Whitewashing and Racism in Hollywood: My Two Cents

Whitewashing is a casting practice in the film industry of the United States in which white actors are cast in historically non-white character roles.

See that picture of Mickey Rooney? I've laughed at that... many times. Not in a funny way (at least not entirely) but in a "how the fuck did anyone think this was okay?" kind of way... You might say it was a different time but just because this happened in 1961 doesn't make it any less wrong.
Whitewashing has long been a problem in Hollywood but it has evolved into something else today. There's a quiet racism at work in the industry that shows no sign of going away. Chris Rock explains it much better than I (apologies in advance for the Jennifer Lawrence footage):

I think that's a very fair assessment of where we're at. I would like to add though that I've seen Concussion and in no fucking universe was Will Smith nomination worthy. He was good. He was his usual magnetic, charming self. Oscar worthy? Erm, no.

There continues to be a fuck-ton of accusations aimed at movies, actors, directors and as shown above, awards ceremony organisers. Many of these are justified but some are not. Some are actually complete bollocks and come from what I can only assume is some kind of liberal white guilt that means well but, as my god fearing friends would say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Here's just a few of my favourites.
                                                                   
                                          Matt Damon and The Great Wall Of China

Matt Damon has said some stupid fucking things in the recent past but I think we can all agree, he seems like a decent chap whose heart is in the right place. Last year, Damon starred in a movie called The Great Wall. Here's the clip:

Soon after the movie came out, the White Guilt Brigade piped up with their accusations of whitewashing. Now, you can argue the toss all day about white actors playing actual Asians and you'll win those arguments but when a movie comes out about a load of monsters attacking China you need to take a step back... and that really should be the end of it but never underestimate a whiney liberal. With no historical frame of reference they quickly shifted their argument in another direction: "The main role should have gone to a Chinese actor" they screamed. So let's see. A fictional story of a foreigner helping the Chinese fight off hordes of monsters should have had a Chinese lead... Why? Seriously, why? "He's white and I'm sick of seeing white people save the world" (for the record a Chinese woman does the world saving in the movie but don't let the facts get in the way of your self loathing). Then don't watch it. Watch Hero or House of Flying Daggers or Curse of the Golden Flower (that's FLOWER down the back). Hero in particular is beautiful and not a westerner in sight.

The Great Wall was a joint Chinese/American venture and as it happens the Chinese company sought out Matt Damon to play the part. Last word to the man himself: "the role was always intended to be European,” saying that “once people see that it's a monster movie and it's a historical fantasy and I didn't take a role away from a Chinese actor ... it wasn't altered because of me in any way.” The only thing you can accuse this movie of is being a bit silly. Whitewashing? Get a fucking grip!

                                                  Tilda Swinton Meets Dr. Strange

I went to see Dr. Strange and I was engrossed from start to finish. As you know by now I detest comics so I had no idea what I was going to see. The cast boasted several world class thespians (that's THESPIANS down the back) including Tilda Swinton. I've always been more fascinated by than a fan of Tilda Swinton. There's just something about her that unsettles me. Obviously it's down to the characters she plays rather than the person she is but in Dr. Strange she was completely wonderful. I loved her character. I loved her performance and she was, in my view, the best thing about the movie. I was deeply upset when she bought it (assuming she has, nobody dies at Marvel Towers) and my wife agreed as we gushed over the movie in the car on the way home. The next day, I started to look up reviews etc to see how the movie was doing and that was when I saw the accusations of whitewashing. Swinton's role should have gone to an Asian, they yelled!

Her character "The Ancient One" was originally an old Asian man. They could live with the character being female but British? Unacceptable! The MNAAA (look it up) blasted the director and the writer. Kelly Hu (who?) chimed in and you know what? I saw their point... for a while.
Swinton is far too classy for all this social media bollocks but she was upset by the accusations. She reached out to Margaret Cho, through email, for guidance. What Cho did after that was disgraceful. On a podcast she said she felt like Swinton's "house Asian" (through email? really?) and made a big deal about Swinton not wanting the emails published. Swinton got wind of this and (brilliantly) put Cho in her place by showing everyone the emails. You can read them here: http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/read-tilda-swintons-emails-to-margaret-cho-doctor-strange-controversy.html Bottom line, Cho adds nothing to the "Hollywood bad" argument. And again, I'd be in agreement but for one thing... If big bad Hollywood had gone to the source, ie the comics and cast this character accurately, this is what they would have been casting:

Cast that and don't cause controversy, I fucking dare you!!!

                                                                   Godzilla

I'm going to keep this one short. FUCK. OFF!!!!

Let's take a breath and discuss actual whitewashing. There have been some recent examples that are hilarious. My personal favourite? Emma Stone was cast as a Chinese/Hawaiian in Cameron Crowe's spectacular misfire, Aloha. That's right. They cast this lady

to play a woman of Chinese/Hawaiian decent. Aloha is a movie that spends much of its running time making no sense at all and I have to assume it does this to try to distract everyone from the fact that Emma Stone was cast in this role. It fails.

The above is impossible to top but these two come close...

 and...

I've long since grown tired of seeing Johnny Depp wearing more make up than Motley Crew and wearing stupid fucking hats but there's just something spectacularly wrong seeing him in this get up. Having endured the movie, I found no solace in his performance either. As for Jake Gyllenhall. Well, who do you get of play the Prince of Persia? Literally fucking anyone else...

                                                   Tom Cruise and The Last Samurai

When I went to see this movie in the cinema, whitewashing was a phrase I'd never heard aimed at movies. I'd seen the clip. I'm a fan of Crusie. Edward Zwick makes gorgeous looking movies. Yeah, I was always going to go see this one. The movie was a financial success and has a lot more good reviews than bad. It's interesting that a big Hollywood movie of this size has gone relatively under the radar with the whitewashy folk. Only recently has it taken flak from John Oliver in a hilarious segment about whitewashing. Why is this?

Well, everyone has a blog (ahem) a facebook page, a twitter account (I gave up on twitter in 2012) a platform to voice their rage. And boy do we love doing it. Look at me go!!! We live in a world of immediacy. It's shiny object syndrome. Why take a shot at a movie that came out fourteen years ago when we can attack Dr. Strange? It doesn't matter that these characters aren't real, we get to shout and look like we care about social justice because Tilda Swinton played a cartoon character. This is our world right now, sadly.

So is The Last Samurai whitewashing? The character of Nathan Algren is fictional and he's American. So no, no it isn't. Not even a little. If this is about you not enjoying white heroics in foreign lands I again ask you to watch something else... Seriously, Hero is amazing! Or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Also incredible. The rest of us will enjoy The Last Samurai for the triumphant actioner it is. Have a look at this scene:

                                                                         Dunkirk

Moving away from the east and much closer to home, Christopher Nolan hasn't escaped the white guilt crosshairs for his depiction of the events at Dunkirk during World War 2. The gripe? Whitewashing. Why? There's no Indians or Africans in the movie. Nolan has yet to comment and truly, that is the wisest course of action. You cannot reason with these people. They see problems where there aren't any and it doesn't matter that people who actually survived the event thought the movie was incredibly accurate. Oh no. You sir, Dunkirk survivor or not, are wrong.

According to John Broich, an associate professor of history at Case Western Reserve University there were "maybe a few hundred Indian soldiers" among hundreds of thousands on the beach. As far as I'm concerned that's check mate on this issue. Could there have been Indians in the movie? Sure. Did there need to be Indians in the movie? No.

As for the Africans. Again according to Broich: "soldiers from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and elsewhere were key to delaying the German attack." All manner of heroics were carried out by these brave soldiers and they made unquantifiable sacrifices. And you know what, I want to see that movie. I think I would enjoy it a great deal. Here's the thing though, Dunkirk is NOT THAT MOVIE!!! But we live in an age where facts are becoming less and less important. Feelings are all the rage and that is a dangerous place to be.

But since I brought feelings up, Dunkirk made me feel like an entitled prick. The things these people endured compared to what we complain about today... I can't verbalise how embarrassed I am by this and it's laughable that whitewashing is what some people latch on to after such a harrowing and powerful movie.

                                                      Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

I fucking loved Rogue One. It had grit, it had fun, it had action, it had amazing fx and it had a great cast. While I watched the movie and was blown away by it, it never occurred to me that the cast was so diverse. I only realised this when I took to the internet to check on reviews to see if others shared my enthusiasm. Many did but there was this other voice. A voice that made me want to throw my laptop at the wall. This voice stated: "having such a diverse cast is an obvious and cynical ploy by the studio to appeal to as many people as possible to secure as much money as possible." I just don't know how to respond to that. But let's just assume, for shits and gigs, what they're saying is true. It doesn't matter! Why? Because these guys were awesome:

If it was a cynical cash grab then cash grab away Hollywood. If you continue to hit us with brilliant characters like these two then work away I say.

It would be naïve of me not to mention money. Ridley Scott recently came under fire for his tactless quote about the movie Exodus: Gods and Kings. Scott's quote: “I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up.” Ouch! Wretched comment but the fact is Christian Bale will get you financed and all movies, from An American Tale to Zombieland are made to make money.

Here's another hard to face truth. Exodus: Gods and Kings cost about $140m and made about $270m. Would it have fared better with a cast more appropriate to the story? The answer to this should be a resounding yes but in all honesty, we just don't know.

Which brings me back to Chris Rock. During his opening at the Oscars he asked for black actors to get more opportunities. And he's of course correct. It should go further though. Give people from all backgrounds and all ethnicities the same chances and choices that white actors get. That way we can avoid nonsense like John Wayne playing Genghis Khan (seriously, that happened) and it'll hopefully go some way to stopping people crying over problems where there aren't any.

"But there are problems G," I hear you say. Yes, I know but your bullshit revolution is getting in the way of actual revolution. You're bitching about Matt Damon fighting dragons in China when you should be asking why there's still a gender pay gap or worse a gender/colour pay gap. While you're agreeing with Jada for saying Will should have been nominated you're forgetting that only one black actress has ever won an academy award for best actress. And you're screaming at La La Land for being about white people like that's some sort of crime. When that didn't wash (ahem) you said it was whitewashing Jazz ... I'll let John Legend take that one: "Well, black people certainly did invent jazz, and there's a lot of wonderful black jazz musicians playing right now, and a lot of wonderful jazz musicians of other races playing right now. I don't think it should be the responsibility of one film to tell the overarching narrative of jazz. If we were relying on La La Land to do that, then clearly it doesn't tell the full story of jazz. But a filmmaker portraying a certain point of view, their perspective, then it's OK that it doesn't incorporate every perspective.

The only way it would be a shame is if it were supposed to be a representation of all jazz and all things jazz, but I think it's more from [director Damien Chazelle's] point of view. This is the story he wanted to tell. Because it's gotten so big, it's gotten that added pressure on it to be the jazz film, and if it is the jazz film, then it does underrepresent the influence of black people. But if it's just a great film from one filmmaker's point of view — it's great at doing that."

I've been called a homophobe because I've no interest in watching Brokeback Mountain (it just looks depressing) and a racist because I've no interest in watching Moonlight (it just looks depressing) those responses to my taste in movies are bonkers but also indicative of the scream first, think later world we live in.

I watched a movie a few months ago called Get Out. It's probably the most intelligent movie I've ever seen. It also happens to be a horror movie. It made me question everything about racism and it genuinely made me wonder if I'm part of the problem. And maybe I am. I'm still wrestling with it. Get Out is honest and I urge everyone to see it. We must continue to look within and ask ourselves if something truly is deserving of our rage and when it is we should scream until we are heard. Save your vitriol for when it really matters. We must not dilute actual travesties with irrational sympathy.

Cheers,

G.