As an old player who has basically finished reading the novel, I have been looking forward to this drama for a long time. I stayed up late to watch three episodes when it first came out; however, when I saw the fourth episode, I had to tell myself: this is a mediocre work. Then I never watched it again.
There are many flaws in the plot that I won't go into. Here I want to discuss another area that has been criticized: casting. First of all, I would like to state that I have always considered myself a leftist on the political spectrum and have supported various affirmative-action issues. Before, whether it was Black Panther or Crazy Rich Asians, although I didn't appreciate the movie itself, I still agreed that such a movie would help minorities gain a greater voice in the industry.
However, I really can't agree with how much political correctness the casting is emphasized in The Witcher. The Witcher itself is a fantasy story set in a medieval setting and incorporates many elements of Slavic culture. In such a case, it would be very abrupt to add a lot of black or Indian cast members. In a way, this is a kind of reverse discrimination against Slavic culture, because such casting is to highlight the ethnic diversity of the characters at the expense of discarding the cultural background of the original text.
A question that I would like to extend is: what method should practitioners in the cultural industry use to promote equal rights. The reason I approve of movies like Black Panther or Crazy Rich Asians is that they place minority actors in their own cultural context and build a great appeal to mainstream audiences or the popular aesthetic s work. Even if such a combination distorts the original cultural background to a certain extent, in the end, they very well demonstrate the unique charm of ethnic minorities as a cultural group. What Witcher has done here, however, is to get minority actors to shed all of their own cultural symbols, inappropriately shoveling them into positions where they have no cultural connection at all. In addition to highlighting the number of ethnic minorities in proportion, this approach actually looks like some kind of discriminatory behavior that lacks introspection.
In fact, if you change to other stories, such as Cyberpunk 2077, there are many black people in the cast that will not look awkward at all. But in addition to its original storyline, the charm of Witcher also comes from its background, character settings, and worldview, which are inextricably linked with the Eastern European culture behind it. It's a shame that the show has become a blurry hodgepodge due to a number of factors, including casting. The shot that made me decide not to look down was Yennefer sitting up slowly in the middle of a masked promiscuity party; at that moment I found myself not sure if I was watching the long-cherished Witcher or the Cheap topless show at the Venetian Hotel.
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