"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: White A-Listers


I’m not looking at a specific movie or TV show today, or the unconvincing comments made about it by an executive/director/actor/etc.  Instead, I’m speaking more generally to white celebrities who work in Hollywood – the Scarlett Johannsons, Christian Bales, and Rooney Maras, yes, but also the stars who have yet to place themselves on the wrong side of a whitewashing scandal.

And yes, what I’m going to say ought to apply to all white actors – however, I think a major part of this problem stems from A-listers, so we’ll start there.  White Hollywood stars, you’re what movies want.  We all know that.  Plenty of whitewashing defenses talk about money, about how you need a star to open a movie, about how there aren’t any bankable Asian, Native American, South Asian, Middle Eastern, or Latino stars of color, about how the only reasonable thing to do is to cast one of you to make their movie work.  Never mind that the box office has shown that big-name stars in whitewashed movies don’t necessarily bring in big bucks, and that recent films with strong PoC casts – like Get Out or The Fate of the Furious – have raked in the dough.  Despite fan outcries, monetary evidence, and countless thinkpieces, studios continue to insist you’re the winning ingredient to make a movie a success.

And you know what that means?  It means you have the power here.  You’re not the only ones taking whitewashed parts, but you’re the ones the producers are looking for, the ones they’re holding up as the justification for not casting an actor of color – who wouldn’t want Emma Stone in their movie, or Russell Crowe, or Ben Affleck?  That means this sytem, this practice, is built on you, and that means you have the ability to play a huge role in shutting it down.

How?  You say no.  All of you.  You get offered a role based on a true story or a previously-written work, you do a quick Google search on your prospective character to make sure they’re white.  You get sent an original script, you note cultural identifiers for your prospective character and see if anything suggests – or outright states – that they’re not white.  And if anything you find tells you that your prospective character was supposed to be or currently is a person of color, you say no.

Now, you might say, “But it’s a great role.”  That’s true, but that doesn’t mean it’s a role you should be taking, certainly not one you should be taking from an actor who almost never gets the opportunity to even try our for a great role.  You might say, “Without me, the project won’t get made.”  That may be true, but if it’s a question between doing it wrong or not doing it at all, I’d prefer the latter – I’d rather wait until Hollywood is prepared to do it justice.  You might say, “But I really believe in this project.”  Then support it in other ways; maybe get involved as a producer and use your name and influence to help ensure that it gets done right.

Imagine how powerful that would be, if all of you stood together on this, if every time a studio came looking for a white celebrity to play their whitewashed starring role, all of you went to ground, taking your fame and your box-office draw with you.  If they had no option of a white A-lister who would take their role.  I’m not saying it’ll change overnight, because Hollywood attitudes about race are still deeply entrenched, and for a while, they’ll court lesser-known and unknown white actors for these parts, actors who don’t feel they can afford to turn down juicy roles.  But if whitewashing the roles with someone of your caliber doesn’t guarantee box-office gold, then these actors won’t even fare as well as that, and eventually, Hollywood will finally start to get the message that this practice isn’t financially sound, realizing that the only way to make these projects is to make them right.  Not to mention, your position and influence may help these lesser-known actors find the resolve they need to turn down these parts as well – even though it would be a greater financial/career loss for them, they might look to you and say, “Well, Jake Gyllenhaal was offered the role, and he turned it down.”  Or, “Jennifer Lawrence wouldn’t do it.”  Send a message that “this is not how we do things,” and others will start to follow.  Isn’t that something you’d like to be a part of?

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