Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: Max Landis (Ghost in the Shell)

I’m saving News Satire Roundup for tomorrow, since there’s one extra Daily Show episode tonight.  Instead, here’s Scarlett Johansson cast as Major Motoko Kusanagi in the forthcoming live-action Ghost in the Shell film.  More whitewashing, more Asian erasure, more people shouting online about why it’s not cool, and more people behind the movie scrambling to explain why they had no choice but to perpetuate a crappy, backwards practice.

Here’s an excerpt from a YouTube video posted by screenwriter Max Landis (not a screenwriter for Ghost in the Shell – just weighing in from an industry perspective) on why Johansson was cast, not because of a pattern of whitewashing in Hollywood casting, but because of the decline of the Hollywood “star system”:  “There are really, like, only 10 or 15 men who get movies made.  Two of them are Black – Denzel and Will Smith.  Um… the rest are white.  And then there are about, like, 5 women who can get your movie made.  Uh… one of them is Scarlett Johansson, ‘cause of Lucy, and, uh… I think they’re all distressingly white.”

First of all, never mind the fact that movies like Slumdog Millionaire, Creed, Ride Along, Keanu, and Life of Pi somehow manage to get around this utter impossibility of getting made without casting the 10-20 bankable names in the industry (not even Denzel or Will Smith!)  Let’s not even bring race into the equation.  Let’s just take a look at this ridiculously hyperbolic claim.

Only 10-15 men and about 5 women in Hollywood can get your movie made.  By extension, this would mean that every major studio production (I’m feel generous, so I’m not even going to count indie films) stars at least one of these 15-20 people.  Which of them starred in The Legend of Tarzan?  The Secret Life of Pets?  Independence Day:  Resurgence?  Now You See Me 2?  Central Intelligence?  Deadpool?  13 Hours?  Free State of Jones?  Yes, I see familiar faces, but it’s not the same ludicrously-few familiar faces over and over again.  I can buy that Matthew McConnaughey might be one of Landis’s 10-15 men, but what Alexander Skarsgård, Liam Hemsworth, or Jesse Eisenberg?  I know it can’t be Kevin Hart, because Landis already told us that Denzel and Will Smith are the only Black men in Hollywood who can get movies made.  Or how about women?  Last year, I saw movies starring Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Teyonah Parris, Alicia Vikander, Amy Poehler, Shailene Woodley, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlize Theron, Anna Kendrick, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Brie Larson, Daisy Ridley, Emilia Clarke, Margot Robbie, and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (I also saw Scarlett Johansson in Age of Ultron, but I wouldn’t call her “the star” of that movie.)  That’s 16 women, 2 of which shouldn’t apparently exist anyway because Landis tells us the only women in Hollywood who can get movies made are “distressingly white.”  So, which are the 5, and how did the rest of their movies get made?

And before you say, “Well, a lot of films are familiar properties relying more on the brand than the actors,” Landis covered that, too.  Later in his video, he names Star Wars as the only property in which the film itself trumps the fame of the actors in it and smugly points that they still cast “a white girl” (point of order – they also cast a Black man and a Latino man, but whatever.)

Long story short, Max Landis, your theory breaks down as soon as you start to tell it.  You specifically name Chris Hemsworth as someone who can’t get a movie made despite his talent, looks, and name recognition from Thor, but you ignore the fact that Chris Hemsworth keeps getting movies made.  (Black Hat, Rush, Red Dawn, In the Heart of the Sea, just to name a few.)  I’m not saying he’s box-office gold, but that’s not your bar.  The bar is, “Can he get cast as the star in a movie?” and the answer is yes, repeatedly, even though you just told us he can’t.

So if, unthinkably, miraculously, so many movies are somehow getting made without having one of these 15-20 magic names, then what’s Ghost in the Shell’s excuse?  What’s it about, if it’s not about race?  And if casting Scarlett Johansson was literally one of only five “distressingly white” choices Ghost in the Shell could have made, then where did basically every other movie I mentioned in this post come from, and how did they manage it when Ghost in the Shell couldn’t?