When re-telling classic stories, you can always count on
Hollywood to get it right. Said no one ever. Last years release of Pan, the live action remake of Peter
Pan, was probably the worst received remake in the history of
Hollywood.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pan_2015/
While it is described as an ‘alternative origin story,’ the
films plot, themes and style were totally off from the original story. Worst of
all, however, the casting and portrayal of key characters was completely and
hopelessly abysmal.
Tiger Lily as portrayed by Rooney Mara
In the Peter Pan story, Tiger Lily is a Native American Indian
princess. In the film Pan, her
character was played by Rooney Mara, a white American actress. This white
washing of the only main character that is a person of colour in Pan angered A LOT of people. A petition
was started to recast the role and to stop casting white people to play
coloured characters. Kristy Puchko describes this backlash in her article on
CinemaBlend, arguing that the refusal to cast a person of colour in a role that
is literally made for a person of colour is a slap in the face to all minority
ethnicities who are once again excluded from representation by white people.
The key argument of Puchko is summed up in these few
powerful sentences:
“Now, you might argue that Mara is far more famous than any
Native American actress you can think of. But can you think of any? That's the
vicious circle of it all. If Hollywood doesn't cast people of color, how can
people of color become household names that make them hot casting properties?”
The Tiger Lily casting drama could be seen as a case of
singular neglectful ignorance, or a case of institutional racism as Puchko
presumes. Why is it so important to have white characters play all the roles?
Why are people of colour not good enough to represent themselves?
These questions need some quick answers and some quick
remedies, or soon enough, Emma Stone will be playing a Chinese/Hawaiian character
and Jake Gyllenhaal will play a Persian Prince.
Wait what?
Kristy Puchko: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Online-Petition-Launched-Protest-Rooney-Mara-Casting-Pan-42175.html
I would've assumed the word "colour wash" would be referring to someone whose character is Eurocentric and their identity is highly influenced through being Eurocentric and then a person of colour coming in and playing that role. so for example, if someone who was Chinese came and played Queen Elizabeth the first in a film on English history. The idea sounds absurd because being very honest that would never in a million years happen but I'd personally use colour wash to demonstrate something like that. But I do understand the point you're making, and it honestly is just pure ignorance and arrogance of filmmakers to not bother enough about representing fairly.
ReplyDeleteI do think that "colourwashing" could be done, actually. It would certainly anger people, and it wouldn't be historically accurate if used in a historical film, but casting PoC as traditionally White characters can be quite subversive. For example, Hamilton casts a Puerto Rican Alexander Hamilton and a black Aaron Burr (http://www.adiosbarbie.com/2015/11/hamilton-wiping-the-whitewash-off-american-history/), and does a damn good job with it. (There are definitely more examples, especially low-scale/local theatre productions.) Similarly, the hashtags #StarringJohnCho and #StarringConstanceWu reimagine White movies (that didn't need to be) as starring Asian-American actors. We can go further than accuracy in representation and even further than writing movies about people of colour and do revolutionary things by casting them in "White" roles!
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