I loved “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. I both read it and listened to it as read by Jim Flemming on Wisconsin Public Radio.
So, I was excited when I learned that Showtime/Paramount had turned the novel into a short series. And, in fact, it’s pretty good. Ewan McGregor is a perfect fit for the main role of Count Alexander Rostov as are the other leading characters with one glaring exception. The casting of Fehinti Balogun as Rostov’s friend Mishka is awful.
It’s not that Balogun isn’t a good actor. I actually think he’s excellent. The trouble is that he’s a Black actor… playing a Russian… in the 1920s. Actually, he’s one of several Black actors scattered around the production here and there. A viewer is led to think that the Black population of Moscow in 1922 was roughly the same as Chicago in the same period.
Having a Black actor — with dreadlocks no less — playing a Russian communist official in the early days of the revolution is jarring and distracting. It’s also infuriating for its silly performative political correctness. Clearly, the producers tossed these Black actors into the story to make a political point, probably about George Floyd, I guess. It’s a move designed to bring attention to itself: look how evolved we are! It’s like having a Black Lives Matter sign in your front yard on Monroe Street in Madison. How brave.
Then there’s the hypocrisy of it all. Aren’t we supposed to be concerned about cultural appropriation and, if so, shouldn’t that work both ways? What if it was a story about American slavery and the slaves were played by white people? There would be an outcry and it would be completely justified. Why shouldn’t it work the other way?
I get the need for diversity but why inject into an historical drama? If it were a story about contemporary politics and you chose to cast the President as a Black woman, well, that would be great. But if you cast a Black woman as Thomas Jefferson, well, not so great. And that’s essentially what they’ve done to A Gentleman in Moscow. Why not have a white actor play Martin Luther King, Jr., while we’re at it?
Aside from this, the production is lightly sprinkled with political correctness here and there. In one scene Alexander is asked if he doesn’t want to speak “his truth” to a reporter. In another scene a female character spits out her disgust with “men” everywhere.
Ironically, while the producers fell all over themselves to make hard-left political statements, the story itself is an indictment of socialism. The noble (in both senses of the word) Rostov is a deeply charming, very human and sympathetic character while the communists come off like thugs.
The rest of the production is so good that I can look beyond the irritating political correctness to enjoy it overall. I recommend it. (Half the episodes are currently available and the rest will be released soon.) But the producers took what could have been a wonderful production and messed it up with an unnecessary and jarringly out of place piece of performative nonsense.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
They’ve been at this for awhile, Citizen Dave.
Sergeant James Kinchloe, “Kinch” to fans of “Hogan’s Heroes,” was portrayed by a talented Black actor named Ivan Dixon. In the sitcom, which ran from 1965 through 1971, a mismatched group of Allied prisoners from various cultures joined together to, basically, win World War II for our side. In every episode, they outsmarted the bumbling German army, including Colonel Klink, (Werner Klemperer) who commanded the prison camp, his assistant, Sgt. Schultz (John Banner) and even General Burkhalter (Leon Askin), an ugly, portly man who was often accompanied by a young, beautiful fraulein. Several of the “Nazi” actors were Jewish.
On many occasions, Kinch dressed up in a stolen Nazi uniform and passed himself as a member of the Third Reich without any suspicion or questions about his ethnic origin. I don’t think he spoke much German but that didn’t seem to matter, as the dialogue was all in English, like it (presumably) is in “A Gentleman in Moscow.”
The directors of these shows took some poetic license in the interest of entertaining the masses.
LikeLike
I propose that you rethink this issue, but try to rely on reason instead of your Boomer gut.
You find it unacceptable for a Black guy to play a Russian. What if it were, say, an Italian playing a Russian? Would his Mediterranean complexion undermine the setting?
What about the language they’re speaking in the movie? And the accents they use? Traditionally in Hollywood movies that are set in foreign countries or ancient times, the actor playing Julius Caesar or whoever speaks with an English accent. But what if instead they spoke in strong Wisconsin accents –– or perhaps a dialect of African American English? I imagine you would find that odd, but it’s not any less realistic than the tradition that was established and feels normal to you.
LikeLike
So, you’re okay with white actors playing American slaves then. Got it.
LikeLike
You know, there are probably plenty of people who think that’s a good idea, actually.
LikeLike
I wonder if you aren’t just hyper-focused on the color of someone’s skin yourself, Dave. I like to watch alot of period pieces and I too have noticed that we are seeing more actors of different colored skin, but it doesn’t detract at all for me. Isn’t all make believe? And you know men started out in theater, being the only actors, and they did play women, before women could play women. Being upset about the color of the skin of an actor is as silly as saying only gay people should play gay characters. It you want to make a film, go ahead and do it. Otherwise, you’re living with someone else’s vision, 100% of the time. I think it’s less about political correctness and more about giving people jobs where they have a chance to make the same living wage as their counterparts, despite the color of their skin or their gender no matter what the industry.
LikeLike
You appear to be so angry by the DEI movement that you’ll find it anywhere you look. A female character being disgusted with “men everywhere”…. What has been an attitude as old as time is suddenly a “sprinkling of political correctness”?
Typically these days Cons want “the woke” to look beyond the irritating political INcorrectness of any creative work in history, lest we be troubled with the woke commentary. But heaven forbid a non-woke person could look beyond subtle “political correctness” and just enjoy a piece of art without providing us with their commentary. We’re all supposed to ignore racism but be hyper-aware of anti-racism?
How close shall the skin shade be for an acceptable casting? I can see if the character’s race is central to the plot of the story, sure it makes sense to cast someone of that race. But in this case, it doesn’t appear that the color of any of the characters’ skin had anything to do with the plot. Or am I wrong? How does the color of Mishka’s skin impact the story?
You repeatedly use the example of white people portraying US slaves, but even beyond the obvious fact that race is indeed central to that role, try asking a few black people what they’d think. Tell them that all the white roles will be open to black actors as long as it’s the other way around too. You might be surprised.
You are offended by seeing a dark face where you deem one should not be. I encourage you to reflect on this without resorting to defensiveness. Perhaps the right wing fever about woke-ism causes irrational reactions? This happens a lot with fantasy movies – if the cast isn’t all white with British accents there will inevitably be backlash, and these are make believe settings!
So funny, Cons go around saying that race should play no role in any decisions whatsoever, but cast a black person in what they think is a white role, and now race is supposed to be considered?! Don’t consider race in any hiring decisions except for actors.
LikeLike
I am not a regular fan of period dramas, but I do listen to (and watch) a lot of opera. Due to the overwhelmingly European roots of traditional opera, your sharp eyes and dramatic sensibility would severely limit the appearance of other than white singers. And this was indeed opera’s norm for centuries, during which white audiences applauded white singers depicting Carmen, Delilah, Madame Butterfly and Othello.
But modern opera casts are surprisingly multi-racial (and multi-national). Modern audiences prize beautiful and powerful (unamplified) voices, and care not about the skin color of Mimi (a 19th century Parisian seamstress) or whether Romeo and Juliet “match.” And no surprise, unleashing the voices of ALL of the world’s singers has raised the vocal quality of opera from the world’s major companies to our little Madison. If they can sing, I boo the villains and mourn the deaths of brave young lovers with the same intensity that I did 50 years ago.
When race is entirely irrelevant to the plot (as in A Gentleman in Moscow), a fine black actor will make a fine Bolshevik apparatchik. As a moderate who believes in individual rather group identity, you might consider updating your artistic preferences, and stop automatically ascribing an occasional black Bolshevik to modern wokeness. (Only then will you be prepared to brave “Hamilton.”)
LikeLike
Good arguments. In fact, I’ve seen Shakespeare at APT with Black actors and never given it a second thought. So, why does it get under my skin (sorry) in this case? I think it’s because to deny Black actors roles in Shakespeare would be to deny them access to the center of English literature. To not use Black actors in a production like Gentleman is no big deal. There are plenty of roles in streaming series all over the place. There’s nothing special about Gentleman. It would have been no more troublesome not to use Black actors in this production then it would be not to use white actors in key roles in The Color Purple. As I wrote in my piece, this looks like an effort on the part of the producers to signal their virtue and nothing more.
LikeLike
Hollywood’s New Fantasy: A Magical, Colorblind Past
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/magazine/hollywood-movies-race-diversity.html?te=1&nl=from-the-times&emc=edit_ufn_20240427
LikeLike
Well, predictably some of your readership is purposely missing the point.
To reader J.C. , Russia is a really big place, stretching from Europe to China, and from Scandinavia to the Middle East and Central Asia. Because of this, actors of almost any ethnicity could credibly play a “Russian”. How about Hawaiian? Native American? Japanese? (all would be acceptable as Siberians/Mongols) Iranian? Egyptian? (Turk or Azerbaijani) Italians? (you get the idea) All of these groups reflect the faces you might see on the streets of 1920’s Moscow. A notable exception would be actors of Melanesian or Sub-Sahara African descent, as they bear no resemblance to any ethnic group in the country. Their presence would be confusing, and beg explanation.
As to J.C.’s comment on accents, he is spot-on about the use of Received Pronunciation in film. I suspect early foreign films were dubbed by English actors, and Hollywood liked it and ran with it. Accents in film just serve to differentiate between groups. It’s the actors job to produce them. The Romans all sound like BBC presenters, and the Visigoths all sound like English is a second language. All of this “goes down the loo” with distribution, when the film is dubbed into 20 or 30 languages. Thus, Caesar is speaking in Thai or Malay, (but, if played by a black actor he’s still black).
To Zeek500, When I was a kid in the 50’s, movies and TV were a subconscious window to the world. I learned that cowboys (even bad guys) dressed in starched and pressed shirts and pants. “Indians” said “How” a lot, spoke in a halting manner, and looked like white guys in make up. Chinese people squinted, showed their teeth, and said “Ah So”. And the Kentucky frontier looked a lot like the scrubby hills of Southern California. This, and so much more, was all false. Hollywood knew it and didn’t care. Now, 70 years later, Hollywood has made tremendous progress in authenticity when depicting the historical times, the people, and locations. But sometimes their desire for historical accuracy comes in direct conflict with their desire for diversity and inclusion. Like it or not, each and every one of us has casting roles that we are just not destined to play. White men should not play African slaves or Arapaho chiefs, just as black men should not play vikings or SS storm troopers, to do so strains credibility. Diversity and inclusion are admirable goals, but just “plugging” someone into improbable roles defies logic and can become a bit predictable, as in “I don’t know why you’re doing this, I just know that you will.” Humans are not getting any smarter. They, like the younger me, rely on the media too much to form their opinions and decide truth from fiction. Such people are more than willing to accept black vikings or Chinese storming the Bastille, or anything else you might consider inclusive or diverse. Does historical accuracy even matter, when you can just scrap it and feel good about yourself? I suspect we’ll find out.
LikeLike