I usually tend to ignore it when people say that an organization or department is racist because people tend to overreact in cases when there are two sides to every story. I’m not talking about police brutality and black lives, but mainly about the entertainment industry. This normally comes up during awards season when there are not enough nominees in races other than caucasian, when there actually have been, just not in that particular year. However, there is one phenomenon in the industry that I think is definitely racist and needs to change, and that is whitewashing. For those of you who don’t know, whitewashing is when they cast a caucasian actor in a role that was clearly meant for another race. Sometimes they do this in comedies, but its okay there since it’s all for a joke. Nonetheless, this is a serious matter that has existed for way too long.
The most recent case of whitewashing came to light in the Bradley Cooper comedy, “Aloha”. Here, not only was most of the main cast white, but the most shocking and enraging part was the casting of Emma Stone as a part-Asian, part-Hawaiian woman. She even said it was probably the worst casting choice she's ever had in her career.
Those of you who had the misfortune of watching M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” (seriously, why is this guy still making movies?) may have noticed the biggest insult to fans everywhere. The entire main cast, of the good guys I should add, were all caucasian, leaving the villains and ensemble to be Asian and Indian. I don’t know about you, but I think that this sends a pretty bad message about what we think of other races.
The most shocking to me is Laurence Olivier in “Othello”. Oliver is known for his amazing roles in Shakespeare film adaptations, but his role in “Othello” as the title character was horrifying since he went blackface. While this was more appropriate for certain movies back then, today it’s definitely not acceptable and I think that it may have been borderline unacceptable at the time too. I can understand earlier movies where certain actors of another race weren’t exactly popular, but during the 60’s? Come on.
This has also been a highly debated topic among fans of Japanese anime shows and films when a live action adaptation is in production or filmed. The upcoming Scarlet Johanssen movie “Ghost in the Shell” is one such case, since fans want to see Asian actors instead of white ones in their favorite roles.
Granted, not every case of caucasian actors in roles that probably would have been better by other races are insulting. For example, Jake Gyllenhaal in “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and the rest of the white cast was fine since during that period, many Persians actually were caucasian so it fit the bill. These movies are fine since they accurately depict history or source material, but Hollywood has got to stop casting roles meant for other races to white people. We’ve come so far as a society in social acceptance, let’s not ruin this by casting interracial roles to the wrong race entirely.
