Swapping the Gender or Race of a Character in Fiction

[Harlock]

Something which seems to happen fairly often in fiction, particularly visual media, is taking an established character and swapping the race or gender. Maybe you are taking one of the most iconic characters in anime and getting Scarlet Johansson to play her, or you think Achilles should be a black man.

So does this work? Are there any examples where this has made a story better or improved on a character? Is it just quota filling or is there actual merit to diversifying pieces of fiction for a visual audience?

So does it work? Or is it always a failure?

 

[Darth Robbhi]

It depends on why.

I have seen lots of acting troupes cast actors of a different race or sex to play a role, usually due to who they have available. It works quite well. You’re only modifying lines to match the obvious, so you avoid most traps and pitfalls.

Now, when it comes to changing gender or race for story purposes, that really depends on what and why are you doing it. Are you transposing West Side Story to Compton? Are you taking a Western, putting in a female sheriff and seeing how the story plays out? Or are you taking an Oceans 8/Ghostbusters approach and going “see, we did it with women!”

The big danger with gender and race swaps are that you engage in tokenism, and reduce your characters to cardboard cutouts based solely on their race or sex, and not anything else. It’s essentially a sour spot, where you have changed what works somewhat, but not enough to create a deep, rich character that is more than their demographics.

It’s a lot more difficult to do than, say, create a new character because you have the serious temptation to make everything about race or gender.

 

[Big Steve]

The best example of this working, at least the best and most recent I can think of, is when the producers and creators of the CW series "The Flash' cast Jesse Martin as Det. Joe West. In the comics the Wests were Caucasian, but Martin's a skilled actor able to play the veteran cop (he spent years on Law & Order, you may recall, as Det. Ed Green). It's no surprise they went for him to play the role (and he has indeed played it well).

 

[Bear Ribs]

I agree with Darth Robbhi, it depends. Good quality can cover over a multitude of sins. The motivation of the person making the change matters in that, doing it for the wrong reasons will result in an inferior project.

More importantly you need to look at the underlying themes of the character and see if the change will interfere with those themes. Just for instance Nick Fury used to be white but now he's black, and it works, because skin color is irrelevant to Nick Fury's themes of being a badass, cunning agent running a crew of nearly-as-badass cunning agents. I went into some detail on SB about why black Batman doesn't work, Batman's themes rely on him having every possible advantage from being peak human and old money from one of the finest families in the world, and using it only to help others rather than benefit himself. Taking away some of Batman's privileges by making him a black woman who won the lottery reduces who Batman is. That's not to say a story about a Black woman who won the lottery and became a superhero wouldn't be worth reading, I'd go for it, but she doesn't need to be Batman.

Which speaking of, takes me to my next point, is there an already-existing female character that could fill that role better than the genderbent male? Female Thor makes me deeply suspicious* of the author's motives because if they wanted a badass female Asgardian Valkyrie, Sif, and Freya and standing right over there available. Do we need the Duke Brothers genderbent or can you just do a story about Daisy Duke being a badass driver on her own? I also grow suspicious when I see this call for changing the character and it seems that the one doing the calling only wants heroes being changed, with no calls going out for a Female Dick Dastardly or Asian Gargamel. Villains need love too?

*Didn't ever read it.

 

[Abhorsen]

I think an interesting side part to this is making characters gay. It works much better than the swap, because you can do it and keep the story going. It could be a character discovering something about themselves, or a character who had no romantic relationships suddenly acquiring one. A classic example of this is Willow from Buffy. She had a crush on Xander and dated Oz, before getting hit with the gay stick.

Race Swaps can also happen similarly, with a character revealing their race/learning about their ancestry, even long after being created. One good example is Magneto. He was created in 1963, but 'became' a Jewish Holocaust survivor in 1981. This really enhanced the character and made him sympathetic.

Other times superhero titles are inherited, such as the green lantern starting as a white guy, but being handed off to a black guy, or the various Captain Marvels.

 

[Darth Robbhi]

Bear Ribs gives an excellent example. A black woman who won the lottery and decides to use her wealth to fix up her neighborhood would be kickass. Even a black woman with the same background as Bruce Wayne (and there are black millionaires you could use as examples) taking over the mantle of Batman could be kickass if you focused on her motivations and especially how she as the Black Knight (Black Dame) interacts with the residents of Gotham and the legacy of Batman.

But that is a much harder story to write.

 

[Darth Robbhi]

I think an interesting side part to this is making characters gay. It works much better than the swap, because you can do it and keep the story going. It could be a character discovering something about themselves, or a character who had no romantic relationships suddenly acquiring one. A classic example of this is Willow from Buffy. She had a crush on Xander and dated Oz, before getting hit with the gay stick.

Race Swaps can also happen similarly, with a character revealing their race/learning about their ancestry, even long after being created. One good example is Magneto. He was created in 1963, but 'became' a Jewish Holocaust survivor in 1981. This really enhanced the character and made him sympathetic.

Other times superhero titles are inherited, such as the green lantern starting as a white guy, but being handed off to a black guy, or the various Captain Marvels.

Again, all good potential storylines, provided the creative team has the skills to navigate the pitfalls. That is especially important when working with an established character, because they have an established audience.

 

[Abhorsen]

Again, all good potential storylines, provided the creative team has the skills to navigate the pitfalls. That is especially important when working with an established character, because they have an established audience.

This. My real problem with woke media isn't that it's woke, it's that it's crap. The only time I recall getting annoyed with a fictional show for politics (that wasn't shoved down my throat, I file that under bad writing) was Jack Ryan season 2, where they said the problem with Venezuela was nationalism, and the solution was a closet socialist.

Honestly, Ocean's 8 wasn't that bad. It wasn't great, but not that bad either. And the remake was justified because Ocean's 11 was also a remake.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

Which speaking of, takes me to my next point, is there an already-existing female character that could fill that role better than the genderbent male? Female Thor makes me deeply suspicious* of the author's motives because if they wanted a badass female Asgardian Valkyrie, Sif, and Freya and standing right over there available.

They had the perfect human female to hand an Uru hammer too as well and her name is Orroro Munroe. Hell, she's earned the respect of Thor and stood side by side with him as they both hurled storms at Magneto's shields only for Eric to beat the absolute fuck out of both of them. He saw her in action, hell they bled together. And she was already associated with mysticism and weather deities.And she's a fucking warrior to boot. So it seems to me like it would be a no brainer choice for Thor had he wished to pass an Uru hammer onto a human and not an Asgardian female. Granted I'm glad they didn't, given the shitty politics and infantile personality of the writer who handled FemThor.

Race Swaps can also happen similarly, with a character revealing their race/learning about their ancestry, even long after being created. One good example is Magneto. He was created in 1963, but 'became' a Jewish Holocaust survivor in 1981. This really enhanced the character and made him sympathetic.

That reminds me of the rumor going around about Denzel playing Magneto. And it gaining a shitload of heat from everyone and their mother and I remember thinking, you could make it work. You'd have to give Eric powers closer to his comic counterpart, for whom extreme old age shouldn't really be that much of a limiter given he once rebuilt his body as it was being descorporated. You could basically make Denzel a former slave, maybe as a nod to his Glory role, he's an ex slave who started out hating whites and then ended up with the mindset we saw towards the end where he was like "White, black this is on both of us" maybe he survives a battle because his powers activated and he was able to "fix" himself by creating an EM field that kept the blood from becoming infected. Have the guy start out, maybe as a proto hero. But over time he sees everyone fail, grows disillusioned with humanity and decides to withdraw.

He has his first run in with other mutants, say in the Spanish American War era, maybe he meets Wolverine or Sabertooth and the thought of there being others out there like him causes him to maybe play around with his own energy fields and he ends up restoring his youth and he goes out into the world again but by the end of the second world war he believes mutants are as lost as the rest...until he meets Xavier in the 70's or 80's? A mutant counterculture activist who actually inspires him to get off his ass and he wades back into the fray but this time he decides to be the cynical voice on the dudes shoulder and overtime they have an ideological rift which brings us to current "MCU" era X men.

It's not..perfect, but at least it would keep Eric's "Never again" mindset and explain why he's so zealous without the holocaust motiff. Because he's seen a dozen generations come and go and burn their opportunities. He's nearing two hundred years of age and is too tired to be patient and kind and nice..Results need to happen now, no matter the cost, mutants can't afford to become like their parent species..yadda yadda/


No studio would take a risk like this though

Which is why a lot of gender and race swapping happens and why it's so dumb. It's about pandering and sanctimonious morons pushing their garbage beliefs on an audience they believe is as infantile as they are and needs to be lectured.

 

[Darth Robbhi]

Or it’s seen as being edgy and new but not having to take creative risks, since they think you can change a character’s demographics the way you would change costumes. They don’t understand how hard the rewrite is to make it not a cardboard cutout.

Which, frankly, is a pretty common approach for a modern, risk adverse studio. They’re in love with remaking existing stuff with just slight edits to tap an existing audience. Creating new stuff is a lot riskier.

 

[Emperor Tippy]

If you are casting a character as another gender, race, sexuality, or religion for woke points then it is going to suck; at least it has every single time that it has been tried so far.

If you are doing a "What if?" to explore how much of a characters story is independent (or dependent on) their gender/race/sexuality/religion then it can be good.

If you are casting a character that doesn't have their gender/race/sexuality/religion as a core part of their character and an individual auditions for the role who seems great for it (Jackson for Fury, for example) then don't let changing the characters gender/race/sexuality/religion be a hangup.

I mean take a historical movie about the US's Revolutionary War. Could you cast George Washington as a black women? No, it doesn't matter who the actress was or how great the script was - it simply does not work.

Now, say, could you cast a black women as President in a movie set in the 80's? Sure. You could even tell an engaging story about the challenges that she had to overcome and her rise to that position.

---
For comic books, it depends a lot on the individual. I mean could Tony Stark have been a women? Easily. Could Black Panther have been a women? Again, easily. Could Captain America have been a black man? No, a black man could have been selected by Erskine and performed the military role but a black man would have never become the propaganda piece that is Captain America; WW2 US just wouldn't allow it.

Could you re-image Captain America as a black man in a modern setting? Absolutely. Have Erskine and the Super Soldier program be a post 9/11 thing with the goal of producing a better spec ops soldier.

Could Thor be a women? No, it doesn't work.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

Adding to Tippys point. Isiah Bradley exists and he sure as hell wasnt gonna be Captain America. Same for Nick Fury in Ultimate Marvel.

Bradley himself is such a missed opportunity. What a great MCU villain he would have made. Say he ends.up with a wolverine like healing factor at the cost of his mental faculties. So instead of a really strong but physically frail centenarian you get a dude in his late thirties to mid forties.

Hydra uses the scepter to try and mind slave him and his healing factor uses the energies to correct his mind.

He wakes up, he realizes the world is still a complete mess, the bad guys "won" by losing and the guy who he sacrificed his mind for ends up some glory hound has been leading a team of superman and placing the planet in even more danger?

He gets pissed and takes over Hydra and engineers the events of winter soldier to get revenge and Ciivil War and Avengers 2 are just his blackpilled desire to burn it all down?

Cast Will Smith and print money? But naw going that requires admitting that minorities that can be just as vindictive and extreme as whitey I guess?

Which is one of the problems with race and gender lifts. You end up dismissively infantilizing the demographic you wanna appeal too by catering to the woke mob.

 

[Abhorsen]

Could Thor be a women? No, it doesn't work.

Ironically, Loki ( or even Odin) being a woman actually works pretty well, given Norse Mythos. It's like the wokeness was trying to be bad, so it found the one person that it shouldn't genderbend, and went with that.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

Loki turned into a female horse because his dad needed to breed a demigod arachnohorse for a war steed.

Loki turning into a hot chick is the least bizarre thing that motherfucker has done

 

[Navarro]

Race Swaps can also happen similarly, with a character revealing their race/learning about their ancestry, even long after being created. One good example is Magneto. He was created in 1963, but 'became' a Jewish Holocaust survivor in 1981. This really enhanced the character and made him sympathetic.

This has however created a new problem as time has gone on - he's becoming too old for him to be plausible as an action character.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

This has however created a new problem as time has gone on - he's becoming too old for him to be plausible as an action character.

Honestly the only thing keeping Magneto from giving himself eternal youth is the lack of imagination from the writers.

The dudes come back from being converted into energy a few times, even fucked with his own soul and slowed his aging via serums before.

Magneto is kind of a diet soda Herald level character....There's a lot he can do that his writers just forget.

 

[S'task]

A classic example of this is Willow from Buffy. She had a crush on Xander and dated Oz, before getting hit with the gay stick.

I honestly think this is actually a terrible example of what you're talking about. The issue is twofold. The first is that they decided, despite previous history, that gay/straight were a binary switch, that despite her previous clear attraction to and involvement with men, that that was no longer actually the case. From the "LBGT" perspective, this is actually "bi-erasure" and while I normally shy away from using the language of that group, in this case it is entirely accurate as it flew in the face or prior character establishment.

The second problem here is that... well... sexuality changing Willow ended up putting her on a very dark path. She quite literally ended up mind controlling her partner (Tara) in order to get her to stay with her. It really wasn't a good example of this idea being done well.

All that said, I actually have a lot of issues with sexuality swapping characters because it tends to just be done for one of two reasons: to virtue signal about how progressive a work is, or for explicit fanservice. In point of fact, the prevalence of LGBT characters in fiction has led to a major issue in public discourse in that people tend to think LGBT people are more common than they are in real life (by a factor of ~5). This then ends up causing very real issues in that it causes people to overestimate the impact of laws and activities on LGBT individual (for instance, there's a HUGE difference between if you think a cake shop could be refusing service to 1 in 4 people rather than 1 in 20 and thus how important it is to force them to "Bake the Cake") and thus how society should balance the right to free association against anti-discrimination ideals.

Thus I disagree that it's overall "harmless" to sexuality swap a character if their sexuality isn't a core component of their story. Over-abundance of LGBT characters in fiction appears to have directly created a false perception that is leading to laws and lawsuits that are oppressive to others.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

Thus I disagree that it's overall "harmless" to sexuality swap a character if their sexuality isn't a core component of their story. Over-abundance of LGBT characters in fiction appears to have directly created a false perception that is leading to laws and lawsuits that are oppressive to others.

Laws and Lawsuits that have inadvertently (Or perhaps deliberately) allowed cases of child sexual abuse to skyrocket while simultaneously going underreported.

It's cheap ratings bait and executed lazily and thoughtlessly. I'm tacitly okay with it, so long as you make a point as a director or writer of highlighting what you just said in some way or the other.

 

[Spartan303]

As a Rule I generally don't favor Gender and Race Swaps because it usually IS done for Tokenism. Swap out White Superman for Black Superman, Libs cheer (Its so progressive!!!). Then, say, swap out a Blackman who is Black Panther for a White guy (Libs Seethe with Rage!!!). Sometimes its done to be sensitive to a culture and or group, but then thats usually pandering too.

Gender Swaps absolutely annoy me. Take BSG and NBSG. I loved the Original Starbuck. He was cool, charismatic and just a guy you'd love to hang out with and play cards with...better bring your A-game to that card game though. NBSG Starbuck....*Deep Sigh* I never liked her. Infact to this day I'm at best ambivalent and at worst I just loathed the character. There were at times I felt I could understand her and there were hints of redeeming qualities here and there...then they went full retard with her being an Angel of God....WTF....just..no.

And pretty much all the Gender swaps, especially as of the last few years have been as bad if not worse. So much so I feel bile in my throat every time they announce a new one.

Have you guys checked out Gotham High? Holy God, what a shitshow that absolutely shits all over everything about Batman. And it does so using Race swapping and I'm sure Gender swapping at some point. But this is what Gender and Race swapping gets you. Most of its crap with maybe one or two decent examples.

 

[Abhorsen]

I honestly think this is actually a terrible example of what you're talking about. The issue is twofold. The first is that they decided, despite previous history, that gay/straight were a binary switch, that despite her previous clear attraction to and involvement with men, that that was no longer actually the case. From the "LBGT" perspective, this is actually "bi-erasure" and while I normally shy away from using the language of that group, in this case it is entirely accurate as it flew in the face or prior character establishment.

This point is totally accurate, but I don't really expect perfection from a show from the 90's/early 00's.

The second problem here is that... well... sexuality changing Willow ended up putting her on a very dark path. She quite literally ended up mind controlling her partner (Tara) in order to get her to stay with her. It really wasn't a good example of this idea being done well.

First, I think it's probably a good thing to show an abusive lesbian relationship, because abuse in the LGBT is very high (higher than straight couples).

Second, it wasn't the sexuality change that did this to her. It was the magic abuse. If the writers had gone with the option of Xander being gay, I bet Willow still would have gone evil.

All that said, I actually have a lot of issues with sexuality swapping characters because it tends to just be done for one of two reasons: to virtue signal about how progressive a work is, or for explicit fanservice. In point of fact, the prevalence of LGBT characters in fiction has led to a major issue in public discourse in that people tend to think LGBT people are more common than they are in real life (by a factor of ~5). This then ends up causing very real issues in that it causes people to overestimate the impact of laws and activities on LGBT individual (for instance, there's a HUGE difference between if you think a cake shop could be refusing service to 1 in 4 people rather than 1 in 20 and thus how important it is to force them to "Bake the Cake") and thus how society should balance the right to free association against anti-discrimination ideals.

I'd disagree with the prevalence of them. First, gays aren't evenly distributed, as we tend to clump together. I mean in my friend group, made largely out of work friends and roomates, has 6 guys. I'm bi, another is gay, and the rest are mostly straight. That gives a 1/3rd chance of gayness in a movie about my current life.

In addition, on broadcast TV, about 6.4% of characters were LGBT, which seems about in line with the ~5%ish figure I use as a rule of thumb.