This is
a slightly thorny one, which is why I didn’t write about it when I first saw
the trailer. This “Matt Damon fights
monsters in ancient China” movie isn’t quite as simple as a lot of the
Hollywood whitewashing I’ve talked about by virtue of the fact that it isn’t
purely a Hollywood movie. The film, out
in February, is an English-language co-production between filmmakers in the
U.S. and China, with Hollywood screenwriters and a Chinese director (Zhang
Yimou, of House of Flying Daggers and
the beautiful Hero.) In addition to Damon, the cast includes a few
other Western actors (Willem Dafoe, Pedro Pascal) and a number of Chinese
actors, including Andy Lau. I get that
the Chinese film industry doesn’t have the baggage Hollywood does when it comes
to parts for Asian actors – obviously – and in China, casting a white guy in a
Chinese fantasy epic is a rarity, not standard practice. But I still want to talk about it.
After
the first trailer/poster for the film was released in the U.S. and Constance Wu
groaned on social media about what appears to be yet another White Savior
movie, Zhang rushed to the film’s defense.
Among other things, he said, “Matt
Damon is not playing a role that was originally conceived for a Chinese actor.
The arrival of his character in our story is an important plot point. There are
five major heroes in our story and he is one of them – the other four are all
Chinese.”
Now,
the film isn’t out yet, so we don’t know what it’s really like. I want to hope that Zhang’s description is
accurate and the movie offers up an equitable five-part collaboration between
four Chinese heroes and one white hero, in which Damon’s part reflects
cross-cultural contact in the ancient world rather than Mighty Whitey riding in
to save the day. If that’s the case and
the movie is amazing, I’ll gladly love it and eat whatever crow is necessary to
counteract my earlier side-eying.
However,
as you can see from the title of today’s post, my beef isn’t with Zhang Yimou
at this point. It’s with whoever had a
hand in the first trailer/poster put out for the film here in the U.S., whether
that was in making them or just approving them for public release. You know, the trailer where Matt Damon has
the only lines and the poster with only Matt Damon’s face on it, both of which
name only him as a cast member. Now,
it’s true that promotional materials don’t necessarily reflect the truth of a
movie. It’s entirely possible that
Damon’s role is no bigger than Zhang suggests it is.
What
this trailer and this poster does, though, is send a message, which is pretty
blatantly, “Come see Matt Damon fight monsters in ancient China!!!” The message is, “It’s got Matt Damon – what
more do you need to know?” Yes, it’s
only a first trailer/poster, and yes, Damon is a bankable name here in the
U.S. That said, these promotional
materials are coming on the heels of outrage about whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, and Doctor Strange, and Gods of Egypt, and Aloha,
and Pan, and shall I go on? Assuming that the people who made the
trailer/poster are familiar with the U.S. film industry, and assuming that the
Hollywood side of production signed off on both of them for release, then I
would imagine they’ve been working in the industry as these other films have
been raked over the coals for their racial tone-deafness and, notably, the ones
that have already come out haven’t
had success at the box office (not saying specifically that they flopped because of whitewashing, just that all
those inappropriately-cast white actors didn’t equal big money, which producers
often cite as a big reason for whitewashing.)
Which means they watched all these controversies unfold, looked at the
trailer/poster they made, and still thought, “Yep, everyone’s gonna love this!”
In a
way, if the movie is an awesome
ensemble piece with mostly Chinese leads, then the promos are even more
troubling because it means that the Hollywood side of this production either 1)
doesn’t understand the outcry over whitewashing in recent years or 2) doesn’t
take it seriously. These people should have been saying, “You know, what
with the Matt Damon of it all, people might think we’re pulling a Ghost in the Shell/Doctor Strange/take your pick.
Let’s get ahead of this before it starts; let’s put out a trailer and a
poster that gives them a glimpse of our awesome ensemble and alleviates some of
those fears.” I’m not saying don’t put
Damon in the trailer or the poster – I’m saying don’t only feature him. Given the
way they’ve chosen to introduce the film to U.S. audiences, they can’t honestly
be taken aback when people worry that it’s a White Savior flick, right? How did they think this was going to
look? If the film itself is a valid
answer to the criticism it’s received, then I wish it would have been promoted
in a way that reflected that. As it is,
regardless of what the film is actually like, the message this trailer/poster
sends is, “Look at our big white star, and nothing else matters.” Which, if Zhang is describing it well, does
it a huge disservice.
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