Cultural Appropriation.


Black and Asian actors in a retelling of an ancient Norse myth?

Shove it!

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This is a very racist thread. First of all, read more books. Nashid Al-amin wrote a good book proving that vikings were in fact, black! Also Romans were black too according to Don Jaide. Celts were also blacks. The original russians were black.

White people came much later in history and through war (how else) conquered the once peaceful black communities of northern europe. Learn your history folks.

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Total *beep* Leftist multicultural propaganda aimed for idiots. Do you believe every book you read? I live in scandinavia and believe me when I say that there's were no trace of black bloodlines, not stories about them here, until few decades ago when first migrants from Africa came.

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This doesn't take place in Scandinavia, or even in our reality. You can take issue with the show's creators for cynically appropriating elements of Beowulf in their completely invented world, but to assign some political motive to their casting choices is asinine. The biogeographic ancestry of Scandinavia has nothing to do with those of "The Shieldlands."

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Have some more propaganda for your brain - it's good for you. What a great suggestion sir.

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So... you can suspend your beliefs long enough to buy into the giant monsters running around, but not enough to see a black person.

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Okay.

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We all know that if this was based on a black African epic, that those who are playing down the Cultural Appropriation by claiming it's a fantasy show would be the first to scream 'whitewashing'.

"Damn you Weatherby Savings and loan, I spit at you!"

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I'm all for political correctness, but a black tribe in Scandinavia in prehistoric times is pushing it too far. It's like making a pre-colonial history drama of southern Africa and having a white tribe - imagine what kind of uproar that would give...

I'd let the Asian slave girl slide - slaves may have come from far away and the Mongolians actually came into Europe a few hundred years later.

My all time favorite shows: Buffy – Farscape – Dead Like Me – Babylon 5 - Fringe - BSG

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This doesn't take place in Scandinavia. It even says so in the show's title, probably in an (apparently futile) attempt to preempt complaints like yours. Denmark's population genetics are completely immaterial to the completely invented world in which the show takes place. The real problem is that the creators claimed that this show has much of anything to do with the original poem other than a handful of proper nouns in order to lure people in to watch it.

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Pssst.

Do you know any actors that have ever played Jesus of Nazareth to be Jewish?

Or Egyptians in Gods of Egypt? Or Greeks in the 300?

Friggin Gentile appropriating scabs.

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I also found it jarring. When I travelled through scandinavia I didn't see a large population of black and asian people even today, so finding a plethora of them in a Norse myth is deeply unrealistic.

Yes, I've heard all the arguments - as a student of greco-roman history, I am fully aware that the roman empire included many races, and when subsumed into the legions, they could be posted anywhere. Some would have settled. The romans encouraged their officials to marry into the local populace and so there was substantial integration, not to mention the inevitable interbreeding between the rank and file and camp followers which would have included plenty of local whores. The romans didn't conquer scandinavia,; they had contact through trade. It's unrealistic to suggest that this limited contact resulted in the relatively few black and indian people in the legions settling in scandinavia, and there's no evidence of a black jarl that I can recall, and no reference to peoples of other races in the beowulf legend itself (which is based on real people who actually lived in scandinavia. To correct others who have commented, the story is based in the late 5th century, not 8th to 11th (which is when it was actually written). I'm all for equality in the media, but not where it attacks the show's legitimacy; these guys were white, period. I have the same objections to a black Bond, a white Malcolm X, an indian Genghis Khan, a chinese Pakal the Great, etc. - it's just ridiculous.

However, despite these foolish casting choices in terms of accuracy for the history or legend, I don't feel it's reason enough to discount the show - let these things wash over you and tell yourself "It's just a TV show", and you can get down to enjoying the storyline.

Felt that characters could have been more involved, but at least they had different sides to their personalities (unlike World Without End which had the dullest one-dimensional range of characters I've ever seen on TV).

I'd welcome more of it.

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Didn't you know, it is ok for them to take and mock anything that has to do with white culture, but if white people do it to any other culture, then that is wrong and they get all upset about it and we have to spend the next 200 years apologizing for it.

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(((HOLLYWOOD)))

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