Daniela Katzenberger and music producer Lucas Cordalis at their wedding in June 2016
Photo:
Magdalena Possert / RTL II / DPA
Does an actor have to be disabled to play a disabled person?
In circles that see themselves as
woke
and progressive, one is now of the opinion: Yes, he has to.
To lace an artificial hump on your back like Lars Eidinger as Richard III.
at the Schaubühne, tying off an arm like Edgar Selge in "Police Call", sitting in a wheelchair like Tom Cruise in "Born on July 4th" is considered disrespectful.
In the scene one speaks of »cripping up«, a sensitive translation of the technical term is still being worked on.
Currently it is the Australian singer Sia ("Titanium") who is in trouble because of her film "Music", which started a few days ago.
Because she cast the role of an autistic girl with a non-autistic actress, she was showered with angry comments and calls for boycotts on social media.
"Fucking" is one of the milder accusations.
Sia has since deleted her Twitter account.
Gal Gadot is allowed to play Wonder Woman, but not Cleopatra - wrong skin color.
The triumphant advance of identity politics cannot be stopped in the cinema and theater world either.
Israel’s star Gal Gadot may play Wonder Woman, but not Cleopatra.
She has the wrong skin color and the wrong cultural background for the role of the North African pharaoh.
The somewhat less well-known German actress Eva Meckbach and her colleague Tucké Royale demanded in an interview with the magazine of the »Süddeutsche Zeitung« that gay and lesbian characters should initially only be cast with gays and lesbians.
"Because of the money, but also because of the visible distribution," said Meckbach.
So that "queer roles are also represented by queers," said Royale.
On the one hand one complains about the special role, on the other hand one demands it: In the highly competitive film business this is not a bad business model, especially since the ego trip comes along as a campaign for diversity.
At the theater, in the cinema and on TV, everyone only represents themselves - is that the future of acting?
Up until now, I thought that the appeal of the job was precisely to slip into the role of one or another, be it a tree in improv theater.
Will the Oscar in future go to the first-person actors from reality TV, the Wollnys, the Geissens, the Katzenberger?
I believe that in terms of diversity, it should be exactly the opposite.
Only when someone like Til Schweiger plays a transsexual without turning it into a joke like "Charley's aunt" is equality achieved.
In fact, there is a trend in the film industry that is heading in this direction.
In the British historical drama "Bridgerton", which runs with success on Netflix, the color of the actors' skin played no role in the roles.
In the first episode, the inexperienced viewer is still amazed that the English Queen is black.
But after a few minutes you don't notice it anymore.
Who knows what Queen Charlotte really looked like.
Icon: The mirror