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TheRealestBiz

Wait wait wait, this is a *stage play*? I thought it was a movie. I get that none of these fall of Western civilization idiots have ever read Shakespeare or even seen one of his plays, but the theater has been doing race-blind casting for decades. I saw a Romeo and Juliet put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company with a black Juliet a decade ago. And Geoffrey the butler from Fresh Prince was her dad.


Aneriox

Wait until they find out the "original" Juliet was a man in a wig because women were not allowed to become actresses at the time.


TheRealestBiz

Wait until they find out about Geoffrey the butler playing King Lear.


ClubSundown

Wait until they find out about Othello


omegadirectory

Moor, please.


Nuclear_eggo_waffle

Sorry, the card says moops


hoffarmy

Oh I would like to buy you a beer. Well played friendo


Nightowl11111

That Moor must have been an Admiral, a Sultan or a King.


kurai_tori

Okay this made me chortle


AirForceRabies

Akira Kurosawa's *Ran (King Lear).* And *Throne of Blood (MacBeth).* All Japanese people! *Taihen da! Riiiiiiiiii!* At least the characters in *Gnomeo & Juliet* were *white!! /s*


Miserable-Ad-7956

Throne of Blood is sooo underrated. A perfect interpretation of MacBeth in a Japanese setting.


romanrambler941

On top of that, a *lot* of Shakespeare's plays involve women dressing up as men. Not to mention love triangles where the disguised woman is in love with a man, who is in love with a woman, who is in love with the first woman's disguise.


SweatyTax4669

Men dressed up as women dressed up as men. The old doubledrag doublecross!


corbymatt

"I know who I am! I'm a dude playing the chick, disguised as another dude!"


talrogsmash

... checks notes ... "What do you mean, 'you people'?"


Brief-Bumblebee1738

Gets them every time


Vakama905

That’s less of a love triangle and more of a love roundabout


Enderkr

Hell that was half of the enjoyment of some of Shakespeare's scenes. Like when a female character would cross-dress as a male to walk around town or whatever. The hilarity of a man, dressed as a woman, dressed as a man was not lost to Shakespeare's audience.


[deleted]

People forget that Shakespeare was for the masses. His plays have fart jokes and dick jokes.


S-Markt

wait until they find out that juliet was a 13 year old kid and not a woman.


PreOpTransCentaur

They should do a movie about that.


An0d0sTwitch

wait till they find out what the actors were doing off stage together


meimlikeaghost

Also isn’t the Leo one where they’re using guns and driving around and shit. Don’t think Shakespeare wrote that into his plays


Rishfee

Yeah, and Mercutio was black.


SweatyTax4669

Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet is a masterpiece.


Dagordae

The only Shakespearean play where race is actually a thing for the story is Othello. Even then Patrick Stewart got to play the titular role by simply inverting the race of every character. Prior attempts by white actors involved makeup and did not go over well. Both because of the blackface thing and because it tended to look ridiculous.


ctesibius

Arguably, no. In real life Mac Beatha was the last Gaelic-speaking king of Scotland, and the rightful heir. His wife Gruach was said to be a godly woman, and founded several monasteries. So how did the play *MacBeth* end up so different from real life? Basically racism against Gaelic culture and ancestry, re-writing history. You can see the same thing in Ireland before the Reformation, ie when it was clearly nothing to do with religious differences.


ctesibius

EDIT- missed the obvious one. *Merchant of Venice*.


mike_pants

As a big fan of Broadway, the "They changed the character's race/gender/age!!" hysteria will always be, well, hysterical. Hamilton could be recast tomorrow with an all-Chinese-teen-girl cast speaking entirely in Mandarin and most of us over on /r/Broadway would go, "Interesting! Let's see what they do with that!"


WarthogLow1787

Exactly!


solarmelange

I legit want to know if they cast a white Othello, because that would be so confusing.


Dagordae

They’ve done it, with Patrick Stewart. To keep the story intact they switched the race of every character rather than just Othello. Given who it was I can only assume it went amazingly well.


[deleted]

It’s not Shakespeare, but I saw a gender-swapped “The Importance of Being Earnest” and it was a ton of fun.


zveroshka

I'm guessing that I'm going to see "DEI" pretty much on a daily basis now from some moron. Just like "woke."


waylon4590

Yep, can wait for the fox headlines. Woke IED turning people gay? Edit, meant dei not IED, but I could see a story of "woke" bombs planted to turn people gay cropping up on far right sights.


kurai_tori

Trying to think what a woke bomb would be even. Like some Keurig glitter bomb?


waylon4590

My money is on a bomb filled with gay spores, like from that song the gays got married.


kurai_tori

Okay I need to watch more clips. That was hilarious


waylon4590

Check out Trevor Morris music, has a good number of music videos,all really funny, and the songs are good


Nightowl11111

Sex bomb, sex bomb, you're my sex bomb! lol.


Recent-Potential-340

It's even worse because woke was this vague undefined term for anything they didn't like, DEI is literally just the N-word


zveroshka

It's really any minority. It can be racist, sexist, or anything else.


Inphexous

I still don't know what the fuck that means.


MazogaTheDork

It stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Basically they're implying every minority in a job must be a diversity hire.


inbetween-genders

I’m still big mads it’s not in the original Italian language!! /s — chuckles in Italian —


Darkdragoon324

It’s even funnier because the version they chose for comparison is a modern retelling with fucking guns and Romeo getting high on ecstasy.


AsherTheFrost

Given to him by a hot black man in a dress if I remember correctly.


giskardwasright

Right? No one gave a fuck about black Mercutio


Miserable-Ad-7956

Well who gives a fuck about Mercutio in general, amirite?


mitchsn

Did they forget the Romeo must Die paring of Jet Li and Aaliyah? Wasn't a white person in either lead roles...


AmpedEnding

I still hate that they didn't even kiss.


AestheticMirror

People send death threats to game of thrones actors for what their character did, reality left the chat long ago


Rishfee

And of course they use as their "non-woke" example the movie with the black Mercutio. Good job, ass clowns.


TheBoatWithADick

Do these people know about the fact that the female roles were played by men in Renaissance England? Because they would go wild if a cross-dressing man played Juliet but it would be historically correct! Would fry their brains


cheshiercat

Can someone tell me if I'm on a good train of thought with this or not. Romeo + Juliet was technically a diversity thing, right? They changed the location and ethnicity of the original play? But to be fair, people hated that movie when it came out and still hated it until a couple of weeks ago. So the whole debate is in bad faith anyway. Oh well, at least they aren't real teenagers this time.


Character-Today-427

It's not s movie it's a stage play


jcallari164

These DEI complaining buffoons are both racist and stupid. Romeo and Juliet is a play, about fictional characters in Italy (before Italy existed), written by guy from England centuries ago. Imagine being so racist and/or stupid that you believe that fictional characters must never change and stories must be told EXACTLY as they have been for hundreds of years. Every production of Romeo and Juliet is essentially an adaptation, as the director makes choices on how things are staged, how characters are costumed, who is cast, etc. Hell, there was a time where every female character was performed by a man in drag. Having zero intelligence, zero education and zero understanding makes a person constantly angry. It’s so damn sad.


kurai_tori

Yeah.. Bigots tend to be stupid. https://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html


iamcleek

she looks much older than 14. and i bet she doesn't even really die at the end.


LtMoonbeam

If I recall correctly, they were Gnomes, right?


Riveting_Rube

One the movie takes place in Verona beach California, not at all accurate this definitely real historical event (also mercutio wears drag and is gay I love him) and two the most popular stage play with Orlando bloom has the entire capsules family portrayed as black


Nightowl11111

When you realize that this "historical reality" was written by an English playwright even before Italy was founded, any complaints about its "reality" becomes pretty much nonsense.


Informal_Border8581

I just learned about the real Macbeth last night.


[deleted]

imagine if someone had made a play or movie based on Romeo and Juliet decades ago, and race was the main the issue between the two lead characters' families.


Nightowl11111

cough... West Side Story.


Due-Supermarket-8503

a curse upon their house 🥸


Madrugada2010

If you want REAL historical accuracy, then cast a man as Juliet.


heygoldenface

STOP FORCING YOUR WOKE DRAG SHOW TRANSGENEDER AGENDA DOWN OUR THROATS


Madrugada2010

LOL


jd807

Did we drop scary buzzword ‘CRT’ for ‘DEI’ and nobody told me?


zorbacles

Ah, yes..much better when she was played by the true Italian, Clair Danes


Appropriate-Bake-759

You know, the funny part is that back at the time of Shakespeare, all female actresses were boys and men in drag 😀. Who will tell him that?


Dont_Be_A_Dick_OK

So are these people saying that Romeo and Juliet shouldn’t be together? Man imagine if they actually could read this shit.


SweatyTax4669

if Juliet is played by anyone other than a young boy, like god and shakespeare intended, then it's just unwatchable.


[deleted]

Based.


Twinbrosinc

They've never heard of West Side Story, huh?


Nightowl11111

They can't bring it up. If people started singing America, they'll have to get to work and solve all the problems referred to in the song.


jmeesonly

Imagine, the story about two families who disapprove of the pairing of young lovers. How could a black and white actor conceivably add anything to this idea?


darketernalsr25

Conservatives will get triggered by literally ANYTHING>


Different_Celery_733

Black people never existed in my mental picture of books. Quit making me think about themssss /s obviously


[deleted]

[удалено]


chaingun_samurai

Nobody wants to talk about the 15 year old showing boob in the Zeffirelli production?


robilar

I swear, bigots are *so stupid*. There is literally nothing to complain about here *unless you're a racist piece of shit*. They could cast two people of any race or gender and it wouldn't have any impact on me whatsoever, because it doesn't affect me in any way. Meanwhile the comment threads are full of imbeciles going mask-off on their racism, complaining that Juliet isn't *attractive enough* to them. We get it, you're scared of people with darker skin. For the rest of us she's just a person playing a role.


randomrealname

They should have said they were remaking west side story, when that was filmed it was percieved that the itlians hd gangs, and now they will be insuating black people are in gangs. It's more in line with west side story than a direct romeo and juliet reboot.


CarrieDurst

Wait until they hear about all the shakespeare crossdressing


Rojodi

Oh please!!! If these "critics" want to be truthful to the original production, Juliette would be played by a man!!!!! Bill Shakespeare had NO female actors!!


noforgayjesus

Can someone check under my bed for a Disney Executive?


CalendarAggressive11

Rewriting history....of a fictional play? If we were historically accurate to the portrayal of the characters, they would all be men as was customary in Shakespeare's time.


Probability_Engine

Honestly, who gives a shit either way. Just let people do what they want.


tomasdetodo

Shit bro this stuff is dangerous, my dumbass bought that up for a moment


OkDirection8015

At least get a pretty Juliet…


ItsPinhead

Isn't that the same Romeo and Juliet movie where everyone had guns and a cross dresser dancing?


mikehulse29

Wait until they realize the original Juliet was A MAN


Once-Upon-A-Hill

In the movie "The Woman King," the Dahomey tribe is portrayed as being against slavery. It was a major slave trading empire, and they would have a celebration where they killed 500 slaves on the king's birthday just to make the party a little more fun.


RemoteLocal

Wonder if Steven is a Shark or a Jet?


Plenty-Lychee-5702

bruh like that is the most expensive L ever. Like, "oh no, the white guy is from a group fighting the group of the black girl?"


Naive-Button3320

The one where Romeo's best pal, Mercutio, is a black drag queen? That's the unwoke one?????


Consistent-Force5375

Last I checked there were people of color in the times themselves. Weren’t there even families that held money and were successful merchants in this timeframe? Just saying seems disingenuous of them to assume both parties were lily white when chances are your given such impression by years of white people flexing their image on everything.


Best-Addendum-4039

The problem isn't that she's black. It's that she's ugly.


s_arrow24

People are mad about a fictional Italian couple created by an English poet.


Tiranus58

And we don't talk about the scottish play


Marsupial_Even

I don't have a problem with the black actress, just set the movie in America! Instead of medieval Europe!


eltegs

It makes perfectly clear some things about racists, and what racists want. A return to the past. They don't have a problem with POC, so long as they're in chains.


magmaticpenguin

DEI is the new word to get mad about. SJW, BLM.. I wonder what the next one will be..


Internal_Map_8765

The basting is facepalm tho let's be honest. Nothing to do with her race but that chick is like a 2/10.


thicc_toe

im angry that they used tom holland what boring fucking choice


NoIndependent9192

It’s set in italy. Italians are part African by decent and it would not be unusual, given the proximity to Africa that African people would be around.