Hey Arach, what are your thoughts on the race changing in our biblical and mythic roles.
From the white Jesus to the newest Hercules.
Now we are straying into territory I hoped to avoid...and complicating the matter even further. But I digress. I'll attempt to keep this brief.
1) The misrepresentation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is problematic and a well discussed topic. Jesus Christ was born in what is now referred to as the middle-east, and is more likely to have looked like a Tuareg than the European look that is often ascribed to the his person.
Despite any equivocation about Christ's deity, he was a real man that dwelt in a region of the world where people are darker. I am always against changing the appearance of actual figures from history. It would be like making Confucius a Taino or Uther Pendragon Japanese. In the case of real people, their ethnic and cultural affiliations are likely a factor in their story.
2) Mythic figures are a different territory and quite complex as an issue. Certain legendary figures are merely personified as mythical. I already listed Uther Pendragon, but there are other examples such as Sundiata, the great mansa of Mali. There is an epic poem all about Sundiata in which he has super human strength and encounters witches and wraiths etc. However, Sundiata is a real person despite the legend that surrounds him. The very nature of creating legends around figures that are confirmed to be real or believed to have been real makes it difficult to assert that there should be free reign with the portrayal of mythic figures.
A secondary issue is that many mythic heroes, even when not real, are distinctly linked to a culture at an ethnic level. Heracles/Hercules is half-god, but also a Greecian male. For instance, the real life Greek hero, Leonidas, claimed to have descended from Heracles. And yes, the Greek often frequented Africa (then generally referred to as Ethiopia) and it is entirely possible for there to have been Greek people that were not all pale of skin. However, that is an even deeper rabbit hole. So keeping in mind that Leonidas identified with Heracles, a Greek hero, it is difficult to approve of Hercules being played by someone that does not appear to be Greek. But that leads to a third issue.
3) America is distinct from every other country in that The United States of America is not a homogeneous population. American culture at its core is meant to supersede ethnic affiliation. This is part of the reason why it is so ignorant to assume that a non-White American must be a foreigner that speaks some other language. There is a great Youtube video called "What Kind of Asian are you" that explores that exact issue. Now, why am I bringing this up? Because in America, where we share a culture and see ourselves as one nation, we expect that anyone can fill in the role of any figure that is iconic in our culture.
In the American mindset, culture is far more liquid, from the ease at which we can dine at restaurants with foreign cuisine, to the fact that we make foreign icons our own. The story of Hercules then, to an American, is more about a powerful hero and his quest than it is about him being Greecian. So when Americans are dealing with characters and stories that aren't American in origin, it muddies the waters of how an adaptation is handled.
