I don’t have anything against black actors. In fact, some of my favorite actors are black, and I enjoy watching them in a tremendous variety of roles. From Idris Elba’s gritty portrayal of London detective John Luther, to Dennis Haysbert’s calm, cool and collected President Palmer in “24” (oh, to have a black president like THAT!), to Denzell Washington and Morgan Freeman in just about any role, black actors have enriched the big and small screens, adding richness, humor, depth and, well, color to our entertainment experience.
So why did I cringe a little when I first saw Gambian actor Babou Ceesay as the Apostle John and Chinese/Zimbabwean actress Chipo Chung as Mary Magdalene standing beside the mother of Jesus during Sunday’s NBC broadcast of the first episode of “A.D. The Bible Continues”? Did my inherent, inborn “racism” as a Southern white dude (go ahead, insert your favorite toothless, ignorant redneck joke here) finally subconsciously kick in, robbing me of the rich, diverse, multicultural experience the filmmakers were obviously trying to bring me with their forward-thinking casting?
No sane Christian denies that we are all the same at the foot of the cross, so, in a metaphorical sense at least, it did seem fitting to see the ebony-skinned Ceesay standing and weeping beside others who followed and loved Christ. After all, thank God, His love and salvation doesn’t depend on the color of our skin!
However, from a “suspension-of-disbelief” standpoint as it relates to historical drama, a black Apostle John makes about as much sense as a musical featuring a gay, lilly-white Genghis Khan leading a diverse cast of Indians, Somalis and Italians dressed in Mongol costumes on a West Side Story-style, multicultural romp across Asia.
He just looked out of place, like Al Sharpton at a Renaissance fair or Michael Moore at a gym.
Why must every historical movie these days, particularly those that deal with biblical topics, be subjected to a diversity “litmus test”? With apologies to Afrocentrists everywhere (OK, not really), while it’s possible there were black people in the vicinity of Judea during the time of Christ, there is no way, absolutely no way, John the Apostle was black. No serious historian believes this.
But wait, there’s more.
According to the Washington Post, several black leaders were less than impressed by the casting of Argentinian actor Juan Pablo Di Paca as Jesus, including the Rev. Darrel Watson, who told producer Mark Burnett, “Given latest scholarship, Jesus is more to be seen as black than anything else. This would have been great for us in 1980, but in 2015, we need to consider for accuracy sake Jesus having another type skin color.”
“For accuracy sake …” mmm-hmm
Watson, completely ignoring the fact that Jesus (and John, but what do I know?) was JEWISH (news flash, with respect to Whoopi Goldberg and Ethiopian Jews across the Holy Land, Jews, particularly in A.D. 33, weren’t black), decides instead to reference an apocalyptic passage in Revelation that describes Jesus as having hair “white like wool” and feet “fine like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace” (Revelation 1:14-15 KJV).
First of all, the much more accurate ESV renders the passage, “The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow.” Secondly, and this is just for fun, are we to assume because the same passage describes his voice as the sound of many waters that perhaps Jesus was part mermaid, too?
See how easy it is to counter this nonsense?
Are we truly at a point in race relations where the only way some black people can relate to portrayals of iconic figures is for those figures to look like them? Really?
Have we come to a place where even casting directors aren’t allowed to discriminate based on what race or ethnicity the historical character actually was? What insanity is next? How about Halle Berry as Queen Elizabeth, or … Leonardo DiCaprio as Martin Luther King?
Look, I’m not trying to enact casting “Jim Crow” policies to relegate blacks to the back of the casting director’s bus. I just don’t like having my history messed with for no better reason than to cater to political correctness.
You want to cast a black guy as a knight in a historical fantasy like “Merlin”? Knock your socks off. It’s stretching it, because we darn well know black guys wouldn’t have been knights (or even servants) in Medieval England even in a kingdom as open as Arthur’s was portrayed to be, but at least it’s just fantasy. But please stop, just STOP, rewriting history to appease people’s hand-wringing, politically correct sentimentalities.
I don’t like it when political correctness decides that John the Apostle was an Afro-Judean, not because I would be offended if it turned out that John (or Jesus, for that matter) was black, but because it’s not true. But, when does truth ever matter to these people?
When discussing casting in front of a group of African-American pastors, producer Burnett said, “We realized that we could have made ‘The Bible’ better in terms of diversity, but we are getting the chance to do it again … and we manage to make this very Afrocentric in major characters.”
Burnett then goes on to insist the African actors were selected “not because of their color but because they were the best for the job.”
Yeah, right. The producers who aimed to make this an Afrocentric film didn’t take color into account when selecting their actors. And I’ve got some oceanfront property to sell you in Zimbabwe.
As silly as that movie was, at least the producers of “Bruce Almighty” didn’t cross any such nonsensical bridges when they cast Morgan Freeman as God, given that John 1:18 clearly states, “No one has ever seen God.” But lots of men, and women too, saw Jesus, and John, and James, and Phillip, and Mary Magdalene, and the closest thing to black these historical folks were is a really dark suntan.
