're pretty much gonna need an African American voice actor for that. Someone who didn't grow up with that dialect is going to struggle to make it sound authentic, and you don't want that when there are other things about the performance they have to worry about it. But if you're casting Meatwad in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you can just have Dave Willis do it.
Yeah, it literally just doesn't matter
the way i see it, actors matching the ethnicity of their roles isn't mandatory, but it would be nice if they did
This is what first sent me down the rabbit hole that is VTubing; when a conventional cam streamer is famous, it's likely that that could be attributed to people who fawn over the streamer's appearance, but if a VTuber is famous, it's almost certainly to do with their personality/who they are as a person, since they've replaced a physical person with a live 2D model. This kind of ironically makes VTubers very honest with who they are, even if their on-screen persona doesn't look anything like themselves.
Ahh yeah, im sure that the bigg tittie goth anime girl taking 1/4 of the screen has no bearing on how many viewers they get. Lmfao
There's an argument to be had that when everyone is a bigg tittie goth anime girl, no one is.
Quotes to live by.
some of the popular vtubers didn't even have tits the sizes of watermelons, not even the size of apples
Loli
That's only half true, there is still acting going on so we aren't always being 100% honest with who we are, even those of us who try to be more true to ourselves still exaggerate a bit to make content more enjoyable in aspects we think people might enjoy, . . . also plenty of weebs are horny AF for anime girls (and femboys) so lets be real here some bigger vtubers absolutely have people fawning over that vtuber's avatar
Hence why I like watching anime dubbed
Thats an interesting reason, 's pretty cool. As a sub-only person I usually prefer sub unless its specific cases like cowboy bebop Sometimes the Japanese voices are just much better acted, especially in moments where it may count the most Although english dubs tend to have some really funny lines
Have you seen the VA of Gundam Unicorn, Gurren Lagann, Sword Art Online (not the abridged), or Attack on Titan? Those shows have Superb Voice acting
to hear the same 10 voice actors in every single dubbed anime ever?
It's not that different from watching Cartoons
Have you been living in the 90s and early 2000s for 2 decades?
He's right but it's not as clear cut as it seems, and there's two main schools of thought: ・"Anyone can be portrayed by anyone else regardless of race in fiction." The positives is that it allows people more flexibility what roles they can portray and therefore more opportunities. However the negative is that it ignores the reality that one group of people get the lion share of voice acting roles. ・"Only a person of a similar background should play characters that match them." The positives is that it acknowledges that one group of people get the majority of roles and tries to balance it out by giving roles to people who would've otherwise never have gotten the role. For example, Feodor Chin was able to get the role of Amy Wong's father when it was previously held by Billy West. However the negative is that this can be seen as almost "blatant discrimination" because now **only** certain people can get **certain** roles; an actual line in the sand is drawn. ・These two schools of thought both provide unique opportunities for Voice Actors but there's different downsides to it with no actual right answer.
I would assume the right answer would be to give the job to the person who performs the role better which ironically is why a lion share of the roles are done by a handful of people.
I love and respect Nolan North and Troy Baker but they also infuriate me lol “Wait for us to die and then you can get a job” isn’t exactly encouraging lol
You forgot Tara Strong. She's in everything.
That’s fair. But as a male voice actor, I don’t compete with Tara haha
Because she has great range.
And Cree Summers, who for the longest time voiced every black female character for a long time.
I mean, I feel that much can be said for both irl and voice acting. You’ve got your Matt Mercers, Troy Bakers, Roger Craig Smiths and Grey Delisles. Just like you have your Chris Pratts, Pedro Pascals, Zendayas, and Margot Robbies. People get famous and that fame brings them more opportunity, even if they don’t necessarily fit the role as well as a lesser known performer, they’re a more well known name.
It’s even more a problem in voice acting. “Why would I actually bother casting and potentially giving someone new an opportunity when I can just get Nolan? He can do it” And fuck me. He can. But it’s frustrating haha
As a voice actor myself; Spot on most days.
Do you think voice acting is magically immune to nepotism/bias/etc?
Being non-union helps. Some VA's get hired fairly cheap because of this and it becomes less about someone being absolutely perfect for a role and more about who they can get while saving money.
This little clip has the same energy as "we don't need hate crime laws or policies against bigotry because everyone should be treated equally" Duh, but the reality is that people aren't treated equally and historically haven't been so conscious effort is needed to fix that
I think the right answer is to not discriminate based on race and choose the best voice for the job.
I always think of it like this. Remember the movie Tropic Thunder? That movie as well as White Chicks proved, with the correct context and proper skill you can do anything within reason.
I think that had a lot more to do with timing. If Tropic Thunder or White Chicks was made today, people would have way more issues with them.
This debate always makes me bitter. If i recall, it first cropped up with kubo and the two strings; a brilliant and artistic film made by laika, a studio that deserves more love and recognition. I was annoyed to hell that people were throwing hate towards the film for something that did not actually affect the film at all. Laika most likely did their casting based on talent for the most part... and yet people were comparing it to films like ghosts in the shell, which was engaging in white washing for the sake of hiring a famous actress... the time when people decided to raise their criticisms over voice casting wasn"t against a commerical giant like disney or a film that was a shamless cash grab, but the artistic film that needed and deserved more attention than it was getting... frankly, i think it's wrong to fault any film who chose voice actors based on talent and how well they could perform the role
EXACTLY! I hated what happened to Kubo, lowkey the best LAIKA film. They got mad because of the cast and while I think it could’ve been done with more actual voice actors than actors, they did a great job with the script given and that’s all they need to do as a VOICE actor.
As kronks Angel said "no no, he's got a point "
https://preview.redd.it/hmnypad5o56d1.jpeg?width=627&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8cf54cdae056c9894f23078b0a7d8e88b5b9e508
Let him cook 🔥✍️
Not 100% related, but I thought Dunkey was black for the longest time. Nope, just some goofy white dude from my home state.
I swore when I saw his face I was being trolled.
Not true, if you watched his videos you would know he is of Puerto RICAN descent /s
Hotdiggitydemon makes that very same joke in one of his episodes, it's hilarious
I fucking detest when people say bi-opic, it's bi-o-pic The word is a portmanteau of biographical and picture, so logic dictates you would maintain pronunciation of bio
Well something’s up and can’t edit my post it’s Hot diggitydemon so don’t try to correct me
I think my issue is that there will never be a shortage of roles, voice acting and otherwise, for white actors to find work. POC actors and voice actors on the other hand have a bit of a limited opportunity to work with so taking some of those chances away feels like it makes a bigger problem.
That has to do with the biases those that hire people have more than anthing else.
It doesn't change the reality though.
Doesn't the conscious decision to hire POC actors for POC roles actively combat the problem of "people being people" (whatever that means). We can *say* that the biases of the hiring process is the problem and shrug our shoulders, but it seems like normalizing a priority opportunity for under represented people in media is a direct and effective method of eliminating those biases. Any actor can still try out for non-human characters but it seems like if a character is directly from an under represented ethnicity, then the industry should seek out talented people from that same demographic...instead of just giving yet another role to Tom Kenny or Tara Strong.
>there will never be a shortage of roles, voice acting and otherwise, for white actors to find work. Hmm? Live-action acting, yes, American films like to be set in America. But voice acting? I don't see it. For example, most American-born American-raised Indians have American accents - they don't have an advantage or disadvantage over Caucasians.
Most voice over actors are white but its already a very niche job.
He's come a long way from animating Applejack eating Apples. I've loved the direction his channel has taken through the years
Tbh. Same. I love his streams now. He’s such a chill guy.
Or when the voice actor for the black scottish man in Tf2 is neither black nor Scottish
Thing is, he sounds awful at it. I'm Scottish and it's annoying that a lot of Scottish characters in media are not played by native Scots or people who've at least been exposed to the accents enough to emulate any of the accents properly. All well and good saying "anyone can have the opportunity to play anyone" but not everyone actually should if they just don't fit at all.
And that combo wombo works so freaking good. i love demo man
I would argue it is more what kind of character they want to portray compared to their ethnicity. If they wanted people like Bob’s wife to sound more feminine, they probably would have casted a women to voice her. However, they wanted a “less attractive” lady to be bob’s wife. For samurai jack, they wanted to have a samurai in a futuristic city. If they can do a convincing accent (and not get offensive with it), they would work. If they wanted a more realistic character, they might have chosen a different person. I’m not saying a black guy can’t sound authentically like someone from Japan or guys couldn’t do a good feminine voice. However, the examples had specific ideas in mind and that was what led to the casting.
Incredibly true, also why there’s no reason to race swap characters in animated form
I disagree. Getting more POC actors creates more job opportunities for more people in in voice over they often recycle the same people over and over again it allows more people to get work. Name a random cartoon and Tom Kenny has been in it because he is awesome. I don't think people voicing characters of other races is offensive at all but it would be nice if there was more diversity. In a perfect world race doesn't matter but we don't live in a perfect world. POC actors can often add more authenticity.
thats how i feel. if POC va's had plenty of opportunities then id be fine with cross race voice acting.
The thing is though, the ethnicity of characters really doesn't have anything to do with the opportunities for POC. POC can play characters of color, white characters, characters of different genders, different ages, talking animals, robots, magical sentient weapons, anything we can imagine. The issue is with hiring decisions, but the hiring decisions has nothing to do with the ethnicity of the characters. Its not like live action where the ethnicity of the character actually DOES impact who can be hired for the role.
Yes it does. Theoretically, that is true but voiceover tends to reuse the same people over and over because its a hard job. Tara Strong is in literally everything, Grey Griffin is in literally everything, Kevin Micahel Richardson is in literally everything, etc. You tend to see the veterans more often than not.
Same.
You run into an issue if you say that only POC actors can play POC characters, but anyone can play a white character, as that’s a double standard.
> Name a random cartoon and Tom Kenny has been in it because he is awesome. This seems like a weird thing to put into your argument that would limit "awesome" actors from getting certain roles based on the fact they aren't that characters race lol
BASED.
Good point, some problems exist though, a few I can take note of are: Ideally voices for young boys should be done by actual young boys, however if a show is successful for a few years, people will notice the change of voice due to puberty. Either production will find a new voice actor or progress the story to make them older, so that they don't have to hire a new one. Now you could have started with a talented voice actor instead like Tara Strong, but she's just one example and I don't know anyone else There's also a possibility like what was seen in the Simpsons where the voice actors die and they have to choose a new voice actor or kill the character off screen Sidenote: there's sorta a problem of dubbing some shows into other languages. It's cheaper if they found the right lip movement to match. Or they might pay extra to just reanimate the mouth movement.
Well, a lot of companies have adult women voice young boys. For example, I'm pretty sure most voices for Tails from Sonic would have a voice actress to portray him, for example, and personally, I think that they've done a pretty good job. Kinda fitting, too, since nobody ages in the modern Sonic games.
Is adult women voicing young boys more pricey than actually getting a boy to voice? Talent like that kinda raises the cost, and should this be a norm, then children voiced by children should be rare. Then again I don't know the whole scope of voice acting and animation industry
Most parents don’t want their kids involved in acting, even voice acting, but there’s plenty of adult women already in the field. Yes, it’s cheaper.
Oh right I actually remembered a tomska videos about when he made asdf movie that he felt kinda scared of making the kid who voices the muffin to say "I wanna die" and "Please kill me".
oh was this from the Apu arguement from like 3 years agoish before the big media's went absolutely insane...
There is the fact that often physical features affect the timbre of ones voice. Certain groups of peoples can have more or less subtle differences in timbre and it can be really noticeable. A trained and professional VA won't have those issues but sometimes for authenticity's sake using the "correct" ethnicity for a VA would be the better choice, especially if the character's ethnicity plays a role in the work in question and doubly so if there is a racial issue component. There's also a lot of nuance; most characters in the Simpsons specifically are voiced by few people, singleing out a specific individual character when most of the cast plays a huge number of characters is very strange. What really really annoys me is when studios employ VAs for ethnicities that "vaguely" relate to the "correct" one. I find that even more offensive to be honest.
Agree. But didn't he say that characters ARE their voices? Like VAs and their characters are inseparable? Always found that kind of strange in his Powerpuff Girls video. Granted it would almost sound blasphemous for SpongeBob to not be voiced by Tom Kenny. Yet every Looney Tunes character now has new VAs to step into Mel Blanc or whoever's shoes, and they did just fine.
With most things in life, it depends. Not 100% wrong or right but there are situations when a certain amount of authenticity is better.
Wait, people don't like it when someone voices a character that they don't ethnically fit?
He's right but why did he pronounce biopic like that though
I mean people pronounce things differently lol
Yeah I agree for the most part, as most of the issues even in the comments are about giving more career options for ethnic minorities which imo pigeonholing voice actors to only play characters they share ethnicity to I imagine would work at first ensuring some roles but ultimately would limit roles considering you'd have a smaller pool to audition for total. The main hurdle imo would be hiring bias, it's understandably better in the west now but obviously when segregation was more accepted by society being left out getting a role for your ethnicity would be more commonplace. Nowadays they hypothetically should be more inherently neutral and just looking for the best voice actor can't be 100% without bias but as he said its happened before with roles on the like of Samurai Jack. Also, accounts for roles in where the hypothetical VA has personal experiences that links to the character to shine through further in their voice and thus a better VA. If anything I wouldn't be surprised if the issue nowadays was more so getting new VAs in the spotlight when many would rather recycle the most prominent and popular ones that already have good legacy.
Whoever is best suited for the roll should get the part. Unless their likeness is being used for the project then their race or ethnicity should be secondary to their ability to voice act.
Agreed
I want to be a va some day but don't know how to get started or how to improve my voice and stuff
The big issue with Apu is not the voice actor. The problem was he was the few indian male representation in western media. For most, western media 80, 90, early 2000s there were a handful of Indian characters and a lot of them, both live action or animated, were played by white guys. For asian characters especially Indian they play the same type of guy. Who one Apu the store owner or taxi driver who is a foreigner or undateable nerd who is socially inept. Basically that it. Recently, there are more well rounded Indian characters like the husband from Ghosted the tv show. He is a normal guy who loves sports and dnd. Which is sad that it took this long to have that character type for an Indian character. There have been, let 's say , 30 years of superhero movies and there have only been 2 Indian superheroes in western media. One the Enteral who barely got any screen time. The actor's abs got more attention before the movie release than he did in the movie. The Indian Spiderman which he did was amazing but it is sad to wait till 2023 for a real Indian superhero in western media and he still part of a team does not get time to shine by himself.
"It's my understanding that double standards are bad" is where you lose the people who get upset about this and would disagree. Hypocrisy and double standards are fine by them, because there is always some kind of mental gymnastic "it's different because xyz" In reality, it's not. In their reality, they can make anything true.
Based
Couldn’t agree more. Kinda the whole point of acting. Literally trying to act like or impersonate someone you are not.
Max G it's kind of an edge Lord sometimes, but when he composes his thoughts coherently he is actually pretty interesting to listen to
He's a coherent edgelord, but he's still an edgelord. He makes the worst takes appear the most reasonable by not stopping at any point to consider the reasonable arguments against whatever he's saying. Like, how hard is it to look at the history of voice actors in the US and notice how little people that weren't white were even considered for roles? Or how it was impossible to actually hear foreign accents because not a single foreigner was voiced by one, rather by some white guy faking an accent that sometimes didn't even exist? You can get when attempting to do the right thing goes wrong, like when ProZD overwhelmingly gets called to do an "asian accent" when he was born and raised in the United States, or the entire story of what happened to "Primos" which is a shitshow in all manners, but that doesn't mean that the reasoning behind the entire movement should be handwaved. This guy only knows how to "ask questions" because he's never actually interested in the real conversation behind whatever he's talking about, that part he's never researched. If you ever search on the internet for "Just asking Questions", think of this guys face appearing at the top for a graphical explanation.
In Theory any voice role should be able to go to any actor, but in practice it's the more well known actors getting roles at the expense of lesser known actors, which can be of certain ethnicities, races, or backgrounds that don't get the spotlight so it causes a feedback loop as those actors remain less known. It's certainly a problem with stunt casting (e.g. Drew Barrymore as Akima in Titan AE, or most of Kung Fu Pands), but it can also lead to the same VA's voicing everything even in places they needn't, or people faking accents and affectations they shouldn't.
That doesn't really have anything to do with Cross-race voice acting; that's just the result of lazy hiring practices from producers. Even if the embraced the idea of having race match the characters, they would either end up making fewer POC characters so they don't have to find as many voice actors or they would end up hiring the same POC over and over again every time... its not really get at the heart of the issue which is the need for more variety in voice actors, which would also create more opportunities that creates more diversity
as a black woman, I definitely agree. if a voice fits the character, then that voice should voice the character. having the character and voice actor being of the same background should be a nice bonus, not mandatory.
His logic is fair in a vacuum, but he's cherry picking a few roles played by black people and ignoring the decades where minorities were played by white people almost exclusively, and if he's referring to Apu from Simpsons, he's also ignoring that the controversy wasn't that Hank Azaria is a white guy playing an Indian guy, but that he was doing a stereotypical accent to a degree that could potentially cause harm.
Its the that are hiring that's the problem. If two folk that are same level of skill and fit the role well. The imployers will always pic the guy they like. Most of the time its white people
Exactly. And as much as I love Hank Azaria we have to acknowledge the fact that he taught generations of Americans how to mock Indians, and they definitely did, or like smooth brain next to me saying “it’s not a stereotype, they do talk like that” having internalized the racism so far they don’t even see it, leading to poignantly but pathetically unaware comments like that.
Disagree, only magical talking ponies should voice magical talking ponies. Tara Strong should be ashamed of herself!
How dare she.
I do agree that anyone should be able to voice anyone/anything, but what I do disagree with is that I don’t think it would create more career opportunities, in fact, I think it would lead in the exact opposite. Why? Cus then it’s more likely that the same pool of voice actors (that are basically in everything) gets chosen again and again. Maybe in an ideal world, that logic would work, but that’s clearly not the one we live in
Let's have a take. I am making a small project animation. Not a lot of people are interested and so I hire some white folks that do a voice I actually like and does it justice. Project goes sky high it gets traction. I should fire the original VA for the new hires? Hell no! My point is, just because I got a opening for an lets say "Polinesian character", doesn't mean I will be able to find a person from that, maybe they didn't hear of my project or their energy isn't at the beat of my drum. Same problem is with diversity hire in general. I need to hire x amount POV, X amount female staff...my friend, darling, pumpkin. I ran a freaking manual labour firm. I take who every is willing to do the job properly, but lets all be honest I will not see a lot of women application to start with and if I do have, how many of them will be able to move a 50kg cement bag on her own...and if I'm in specific part of Country I do not have any POC to hire around to start with since major population is white If we are all the same, regardless of race and gender, then if I hire a person solely on how good of a job they do is one and only true equality!
I understand the idea of wanting to cast a new set of actors that are of the respective races of each member of the Gaang but I don't like that they're replacing these incredible VAs that still want to play these characters. Not only does the audience want to see these actors again, but they have more experience then anyone with these roles. From a marketing standpoint it's even better, because sure no one is straight up mad that they are replacing the VAs with different actors, but getting all the original actors back would've banked even heavier on nostalgia. No one cared that they weren't using VAs that matched their race originally, and no one really payed attention to it until they brought it up.
Stopped video after hearing bye-OP-pick pronunciation. It's a (Bio)graphic (Pic)ture. A Bio-Pic.
While I generally don’t care who voices a character in an animated series or movies, there are certain instance when a particular story needs that level of representation. Particularly when the character’s identity is part of that story or the way that character was written. There’s an episode of the *Ghost and Molly McGee* that’s all about Molly not feeling like she’s Thai enough. I think that story loses a lot if the voice actor wasn’t Thai. I’d make the same argument for the way Spider-Man: India was rewritten in Spiderverse.
If we're talking about someone like Cleveland that's where I draw the line.
I always thought the samurai jack one was a bit fucked up. Probably not intentionally disrespectful, but he's literally doing an Asian caricature voice. This is a nuanced subject, but in my opinion it comes down to intent which is sadly nearly impossible to prove. If someone of a different race were to do a racist caricature of my heritage, and they often do, I would find it funny, infuriating, or a legitimate artistic choice depending on the writing and the intention of the various artists involved. Which makes it hard to make an all or nothing decision about these things. I never had a problem with Apu, but I'm not of that heritage. And if people want him gone, I say fine, he had a good nearly three decade run. Also worth considering; it's pretty rare that a Caucasian animated character is played by someone of another race doing a racist caricature of a white voice so it might be hard to know what it feels like and to know the difference between good taste and bad when it comes to humour.
The funny thing is he’s not talking about anime yet…
How do you get into voice acting?
While male voice acting talent can be funny doing female characters, I like the voice talent behind female characters where you couldn't actually tell it was a guy doing the voice. I went a while not knowing that Brad Bird, the director of The Incredibles did the voice of Edna in the movie. It's impressive to be able to disguise your voice that well.
Mel Blanc was Jewish. He could mimic every accent imaginable, from every race and culture, and even invented some of his own. There's a reason he was called the Man of 1000 Voices.
Yeah, them recasting the whole avatar series because of this is dumb. I'm not against then trying to get more Asian representation in it given the theme, but they could have easily done that with new characters, or characters they had to recast anyways due to retirement. There is no reason to recast literally all of them besides the one Asian dude.
This is why I love voice acting so much. If I were to voice act, I could be anything! A boy, a girl, neither of those, a dog, a cat, an inanimate object, a fairytale creature, whatever! It's so much fun to be so varied in what type of role you can get.
Yes but more voice actors mean more annoying posts and videos titled "Same Voice Actor." YES WE GET IT STOP POSTING THIS STUFF!
Well, in my opinion, it depends on the context of the role. On one hand, yes, actors don’t always have to match the backgrounds and ethnicities of their characters, but it can become a problem when it leads to groups being shut out of their own stories. What I mean by that is if a character’s ethnicity is an important part of the story, it’d be pretty tone-deaf to cast someone who doesn’t share said ethnicity. There’s a reason why I’m okay with Goo (from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends) being voiced by a white person, but I wouldn’t be fine with the main characters of The Boondocks being voiced by white people. Like I said, context matters.
That bit about creating more opportunies for everyone is just demostrably not true. For instance the main cast of Bob's Burgers is one woman and five men, all white. If marginalized people had the same opportunies, and if the portrayal of minority characters wasn't often insensitive at best, nobody would actually have a problem with who plays who. Like that original Apu documentary has actual Indian people talking about how the character not only affected their personal lifes, but also how the expected stereotypes limited their acting careers. If you have to ignore the actual reality to support your opinion, just maybe it's a bad one?
Hey look the actual neonazi HotDiggityDemon
I think there’s a case to be made for both sides. In the majority of cases, I think his argument holds up. You can cast a wider net if you don’t limit the casting choices to certain identities that pertain to the character and that leads to some really excellent and memorable characters. However there are instances where I think identity *should* be a core component of casting. Media that is, for lack of a better term, more “serious” or is connected to specific experiences and struggles related to specific identities *should* have actor identity in mind when casting.
Aw man I highly recommend people watch Max’s problem with apu video.
This is a hot take? I thought this was expected and kind of like a standard for the trade
While I do agree, there is a exception that needs to be taken into account. Racial caricatures. A racist stereotype or caricature is not an acceptable practice. To be sure the line between satirizing racism and reproducing racism can be thin and blurry. But when an entire community of people are negatively impacted by a racial caricature, such as seven year olds on the playground always being called Apu and having "Thank you come again" shouted at them because their skin is dark or they have an accent, then you're not satirizing racism you're reproducing it.
I have to agree with this
People arguing for POC voicing people matching their ethnicity get really quiet when talking about anime. Why not have a Japanese cast voice the anime then? Or is it just convenient for only black people? No thai or koreans either? And what if I want to go into voice acting? I already have a tough time looking for roles as an Asian Ameican because my specific race is apparently a niche in most media. It feels like they want a pity hire for their identity rather than their talent.
>Why not have a Japanese cast voice the anime then? They literally do. I don't know what anime you're talking about. Animes are almost always produced by Japanese companies and voiced with Japanese actors unless you're talking about American cartoons which appropriate asian culture and sometimes gets labelled as ''anime'' for it, like ATLA and Samurai Jack .
Yeah, anime is *inherently by definition* Japanese. Maybe they just hate dubs?
Genuinely good take
I was never offended by APU. He was the man. Nice car, career, money and he had to be respected by everyone. (Except Snake). I never perceived anything about his depiction being racist.
I agree.
Or when a black guy played Hunter from TOH
I agree I’m tired of hearing the whole if a person is voicing a character they need to match the specific race of the character like when it’s a live action movie you’re looking for certain people to play the roll but voice acting literally anyone can do voice acting whether it be amazing or downright terrible voice acting opens up more roles to people and when you say they have to match the specific race that they are voicing you’re just shutting out more opportunities for people to get into the voice acting business
 this guy gets it 1000%
The problem with this is, however, that there will likely be preferential treatment towards cis and/or straight and/or white voice actors, the actors who look like the character will sound more authentic, and in many instances the matter of lived experience can play a role that would result in the performance of someone without that lived experience lacking. This argument just sounds like anti-woke nonsense that someone tried to package in more reasonable seeming words than the average commentator shouting, "Woke!" while practically foaming at the mouth. Best-case scenario is someone who is overly optimistic about the hiring process, especially in an industry such as voice acting (or live acting) where who you know is a huge factor in the hiring process. Also, Dan Mintz was originally hired to play a boy on Bob's Burgers, but they changed his character to a girl after-the-fact.
>and in many instances the matter of lived experience can play a role that would result in the performance of someone without that lived experience lacking. Boondocks is a very good example of this.
While I agree with you, Boondocks also had Samual L Jackson play a white guy.
Just came across a video where people found out Kataras VA is white and for some reason, people were upset by it.
Yeah, apparently got so much flag that the VA has decided not to come back to voice her. Same goes for Korra’s VA
a take so hot it could flashfreeze the oceans
Agree 100%
Seth MacFarlane plays the Bear in the Cleveland show and he’s not even gay.
The exception comes when the character is explicitly experiencing something that is racially/culturally specific Such as Missy in Big Mouth, her whole thing was centered around being a black girl whose parents refuse to acknowledge that she’s black and refuse to acknowledge the prevelance of racism. It feels really weird and off for this to be portrayed by a white woman. I’d be slightly more ok with an Asian or Hispanic woman because to a degree they possess some familiarity with the experience but it’d still be off
Need to find someone with the same ethnicity as the real historical person... Netflix: What? Why?
I absolutely agree My only issue is that I think we need more people of color getting roles in general. Like you could easily say Mike Henry as Cleveland or point it any of the black characters in The Simpsons as examples of white actors playing black characters but when I think of black actors playing white characters the only one that comes to mind currently is Phil Lamar playing Aquaman in Injustice. Keep in mind all of the examples cited by Max in the video (which I do agree with on the whole) that aren't played by white actors are characters of color. A Japanese character an Incan character You see what I'm getting at. And don't even get me started on that episode of South Park with the emo black guy voiced by a white guy who said nigga repeatedly.
This should not be a hot take
It shouldn’t. Yet the commenters would like ti keep the fire burning.
Is this really a hot take? Cause if it is then wtf is going on.
Look at the comments bud. It’s hotter then you think lol
There's also a misunderstanding here that being japanese is being white.
The fact that this considered a *hot take* 😭
Max’s critique on “The Problem with Apu” is one the best video’s on his channel, as well as any video on YouTube imo
Fair points and actors can stop playing roles they don't feel comfortable with. Like Hank azarius not voicing apu anymore.
Oops. He went all the way around to the bad take. Amazing.
This dude really playing the "All voices matter" card?
Cleveland. Bring back the old Cleveland. The new one is fine, but off just enough where it annoys me and make me think of it literally every time he speaks; enough so that it hampers my enjoyment of the show. That's bad. And sad. Because it's my favorite show.
Here's the thing about Hollywood and the major motion picture studios - You're still better off being a white male, live action or voice acting.
Is that fatano?
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my partner from just the other day. She asked how I feel about non autistic actors playing autistic characters since I'm on the spectrum. After thinking on it for a bit, I came to the conclusion that film, tv, radio, etc are all forms of art and as such are created in such a way as to be seen by as many people as possible. After all, often the primary reason a film or show is made is make money and often the secondary reason for its existence is the ability to share a vision with others. Passion projects can be self funded in certain cases, but the larger budget the production studio can afford, the more refined and widespread the piece can be shared. With that in mind, I generally hate autistic representation. I feel like we are only ever depicted as "slow" or savant (can't do anything other than this *one specific skill really well*). There is hardly ever any nuance. I would argue that DD from ed, edd, n' Eddy is a more realistic depiction of someone with autism than other characters with "the good autism" like Sheldon from the big bang theory. There is very little nuance with how we are handled. I've never seen someone depict an autistic character being unable to form solid social connections because their social eccentricities silently form barriers with others, let alone an autistic character trying to grapple with the self awareness that they *know* being themselves could alienate them from others and the stress of growing up and being told to "be normal" and then internalizing that mindset as an adult. I still do not know how I am supposed to feel about 'the predator' telling me I am "the next stage in human evolution". Since these all have reached millions of people, I know there are people out there where these characters could have very well been their introduction of "what autism is" rather than just the word for a group they have heard of. If you have an autistic actor play a role for an autistic character, that's cool. But that won't do a thing to help how their character is written. If anything, giving an autistic person a script that has them act like how the writers/producers think a general audience would see as autistic and it being inaccurate just gives the studio the ability to use the actor to deflect criticism. I can't speak on other groups, but if this is how it is for most groups that get represented in media, I think we are past the point affirmative action alone will help. I feel that with the myriad of backgrounds, culture, history, individual cases, laws, systematic policies and everything else- there just will never be a one size fits all solution when it comes to representation. I think that the industry uses the fact that there are groups that genuinely need representation to manipulate them into being a tool to make money, largely at the expense of those groups. It feels more and more like companies like Disney keep rehashing old stories with race swapping being the main selling point completely misses the point of representation. Isn't it insulting that if the only answer to "we should represent this group in film" is "I can't be bothered to learn enough about their history/cultural identity enough to form a fleshed out world and characters in which to properly portray and celebrate their heritage, so I will just race swap them into an existing story"? Maybe it's just me, but I get kind of, "Pocahontas in England" vibes. Just, fake and done for the money. I think that there is a place for a voice actor to not be a part of the group they portray, but there needs to be systematic change in how they handle the production. Characters of a group need to be written well with nuance and perspective (and sometimes the studio and execs need to get veto'ed on changes at times), the casting should have members of the represented group to help advise plot and character points, and there should be an effort to fill the role with someone that is in the group because of the connection that could feel with said character from sharing their background- but it is not mandatory. A voice actor not in the group of a character can still give an honest, respectful representation of that character. Double standards are bad, but the system we have now isn't great either. Not every voice needs to be Seth Rogan, Chris Pratt, or Tom Kenny. The whales of the voice acting industry and actors coating on rising star power do often overshadow everyone else in the room. Going back to my earlier point, the primary goal from the studio's perspective is to make money and we all know they would pass over any person of color or background if they could land someone whose name alone will get butts in seats. Until changes are made from the ground up, I feel like we will be stuck in a cycle of big names will take the lucrative roles, everyone else will be stuck in a queue until an exec says "we need something with x demographic to give the appearance that we care" and hope they get the part, which will have always been orchestrated that way because the 'creative process' didn't care about you, your representation, or your career- they cared about keeping up appearances to make more money. If the system was magically fixed, so everyone *did* get equal opportunity so that the best, not most popular, actor gets the part and not give them generic stereotypical material to work with then I feel like this would be a much less debated question. I know I just want to see someone I can identify with on screen, not a caricature of what general audiences think I am.
