Why is Hollywood so white? (Pt1)

I thought we’d start our little journey with race and ethnicity because, as some of you may now, it is a hot topic right now. So let us teach you a thing about white-washing and race bending. The term race-bending has existed since about the time film started to get sound. The first major examples of racebending occurred in the early 20s in cinema’s youth, when white actors would be cast in ethnic roles using blackface and yellowface to depict the race of the characters. Basically, this would involve white actors caking their faces in paint and makeup to change their skin colour, all of which was very popular at the time and widely accepted as an okay practice. (Al Jolson – Jazz Singer)

Thankfully, this practice has mostly stopped in modern day Hollywood (despite a few instances here and there) though the practice of racebending has now turned into the (just as problematic) practice of character whitewashing. As I am sure you’ve already figured out, whitewashing is the Hollywood practice of casting Caucasian actors and actresses in racially diverse roles thus barring ethnic actors from performing on the big screen as main protagonists/antagonists. In this article, I hope to demonstrate how rampant this practice really is, and explore why this is actually a problem for the everyday consumer – you and me. I’ll start simple. Price of Persia, a game I haven’t personally played but was blown away by when I first saw Ubisoft’s Xbox 360 trailer for it many years ago online. The song was to Sia’s Breathe Me and I thought that the whole two minute experience was a work of art. Fast track to 2010 and low and behold Disney grab a hold of this lucrative game franchise and make a film based on the Sands of Time storyline. Was I excited to go see it? Hell yeah! So who do they cast as our Persian Prince Dastan? Why it’d only be Jewish American actor Jake Gyllenaal! And who is his (rather useless) lady companion and love interest? Why it’s English actress Gemma Arterton!

Persia. It is called Prince of Persia. PERSIA. So, some quick background info. Persia is now Iran, and was an Empire built of the countries we now call Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. The people that live there are Iranian and Iranian speaking. So they cast a white guy. Hollywood is a big fan of the dirt rub and the beard tactic. You’ll see more of that later on. Now, Exhibit B. Let us cover the train wreck that was M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘blockbuster’ of Nickelodeon’s Avatar The Last Airbender. Funnily enough, 2010 seems to be the year for cocking up race and this awful blot in film history is yet another prime example of Hollywood whitewashing an ethnically diverse cast for reasons none of us could actually comprehend. I’ve yet to see the film all the way through – yes it was that much of an insult.

(The above is definitely worth watching. I watch honest trailers religiously)

Avatar The Legend of Aang was a popular children’s programme running on Nickelodeon with a diverse cast based around characters with Inuit and Chinese heritage. Katara and Sokka (seen below) are of the Southern Water tribe and are strongly based off of Inuit culture. They have darker skin than the show’s other main characters and have well developed stories and motives and are basically exceptionally well written. This brother and sister tag team serve as the show’s main protagonists other than the programme’s main character, an Air nomad monk named Aang who has a culture based around that of Buddhist monks. Add in Zuko, an Asian (probably Japanese) fire Prince and Toph, a young blind girl with Chinese heritage and you have a pretty damn good diverse cast. This is actress Nicola Peltz and actor Jackson Rathbone – a.k.a Katara and Sokka of the Southern ‘Inuit’ water tribe. I don’t think so. Oh – and that white Prince who’s motive for the film’s entirety is to capture and/or kill the Avatar? Yeah, this is Dev Patel, star of Slumdog Millionaire and head of a very ethnic army who are painted as the typical bad guys for the entire movie. So not only do we have the problem of ethnically diverse characters being portrayed by white actors, we have an example of selective whitewashing, where the races of the characters have been bent to suit the message of the film. White good, black bad right? Oh, and according to Racebending.org the problem with Avatar began when their casting calls indicated a preference for white actors for protagonists and people of colour for the films villains and secondary characters.  And the film was shit. RB.org didn’t say that but that’s what everyone was thinking.

NEXT ON THE LIST! Dare I say it (Young Adult Literature Gods and J.Law forgive me) but why on earth did they cast Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games when every last damn person who slogged their way through those bloody books knew she was a woman of colour? In The Hunger Games, the first book in the trilogy (which should have remained a one hit wonder in my eyes but hey-ho the films are awesome) Katniss is described as having long black hair, olive skin and grey eyes. Insert brown haired, blue eyed American actress Jennifer Lawrence and you have one of modern cinema’s most famous examples of character whitewashing. It also doesn’t help that this YA film practically took over the world and catapulted Ms Lawrence to stardom. I love Jen, but come on! (Katniss by Deviantart User vanduobones – http://vanduobones.deviantart.com/art/Katniss-295841162)

a.k.a how she is supposed to look vs. J.Law, every girl’s best friend.

I will be doing a series on The Hunger Games soon, hopefully covering the complete incompetence of the filming directors to include canon disability as well as how Katniss has inspired a new wave of feminism for possibly all the wrong reasons. ALSO THE FACT THAT THEY HAD A FILM DEAL WITH SUBWAY IT’S CALLED THE HUNGER GAMES FOR A REASON YOU IDIOTS! All to come folks.

Below video – spoilers!

So let’s end with something we just can’t seem to get right. Yes, you guessed it – Egyptians! With the dawn of a new age, Exodus Gods and Kings punches us in the throat with yet another western biblical adaptation of that timeless classic Moses, NOW PLAYED BY BATAMAN! Yes, that’s right, Christian white guy Bale as Moses. Why didn’t I think of that? Dirt rub and beard tactic be damned! With a diverse cast of Mr Bale, Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley (oh yeah here he is again can we cast this poor guy as something other than a Hollywood racial stereotype I’d had enough of him in Price of Persia) we have another biblical adaptation costing millions of dollars to badly represent the cherished history of both a country and a religion – congratulations! Two birds one stone. So what’s all the hullaballoo about? Well, if we take a quick peek over at IMDb we find that there is wonderful ethnic diversity in the film, with characters of Middle Eastern ethnicity playing all sorts of roles. Only they aren’t the main characters. You know Moses? White guy. Ramses II? White guy? Queen Tuya? White lady. Love interests? Half the age of the protagonists! Another problem is that Dreamworks, sweet Dreamworks that brought us such movies like Cabin in the Woods: Ogre Edition and The Perks of Being a Dragon DID IT BETTER! DW’s adaptation called The Prince of Egypt released in 1998 captured not only the race of the characters perfectly but also the moral of the story which remained entirely biblical. So what does Hollywood do? It throws millions of dollars at a bunch of well-known white actors in order to make as much profit as possible on an end of year blockbuster. Director Ridley Scott has addressed this issue of whitewashing, standing by the casting and stating that Egypt has and always will be a ‘confluence of cultures’, that they did right by their casting to demonstrate how diverse Egypt truly is. I’m calling bullshit

And lastly because I am losing the will to live, let’s have 2015 new sparkly adaptation of Peter Pan (because we haven’t had enough of those). Pretty diverse cast (ish) and I do love the story, but can we please just pause for thought as to why on earth casting directors thought it was at all appropriate to cast Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, a well-known and beloved character of Disney’s original who is of Native American origin. I just find it pretty insulting, and I am a twenty something white girl. What adds further insult to injury is the fact that native American actresses did audition for the role and were turned down, and when asked about this the director stated that this version of Pan was brand new, that the characters were loosely based on the originals but that they were starting afresh. So basically more bullshit validating white actors over people of colour. As this article turned out to be so long (and I never even touched on early examples, Argo and Angelina Jolie are all guilty) I feel as though it’d be wise to split this into two parts. Next article I’ll be looking at the ramifications of whitewashing and how it effects and distorts the world view of young people, as well as instances of race bending where Hollywood has got it right though sadly these are few and far between.

As always, keep your eyes open and love that f word.

Kharma.

Sources: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/hollywood-whitewashing_n_5515919.html http://www.firstshowing.net/2014/ridley-scott-addresses-whitewashed-cast-of-exodus-gods-and-kings/ http://the-artifice.com/hollywood-white-washing/

Images: digitalspy.com / wikia / express.co.uk / stormfront.org / indiewire.org