Here's Javi Grillo-Marxuach's tweet on the the new movie:

julie taymor's films are the movie equivalent of a gorgeous, erudite but very difficult companion who may leave the party with someone else.

The problematic effect has to do with a cultural history, as well as what Caliban means specifically in the play.

The problematic effect has to do with what I read as you calling Djimon bestial, to be precise.

The problematic effect has to do with what I read as you calling Djimon bestial, to be precise.

I didn't presume my comment was happening in a vacuum, but enjoined already in a long running discussion where the terms and issues of race-blind casting would be understood as given.

If not, I'll clarify: there's nothing bestial about Djimon. But the issue is with casting a black man as a half-human, demonic, rapey character.

mostly because black actors don't get a lot of opportunities to do Shakespeare on film

The solution to this is not to limit black actors to explicitly described-as-black-in-the-text characters, especially when those characters are based on 400 year-old harmful stereotypes.

I read it as the character Caliban being bestial. Did I miss something?

It's not like we're talking about a Kenneth Branaugh production here.

Hey, even he cast Denzel, and I don't recall anything in the text about Don Pedro being black. (Though I do wish Branaugh had been a little less expansive and restricted his casting choices in that film to people who can act—sorry, Keanu.)

I read it as the character Caliban being bestial.

I guess if you accept that Djimon being black has anything to do with it, sure. I may be oversensitive on the topic, but I have a major disconnect getting to anything past "other." Accepting the equation of casting him for bestial qualities (beyond his ability to play bestial--the implication is clearly something inherent here) is further than I'm comfortable going.

Oh, how I love Denzel in Much Ado! Just brilliant in the role--he's hilarious in the trapping-Benedict scene with Robert Sean Leonard, and then unexpectedly yearning when he asks Beatrice if she'd have him as a lover/husband.

Accepting the equation of casting him for bestial qualities (beyond his ability to play bestial--the implication is clearly something inherent here) is further than I'm comfortable going.

I did not read that in the comment.

The character in the play is a commentary on colonialism and slavery, and I think there's an argument to be made for putting that commentary up front and in the viewer's face.

ut I have a major disconnect getting to anything past "other." Accepting the equation of casting him for bestial qualities (beyond his ability to play bestial--the implication is clearly something inherent here) is further than I'm comfortable going.

To be more clear, I think Taymor is using the fact that he's the only black person in the cast to contrast him, and designate him as other in relation to the rest of the white cast. In short, she's exploiting his blackness.

Knowing her visual sense, I wouldn't doubt that some of that choice is an aesthetic one, a question of palette. Though casting a black man in that role (intentionally? thoughtlessly?) exploits cultural history that has more to do with Being Black than Being Caliban.