"Whitewashing" has been the term put to the casting of white actors/actresses into non-white roles. It has picked up steam as a mainstream issue, with Asian-American actors speaking up and Last Week Tonight doing a great hilarious piece covering the prevalence of this phenomenon. While I have no experience in the film industry, I have lots of experience as an Asian-American, and my journey co-opting my identity has been influenced by Asian-American representation in TV and film, and have thus observed this practice keenly.
While plenty of articles grant this issue facetime and recount historical context, I haven't seen a fleshed out and nuanced understanding of 1) why is whitewashing an issue? and 2) when is something whitewashing? In creating this list, I found so many confounding grey areas. What is the right move here? What does the slippery slope take us to? This discussion deserves more back-and-forth than it gets.
Let's start with the easier question. Why is whitewashing bad? And why does it happen? In a movie like 55 Days at Peking, the whitewashing is dripped in colonialism. You can almost see the thought bubbles, "We need a Shakespearean-trained dramatist to portray Empress Dowager Cixi, not one of these Chinese actresses without theatrical class." We've certainly come a long way, but even if filmmakers nowadays do not harbor these same sentiments, they still need to be wary of belittling the abilities of minority thespians. However, the biggest complaints raised now is less the overt racism, but rather the institutionalized practice of reducing opportunities for non-white actors. Filmmakers counter that they need bankable stars, so many of whom happen to be white. Minority actors rightfully respond that to become bankable stars, you have to get cast in the first place! Missing out on roles early on means missing out on exposure means missing out on more roles later on - producing a very white snowball effect. The mentality of sticking to "known quantities" reflects a lack of imagination, a peculiar quality for the film industry. The downstream consequences of this practice include an all white set of Oscar's Best Actor/Best Actress nominees #oscarssowhite.
The connections-heavy world of Hollywood, where many stars are themselves children of stars, poses a difficult barrier of entry. But less industry-specific causes exist too, such as self-segregation which pervades throughout society. I am sure there are many white producers, writers and directors who have primarily white friends - many who don't normally hang out in minority-filled crowds. The reverse is far less true, because minorities in this country by definition find themselves outnumbered by white people all the time. This bleeds into show business. So often you can just tell watching a show that their screenwriters are all white. Consider Friends, the successful decade-long show starring 6 white people, produced by another 10 white people. However this show was considered super mainstream. Lots of minorities watched it, and we didn't find that weird at all. Sure the show only contained white experiences, but we're used to seeing that. Consider Tyler Perry's House of Payne, a successful show lasting 8 seasons, starring and produced, and watched nearly exclusively by black people. This whiteness-as-a-default is an entrenched characteristic of our society, (which is why fantasy characters or race-blind roles still so often end up played by white actors), and if you don't hang out with minorities, you only know the default. Our society is moving towards Aziz Ansari's Master of None, which just as obviously appears written by a diverse staff who find it normal to discuss race.
In addition to depriving actors of color, when films addressing historical or cultural topics are whitewashed, the film itself can suffer. History and culture are passed down among sub-groups and latched onto one's core essence. It's very awkward then to see dances, rituals or poetry performed by people to whom they have not been passed down to. Not saying it can't be done with class, but I shiver hearing a white person recite translated Confucius. There is just this knee jerk reaction of "oh no you don't go there."
Where we draw the line is quite challenging though. Everyone gets offended differently and you can't please everyone, especially in this age. Zoe Saldana was criticized as being not black enough to play Nina Simone, and there was even furor at Irishman Pierce Brosnan playing Englishman James Bond. As a stutterer, I would have preferred an actor with a real speech impediment play the main role in The King's Speech, though Colin Firth's performance won me over. Personally, when examining a casting or adaptation decision, my first barometer is the simple visual test: "does this person look the part?" Secondly, I believe strongly that power dynamics must be contextualized. Because French people do not face discrimination in America, we examine the Hollywood adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo differently than an adaptation of the West African story of Anansi. Thirdly, "cultural distance" too factors in casting. Certainly there are differences between Latin American countries, but a sense of cultural proximity might allow Puerto Rican Benicio del Toro to portray the Argentine Che Guevara. What determines whether cultural distance is too great though has no one answer.
When Natalie Wood plays Maria in West Side Story, she doesn't completely fail the visual test, but her casting is still squeamish because of the uneven power dynamic between white Americans and Puerto Rican Americans. When Gary Oldman puts on an accent as the Russian villain Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One, it's just a good performance in an action movie. Despite the Cold War history, present day dynamics between Russians and Brits or Americans are not particularly sensitive. And in the Russian-German-Kazakh co-production of Mongol, the majority of the cast is Mongolian, but main characters Genghis Khan and his rival Jamukha are played by Japanese and Chinese actors respectively, who learned Mongolian for their lines. They look the part though and the movie flows without a hitch (at least to the non-Mongolian speaker). When Korean-Americans Randall Park and Ken Jeong play Chinese-American characters, they basically pass the visual test and aren't stealing jobs from Chinese-Americans - in our current setting, they are all in the same boat (or fresh off it), struggling for limited roles.
I need to add that I am holding Hollywood to a very high standard. Film studios all around the world, whether it's India, China or Nigeria, practice their own local ethnic washing methods. When those studios become as rich as Hollywood and those countries become as diverse as 2016 America, we can judge them to the same standard. And I know that Hollywood studios face intense financial pressure, and that a huge chunk of Americans do not share my sensitivities, or even actively oppose them as too "politically correct." But we should challenge nonetheless, for not only does Hollywood exhibit a microcosm of American ethnic issues, but it also commands the rare podium to affect it.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it is getting way better. We have Anthony Mackie playing a rewritten Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Irfan Khan in Jurassic Park, John Bodega in Star Wars etc. We have hit shows like Empire, Fresh off the Boat, the Mindy Project and Jane the Virgin. And then there's Hamilton. The progress has been real. But now, let's explore how much further we have to go.
From least to most egregious:
There's a fair amount of uproar about this role of a Tibetan spiritual guru being rewritten as a "Celtic mystic." I actually have less problems with this than you might think. I'm not a reader of the comics, but given that this character was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko to be a wise male sorcerer capable of astral projection, I read this character as an exoticization of Tibetan culture and all things "Far East" by western society? Since the Himalayas have historically been so remote and inaccessible to foreigners, myths like Shangri-La have long fascinated western culture. This character is more a manifestation of these myths (and maybe reverence for the Dalai Lama) then a proper imagining of a superhero Tibetan.
Initially, this one also didn't strike me as too offensive. Minghella's father is Italian and his mother from Hong Kong, of mixed Chinese, white and Indian Parsi extraction, just like my family. His appearance could kinda pass for Indian. But it really irked Aziz Ansari, as he expressed in Master of None ("We're all 1/16 something. I'm probably 1/16 black. Do you think they're going to let me play Blade!?"). And so I thought about this from his perspective more, and I realized here you have this historical Indian-American person and over 3 million Indian-Americans. I think you can do a little better than someone who "could kinda pass for Indian." We also seem to have one level of credulity for an Indian actor trying to pass as white, but another level for a white actor trying to pass as Indian. Chalk this up as passing the visual test with a C-, but denying opportunities and insulting a real life figure.
Even without reading the book, during the movie I could tell from the names that the casting seemed suspicious. While the author was not explicit, Vincent Kapoor was envisioned as Indian and Mindy Park as Korean. In the movie, they are Black and White respectively. Fictional whitewashing isn't egregious, especially when the race of the characters are irrelevant to the storyline. But on the other hand, this still diminishes the types of roles available to Indian and Korean actors respectively, which is the whole reason we're having this discussion. In a case like this, I believe the minor role, in this case Mindy Park, is more aggrieved, because of course you can find an Asian actress to produce a quality 2 minutes of screentime. Vincent Kapoor is a major character, and if you think Chiwetel Ejiofor is the person able to bring the most out of that character, I'll at least entertain your argument. I'll make the argument that you could have cast an Indian actor and the film would have done just as well artistically and commercially.
So Persians are Caucasian, and Jake Gyllenhaal, a descendant of Swedish immigrants to America, is also Caucasian. Still I don't think I need to explain how culturally distant Sweden and Iran are, and this film gives zero fucks about that. This movie is the classic case of big budget Hollywood, casting a good looking, poorly acclaimed star and culturally appropriating non-Western concepts for a Western audience. The entire main cast is in fact white American or English actors, getting as diverse as Ben Kingsley, whose father was of Indian descent. If this movie were to be remade, it should probably occur in a fictional fantasy land without any obvious takes from real places.
#7 - Cloud Atlas (2012) - Jim Sturgess as Hae-Joo Im
If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, this entry may elicit a WTF reaction. But there are legitimate artistic considerations here. The plot occurs several time periods, with the same actors and actresses reprising multiple roles over the periods. This includes a futuristic Seoul where several non-Asian actors, notably Jim Sturgess but also Hugo Weaving, James D'arcy and David Keith, portray Korean characters. To make their facial features appear more Asian, CGI is used essentially to create epicanthal folds. The net effect looks completely terrible. Such obvious high tech yellowface is somehow not considered socially taboo, as opposed to blackface, which is avoided in the movie.
It's fascinating to me how blackface seems to be the only clearcut ban in the Hollywood whitewashing game. Its slavery-days origins means that using blackface is either explicitly racist or ignorantly insensitive. Using makeup to appear Hispanic, East Asian or South Asian does not have the same historical baggage - but it still looks ugly. When a member of a privileged class makes such effort to look like a less privileged class, the simple visual strikes a queasy feeling that strips away human dignity.
The decision to reuse actors to portray the reincarnation themes of the book can be judged solely on its artistic merits. The cast displays impressive range and the makeup artists deserve great props. The yellowface does not further this artistic vision. Though its a strategy more common for the theater than for the cinematic screen, I think keeping the actors' appearances minimally altered and letting the audience use their imagination would have been best.
Most stunning may be how little controversy this yellowfacing generated. Researching this, I unfortunately came upon a PopSugar piece praising all the transformations, and gushes over the Brit heartthrob like this: "I have just three words for you: Asian Jim Sturgess." Jim Sturgess' own deleted tweet from the controversy showed his own enlightened understanding of the issue. "Yellowface? Blackface? Pinkface? Pinkberry? Blueberry? Strawberry? Bananas? Frozen Yogurt? All the toppings? ... Lovely!" What the actual fuck?
#6 - 21 (2008) - Jim Sturgess as Jeffrey Ma
We got a pair of Jim Sturgesses! I'm not great at Blackjack, but I think when you're dealt a pair of Jim Sturgesses, you never split. In this version, Sturgess doesn't go yellowface - he just replaces the ethnicity of a real person, the Chinese-American MIT graduate blackjack-winning. Ma downplayed his whitewashing and said, "I would have been a lot more insulted if they had chosen someone who was Japanese or Korean, just to have an Asian playing me." Despite my Brad Pitt joke earlier, I totally disagree with Ma here. Maybe fame or financial gain were more important to him that historical accuracy, and the film was also a dramatized adaptation of a book that itself significantly dramatized the real events, and Ma was not very involved in the whole process. Instead of criticizing him, it is much easier to criticize the filmmakers who "would have loved to cast Asians in the lead roles" but such Asians were unavailable. I doubt the white filmmakers ever thought what it would be like for a non-white actor to portray them in a movie inspired by their lives.
#5 - Elizabeth, Michael and Marion (2016) - Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson
I think this yet-to-be-released movie is one of the most interesting cases on here. Unlike Mariane Pearl, Michael Jackson explicitly stated that he did not want to be played by a white person and was proud to be a black American. Of course, Jackson was a weird, weird man with the palest skin and facial features that didn't look like anyone. Most black actors would not look anything like him. It remains to be seen how good this movie's makeup team is, but Joseph Fiennes doesn't look anything like Jackson either. Maybe studio execs thought, "If we can make his brother look like Voldemort, we can make him look like MJ." I think the appropriate course of action is to search for a light skin black actor, maybe a Wentworth Miller or Jesse Williams. No you're not going to get a perfect casting here, but you can at least try to not insult the American audience. For his part, Fiennes is pretty incredulous: "I'm a white, middle-class guy from London. I'm as shocked as you might be."
The reason why I rank this movie with a $30 million budget worse than those larger films is because this one's personal. If you want to understand the backlash against whitewashing, you have to understand it on an emotional level, and no example causes more of an emotional response in me than this one.
I freaking loved the Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z as a kid. In elementary school and middle school, I made sure I was home at 5:30 on weekdays to watch Goku kick butt. I didn't think too much about the cultural setting of the show, or even that the main human characters are all supposed to look Japanese. I had no idea that Goku was inspired by Sun Wukong, 孫悟空, the Monkey King from the Chinese folktale Journey to the West. None of that was important, the show was just awesome.
When I heard about this movie, it'd been many years since I cared about Goku, but I still got excited. Then one look into the trailer I physically shuddered. It was bad enough adapting the Dragon Ball Z epic into an American high school coming-of-age story. It was criminal to put a white guy into the main role. It was worse to keep most of the supporting cast Asian. I felt like it was a direct referendum: Asians are not cool enough to be the hero. They can play the supporting role, the wise kung fu trainer, but white people will never accept you as a leader or star. Having a no name white actor (who the fuck is Justin Chatwin) playing Goku, name unchanged and all, and Emmy Rossum (Shyamalan-esque career post-Mystic River) playing Bulma, is so mind-bogglingly jarring I still cannot bring myself to see this movie. You can make all the intellectual arguments against whitewashing, but sometimes the best argument is a visceral one. Fittingly, this movie was universally panned.
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| Empress Dowager Cixi and advisor |
In the pre-Civil Rights movement days, Hollywood whitewashing was flagrant, with blackface and yellowface deemed socially acceptable. The WTF-inducing examples are plentiful, from Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Laurence Olivier playing Othello in blackface and an ensemble of white people in 55 Days at Peking playing Chinese imperial figures.
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| Someone you know saw this in 1965 |
While plenty of articles grant this issue facetime and recount historical context, I haven't seen a fleshed out and nuanced understanding of 1) why is whitewashing an issue? and 2) when is something whitewashing? In creating this list, I found so many confounding grey areas. What is the right move here? What does the slippery slope take us to? This discussion deserves more back-and-forth than it gets.
Let's start with the easier question. Why is whitewashing bad? And why does it happen? In a movie like 55 Days at Peking, the whitewashing is dripped in colonialism. You can almost see the thought bubbles, "We need a Shakespearean-trained dramatist to portray Empress Dowager Cixi, not one of these Chinese actresses without theatrical class." We've certainly come a long way, but even if filmmakers nowadays do not harbor these same sentiments, they still need to be wary of belittling the abilities of minority thespians. However, the biggest complaints raised now is less the overt racism, but rather the institutionalized practice of reducing opportunities for non-white actors. Filmmakers counter that they need bankable stars, so many of whom happen to be white. Minority actors rightfully respond that to become bankable stars, you have to get cast in the first place! Missing out on roles early on means missing out on exposure means missing out on more roles later on - producing a very white snowball effect. The mentality of sticking to "known quantities" reflects a lack of imagination, a peculiar quality for the film industry. The downstream consequences of this practice include an all white set of Oscar's Best Actor/Best Actress nominees #oscarssowhite.
The connections-heavy world of Hollywood, where many stars are themselves children of stars, poses a difficult barrier of entry. But less industry-specific causes exist too, such as self-segregation which pervades throughout society. I am sure there are many white producers, writers and directors who have primarily white friends - many who don't normally hang out in minority-filled crowds. The reverse is far less true, because minorities in this country by definition find themselves outnumbered by white people all the time. This bleeds into show business. So often you can just tell watching a show that their screenwriters are all white. Consider Friends, the successful decade-long show starring 6 white people, produced by another 10 white people. However this show was considered super mainstream. Lots of minorities watched it, and we didn't find that weird at all. Sure the show only contained white experiences, but we're used to seeing that. Consider Tyler Perry's House of Payne, a successful show lasting 8 seasons, starring and produced, and watched nearly exclusively by black people. This whiteness-as-a-default is an entrenched characteristic of our society, (which is why fantasy characters or race-blind roles still so often end up played by white actors), and if you don't hang out with minorities, you only know the default. Our society is moving towards Aziz Ansari's Master of None, which just as obviously appears written by a diverse staff who find it normal to discuss race.
In addition to depriving actors of color, when films addressing historical or cultural topics are whitewashed, the film itself can suffer. History and culture are passed down among sub-groups and latched onto one's core essence. It's very awkward then to see dances, rituals or poetry performed by people to whom they have not been passed down to. Not saying it can't be done with class, but I shiver hearing a white person recite translated Confucius. There is just this knee jerk reaction of "oh no you don't go there."
Where we draw the line is quite challenging though. Everyone gets offended differently and you can't please everyone, especially in this age. Zoe Saldana was criticized as being not black enough to play Nina Simone, and there was even furor at Irishman Pierce Brosnan playing Englishman James Bond. As a stutterer, I would have preferred an actor with a real speech impediment play the main role in The King's Speech, though Colin Firth's performance won me over. Personally, when examining a casting or adaptation decision, my first barometer is the simple visual test: "does this person look the part?" Secondly, I believe strongly that power dynamics must be contextualized. Because French people do not face discrimination in America, we examine the Hollywood adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo differently than an adaptation of the West African story of Anansi. Thirdly, "cultural distance" too factors in casting. Certainly there are differences between Latin American countries, but a sense of cultural proximity might allow Puerto Rican Benicio del Toro to portray the Argentine Che Guevara. What determines whether cultural distance is too great though has no one answer.
When Natalie Wood plays Maria in West Side Story, she doesn't completely fail the visual test, but her casting is still squeamish because of the uneven power dynamic between white Americans and Puerto Rican Americans. When Gary Oldman puts on an accent as the Russian villain Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One, it's just a good performance in an action movie. Despite the Cold War history, present day dynamics between Russians and Brits or Americans are not particularly sensitive. And in the Russian-German-Kazakh co-production of Mongol, the majority of the cast is Mongolian, but main characters Genghis Khan and his rival Jamukha are played by Japanese and Chinese actors respectively, who learned Mongolian for their lines. They look the part though and the movie flows without a hitch (at least to the non-Mongolian speaker). When Korean-Americans Randall Park and Ken Jeong play Chinese-American characters, they basically pass the visual test and aren't stealing jobs from Chinese-Americans - in our current setting, they are all in the same boat (or fresh off it), struggling for limited roles.
I need to add that I am holding Hollywood to a very high standard. Film studios all around the world, whether it's India, China or Nigeria, practice their own local ethnic washing methods. When those studios become as rich as Hollywood and those countries become as diverse as 2016 America, we can judge them to the same standard. And I know that Hollywood studios face intense financial pressure, and that a huge chunk of Americans do not share my sensitivities, or even actively oppose them as too "politically correct." But we should challenge nonetheless, for not only does Hollywood exhibit a microcosm of American ethnic issues, but it also commands the rare podium to affect it.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it is getting way better. We have Anthony Mackie playing a rewritten Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Irfan Khan in Jurassic Park, John Bodega in Star Wars etc. We have hit shows like Empire, Fresh off the Boat, the Mindy Project and Jane the Virgin. And then there's Hamilton. The progress has been real. But now, let's explore how much further we have to go.
From least to most egregious:
#13 - Dr. Strange (2016) - Tilda Swanton as the Ancient One
Furthermore this character comes with political baggage. First, there are 8 million Tibetans in the world but only around 9,000 Tibetans in America. It's fair to say that it is logistically challenging to find a qualified actor of Tibetan ancestry to play this major role. Second, Marvel wants that China audience and Tibet is a very sensitive issue to China. The PRC Ministry of Culture probably would have blocked the movie had it cast a Tibetan actor or acknowledging the character's origin as Tibetan. That doesn't mean Marvel must bow to this political pressure, but they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Furthermore, let's say a Chinese actor looked and fit the part. That would have been even worse (power dynamic)! That sort of casting would have further marginalized Tibetan people. Giving it to a Korean or Japanese or Indian actor doesn't feel right either.
All in all, reimagining the character as a female Celtic mystic and getting away from those issues and letting Tilda Swinton do her thing isn't too terrible to me. The worst sin is the studio's admitted effects of trying to make Tilda Swinton look more Asian - they should go all the way and make her look super Irish or Scottish instead. Since the movie isn't released yet, we can wait and see how awkwardly they appropriate Tibetan customs, but until now this more or less gets a pass.
#12 - A Mighty Heart (2007) - Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl
I never knew even after watching the trailer for this film that the wife of beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl was of part Afro-Cuban descent (and part European and part Chinese). With tanning sessions, Jolie actually arguably passes the visual test, though she does need to wear a wig, which crosses into the ickiness of hairstyle appropriation. The real life Mariane Pearl actually stated she was elated to have Angelina Jolie portray her. Hard to blame her, it doesn't get more flattering than that. You could talk me into compromising my ethnic heritage if Brad Pitt wanted to play me in my life movie. Pearl's opinion matters a lot here, especially her own racial self-identity, and since she's also part-white, it's not the greatest sin to have a more white actress portray her.
#11 - The Social Network (2010) - Max Minghella as Divya Narendra
#10 - The Martian - Chiwetel Ejiofor as Vincent Kapoor, Mackenzie Davis as Mindy Park
#9 - Aloha (2015) - Emma Stone as Allison Ng
This one caused an uproar when it happened. Emma Stone's character was inexplicably identified as half white, quarter Chinese, quarter Hawaiian, and based on a real person director Cameron Crowe met. When I first heard about this, I actually got excited! I assumed that Emma Stone must have been part Asian and I just hadn't known, like Keanu Reeves. When I discovered she wasn't, I assumed Cameron Crowe must have been part Asian. How could a white guy just cast a white girl to play a character like this in 2015? It made no sense. I haven't seen the movie, but I read that Allison Ng's ethnicity is largely superfluous to the plot. It establishes her connection to the island's heritage, but can easily be written out. So why leave it in at all?
Crowe says the character was inspired by a real person of that ethnic background and super proud of it, who really did appear white. If Crowe really thought this Asian heritage was important to the story, he should have cast a mixed Asian actress like Olivia Munn or Chloe Bennet. If he was committed to Emma Stone, he should've left out that part. But the current status treats mixed heritage as a prop, something you can simply put on as opposed to something that defines who you are. It does no justice to the nuances of growing up as a mixed person, especially in a diverse place steeped in colonial history like Hawaii.
#8 - Prince of Persia (2010) - Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia
Crowe says the character was inspired by a real person of that ethnic background and super proud of it, who really did appear white. If Crowe really thought this Asian heritage was important to the story, he should have cast a mixed Asian actress like Olivia Munn or Chloe Bennet. If he was committed to Emma Stone, he should've left out that part. But the current status treats mixed heritage as a prop, something you can simply put on as opposed to something that defines who you are. It does no justice to the nuances of growing up as a mixed person, especially in a diverse place steeped in colonial history like Hawaii.
#8 - Prince of Persia (2010) - Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia
#7 - Cloud Atlas (2012) - Jim Sturgess as Hae-Joo Im
It's fascinating to me how blackface seems to be the only clearcut ban in the Hollywood whitewashing game. Its slavery-days origins means that using blackface is either explicitly racist or ignorantly insensitive. Using makeup to appear Hispanic, East Asian or South Asian does not have the same historical baggage - but it still looks ugly. When a member of a privileged class makes such effort to look like a less privileged class, the simple visual strikes a queasy feeling that strips away human dignity.
The decision to reuse actors to portray the reincarnation themes of the book can be judged solely on its artistic merits. The cast displays impressive range and the makeup artists deserve great props. The yellowface does not further this artistic vision. Though its a strategy more common for the theater than for the cinematic screen, I think keeping the actors' appearances minimally altered and letting the audience use their imagination would have been best.
Most stunning may be how little controversy this yellowfacing generated. Researching this, I unfortunately came upon a PopSugar piece praising all the transformations, and gushes over the Brit heartthrob like this: "I have just three words for you: Asian Jim Sturgess." Jim Sturgess' own deleted tweet from the controversy showed his own enlightened understanding of the issue. "Yellowface? Blackface? Pinkface? Pinkberry? Blueberry? Strawberry? Bananas? Frozen Yogurt? All the toppings? ... Lovely!" What the actual fuck?
#6 - 21 (2008) - Jim Sturgess as Jeffrey Ma
#5 - Elizabeth, Michael and Marion (2016) - Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson
#4 - The Last Airbender (2010) - Everything About the Movie
We had such high hope M. Night Shyamalan. Normal hope, not the kind that culminates in winning the Razzie for Worst Picture. The movie is based on a Nickeldeon TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender that is not actually a Japanese anime as I had thought, but an American creation by two white guys, heavily inspired by Japanese anime. The Avatar universe is full of architecture, themes and people heavily inspired by East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Inuit and New World cultures. Though voiced mostly by white people, the characters are depicted in the anime as variously Asian. We can have a separate conversation about whitewashing in voice casting (it's not as bad), but let's see how the producers and Shyamalan handled this film. On one hand, the cast is very diverse with many parts for young actors and actresses of color. On the other hand, the main protagonists are all white (and not well-known stars), and the antagonists South Asian or Middle Eastern. All of these characters in the TV show appear East Asian or Inuit. Now, you can do something creative in this fictional world and put characters of an ethnicity into clothing, cultures, and even names atypical of that race to stretch our assumptions. But when one ethnicity represents the good guys, minority ethnicities represent the bad guys, and none of them are true to the show, then people will start judging the cultural appropriation, criticizing the acting and eventually put your film on this list.
#3 - The Lone Ranger (2013) - Johnny Depp as Tonto
I'm sure this movie wouldn't have been made without a big name playing Tonto of the Comanche tribe, and none of the big name stars in Hollywood are significantly Native American. Way back in the 1950s, Canadian Mohawk actor Jay Silverheels played the same role. I'm not sure whether this indicates that Hollywood has regressed in 60 years, or whether Canada has just always been more progressive. Depp claims to be part Cherokee, or maybe part Cree, and it's all pretty dubious. If you want to talk about uneven power dynamics, no example is more skewed than Native Americans and white Americans. The producers touted the presence of a Comanche advisor on set and they had dialogue in the dying Comanche language. Whatever. The film is a stupid remake of a stupid radio show of a stupid racist genre and it deserved to lose all these producers millions of dollars.
#2 - Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) - Christian Bale as Moses + Everything Else
This is basically the same concept as in Prince of Persia and Gods of Egypt (2016) with casting decisions that piss off modern Egyptians and don't give minority actors a chance. Except the production team of Gods of Egypt actually recognized their mistakes, with director Alex Proyas and Lionsgate issuing apologies for not considering diversity. Director Ridley Scott of Exodus went the other way, dropping this memorable quote, "I can't mount a film of this budget...and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such...I'm just not going to get financed." This is not without truth, but it belies the fact that Scott didn't even try to fight this trend and simply doesn't care to understand why people like me are so bothered by whitewashing.
#1 - Dragonball Evolution (2009) - The Movie
#1 - Dragonball Evolution (2009) - The Movie
I freaking loved the Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z as a kid. In elementary school and middle school, I made sure I was home at 5:30 on weekdays to watch Goku kick butt. I didn't think too much about the cultural setting of the show, or even that the main human characters are all supposed to look Japanese. I had no idea that Goku was inspired by Sun Wukong, 孫悟空, the Monkey King from the Chinese folktale Journey to the West. None of that was important, the show was just awesome.
When I heard about this movie, it'd been many years since I cared about Goku, but I still got excited. Then one look into the trailer I physically shuddered. It was bad enough adapting the Dragon Ball Z epic into an American high school coming-of-age story. It was criminal to put a white guy into the main role. It was worse to keep most of the supporting cast Asian. I felt like it was a direct referendum: Asians are not cool enough to be the hero. They can play the supporting role, the wise kung fu trainer, but white people will never accept you as a leader or star. Having a no name white actor (who the fuck is Justin Chatwin) playing Goku, name unchanged and all, and Emmy Rossum (Shyamalan-esque career post-Mystic River) playing Bulma, is so mind-bogglingly jarring I still cannot bring myself to see this movie. You can make all the intellectual arguments against whitewashing, but sometimes the best argument is a visceral one. Fittingly, this movie was universally panned.
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