Whitewashing in Hollywood

After years of battling racism in Hollywood do minorities still have to fight to play their own race?

Whitewashing : the entertainment industry’s attempt at making ethnic characters more appealing to the white, money-spending masses by making characters less ethnic and more white.

Many Hollywood film industries have been accused of whitewashing in films such as Batman Begins, Doctor Strange, Deathnote and even Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The most recent example of whitewashing in the media is Netflix’s decision to recreate the Japanese anime, Death Note, with an all-white, Americanised cast. The anime, originally set in Tokyo, is being relocated to Seattle with a typical “American School Drama” making the film adaptation almost completely unrecognisable to the original. This may sound like a decision to make production easier but it gives no excuse for changing Japanese surnames to names commonly found in America. Light Yagami becomes Light Turner and Misa Amane becomes Mia Sutton. Furthermore, instead of casting Asian or Asian-American actors which would fit with the original all the cast are white despite the fact that actors of Asian descent auditioned for the part. Despite a nearly all-star cast including Nat Wolff and Margaret Qualley there is only one Asian actor in an adaptation from a show originally set in Asia!

However, this is a drastic step down from Hollywood around the 1930’s who used yellow-face and black-face to make characters more ethnic instead of casting characters of that race. In The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) the character of Dr Fu Manchu was portrayed as having an extremely yellow face and talon-like fingernails despite being played by Boris Karloff (a white, British actor.) Arguably, this kind of media racism is becoming less common with blackface becoming so targeted by black actors speaking out against the racist act but it is still happening. Joseph Fiennes came under attack by the media after playing Michael Jackson in a comedy short trailer released by SkyArts. However, the director of the short defended Fienne’s actions by saying that casting an actor for Jackson was “a challenge in terms of physical resemblance.” Jackson was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in 1993 and said “Why would I want a white child to play me? I’m a black American. I’m proud of my race.” In Tropic Thunder (2008), Robert Downey Jr donned full blackface complete with curly, dark hair to play an award winning method actor. Now the question has to be asked, couldn’t they hire a black actor? It seems simple logic to hire an actor to play a character of the race they actually are rather than painting an actor in a racist fashion. Do you think this is a major problem in Hollywood and if so what should be done about these portrayals?

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