Gods of Egypt is kind of an
interesting case for me. No doubt, the
casting was very badly handled – in this action fantasy set in ancient Egypt,
the majority of the Egyptian gods are played by white people (Chadwick Boseman
and Elodie Yung are the only exceptions, neither of whom are of Arab descent.) This was a definite movie fail. But, at the very least, this is one of the
few films to get involved in a controversy like this and not entrench themselves in the defensive and make a bunch of
damage-control excuses.
The
outcry began as soon as the casting was announced and only got louder when the
first character posters came out featuring the likes of Gerard Butler and
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau playing Egyptian gods.
Lionsgate, the film’s distributor, and Alex Proyas, its director, didn’t
respond to the criticism right away, but when they did, they didn’t try to
obfuscate. Here’s the statement
Lionsgate put out on the film’s casting:
“We recognize that it is our responsibility
to help ensure that casting decisions reflect the diversity and culture of the
time periods portrayed. In this instance
we failed to live up to our own standards of sensitivity and diversity, for
which we sincerely apologize. Lionsgate
is deeply committed to making films that reflect the diversity of our
audiences. We have, can and will
continue to do better.”
Which,
I admit, is nice to see. It’s a relief
not to hear a bunch of complaining about how “it’s not our fault there are no Arab movie stars,” “The haters just don’t get it
and will totally understand when they see the film,” “Hey, it’s not like we put
anybody in brownface,” or “It doesn’t count as whitewashing because these are gods, not people.” I definitely give Lionsgate and Proyas credit
for owning up to the mistakes they made here.
It’s
just a shame that they put themselves in a situation in which they needed to apologize
in the first place. Commitment to
diversity in film only works when your movies reflect that commitment, and
films set in the Middle East still seem to be a consistent blind spot on this
front. From Christian Bale as Moses to
Russell Crowe as Noah to Jake Gyllenhaal as the prince of Persia to pretty much
any movie about Jesus, we’ve seen this again and again. In fact, Gods
of Egypt came out within two years of both Exodus: Gods and Kings and Noah.
Instead of making the same mistakes as those (very recent) films and
having to apologize for it, why didn’t Lionsgate learn from those films’ mistakes and cast their own with more
sensitivity?
I don’t
know what it’s going to take for studios and creative teams to consistently
show their commitment to diversity at the start
of production rather than after the fact.
One female- and/or PoC-led flop is enough to scare Hollywood off and
make them declare, “See? People don’t
want to see movies about woman/PoC!”, but we’ve seen flop after whitewashed
flop over and over (not saying that they all flopped specifically because of whitewashing, but casting
white people certainly didn’t guarantee box office gold,) and yet the studios keep doing it. Where’s the breaking point? When are they going to realize that it’s
literally not worth it?
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