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Forum - View topicINTEREST: Requiem of the Rose King Stage Play Casts Female, Male Actors to Portray Intersex Protagon
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Cardcaptor Takato
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Was it really that hard for them to just hire an intersex or non-binary actor? I'm sure they exist in Japan too.
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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While I agree that this is a fairly cringey decision (although I confess I fully expected something like this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ considering both mainstream Japanese sensibilities, and also what happens in the manga, one of the reasons I ended up being deeply disappointed in it) I'm not sure if an intersex/non-binary actor would be in line with the character. That is, Richard is not simply intersex in a way that's just an additional aspect of his character, it's one of his central traits that is the source of much of the drama, it affects a lot of his personality, his angst, his decisions, etc. And it's not exactly treated in a way that is in line with current progressive sensibilities, and I don't mean this in a "hurr hurr woke agenda vs pure japanese traditions wharlgarbl" way, it's just that sometimes his gender is not handled in a particularly sensitive and progressive way. There's this whole thing about (spoilers for second arc of the manga) spoiler[coding him more feminine when Buckingham is involved, including wearing female clothes more often, remarks on becoming more feminine once he and Buckingham start boning, the manga basically turning into a trashy TL romance complete with pregnancy scare/temptation, and so on and so forth]. So honestly, this character and this story aren't really meant to be intersex/non-binary representation, nor it is, I think, a good vehicle for it. (Of course, in my experience these stage adaptations tend to be "inspired by" rather than "based on" the source material, so who knows. But source material aside, it seems to me they're planning to go all out with some sort of "oh the duality of genders! should I be a man consumed by ambition, or a woman consumed by love!!!" drama.) (ETA: edited for typos) Last edited by SHD on Wed Apr 20, 2022 3:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Maybe it's that I don't know anything about this title or series, but referring to this character as intersex doesn't seem appropriate for someone who needs to be played by two different people. If they have 2 forms (a male and female) that doesn't make them intersex. If they appear as one sex in reality and another as an imaginary or self-perceived persona (hence another actor), that's still not intersex. It just seems like whoever is calling this character intersex kinda needs to brush up on their LGBTQ terminology before they start producing a show with one.
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Pssst, Google is your friend - there are no two forms involved, it's a single character who is, in fact, intersex with both male and female reproductive organs and all that, although he regards himself as male (spoiler[usually, anyway]). I assume they decided to separate him into a male and a female "form" in this stage play because they're planning to lay into, and wildly exaggerate, this "duality". |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Thank you SHD for compensating for my reluctance to use google to research this character and title in the first place. I was somewhat curious why the article, being that Richard is the protagonist, didn't include a synopsis of the story. That's usually there so I guess I figured I should only be familiar with this character (and details such as whether they are actually intersex) if I was familiar with the series or associated works.
That's my [lame] excuse anyway 
Last edited by P€|\||§_|\/|ast@ on Wed Apr 20, 2022 8:13 am; edited 1 time in total |
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IG
Posts: 60 |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2948 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Intersexuality is about as rare as red hair.
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BonusStage
 Posts: 307 |
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Well, intersexuality is a very broad term that encompasses many different birth abnormalities ranging from benign to very life-impacting. If we're talking specifically about cases of people born with ambiguous genitals like the protagonist of this series then that happens in about 0.02%-.0.05% of births. And even those cases can be further divided into different categories.
If people would be fine with them simply casting an actor with a more common condition under the intersex umbrella like having an atypical chromosome combination then maybe they could, but it wouldn't really be true to the character and just come off like lipservice in my opinion. Although that kind of restrictive casting is more of an American thing and not something you really see Japan take part in so I would not expect them to do anything like that. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
Posts: 4866 |
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IG
Posts: 60 |
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Also the question how many of these people are in the acting career in Japan ? |
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