"Hilary Swank has a vagina, and she won an Oscar pretending she has a dick. That’s what actors do. They pretend. "
-Ari Gold, Entourage
Although, admittedly, Ari Gold isn’t exactly the poster child for political correctness.
The most practical problem with this is that there would be little economic pressure to “whiteface” minority actors, but the same can not be said for “minority-facing” white actors. So you end up making Hollywood even whiter than it is now.
It boils down to this question: Why turn a well-known black actor into white-looking one when you could just hire a well-known white actor and save the expense of CGI?
But in a racially biased world, its radically different when you change things around. You could turn a well-known white actor into a faux minority and still cash in on a brand name that comes from white privilege. If the CGI technique is effective enough (and not as ridiculously distracting as that hotass yellowface mess they used in Cloud Atlas) then there would be little reason to cast any minorities in roles that they could do well in. Just use the same old Matt Damon/Tom Hanks types in everything; with CGI, now they even play MLK and Malcolm X and it’s all good! Because why trust a black actor to attract white audiences when we always put our confidence in a white one who is just pretending to be black, amirite?
Movies would become less diverse, not more. Do you not see a problem with this, or are you honestly indifferent to whether racial groups are well-represented in the media?
Quick, name the last 3 Hollywood movies you saw staring a white person.
Now name the last three you saw staring an Asian American.
Don’t cheat and use IMDB.
Why do you think the studio went out of their way to not cast an Asian actress?
Because they didn’t cast an Asian actress when they could have? Did I use the idiom incorrectly? I’m a native English speaker, but hey we all make mistakes.
Maybe I don’t understand your question.
I don’t know. What are you trying to say? Saying that they went out of their way to cast a white actress is saying that they exerted extra effort to cast a white actress over an asian one.
X-Men Apocalypse - Olivia Munn as Psylocke
um…I think Kill Bill 1 and 2 were on USA last night. Is that two movies?
Does ‘Aloha’ count?
Do you think they have a moral obligation to cast a black actor as Luke Cage. Because that is what people seem to be arguing here.
The writer of the GitS movie posted a YouTube video that one (admittedly tabloid) website characterized as saying, there just aren’t any good Asian actors.
If I could find it, I’d link it, but…
Its almost always fine if you want to remake a traditionally white character into a minority, its almost always not fine the other way around.
Whitewashing is a real thing. As the dominant culture/race, remaking white things with minorities isn’t an attack on white culture. Its expanding the power and influence of traditionally marginalized minorities. You can remake a hundred white movies with minorities and it won’t harm whites. Being white is the default and nobody thinks that’s weird. That’s accepted. Their power is safe and unassailable.
On the other hand, being part of a smaller, less pronounced culture means that any attempts to minimize that culture has greater negative effect on it, increasing the power gap between whites and minorities, makes us less diverse, and pushes it away from having equal power.
Even if you don’t believe the above, you know that its fact that whites have had a much more diverse group of characters to play onscreen. They’ve had their turn, so why not let other races try it out too? Who are these people to get mad at the portrayal of a fictional character whose race doesn’t matter? Major Kusanagi is Japanese, the setting is Japan, and the character is based on Japanese people so her race matters. Bond is a secret agent. He’s not a secret white agent who goes to free slaves or whose origins are that he’s an escaped Congolese military personnel. His race doesn’t matter. So why not have him be black or Asian or Hispanic?
Found it. Judge for yourself.
Weird video. He keeps saying, “Don’t blame Hollywood!” And then describing exactly how this is Hollywood’s fault.
Maybe he’s saying it’s the public’s fault for creating “market realities”, and the studios bear no blame for merely kowtowing to them?
They hired that dingbat to write the film? Maybe casting won’t be the only problem.
OK, so eventually, Ms. Johanssen (like every other big-name Hollywood actress) will be past her prime. Hollywood is going to have to find new young stars to bring in after her. Let’s take it as a given that the Powers that Be in Hollywood are racist jerks, and so they’re going to want all of their roles to be white. But if digital race-shifting is cheap and effective, they’re going to be able to just as easily cast anyone in those roles. Asian and black and any other minority actresses will then have a chance to get their start. And then, once they get their start, some roles will crop up where they don’t need the digital race-shifting.
Maybe? I mean, I guess you could say it’s not the studio’s fault that there’s only about fifteen “A” list actors out there - that’s pretty clearly about shifting market expectations, not any particular action by the studios. But their reaction to the idea that the public doesn’t really care about “A” list actors is to double down on the few A listers still around - that’s entirely on the studios, not anyone else. That market model is clearly failing, and they’re clueless about what to do about it. That sounds like its entirely their fault. The overall gist of his piece seemed to be, “Don’t blame the studios; they’re too cowardly to take chances!”
And you know, I think that’s something I will blame the studios for, the gutless sacks.
But I’ll say this for him: he’s very clearly **not **saying there are no good Asian actors. He’s saying their are no successful Asian actors - at least, not at the level of a Tom Hanks or a Will Smith - which seems hard to dispute.
But it requires a galling level of naiveity to think this would somehow increase the number of roles given to minorities.
If a role calls for a white person and there 80 whites for every 20 minorities competing for that role, just on a numeric basis it is more likely the part will go to a white person. This is true even if low-cost CGI exists that would somehow make the actor’s race moot, and it certainly holds true if CGI comes at cost.
If a role calls for a minority and there’s 20 minortities for every 80 whites competing for that role, once again, whites will be more likely to get the part. This doesn’t change even with race bending CGI making everything “colorblind”, and even if this is somehow happening in a dream world where racism and bias doesn’t exist.
In a world where racism and bias does exist, it’s even more apparent this would not help anyone except whites. Why would any Hollywood exec hire an Asian ever, if it was socially acceptable to cast white people for white roles and white people for Asian roles? Sure, an Asian actor could try to audition to be the next Batman or Jason Bourne, but regardless of CGI, they don’t have the star power of a Ben Affleck because the deck is stacked against them.
Because the Asian actor is the best actor. I know it’s shocking to think that a minority actor might actually be the best solely on merit, but I assure you it can happen.
And did anyone even bother to google? Because I did, and according to Forbes, Jackie Chan was the 2nd highest paid actor last year.
Why would racist jerks want to give minority actors a chance? If they’re such racist jerks they’re going to prefer white actors, and unless this digital race-shifting can be done for free then hiring a white actor to play a white character is going to be cheaper too.