Why are non-ethnic actors consistently chosen for ethnic acting roles?
The latest is, of course, Scarlett Johannson’s placement into Ghost in the Shell, a story starring a Japanese anime character. Japanese, as in, Japanese. The worst part? The film’s director thinks it’s a good idea to use special effects so that Johannson can appear more Asian.
This is not the first time Hollywood has put a non-ethnic person into an ethnic role. How about Cleopatra? The Last Airbender? The new Aladdin movie that Disney almost made? Even one of your all-time favorites, The Hunger Games?
The list goes on. Hollywood has a long history of choosing white characters to play ethnic ones. What this really does, though, is send a message to minorities that they aren’t worth the time spent to find a proper actor.
Doing this reduces race into a "look" -- rather than a piece of someone’s identity that comes along with culture and heritage.
In almost making the Aladdin film, the casting team plans to cast Bella Thorne as Jasmine. If you look up an image of Bella Thorne, I could tell you with some confidence that she in no way resembles a girl from the Middle East.
The industry has raised other questions aside from the race one, however. Hollywood has been damaging for certain groups in other ways, too. It is a fact that there exists a double-jeopardy effect for women being cast: the older they are, combined with the fact that they are women, leads to a declining number of roles.
Only twenty-four percent of women in American film are given roles when they are over the age of forty. In addition, women are usually used for their youth and portrayed as a love interest of a much older man.
On top of this, many female actresses (such as Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep) have publicly announced that they are not content with receiving less pay than their male colleagues.
It seems that Hollywood has bigger issues than its use of special effects now.
With these facts in place, it could be argued that what Hollywood produces is simply an extension of how society views different groups of people. Women are continually seen as objects of beauty.
Ethnic groups are seen as "others," or people who aren’t the norm in society. How can we go about changing this fact? What can we, as a society do to help change these things?
The reaction to Johannson’s casting has sparked fury among many Asian Americans and extends beyond them alone. Most minorities know that their group has, at some point, been misrepresented in the media, including in movies.
I think that non-ethnic actors should be aware of this when they are chosen to play characters who do not reflect their own racial identity.
As a middle schooler, my sister was cast as a Native American in a play because she was one of the only people with dark skin. Both she and I were not given roles because we didn’t "look the part," but then people who didn’t look Middle Eastern or Native American or Asian were given roles even though they had no composition of their racial identity reflect those demographics.
Where is the line drawn? Or, is there even a line?
