White-Washing in Post-Apocalyptic Film

 

The other night I sat down with some protest to watch The 5th Wave (2016) — a typical young adult’s dystopian movie about a post-apocalyptic society following a series of alien invasions on Planet Earth.  Needless to say, by the end of the movie I was fast asleep having already worked out both the plot twist before it came as well as which ripped-as hunk Cassie would end up smooching by the end of the film.  What did grab my attention though was that almost all of the characters in the movie were white.  I cannot recall one single character who was not of European descent.  This is clearly problematic as it does not reflect the demographics of contemporary America in which the film is meant to be set. 

 

What makes it worse is that the film is set a year after an alien attack has destroyed most of humanity leaving what Cassie calls only the strong to survive: ‘Here’s how you kill off a species. First, you take out the easy ones, the weak, the exposed. Kill them as efficiently as possible. That was the first three waves.’  The fact that there are only white characters in the film suggests that all marginalised groups are weak and disposable.  Notably, this portrayal is not remarkable. In his 1976 album Bicentennial Nigger, Richard Pryor noted that in the futuristic movie called Logan’s Run 1976), “ There ain’t no niggers in it” and claimed that, “Well, white folks ain’t planning for us to be here”.  According to these films, the future is whitewashed - thus naturalising colonial and white hegemonic discourses in the present.