"Starsky," "Jersey Girl" guilty of whitening?

Cafe Society
1

I have noticed a strange phenomenon which the promotions for the films “Starsky and Hutch” and “Jersey Girl” have in common. I hesitate to call it “whitening,” because I’m sure other ethnicities consider Jews to be white (I’m Jewish, and I consider myself Caucasian).

The film “Jersey Girl” co-stars a 7-year-old named Raquel Castro. She is supposed to be the daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennier Lopez, and has a somewhat ethnic look. Here’s a photo from Kevin Smith’s web site: http://www.newsaskew.com/exit37/cast.shtml

However, here is the poster for the film: http://impawards.com/2004/jersey_girl.html

Frankly, I don’t believe the girl in the poster is Raquel Castro. She is noticeably more pale and has lighter hair, and looks completely different than Castro, based on the trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/jersey_girl/

It looks like Miramax has “whitened” the image for the poster to make it more palatable to those who might think poorly of interracial (if that is the word) marriages.

Likewise, at the end of the trailer for “Starsky and Hutch,” Ben Stiller accidentally shoots a pony which Vince Vaughn has bought for his daughter. Vaughn says, “Happy birthday, baby, I love you.” http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/starsky_and_hutch/small.html

However, in the actual film, Vaughn says “Happy bat mitzvah, baby, I love you.” I have no cite for this, as the film is still in theatres. I saw the clip as part of a movie-review show, which shows actual footage from the finished film.

Even though Vaughn is wearing a yarmulke in the scene, apparently Warner Brothers thought the term was either unknown to Gentiles or simply “too Jewish” to be included in the promotional material for the film… but not the film itself. After all, it’s the topper to the punchline (the reveal that only a pony is inside Vaughn’s garage), which Stiller, Vaughn, Owen Wilson and director Tood Phillips believed would be understood and funny to the audience. Warner Bros’ marketing department must have disagreed.

What do you think?

2

I think you’re over-reacting.

There could be any number of explanations for the difference in skin tone between the photo and the movie poster, from time of day, to film speed, to make-up, to what month the photos were taken. Inter-racial relationships are already pretty common in current media, and I can’t imagine that the audience for a Kevin Smith movie is going to stay away from the movie because it implies that a white guy once had sex with a hispanic woman.

The Starsky and Hutch thing is similarly trivial. Someone only half paying attention might not catch the word “bat mitzvah,” even if they know what one is, and miss the joke. It’s a commercial, they want to avoid confusion as much as possible and communicate quickly and clearly with the audience.

3

It’s funny - Atlanta (like a lot of cities) is split between the (mostly white) northern side and the (mostly black) southern side. I was traveling to the airport one day a year or two ago on MARTA - Atlanta’s commuter rail train. I started at the northernmost station and had to go all the way to the southernmost station (the airport).

ANYWAY, there was an ad for something - a perfume, I think - posted all over every station that mostly consisted of a girl in a bikini . She was “barely tan” on the northside, but by the time I got to the airport, she was “seriously black”. I even got up from my seat and looked out the open door of the train at a couple of stations just to make sure that I wasn’t seeing things, or to see if perhaps there was tinting on the windows, etc…

4

Looks like nothing apart from the differing lighting conditions you’d get between a on-location snapshot and a in-studio promo shot.

5

Well, even if we assume the advertisers are afraid of provoking a racist reaction, is there ANYBODY on the planet who doesn’t know by now that Raquel Castro is supposed to be Jennifer Lopez’s daughter? If there ANYBODY who didn’t see 36 trillion hours of Ben/J. Lo coverage in the media last year? Of course not! So lightening Raquel’s skin in an ad would accomplish nothing! Anybody who cares already KNOWS that her character is supposed to be half Hispanic!

Besides, this isn’t some kind of mainstream film that’s aiming to be a blockbuster. If it were, MAYBE the distributors would be wary of offending bigots. But this is a film by Kevin Smith, an independent director with only a small (but rabid) cult following. Kevin Smith’s fans are generally liberal types who wouldn’t think twice about an interracial romance.

So, I think the OP is waaaay off base here.