A casting director for the horror thriller "Shelter" has been fired after West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin's office objected to what it termed an insensitive casting call for extras with unusual features that might look inbred.I don't care one way or another about Belajac's firing. It's not a victory for disability awareness if all the brouhaha was because it was offensive to suggest people of a geographical region all look abnormal or disabled. It was the association with abnormality everyone was upset about, not any assumptions about the worth of people who aren't picture perfect.
Donna Belajac Casting's Web site initially advertised the scene as being set in a "West Virginia 'holler,"' but producers Emilio Diez Barroso and Darlene Caamano Loquet said the movie is not set in West Virginia and the state will not even be mentioned.
"On behalf of the entire SHELTER production we regret and are deeply sorry for the very insensitive casting call sent out without our knowledge by our casting director Donna Belajac who has been dismissed from this project as a result," Barroso and Loquet said in a statement issued Tuesday night.
The movie studio will hire someone careful to not attribute the abnormal "inbred" look of its scary characters to a particular place, and we're all supposed to be placated by that. Rest easy. Be assured that the scary folk in the movie are not "us" and we are not "them."
See previous post here.
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