^Sunny, I'm all for new writing for a much more diverse cannon of characters
But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be more diverse casting in the cannon that we have now.
So if people want to object to a lack of non-white diversity in the casting of an array of roles (particularly of all principle roles in a particular production) that lend themselves to diverse non-white casting (to my mind, most roles do - with the exception of roles for which demographic identification of the actor as white is necessary because of the theme and or critical concept of the show) it's certainly a valid objection. And it may very well be a completely valid objection when it comes to the casting of all the priincipals (principles? I always confuse them particularly when autocorrect doesn't allow the first spelling) of Evita. Just as much as it might well be a valid objection to the wholesale casting of all white principles in, for instance, Hello, Dolly or Anything Goes.
But that wasn't at all my reading of the original post of this thread. Or at least of the original poster's main point.
My reading of that post's main point was a simple and valid debunking of the idea, held by some, that Evita, Peron, Che and Magaldi MUST absolutely be played by actors of partly Amerindian ancestry because the characters being Argentine must somehow be partly Amerindian (in that they are people whose ancestry is a mix of indigenous and European, indigenous and African, or indigenous, European and African roots).
To me the idea the original poster sought to undermine is worthy of debunking. It's an idea about as persuasive as arguing that any U.S. character should be played by an actor with Native American ancestry. The arguments are equally flawed because, as in the 20th Century United States, the population of 20th Century Argentina was made up mostly -- by leaps and bounds - of people whose ancestry is Eastern Hemisphere immigrant, rather than Western Hemisphere native.
The Amerinidian population of Argentina is only about 2.4% of that nation's demographic - much lower than the Amerindian or Mestiza populations of a great many other Latin American countries.
Very few Argentines have native South American ancestry. Tragically, unlike in other large parts of Latin America, the population of Argentines with Native American roots is extremely low. Because, and hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong on this, most of the native population of Argentina (as well as Chile) was killed off by the colonists.
Like the United States, Argentina and Chile have a pervasively tragic history of genocide of native peoples that is somewhat distinguishable (though of course far from entirely distinguishable, alas) from, say, the histories of Peru and Mexico.
The great majority of Argentines are of European ancestry - including descendants of very large immigrant communities of Spanish, Italians, Basques, French, Germans, Eastern Europeans and Jews.
True, there has been a significant immigration of Amerindian and Mestizo people into Argentina in recent times. But this wave of immigration - mostly from Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay - occurred well after Eva Peron's death.
The characters in EVITA are of course Latin American, and in that sense (which as I understand it is the only semantic sense) they are Latinos (which, to my understanding, means being from a Latin American country or having familial roots from a Latin American country - and is not a term confined to Latin Americans with Amerindian ancestry).
However the principle characters - especially the historical characters Evita and Juan - have ancestries which - unless we go back countless millenia to Africa, as all our roots do - are ethnically European (even if don't necessarily consider Che to be based on the Spanish and Irish Argentine, Che Guevara... though in many productions, the identification of Che with Guevara is not played up... Che is still a 20th Century Argentine, so would most likely have had European ancestry. No one, clearly, had any objection to Banderas as Che and, newsflash, Antonio Banderas is a European!. And the great majority of Argentines have European heritage - including, if I'm not mistaken, Elena Roger. If I recall correctly, Roger is mostly of French (shades of her Piaf) and Italian descent. And, it might well be worth adding, she certainly looks like she's of French and Italian descent.
Not to suggest that there's anything remotely wrong with an Argentine actress (of any racial or ethnic background) playing Evita. Far from it!
But the idea that there's anything particularly or especially like a whitewash in casting an American actress of European descent as Evita is rubbish.
Which, again, is not to suggest that the objection to the casting of all European Americans as the principles in your average show, Evita included, is an invalid objection. But it's a very different kind of objection that might posit that casting white Americans of European descent as Evita, Che, Magaldi, and Juan is tantamount to, for instance, casting white Americans of European descent as Bess, Crown, Sportin' Life and Porgy.
Updated On: 9/15/17 at 12:46 PM
