White actors to no longer voice non-white characters

as far as "would be like going to Japan and expecting more white and black VAs in anime." yes this should absolutely be happening too. It'll likely be much more difficult true because of the nature of Japan and it's culture, but having POC roles in anime is not a bad thing nor is it something that should be viewed as unobtainable
Some of the best acting performances in anime localization I've ever heard have come from POC voice actors... from Mela Lee to Johnny Yong Bosch to Cynthia Martinez to Beau Billingslea to Stephanie Sheh. That's a market that's long overdue for more diversity in casting but those that have been afforded the opportunity to flourish have done so exceptionally well.
 
The state of this forum. Jeez. I very much welcome differing opinions but the childish name calling and nonsense on display throughout this thread. This forum used to be a place where The Simpsons staff would secretly log on and see what the true fans of the show were thinking - genuinely would have no idea why they'd bother. Half of you are like a bunch of 13 year olds. No wonder I, as well as the other long time posters went years ago - forgetting our passwords and having to start new accounts.

Regarding the topic at hand. I think this decision asks more questions than it answers.

Such questions as - So we've established it's not acceptable for white people to comedically voice people of colour. Can straight people comedically voice gay characters? Can atheists or people from certain religions, comedically voice other people who belong to other religions? Can incredibly rich white people comedically voice lower working class people? I don't see how you can agree with the PoC move and not agree with the above. All of the above have suffered throughout history with oppression and there's still many examples of said oppression occuring today. So surely, we should apply the same rules?

I feel in recent years, the small minority which have access to the most power regarding culture (Far left) are no longer being offended by racism. They're being offended by things which remind them of racism. Hank Azaria voicing Apu is not racist. IF they brought in specific actors to voice every other nationality in the world except Apu, then yes - you could argue it's racist. OR if every Springfieldian was smart, ethical and wonderful - except from nasty Apu... then yes, again - a much better case for racism.

But no, Hank Azaria voicing Apu isn't racist. But what it does, is remind people of actual racism from the past. In the same way that Jimmy Fallon dressing up as his friend Chris Rock and wearing blackface - is not racist. I know, there's a part of a few of you now, screaming inside going 'WTF?!?!? B-b-b-but B-b-b-blackface!!!' but it's not. It just reminds you of racism. Because 50/60/70 years ago people did indeed wear blackface and were being actually racist. Also, how long do you want this ban to go on for? In 2820... should white people still be villified if they impersonate a black person? I want to know if it has an expiry date. Because usually offense does. If I made a joke about a victim of the Holocaust I'd be fired but if i made a joke about a tortured gladiator from the Roman empire, that wouldn't raise an eyebrow. I could rape the skull of a dead soldier from the Boar war, and nobody would mind. So yeah, when can we progress from this 'progressiveness'? Just asking.

So 2020... this is how progressive we are... we get offended by things which aren't offensive but remind us of something that offended us. And anybody who disagrees with this shall be cancelled, fired, de-platformed. This is incredibly dangerous. This will firstly tear apart art... because we can't create art in a culture which bans things which reminds us of actually horrible things. Because everything has to capacity to remind somebody of something that offends them. If 'reminding' is all it takes. It will then rip into society and I will not be surprised if you see racism on the rise. Trump will get another 4 years and the people on the left will be asking themselves "Huh? Why didn't they join our side after we consistantly silenced them, told them they're racist, sexist, homophobic, took away their TV shows and attempted to get them fired from their jobs? What's wrong with them??" ... does the left really think this is the smartest approach to reconciliation? It keeps making the same mistakes, not just in the states but worldwide, and it's reaction is not to learn from it's errors... but to double down on them harder and harder. I've never seen a more facist movement within western society in my lifetime.

Buuut anyhoo... as JJ said previously. If I were starting a new animated show today, I would hire black voice talent because I would want authentic sounding black characters. Although, going down this path does eventually lead to... 'okay, well are you also going to hire Asian voice talent?' 'And what about South Asian? And Latino? And Eastern European? And Middle East? etc. etc. You then begin to eat away at the art of voice acting and impersonations/impressions.

We will soon see The Simpsons having to hire a genuinely stupid hick to voice Cletus. And let me tell you, he'd have more right to be offended than any Indian has to the character of Apu. Hari the comedian said his childhood involved being teased, bullied and being called Apu. Does he genuinely believe, I want to sit him down and ask him this, does he genuinely believe that if Apu was voiced by an Indian since 1990... that those bullies would have left him alone and not seen any kind of connection? If a Chinese kid gets bullied and is called Jackie Chan when growing up... what do we do? Ban Jackie Chan? "Sorry, Jackie you have to go."
 
We will soon see The Simpsons having to hire a genuinely stupid hick to voice Cletus. And let me tell you, he'd have more right to be offended than any Indian has to the character of Apu. Hari the comedian said his childhood involved being teased, bullied and being called Apu. Does he genuinely believe, I want to sit him down and ask him this, does he genuinely believe that if Apu was voiced by an Indian since 1990... that those bullies would have left him alone and not seen any kind of connection? If a Chinese kid gets bullied and is called Jackie Chan when growing up... what do we do? Ban Jackie Chan? "Sorry, Jackie you have to go."

Yeah, I agree with this. If Apu had been esentially the same character but voiced by an Indian guy, with the accent and everything (like, say, Raj in The Big Bang Theory) I think the results would have been simmilar and the bullies would have acted in the same vein. Maybe if Apu hadn't had any accent at all or if they have given him another job which played against the stereotype, then it would have been a bit different, though bullies usally find any excuse. Strangely enough, maybe I am not recalling everything right but I don't remember that Hari talked too much in the documentary about what I'd consider Apu's most potentially "racist" trait, the fact that he usually tricks Homer and other costumers into buying passed away food. I'm not sure if they gave him this trait because he's an inmigrant or they would have included that for any convenient store character but I can see people mistrusting the Indian dependent in the convenient store because of this stereotype. Maybe the documentary doesn't make a big deal about that cause most bullies are simpletons and they just make jokes about superficial things like "funny accents" and not other subliminal messages.

I personally think the writers could have invited Kondabolu or other Indian comedian to write some Apu centered episodes. I'm not sure if Kondabolu specifically is an extremely funny comedian but I don't think he would have made it worse than some of the awful scripts the regular staff had written and it would have solved the question about what Hari Kondabolu specifically wanted for the character which I didn't quite get from the documentary. Incidentally I remember them talking about 'Much Apu About Something' and Utkarsh Ambudkar's role in it. I'm not remembering that episode perfectly but I thought it was at least an small attempt of touching the subject of Apu being stereotyped and Jay being different. I thought they were being a little nitpicky and overly critical about that episode in the documentary.
 
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Hope the new actors sound like the characters at least. Thankfully most people agree this is an unecessary descion. Hope this doesn't set a trend. There's a VO YouTuber I watch who isn't white nor black and I wonder if he'll be restricted to his specific race in his career going forward.
 
I'd say go woke go broke but the show has been dead for years and this kind of shit is just hammering more nails into the coffin.

Anyway, Phil LaMarr, who has voiced many white characters and a Japanese character, on voice acting:

GRJ56my.jpg
 
lol, the whole point of this trend is to finally give poc more roles in voice acting, something that has only been slowly rising for the past few years, no one is claiming hank playing Carl is racist they are saying roles like that should be given to more black VAs, obviously same with other races and ethnicities, simps has already shown the worst case scenario this can come to with recasting akira, not to mention cookie kwans racist ass voice
 
You sound like a petulant dipshit when you complain about a voice actor leaving a show on his accord. No one got fired. OH NO THINGS ARENT THE SAME AS THEY WERE AS WHEN I WAS A CHILD. grow up loser
 
But Phil also took the role of an Asian character, an even more under-represented group than blacks. So him saying that voices have no race, and then also having this opinion, just makes him a hypocrite as well
 
Or his opinion got more nuanced over time... shocking I know some people actually attempt to grow as people
 
Ok but my point is you can't be against a white person voicing an under represented group and then be ok with a black voicing an even more under represented group

It's hypocritical lol
 
I was glad the show addressed Apu and retired the character. I was glad they got Kevin Michael Richardson to voice newer black characters (which is a win-win because they could've just decided to only have new white characters, but they're creating more diversity, which is a good thing). But this is a bit trickier. When we talk about Dr. Hibbert, we're talking about a character who parodies a specific character. It's more about the spoofing Bill Cosby himself than making a comment on race. Lou's voice originated in an imitation of Sylvester Stallone.

Such questions as - So we've established it's not acceptable for white people to comedically voice people of colour. Can straight people comedically voice gay characters? Can atheists or people from certain religions, comedically voice other people who belong to other religions? Can incredibly rich white people comedically voice lower working class people? I don't see how you can agree with the PoC move and not agree with the above. All of the above have suffered throughout history with oppression and there's still many examples of said oppression occuring today. So surely, we should apply the same rules?

Some of that is problematic if, say, a straight person decides to use a stereotypical gay voice for the sake of comedy. There's no stereotypical Buddhist voice to create the problem of an atheist or a Christian actor playing a Buddhist.

So 2020... this is how progressive we are... we get offended by things which aren't offensive but remind us of something that offended us. And anybody who disagrees with this shall be cancelled, fired, de-platformed. This is incredibly dangerous. This will firstly tear apart art... because we can't create art in a culture which bans things which reminds us of actually horrible things. Because everything has to capacity to remind somebody of something that offends them. If 'reminding' is all it takes. It will then rip into society and I will not be surprised if you see racism on the rise. Trump will get another 4 years and the people on the left will be asking themselves "Huh? Why didn't they join our side after we consistantly silenced them, told them they're racist, sexist, homophobic, took away their TV shows and attempted to get them fired from their jobs? What's wrong with them??" ... does the left really think this is the smartest approach to reconciliation? It keeps making the same mistakes, not just in the states but worldwide, and it's reaction is not to learn from it's errors... but to double down on them harder and harder. I've never seen a more facist movement within western society in my lifetime.

Buuut anyhoo... as JJ said previously. If I were starting a new animated show today, I would hire black voice talent because I would want authentic sounding black characters. Although, going down this path does eventually lead to... 'okay, well are you also going to hire Asian voice talent?' 'And what about South Asian? And Latino? And Eastern European? And Middle East? etc. etc. You then begin to eat away at the art of voice acting and impersonations/impressions.

You raise some great points. There's the issue of wanting more diversity in our actors (because it's important to reflect the diversity of the world we live in and to give more opportunities to minorities,) and there's the issue of not being offensive and being on the wrong side of history (a problem which, if addressed, can limit and negatively affect art) when looking at shows that have been around for decades.
 
But Phil also took the role of an Asian character, an even more under-represented group than blacks. So him saying that voices have no race, and then also having this opinion, just makes him a hypocrite as well

I loved that show and Phil voiced the character with depth and heart.
 
Not happy with this. The point in voice acting is to not be yourself. It's more racist to restrict someone to a character of their ethnicity or race.
 
They don’t have a freaking Cheeto doing the voice of trump in Our Cartoon President and the cuck left wing media has been silent about that????
 
Since this thread has been such a mess I've been a little reluctant to post, but I'd still like to share my somewhat brief opinion.

I actually don't mind them doing this. I actually welcome it since I think it is a good idea, but to think it took this long for them, let alone anyone in the animation industry, to even consider this is weird (for example, I'm reminded of the stop-motionfilm 'Kubo And The Two Strings' was set in an Asian world and has Asian characters, yet pretty much everyone was voiced by a white person, such as Charlize Theron & Matthew McConaughey in two prominent roles, while the two Asian actors George Takei & Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa only got minor bit parts; that was just an odd decision and kinda bizarre in a sense. I think I even mentioned this in the thread for the film).

There is a lot of great more or less known non-white voice actors and actresses out there (some that have popped up in recent years and have done some great voicework) so to give them a chance to step forward and get more work is a great idea and I hope they'll pick some suitable ones that can fit as the various affected characters on this show (plus I hope this can mean some of the neglected ones such as Kumiko, who hasn't been allowed to be an actual character but an accessory to Comic Book Guy, to get much more to say and do). Most modern animation follow this casting rule so there is not really a reason for 'The Simpsons' not to do so as well.

I can understand why some are upset about the decision, but I understand why the decision has been made and to me it just feels like an natural decision (albeit maybe coming a few years too late after some more or less notable whitewashing incidents).
 
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I Think in a way that it's great that they're taking another step forward to stopping racism, but I just don't think the characters will ever feel the same as they used to. But still, I'm happy for the new voice of Carl.
 
I think Kevin Michael Richardson might voice Dr. Hibbert during Season 32, because Harry Shearer's Dr. Hibbert impression kinda sounds similar to Kevin Michael Richardson anyways
 
this was a fantastic way to suck the oxygen out of the room during one of the biggest moments of social upheaval in the past 50 years. virtually nothing was accomplished, but at least a few ancient cartoons replaced their voice actors when nobody on the planet asked them to.
 
I Think in a way that it's great that they're taking another step forward to stopping racism, but I just don't think the characters will ever feel the same as they used to. But still, I'm happy for the new voice of Carl.
To be fair, let's hear what the characters sound like.
Can you really tell the difference between:
...Russi Taylor's and Grey DeLisle's versions of Martin?
...Marcia Mitzman Gaven's and Maggie Roswell's versions of Helen Lovejoy and Miss Hoover?
...Tress MacNeille's Lunchlady "Dora" and Doris Grau's Lunchlady Doris?
I can think of one person on the cast that won't mind actor changes; Nancy Cartwright - she replaced Christine Cavanaugh as Chuckie on Rugrats.
 
don't forget new cartoons. thank god Central Park recast after only one season. now i can just watch season 2 if i wanna end racism.
 
To be fair, let's hear what the characters sound like.
Can you really tell the difference between:
...Russi Taylor's and Grey DeLisle's versions of Martin?
...Marcia Mitzman Gaven's and Maggie Roswell's versions of Helen Lovejoy and Miss Hoover?
...Tress MacNeille's Lunchlady "Dora" and Doris Grau's Lunchlady Doris?
I can think of one person on the cast that won't mind actor changes; Nancy Cartwright - she replaced Christine Cavanaugh as Chuckie on Rugrats.

For me, I can partly tell the changes between Martin, but not on the others.
 
You can tell a clear difference between all of those except Doris(a) because it's just a grovely old lady voice. And Maggie is a baby.
 
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