Remember, Disney didn’t cast little people as the dwarfs either…he cast ink.
The advocacy group “Little People of America” is crying foul because the seven dwarves (or dwarfs, if you’re Walt Disney) in “Snow White and the Huntsman” were played not by real little people (who don’t like being called dwarves, just playing them for money) but by digitally-altered normal-sized actors.
A representative of the group told the gossip web site TMZ that the studios should be “casting people with dwarfism as characters that were specifically written to be played by little people … and other roles that would be open to people of short stature.”
Your Ethics Quiz of the Day: Do movie makers have an obligation to cast small people in small people’s roles? Is it unethical to use special effects to do avoid casting them?
My answer is this: First of all, I’m sympathetic. A small actor can’t play an NBA basketball player; there are a limited number of roles he has a chance at. Here’s a movie that has prominent roles tailor-made for seven height-challenged performers, and the producers cast six-footers anyway, and even pay extra for pricey digital effects to shrink them down! It certainly doesn’t seem fair, does it?
In entertainment terms, however, it is. What matters in show business is the quality of the show, and if the director and producers feel that the talents they want and need handling the roles of the dwarves are those possessed only by specific normal-sized actors, then that is all that matters. The employment needs of small actors is not the film-makers’ proper concern. They are not being paid to be nice, or diverse, or to give struggling actors a chance, or to practice affirmative action. If the makers of “Snow White and the Huntsman” believed that casting small actors would make the movie successful, they would have cast small actors. It they thought casting trained wolverines as the dwarves would result in the best possible film, they would have done that too, and should have. They concluded that their best option was to use big actors. They may have been wrong, but they weren’t unethical.
I can imagine all the homely actresses who could have played serial killer Aileen Wuornos in “Monster” without a bit of make-up were beating their heads against walls when they heard she was going to be played by Charlize Theron, one of the most beautiful women in the world. Think of all the dancing Broadway actresses who could have broken through to stardom in the film version of “Chicago”…but the film opted to use quick cuts and tricks to let non-dancers fake the lead roles. (you almost never see Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger delivering more than a step or two at a time in the film. There is a reason for that.) John Rys-Davies stole the role of the dwarf warrior Gimli in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and surely there were real twin actresses who could have starred in the two “The Parent Trap” films, rather than Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills, and Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan. Saddest of all, perhaps, was the saga of Hazel Spellman, the famous 50-foot Hollywood actress who took her own life ( eight barrels of sleeping pills!) after the producers of 1958’s “The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” cast pipsqueak Allison Hayes in the part. “That was the role I was born to play,” Hazel wrote in her tear-soaked, 3 x 5 foot suicide note.
All right, that last one isn’t true.
But if there had been a real 50 foot woman, the producers would have had no obligation to cast her if they didn’t feel she was the best one for the part. “Rocky” wasn’t played by a real boxer, John Wayne wasn’t a real cowboy, and they don’t have to find a paraplegic actor to play Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Let me leave you with some controversy to mull over. In my view, if a director felt that a white actor wearing make-up was the best choice to play Martin Luther King, or that a black actress in make-up would be the perfect Jackie Kennedy, as long as theses non-traditional choices were dictated by purely artistic considerations and not bigotry, they would be ethical too.
Insane, perhaps, but ethical.
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Source: TMZ
Graphic: Triplets and Us
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
The better actor is the better actor. If they didn’t even bother to give midgets a shot at trying out, they may have a point.
Well, obviously no actor can “act” short better than a short actor. The question is, what is the main requirement of the role? Casting directors don’t always bother with readings.
I was sort of wondering about this topic when I was watching the film. That said, there were some “long shots” that show the “dwarves” trekking right along with the 6 foot people, looking away from the camera. I have to believe this wasn’t digitally enhanced and that actual people of that stature were in the roles as “stunt doubles”.
Yes, I am 100% sure you are right, just as there was a dwarf double in “Lord of the Rings.”
Late last year my brother worked for eight days as an extra for the upcoming film ‘The Hobbit’. At 5 foot 4 inches he played one of the hobbits while a 7 foot 2 inch extra doubled as a normal size human. I presume finding one tall extra was a lot easier than finding a lot of under 4 foot 6 inch extras.
You are right and I think I rushed my response to your post. I feel that the writers have embodied very specific personalities in each dwarf. Some writers even envision certain actors when they write. If this was not the case (but I’m sure it is) then open casting should have included midgets. If open casting occurred and no midgets were as good, then it was a fair shake.
Didn’t David Lynch do the opposite of this in Mulholland Drive? (as in, put a dwarf actor inside a big suit so he appeared to be a man of more average proportions)
When I watched the Social Network, it didn’t occur to me that the Winklevoss twins were played by the same actor. I remember thinking, “Well, they need two six-foot-five identical twin crew runners. I think the only ones in the world might be the Winklevosses themselves.”
Not having seen the movie I cant comment on if it worked or not but I take it that, like any special effect or gimmick casting, the producers saw the casting of regular sized actors in these roles as a way to get PR for the movie. Just as casting Charlize Theron in that role wasnt done becuase she was the best actor for the role but becuase she has name reconition and the gimmick , and it is a gimmick nothing more , of having such a beautiful woman play such a horrible and unattractive one.
And using gimmicks to sell a movie is completely legitimate. Imagine how many old character actors could have aced Inspector Poirot in “Murder on the Orient Express” without breaking a sweat. Instead, producers opted to let a young Albert Finney play the role under tons of latex. And he was good, but it was still a stunt just like using Theron.
I can say I wouldnt do it but thats easy to say when I havent had someone hand me the reins to a multi million dollar investment and wanted me to make them money. If it was a choice between casting the perfect actor or casting the name actor , who could still do the job, that the producers or money people wanted I know damn well what I would be doing. lol
Disney didn’t come up with “dwarfs”; that was the only plural in use at the time of the movie. Tolkien popularized “dwarves”, which is now seen commonly. In a letter to his publisher in 1937 (coincidentally, the same year as the Disney movie), Tolkien wrote: “No reviewer (that I have seen), although all have carefully used the correct dwarfs themselves, has commented on the fact (which I only became conscious of through reviews) that I use throughout the ‘incorrect’ plural dwarves. I am afraid it is just a piece of private bad grammar, rather shocking in a philologist; but I shall have to go on with it. Perhaps my dwarf – since he and the Gnome are only translations into approximate equivalents of creatures with different names and rather different functions in their own world – may be allowed a peculiar plural. The real ‘historical’ plural of dwarf (like teeth of tooth) is dwarrows, anyway: rather a nice word, but a bit too archaic. Still I rather wish I had used the word dwarrow.”
Now if only any dwarrows had auditioned . . . .
And if they did and didt get cast they could have Clarence Dwarrows to sue for them.
My daughter (a former professional ballerina, now a PhD. in an entirely different field) have a complete disagreement over the film “Black Swan” She refuses to see it, claiming that they should have cast a real professional balleriina in the lead role, instead of Natalie Portman. I think she has the same mindset about this as the Little People of America had in their case. Oh, well, I love her anyway.
We’ve noticed!