Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: Ewan McGregor (The Impossible)

This is going back a few years now – The Impossible came out in 2012 – but seeing Tom Holland as the new Spider-Man in Captain America:  Civil War, reminded me of this film, where he played the teenage son of the central family in the film about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand.  Now obviously, Tom Holland isn’t Thai, and neither are the actors playing the rest of the family, including Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor.  However, while it’s fair to acknowledge that the film is specifically about a family of tourists vacationing in Thailand when the tsunami hits, it’s based on the true story of a Spanish family’s experiences.  The film casts white UK actors in the roles, anglicizes the characters’ names, and gives them English accents.

There’s a lot going on here.  The fact that the movie is about a major natural disaster in Asia and doesn’t provide any Asian perspective is a clear issue, and even once the film moved Asian people out of the foreground, focusing instead on tourists, the nationality and complexions of the actual tourist family they were talking about weren’t considered “universal” enough and so we wound up with a white English family instead.  I’ll be looking mainly at the first issue in this post, since that’s the issue Ewan McGregor regrettably tries to discount in this quote: 

“The truth is, it’s a story about this family, this western family, who are on holiday there.  And that story is many, many people’s story.  But to say that it doesn’t tell the Thai people’s stories…  Naomi’s character is saved by a Thai man, and taken to safety in a Thai village where the Thai women dress her.  It’s one of the most moving scenes in the film, really.  In the hospital they’re all Thai nurses and Thai doctors – you see nothing but Thai people saving lives and helping.”

Sigh… I get that actors don’t want to burn any bridges against their studios, and really, when white actors agree to take roles like this, they’re at the very least complicit in what’s going on.  Still, it saddens me when people I like say these sorts of things.  It never, never makes them look anything resembling good.

So, Ewan, I’ll grant you that the story is “many, many people’s story,” in that there were many tourists in Thailand when the tsunami hit.  However, that large number of tourists still pales in comparison to the number of Thai people with their own stories to tell (who probably didn’t get the same priority medical treatment as the injured white tourist.)  It’d be a bit like making a Holocaust film about a Jehovah’s Witness in a concentration camp; yes, some people in concentration camps were Jehovah’s Witnesses there, but the vast majority were not, a fact very widely accepted in Hollywood.  Although, even that story would be preferable to this one, since many films have been made about Jewish people during the Holocaust and so the occasional story about non-Jewish people wouldn’t constitute erasure.  However, there isn’t a wide body of films about the Indian Ocean tsunami that tell the stories of the people principally affected by it, and so, a high-profile movie that tells an outlier story is going to be much more conspicuous.

Because all those Thai people in your movie are serving the white characters’ story.  They’re there for storytelling utility, not as real characters.  None of them have names or fears/struggles of their own that are more than backdrop.  That’s what people mean when they say the film “doesn’t tell the Thai people’s stories,” and to argue otherwise is disingenuous at best.

Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: The Hunger Games

It makes me sad to send The Hunger Games a Dear Hollywood Whitewashers, because I love Jennifer Lawrence and I love Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, but this was not a role I think she should have been given (this post equally applies to Gale, Haymitch, and other Seam residents, but Katniss is definitely the eye of this particular storm.)  I’m not calling out any one specific person here.  Troubles began when Katniss’s original casting call was only open to Caucasian actresses and were exacerbated when director Gary Ross and author Suzanne Collins both dismissed whitewashing concerns as nothing a little hair dye or makeup couldn’t fix.  A seal of approval from the series’s writer might negate this argument for some, but I’m sticking with it.

The quote we’re examining today isn’t one of these justifications or dismissals.  Instead, these words are from Katniss, the description she gives of herself and other Seam folk in the first book:

“He could be my brother.  Straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same gray eyes.  But we’re not related, at least not closely.  Most of the families who work the mines resemble one another this way.  That’s why my mother and Prim, with their light hair and blue eyes, always look out of place.  They are.  My mother’s parents were part of the small merchant class…”

Now, I get that “olive” doesn’t absolutely, no-question mean someone is non-white.  It could arguably suggest a more typically Mediterranean complexion, and Google Imaging “olive skin” provides results as racially varied as Halle Berry, Jennifer Lopez, and Aishwarya Rai – including, yes, a small number of white people.  However, in my experience, white authors don’t use the word “olive” to describe a white person’s skin tone.  They might use words like “pasty” or “tan,” but in all honesty, they’re more likely not to mention their skin color at all.  Characters of color are far more likely to have their skin tone specified, while white characters much more frequently only have their hair or eye color described – “white” isn’t considered a necessary detail to give, since it’s generally the default assumption for white readers (In the quote above, notice that Katniss’s mom and Prim aren’t specifically noted as having light-colored skin.  Give them light hair and blue eyes, and we fill in the rest.)

What’s more, The Hunger Games gives us two class-based subsets of District 12, both of whom whom have colorings distinct enough that residents can be easily identified as “Seam” or “merchant class.”  It seems strangely coincidental if the (relatively) better-off merchants are all noticeably lighter than the impoverished coal miners – given the below-ground profession of most of the population, the “Seam look” can’t simply be blamed on them getting more sun – and it’s notmeant to highlight a racial disparity.

To be fair, I’m not specifically saying that Katniss is Native American.  Or Asian.  Or Latina.  Or Black.  The impression I get is that, due to years of racial mixing, Panem has races that present-day America doesn’t.  If I was casting Katniss, Gale, and Haymitch, I’d have probably looked for mixed actors who couldn’t be immediately labeled as “[insert race here!]”  So, I can’t say what Katniss “is,” but I strongly feel that she is not white.  Casting her as such, in my opinion, stripped the films of a lot of potential richness and of course denied an actress of color the rocket to mega-stardom from playing this extraordinary role.

Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: Cameron Crowe (Aloha)

Hollywood has a long history of whitewashing Asian characters:  the horrifying yellowface of past decades, the near-total white-ification of screen adaptations of popular animes, the Asian erasure of real-life people in movies aboutthem, and the shoehorning of white guys into samurai movies are just a few oft-used techniques, past and present.  Cameron Crowe’s rom-com Aloha became one of the most recent offenders on this front when Emma Stone was cast as Allison Ng, a mixed character of white, Chinese, and Hawaiian descent.

Now, the quote we’re looking at is actually from an apology letter Crowe posted on his blog after controversy about Stone’s casting blew up.  It’s not the sort of apology one would hope for – he extends the mea culpa to “all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice,” using fairly soft adjectives and focusing on people’s perception of the casting rather than agreeing that it was objectively wrong – but at the very least, he does seem to acknowledge the mistake and places the blame at his feet rather than Emma Stone’s.  But I digress – here’s the quote:

“As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud ¼ Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one.  A half-Chinese father was meant to show the surprising mix of cultures often prevalent in Hawaii.  Extremely proud of her unlikely heritage, she feels personally compelled to over-explain every chance she gets.  The character was based on a real-life, red-headed local who did just that.”

Okay, Cameron Crowe.  Character-wise, that’s all fine.  Granted, when the only prominent Hawaiian/Asian character in your movie set in Hawaii looks white, it’s not particularly cool, but the character itself is fine.  As you say, she’s based on a real-life person.  But do you know what that real-life person is?  Mixed.  Regardless of how she looks, she and her heritage is mixed.

So, you’ve neatly established for us that mixed people who look white exist.  It then stands to reason that mixed people who look white can be cast in movies, and that’s who you should have cast here.  When you’re talking about race and a long history of cinematic whitewashing and Asian erasure, it’s not just the look that’s important.  It’s soessential to recognize that actors of color have far fewer opportunities in Hollywood, and the absolute least that Hollywood can do is cast these actors in the roles that are written as PoC/mixed.

I get that you were specifically looking for an actress that didn’tlook Asian, but you could have found one without hiring a white actress.  (After all, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played Zach on Saved by the Bell, is part Indonesian, and I don’t think many saw Zach as anything other than a white kid.)  Why not someone like Olivia Munn, or Chloe Bennet from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (altered hair color optional?)  Coincidentally, Bennet is a great example of why “the character’s supposed to looks white” isn’t a good enough reason to cast a white actress instead.  Back when she used her given name, Chloe Wang, she had a hard time getting roles, being told, “You’re not white enough to be a lead character, but you’re not Asian enough to have a best-friend role.”  While she’s now the lead in a genre show, it’s as Chloe Bennet(her father’s first name.)  White and mixed/PoC actors are not awarded the same opportunities, and so, when roles like this come along, it’s your duty as a person with power in Hollywood to fill them as they ought to be.

Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: Ridley Scott

Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight did a magnificent piece on whitewashing in Hollywood (more on that in this week’s News Satire Roundup,) which got me thinking.  I’ve been paying more attention to diversity in film and television lately, and I’ve mentioned being no fan of whitewashing.  However, a quote from Ridley Scott, director of 2014's white-led Egyptian story Exodus:  Gods and Kings, made me realize something I haven’t talked about – the excuses that filmmakers (and actors) give when the public calls them out on whitewashing practices.  So, this is a new feature focused specifically on these kinds of excuses and my replies on them.  (Note:  as with many of the films I’ll eventually bring up in this feature, I haven’t seen Exodus:  Gods and Kings, but I’m commenting on the casting trend and not the movies themselves.)

Here’s Ridley Scott on why he cast white men (Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton) as leads in his movie about Egyptian characters:  “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.”

We won’t focus too much on the “the tax rebates made me do it!” hand-wringing over budget, except to point out that that excuse wouldn’t have remotely flown for a story set virtually anywhere else in Africa.  Even though Hollywood has (mostly!) learned that it can’t get away with casting white actors as Black people, Middle Eastern characters are subjected to whitewashing more often, particularly in biblical epics like Exodus.

See, here’s the thing, Ridley Scott.  Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such (topnotch phrasing there, really well-made choice) has ludicrously-limited opportunities in Hollywood.  Goodness knows he’s unlikely to be cast in any race-non-specified role that will probably default to white.   The casting calls his agent sends him are a lot of Arab Cab Driver, Terrorist #3, and Oil Sheik stuff.  He goes to these auditions and he takes these parts because he wants to work and he wants to act and he looks for something more substantial to come along.

But when those parts do come along, people like you say, “Who’s this guy?  I can’t open a movie with someone like him,” and they cast a white “name” (or not – Bale is a star, but Edgerton isn’t much of a known commodity, as the Last Week Tonight piece points out) in the name of selling tickets.  Well, no, that’s not quite right.  As you said, “the question doesn’t even come up.”  You never see his audition, because he doesn’t get to give you one, because you’re already decided that’s not an option worth considering.

And if he never gets that chance to even try for a part like that, he’s always going to be “Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such,” because he can’t make a name for himself off of Terrorist #3.  Do you know who Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt, and, yes, Christian Bale, all were once?  Robert and Brad and Christian so-and-so from such-and-such.  Years ago, they became the names we know today for two important reasons.  First, they’re damn good actors.  Second, they were able to prove that to Hollywood – and the rest of us – because they were able to audition for and get great roles in great movies.  By denying Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such the opportunity to show you what he can do, you’re just perpetuating the trumped-up excuse you used to exclude him in the first place.