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Q: Pandering? What do you other Vikings fans think?
Vikings season 4 (just got around to watching it) throws in a Chinese character along with Chinese medicine. Vikings became popular in large part due to their historical 'accuracy' and not trying to spice things up in order to pander to the audience. Are they betraying their audience?
I've not got this far with Vikings as my wife got bored with it. Might have to catch up sometime.
Pandering? I really don't know but thought I'd do a bit of searching on the subject of whether Chinese )or other Asians) got as far West as Scandinavia. Couldn't find anything academic after 5 pages of results but I did find this asked on Quora...
https://www.quora.com/How-plausible-is-it-for-Ragnar-Lothbrok-to-have-a-...
So not wholly implausible but doubtful.
No. I suspect it's less 'pandering' and more trying to be a bit more multi-cultural.. as well as adding in the idea that the Vikings did actually have contact with many other peoples.
https://www.quora.com/How-plausible-is-it-for-Ragnar-Lothbrok-to-have-a-...
http://www.medievalhistories.com/viking-silk/
https://www.apollon.uio.no/english/vikings.html
Vikings had silk... the silk mostly came from Persia, but some from much further east due to trade. Along with the silk, there were also slaves. So, it's not entirely unrealistic for the Vikings to raid a group of traders who happened to have Chinese (or other eastern) slaves...
You may possibly change your mind as you keep watching....
Englteachted:
The show covers the time when they first started setting out. Yes eventually they had contact with many
Shining_brow:
That's sort of true... there are quite a few anachronisms in the show, however, and so it's not really surprising they try to thrown a few centuries into the life of just one guy (and his family).
Vikings has always been a GOT wannabe to me, it's different but not that different, and it came not too long after so the comparison is inevitable, minus all the cool magical and mysterious stuff, too realistic for my acquired taste to the likes of fantasy and scifi.
Hotwater:
Too realistic for your taste? What were you expecting? Vikings is violent historical drama based on real people and events. Can't expect magic and sorcery when it didn't exist...
Season 4 seems to be attempting to be multicultural/ pander (same thing), saw a Black guy in the background (As a Viking). Show is spiraling downward, they've run out of storylines and are desperate. I vowed to watch no more after s3 but I've been bored recently
Hotwater:
You might not know this with your sheltered upbringing but there were "black guys" in the Roman legions fighting in Europe & Britain many centuries before Vikings is set so it's not outside the realms of possibility that an odd one or two got further north.
Englteachted:
And became a member of the Vikings? Which were not part of the Roman Empire.
Shining_brow:
Probably coming from Heimdall's line 
But, Hots is basically right... the idea that you have that people did NOT migrate all over the place is just odd.... especially when you consider that the vikings (in later times) went a raiding all through the Mediterranean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_expansion#/media/File:Viking_Expansion.svg
This map (from Wiki) shows they obviously raided in Morocco, and other areas of northern Africa - modern day Libya, Tunisia, Algeria (if my geography is correct). Taking slaves was normal, and so having non-white people in Viking settlements is possible... if without the idea of Africans in Roman formations heading north into the German lands
Englteachted:
With regard to this bit, they're trying to sell the idea that the city became a trading center
Shining_brow:
"With regard to this bit, they're trying to sell the idea that the city became a trading center"
Very true!
Did you go onto the History Channel website and watch any of the Viking related videos? IIRC. there were a coupld about how the Norse did, in fact, have some pretty major trading ports going... (though, again, probably later in real time).
So, Vikings is pandering because they include an asian and a black person....
But you don't seem to mind when they cast Tilda Swinton as a Tibetan mystic in Dr Strange... and I presume you're not going to complain about Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell... or a myriad of other times when white actors take the place of those who should be of other ethnicities....
Yes, I agree there is too much pandering to fit multicultural sensitives,... but it sort of goes the other way as well.
Englteachted:
I do mind them putting Tilda as a Tibetan, Jason Bourne in The Wall but you see they did not first bring people in for authenticity and then start trying to pander for a bigger audience. What Vikings did was a betrayal to the original fans (if in fact they are just trying to pander to a wider audience).
And you're ignoring a glaring difference, Tilda didn't get the role simply because they wanted a white person, they wanted a big name actor (same with Bourne and the Wall). Do you understand the difference between recruiting sb based on race vs recruiting sb based on their star power?
Hotwater:
It was Matt Damon who was in the Great wall if that is what you are referring to.
I really think you're looking for pandering here when there is none.
Shining_brow:
You're ignoring the fact that they wanted a BIG NAME actor who was white! To suggest that there are NO Asian actors who could have done that role is ridiculous! (Jet Li comes to mind!) Given Benedict Cumberbatch was in the movie, there wasn't really a need to bring in someone else just as big. ( I can't comment of The Wall... I don't know what you're talking about)
Yes, there is some element of pandering to (white - and now, black) audiences... but what you're arguing is trivial in comparison.
The Chinese line in Vikings, in my mind, is that of exploring the idea that they went raiding wide and far, and had - actually - met up with many different cultures. I showed above that there was clearly some sort of connection to the far east (we have the evidence - which coincidentally came out in about 2013... not too long before season 4 was made!
