The True Culprits Of Hollywood Whitewashing Are Hiding In Plain Sight
Don’t direct your rage and tweetstorms at actors anymore.
Dear Hollywood producers,
I don’t know any of you by name or at least we’re not familiar enough to be on a first name basis so I hope you don’t mind if I address you all as one. Cool? Good. Most of you are aware Ed Skrein made news when he decided not to play Major Ben Daimio in the upcoming Hellboy flick. While actors step down from roles all the time, this had nothing to do with “conflicting schedules” or the dreaded “creative differences” we always hear so often. Skrein, a man of Jewish Austrian and English descent, decided he might not be the best guy to play a character who’s traditionally been Asian American.
Stunning right?
Now that you’ve picked your jaws up from the floor and stopped convulsing at the fact the guy threw away a lucrative payday and the chance to have a big role in an upcoming comic book movie, maybe you can answer this question: why was Skrein even put in the position where he had a choice to make, let alone one he felt compelled to express through social media?
When whitewashing occurs, it’s easy to throw shots at the actors playing the roles or even the directors. Ghost In a Shell, Death Note, Dragon Ball, and Doctor Strange are all recent examples of producers or other creative types taking Asian characters and deciding they would be better served if portrayed by someone white. To say nothing of those old Christopher Lee Fu Manchu movies where Lee, a British white guy, played the title Asian character for five freaking movies. Yes, the ’60s and ’70s were a different time but if it was truly that anachronistic, why are you making the same mistakes 50 years later?
Your audience gets mad at the actors/actresses for taking the roles. We conjure tweet storms against Scarlett Johansson, rake Tilda Swinton over so many coals, when the lion’s share of the blame doesn’t lie with them although you’d like us to believe it does. They get paid the big bucks for a reason, right? Yes, no one is twisting their arms to take the roles. No one is putting a gun to the two leads of Death Note or even the director and forcing them to sign on the dotted line or you’ll get them and their little dog too. They’re adults and being a grown-up means dealing with grown-up consequences. But you get to hide. Unless you’re a big name producer like Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, or Kevin Feige, the public has no clue who you are and probably doesn’t care. Real killers do move in silence after all and anonymity is crucial to pulling off any deed, however ill-thought out.
To the credit of the cats behind Hellboy, they released a statement following Srkein’s, but why did it take him dropping out for Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin to realize the error of their ways and repent? It’s awesome they want to “recast the part with an actor more consistent with the character in the source material” but why did that take this far into production for that light bulb to go off? You all seem to suffer from the same hindsight syndrome, telling the world after the fact how you’ll “do better” and “never mean to be insensitive” but come on now. Everyone knows it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, and even better to do it after the fact. So we forgive because as minorities, whether we’re Black, Asian, or Hispanic, that’s seemingly what we do best.
As a Black man who adores Bruce Lee and believes he was an actual superhero, to hear you all in your infinite wisdom sold Birth of the Dragon as a Lee story but it’s actually about “nondescript white guy no. 1” and his impressions of the man hurts my soul a tad. But it’s a perfect metaphor for how you all do business. Ed Srkein disagreed with that notion and realized someone who looks like him will have plenty of opportunities to get another big payday and true art must have some honesty to it. Why tell a Bruce Lee story if you’re not going to make it about, you know, Bruce Lee? Why adapt Ghost in a Shell if you’re just going to make the movie about an Asian woman living in the body of a white woman rather than actually casting an Asian woman? Why do a movie about ancient Egypt and not cast a single lead who looks like they could actually be Egyptian?
Because, and here’s the metaphor, Birth of a Dragon says a story about a minority, even one as cool and influential as Bruce Lee, is only viable or relatable if it’s through the eyes of a white guy. It’s 2017, not 1917, so maybe it’s time for you all to join the rest of us in this century.
Marcus Benjamin is a danger to the public, an alum of American University, St. John’s University, a screenwriter, and has an intense relationship with words. Witness his tomfoolery on Twitter,@AbstractPo3tic.
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