Whitewashing – Bitch Flicks

On Racism, Erasure, and ‘Pan’

Even less surprising is their casting choice, where they have once again whitewashed a Native American character, hiring Rooney Mara to play the part of Tiger Lily. Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn. … There has been a long standing Hollywood cliche that states, the only color Hollywood executives see is green. This excuses the industry from their role in helping maintain white supremacist patriarchy…

This guest post by Danika Kimball previously appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

Hollywood has a history of recreating the same stories over and over again. I mean, in recent years audiences have seen remakes of Carrie, Cinderella, and about 18 Spiderman films (18 too many, in my opinion). So it came as no surprise when Warner Brothers announced that they would be making a new version of Peter Pan, entitled Pan. Even less surprising is their casting choice, where they have once again whitewashed a Native American character, hiring Rooney Mara to play the part of Tiger Lily. Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn.

Raise your hand if you’re sick of it.

Director Joe Wright reportedly intended the film to be “very international and multi-racial,” but if the characters we’ve seen in this adaptation of Pan are indicative, he very well means “whiter than bleached snow.” Really, if he wanted the film to stand out from the rest of the Peter Pan films, he might have made it a point to create a non-racist one, as it would be the first of its kind to do so. I mean let’s not forget the disgusting racism present in the beloved 1953 Disney classic.

But fear not!

The studio apparently did an exhaustive search in finding the right girl to play the role of Tiger Lily, auditioning both Lupita Nyong’o and Adele Exarchopoulos before choosing Mara for the part. Though both of these actresses are phenomenally talented, name-checking starlets born in Kenya and France respectively hardly counts as an “exhaustive search,” especially when you cast a conventionally attractive white woman in the role at the end of the day.

Though certainly not the first film to completely screw up its casting choices (ahem — Stonewall, Aloha, Breakfast at Tiffany’s), Native whitewashing is particularly problematic. Fashion editors, photographers, and designers frequently appropriate Native culture, sport red face, and hypersexualize women. Though women are sexualized overall in entertainment mediums, the objectification of Native women presents a whole new set of problems. While one in four women is the victim of sexual abuse on average, that number more than doubles for Native women.

Furthermore, when was the last time you saw a film featuring Native Americans that didn’t use a harmful stereotype like “the violent savage,” “magical Native American,” or one who is drunk in a casino? Why are sports teams still using Native American caricatures as their mascots, despite overwhelming public dissent? How is Columbus Day still a thing? Why do we call celebrities our spirit animals?

To the naysayers that argue that Warner Brothers couldn’t find a good Native actress to fulfill the role, please allow me to call bullshit.

2002’s Whale Rider cast an unknown actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who went on to receive a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Similarly, Quevenzhané Wallis was cast as an unknown talent in 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. That year she became the youngest actress to receive a Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards.

Laverne Cox and Peter Dinklage are both testaments to the fact that casting great actors in roles that they authentically embody pays off in the long run. How inappropriate (not to mention ridiculously offensive) would it have been for HBO to continue the practice of “shrinking an actor” in order to depict the role of Tyrion Lannister? Consider the backlash that both Jared Leto, Eddie Redmayne, and most recently Elle Fanning have received for being cast as trans characters, rather than trans actors who could authentically play those parts.

Why on earth is Warner Brothers so hesitant to adopt a more progressive and culturally sensitive casting choice? What more do Hollywood executives need? Casting marginalized actors is not an impossible task, and their hesitation to embrace diversity on screen has real-life consequences.

The film Miss Representation touches on this idea. Adopting the mantra of Marie Wilson, director of The White House Project — “You can’t be what you can’t see” — the film argues that media representation is important. Without visible role models to look to, young people, especially girls and people of color, will be dissuaded from joining certain fields. Marginalized groups continue to be underrepresented in STEM, politics, leadership, and law enforcement, fields that are currently oversaturated with white men.

This opinion is shared by those who it most severely affects. A recent graduate from Arizona State University, Edilh Gallardo, shared her experiences in pursuing an education with her alma mater, emphasizing that pursuing higher education as a minority can be difficult because “a lot of our children don’t realize the opportunity is there.”

Her sentiments are part of the reason why representation in television film matters so much. If the only representations you see of your race or gender on TV are terrorists, criminals, and savages, rather than doctors, lawyers, or leaders, it might be difficult for you to imagine yourself in those positions later on in life.

There has been a long standing Hollywood cliche that states, the only color Hollywood executives see is green. This excuses the industry from their role in helping maintain white supremacist patriarchy because they are allowed to say, “We’re just giving the people what they want.” It’s clear in films like Pan, Tonto, and Aloha that Hollywood has no qualms with telling the stories of women or minorities. They have no problem with disenfranchised characters, but it has become apparent in recent casting choices that Hollywood is not ready for disenfranchised actors. This kind of transgression is irresponsible at best, and damaging to our cultural fabric at worst. So for the sake of actors, films, and the future of the industry, I hope eventually someone will start listening.

Danika Kimball is a musician from the Northwest who sometimes takes a 30-minute break from feminism to enjoy a TV show. You can follow her on Twitter @sadwhitegrrl or on Instagram @drunkfeminist.

From Racist Stereotype to Fully Whitewashed: Tiger Lily Since 1904

Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.

This post written by staff writer Amanda Morris originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is re-posted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

Pan has a 26 percent rating based on 152 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and having just come from a matinee viewing, I must say I agree with these critics. The Peter Pan narrative that we all know has been reconstructed as a sort of prequel, and not very imaginatively, while still retaining its racist roots. The Native people are called “natives” and “savages” multiple times and retain their feathers, facepaint, fringe, dancing, and primitive clothing to emulate a stereotypical idea of Native peoples, and even the map that Peter finds guides him to “Tribal Territory.” The actor playing Hook thinks he is Clint Eastwood in a Spaghetti Western, the Neverbirds are just bigger, more threatening versions of Kevin in Up, and the main actors who appear throughout the entire film are all white.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1wRv8vTpxo”]

When J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, “Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” first appeared on the cultural scene, Miriam Skancke (stage name Nesbitt) played Tiger Lily. Nevermind the problem of reducing actual, living people to imaginary creatures in a fantasy land. According to Miriam’s father’s birth record, she appears to have been of Norwegian heritage. Certainly not Native American. So the fantasy creature, the “Indian princess,” Tiger Lily, started off in global imaginations as a beautiful white woman.

In 1911, Barrie published the novel version, Peter Pan, and soon more stage productions and the film industry came calling, clamoring for this children’s fantasy tale. From 1955-60, Broadway and the American TV industry brought the story to stage and TV with Sondra Lee playing Tiger Lily. Another white woman playing an offensive racist Native stereotype, with the music and dancing to match:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVPc4SuoJWE”]

The 1979 Broadway production featured Maria Pogee, an Argentine-American dancer and choreographer, in the Tiger Lily role, and the 1990 version featured Holly Irwin in the role. The characterization on-stage remained “Native American,” but still, the actors playing Tiger Lily were non-Native. No self-respecting Native woman actor would WANT to play a racist fantasy stereotype of her own culture, and that is where Pan‘s studio, director, and writer made a costly miscalculation.

Here is where we need to be more critical of Warner Brothers, director Joe Wright, writer Jason Fuchs, and the casting staff responsible for adamantly refusing to re-conceive this problematic character into something more culturally appropriate and honorable. They DID take the time, energy, and money to construct a new narrative that explains how Peter Pan came to be; they reconstructed this narrative in myriad ways so as to make it clearly different from Barrie’s original, except where it concerns the “Natives.” Instead, they took the cowardly way out and completely whitewashed the character (while still retaining feathers, costuming, and even an Aboriginal actor as Tiger Lily’s father).

Bottom line here, Hollywood is lazy and greedy. They saw an opportunity to re-envision this narrative from stem to stern, possibly giving us a truly creative and compelling new story, but instead of also eliminating the racist stereotypes from the original, they chose to whitewash because that is the easier choice. From their perspective, it would have been too hard to reconstruct this “Indian princess” into a strong, brave, Native woman. Especially one who seems to be developing feelings for the future Captain Hook, who is white. Instead, they chose white actor Rooney Mara to portray a strong, brave, Native woman who wears beaded and feathered attire, long and dark braided hair, and colorful tribal makeup.

Who exactly do they think is fooled by this? Certainly none of us trying to encourage more respectful representations of Indigenous peoples. Plenty of reviewers, including one at Bitch Flicks, has pointed out the immense problems with the company and crew’s voluntary obtuseness to their heinous choices. In fact, director Joe Wright defended his choice.

So, Joe, you understand our criticisms, but were unable to find a Native woman to play a “badass” Native woman character?

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Here are some of the amazing Native actors you should have considered casting: Devery Jacobs, Cara Gee, Tanaya Beatty, Jamie Loy, Amber Midthunder, Taysha Fuller, or Crystle Lightning. That list is by no means complete, but the reason none of these women were chosen is because they are not considered bankable money makers by the Hollywood machine.

Warner Brothers would rather hire a known white woman (as usual) and to completely whitewash the character than to spend a few minutes asking the writer to re-conceive this character to be more respectful of real, living, Native peoples, and then hiring a talented Native woman to play her. Because with all of the white racist fear out there in the viewing audience, they knew this whitewashed version of J.M. Barrie’s original would make them money. They know their audience.

Thankfully, at 26 percent approval rating, Pan will not be in theatres very long. I predict that Warner Brothers could have made a lot more money doing what I and others have suggested — re-writing Tiger Lily to be a more relevant and vibrant representation of a Native American woman with a family that doesn’t look like the ridiculous, primitive stereotypes of Barrie’s imagination, and then casting a terrific Native actor into that role. The amount of positive publicity and curiosity alone would have driven people to want to see this film. Critics and viewers would be introduced in a big way to a talented Native actor, and all of the negative (and well-deserved) criticism that follows this film might have been reduced. Talk about a missed opportunity and a bad business decision.

Pan is just another in a long line of disappointing versions of this childhood tale. Barrie wrote in a time (1904) when the general populace had accepted the disappearance and death of Native peoples. Everything they read told them that these peoples no longer existed.

That we are still in that same headspace, imagining Native peoples as either racist stereotypes or as long-gone peoples of the past, is pathetic. Shame on you, Warner Brothers, Joe Wright, Jason Fuchs, Rooney Mara, and all of us who accept Hollywood’s standard practice of erasing Native peoples, cultures, and identities.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

On Racism, Erasure, and Pan
Violence Against Indigenous Women: Fun, Sexy, and No Big Deal on the Big Screen

Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

Rewritten History: Affecting in ‘Brooklyn’, Not So Much in ‘Suffragette’

I was surprised at how enjoyable and skillfully made ‘Brooklyn’ is: I cried when everyone else did and gasped when the rest of the audience did too, but in spite of its excellent art direction and affecting performances the film is mostly hokum. New York in the 1950s is a place where no one the main character hangs out with smokes (when all of the men and the majority of women were smokers). Most of the characters barely drink (just one glass at Christmas) and, except for a child’s brief outburst at a family dinner table, (“I should say that we don’t like Irish people”) none of its white, working-class, ethnic characters have any problem with any other ethnic group.

I’m never enamored of the cleaned-up, ambiguity-free nostalgia that movies, especially mainstream ones, serve to their audiences in the guise of “history” so I avoided John Crowley’s Brooklyn (written by Nick Hornby from the novel by Colm Tóibín) about an Irish immigrant, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) in the US. The Irish have been romanticized in films as early as The Quiet Man (a new release when the film takes place) and romanticized among Irish Americans for as long as the Irish have been coming to the US. But when Brooklyn began raking in awards (especially for Ronan) I decided to see it.

I was surprised at how enjoyable and skillfully made Brooklyn is: I cried when everyone else did and gasped when the rest of the audience did too, but in spite of its excellent art direction and affecting performances the film is mostly hokum. New York in the 1950s is a place where no one the main character hangs out with smokes (when all of the men and the majority of women were smokers). Most of the characters barely drink (just one glass at Christmas) and, except for a child’s brief outburst at a family dinner table, (“I should say that we don’t like Irish people”) none of its white, working-class, ethnic characters have any problem with any other ethnic group. In the actual 1950s, my mother, just a few years younger than Eilis is in the film, lived in an Irish American neighborhood in Boston, much like the one the film shows in New York and wasn’t allowed to date Italian boys because, her father explained, “They beat their women.” We never find out what the main characters in Brooklyn think of Jewish people (since the church still taught then that the Jews killed Christ, that opinion probably wasn’t favorable) because none of them encounter any, even though plenty of Jewish people lived in Brooklyn in the 1950s. And Black people in this film are at the farthest periphery: two women in a crowd crossing a street and a Black couple is shown on the beach at Coney Island.

Eilis’s family in small-town Ireland is prosperous enough that her sister works as a bookkeeper and they live with their mother in a decent house, but Eilis immigrates anyway to a sales clerk job, arranged by a kindly priest (Jim Broadbent), at a department store in New York. In other words, she’s the kind of immigrant even the Republican party of today would like: white and “respectable.” She’s not the kind who comes to the country without papers, or has to learn English, scrub floors or work as a nanny and she doesn’t have an impoverished family in her home country to worry about. When being well-cared-for in her new home becomes too much for Eilis, her suddenly sympathetic boss (Jessica Paré) has the priest swoop into the store break room and tell Eilis he’s signed her up for bookkeeping classes at Brooklyn College. He tells her, “Homesickness is like most sicknesses. It will pass.”

Priests in the US at the time took collection money from their parishioners and gave them very little in return so to have one dole out college tuition after arranging a sales clerk job seems far-fetched, and for the recipient of both favors to be a young “marriageable” woman the priest barely knows seems like something from a parallel universe. For women in the 1950s, especially those in the working class (even ambitious ones like Eilis) the endgame was marriage, not a career. “Real” men (especially working-class ones) didn’t let their wives work outside the home (unless the family was poor), but Eilis’s middle-class, Italian-American, plumber boyfriend (Emory Cohen, a standout in a very good cast) walks her home from her night classes and loves hearing about her studies. His parents and his brothers seem equally charmed instead of exchanging nervous glances and asking, “You’re not a career girl, are you?” The only way a daughter-in-law in that type of family in the 1950s could work would be in her husband’s business — and even then she probably wouldn’t be given a salary for the first decade or so.

What priests did then (and for decades afterward) was browbeat women for working when they had children at home: if they encouraged women to go to college, the goal was for the women to find husbands there and never work outside the home again. If their husbands then beat or neglected them, the priests told the women they must be at fault (this mindset was a secular one at the time too) and they must never, ever get divorced. At the boarding house where Eilis lives she talks about marriage with a woman whose husband has left her for “someone else.” We never have a clue, in all of Eilis’s longing for her old hometown that a woman in that same situation wouldn’t be able to get divorced in Ireland until the very last part of the 20th century, a detail that a woman screenwriter or director probably wouldn’t leave out.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15syDwC000k” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette (with a screenplay by Abi Morgan) is another film I put off watching, because even with its creaky plot device of seeing historical events through the eyes of a fictional “composite” character the film apparently still managed to leave women of color out of the fight for British women’s suffrage as well as omitting another integral element, the queerness of some of the most famous suffragettes.

The film isn’t as bad as I feared it might be (or perhaps it just looked good compared to the film I saw just before it: The Danish Girl) but its problems are not just because it’s about white, straight women. Carey Mulligan does what she can with the lead role, Maud, who works at the laundry and is radicalized by a coworker–and by witnessing police beating up “Votes for Women” protesters. The film could do a much better job of integrating present-day concerns with what happened to “radicals” then, with its scenes of not just police brutality and political groups using bombs and violence as a means to bring about change, but the treatment of political prisoners and the force-feeding of hunger-strikers.

We see Helena Bonham Carter in another old-fashioned role: the audience/main character’s guide to the movement but we don’t see what we do in Brooklyn’s portrait of the women in the boarding house: the sense of the group of women as a clique, a cornerstone of the women’s suffrage movement which needs to exist in any radical political movement. If a woman’s family and old friends think her ideals are anathema, she needs to find peers who share those ideals and who will be her new friends — and new family. Except for a few, not very compelling scenes, we don’t get the sense of Maud as part of a group that supports her, just that she’s an outcast from her old life. The film contains very little we haven’t seen before and what’s new in it is allowed onscreen only very briefly: like the idea that Maud, who has worked most of her life including her childhood, would find motherhood her first opportunity to engage in play.

The film instead becomes a guessing game of what horrible thing can happen to Maud next. Suffragette has the chance to contain more dramatic tension when a police captain asks her to be an informant in exchange for dropping charges (another situation with present day parallels). He tells his men, “We’ve identified weaknesses in their ranks. We’re hoping one of them will break.”

But instead of considering the offer or pretending to inform while acting as a double-agent, Maud just writes an impassioned letter to him about the righteousness of her cause. In the end, Maud is just as dull and unimaginative as the film is, which is a shame, because the real-life figures in this fight were never boring.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056FI2Pq9RY” iv_load_policy=”3″]

___________________________________________________

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

From Racist Stereotype to Fully Whitewashed: Tiger Lily Since 1904

Written by Amanda Morris.

Pan has a 26 percent rating based on 152 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and having just come from a matinee viewing, I must say I agree with these critics. The Peter Pan narrative that we all know has been reconstructed as a sort of prequel, and not very imaginatively, while still retaining its racist roots. The Natives are called “natives” and “savages” multiple times and retain their feathers, facepaint, fringe, dancing, and primitive clothing to emulate a stereotypical idea of Native peoples, and even the map that Peter finds guides him to “Tribal Territory.” The actor playing Hook thinks he is Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western, the Neverbirds are just bigger, more threatening versions of Kevin in Up, and the main actors who appear throughout the entire film are all white.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1wRv8vTpxo”]

When J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, first appeared on the cultural scene, Miriam Skancke (stage name Nesbitt) played Tiger Lily. Never mind the problem of reducing an actual, living people to imaginary creatures in a fantasy land. According to Miram’s father’s birth record, she appears to have been of Norwegian heritage. Certainly not Native American. So the fantasy creature, the “indian princess,” Tiger Lily, started off in global imaginations as a beautiful white woman.

Miriam Nesbitt plays “Tiger Lily” in J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, Peter Pan, in 1904

In 1911, Barrie published the novel version, Peter Pan, and soon, more stage productions and the film industry came calling, clamoring for this children’s fantasy tale. From 1955-60, Broadway and the American TV industry brought the story to stage and TV with Sondra Lee playing Tiger Lily. Another white woman playing an offensive racist Native stereotype, with the music and dancing to match:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVPc4SuoJWE”]

The 1979 Broadway production featured an Argentine-American dancer and choreographer in the Tiger Lily role, and the 1990 version featured Holly Irwin in the role. The characterization on stage remained “Native American,” but still, the actors playing Tiger Lily were non-Native. No self-respecting Native woman actor would WANT to play a racist fantasy stereotype of her own culture, and that is where Pan’s studio, director, and writer made a costly miscalculation.

Here is where we need to be more critical of Warner Brothers, Director Joe Wright, writer Jason Fuchs, and the casting staff responsible for adamantly refusing to re-conceive this problematic character into something more culturally appropriate and honorable. They DID take the time, energy, and money to construct a new narrative that explains how Peter Pan came to be; they reconstructed this narrative in myriad ways so as to make it clearly different from Barrie’s original, except where it concerns the “Natives.” Instead, they took the cowardly way out and completely whitewashed the character (while still retaining feathers, costuming, and even an Aboriginal actor as Tiger Lily’s father).

Bottom line here, Hollywood is lazy and greedy. They saw an opportunity to re-envision this narrative from stem to stern, possibly giving us a truly creative and compelling new story, but instead of also eliminating the racist stereotypes from the original, they chose to whitewash because that is the easier choice. From their perspective, it would have been too hard to reconstruct this “indian princess” into a strong, brave, Native woman. Especially one who seems to be developing feelings for the future Captain Hook, who is white. Instead, they chose white actor Rooney Mara to portray a strong, brave, Native woman who wears beaded and feathered attire, long and dark braided hair, and colorful tribal makeup.

Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in Pan

Who exactly do they think is fooled by this? Certainly none of us trying to encourage more respectful representations of indigenous peoples. Plenty of reviewers, including one on this site, has pointed out the immense problems with the company and crew’s voluntary blindness to their heinous choices. In fact, director Joe Wright defended his choice.

So, Joe, you understand our criticisms, but were unable to find a Native woman to play a “badass” Native woman character?

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Thankfully, at 26 percent approval rating, Pan will not be in theatres very long. I predict that Warner Brothers could have made a lot more money doing what I and others have suggested – re-writing Tiger Lily to be a more relevant and vibrant representation of a Native American woman with a family that doesn’t look like the ridiculous, primitive stereotypes of Barrie’s imagination, and then casting a terrific Native actor into that role. The amount of positive publicity and curiousity alone would have driven people to want to see this film. Critics and viewers would be introduced in a big way to a talented Native actor, and all of the negative (and well-deserved) criticism that dogs this film might have been reduced. Talk about a missed opportunity and a bad business decision.

That we are still in that same headspace, imagining Native peoples as either racist stereotypes or as long-gone peoples of the past, is pathetic. Shame on you, #Warner Brothers, Joe Wright, Jason Fuchs, Rooney Mara, and all of us who accept Hollywood’s standard practice of erasing Native peoples, cultures, and identities.

Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

On Racism, Erasure, and ‘Pan’

Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn.

This is a guest post by Danika Kimball.

Raise your hand if you’re sick of it.

But fear not!

Though certainly not the first film to completely screw up its casting choices (ahem—Stonewall, Aloha, Breakfast at Tiffany’s), Native whitewashing is particularly problematic. Fashion editors, photographers, and designers frequently appropriate Native culture, sport red face, and hypersexualize women. Though women are sexualized overall in entertainment mediums, the objectification of Native women presents a whole new set of problems. While one in four women is the victim of sexual abuse on average, that number more than doubles for Native women.

To the naysayers that argue that Warner Brothers couldn’t find a good Native actress to fulfill the role, please allow me to call bullshit.

2002’s Whale Rider cast an unknown actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who went on to receive a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Similarly, Quevenzhane’ Wallis was cast as an unknown talent in 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. That year she became the youngest actress to receive a Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards.

The film Miss Representation touches on this idea. Adopting the mantra of Marie Wilson, director of The White House Project–“You can’t be what you can’t see”–the film argues that media representation is important. Without visible role models to look to, young people, especially girls and people of color, will be dissuaded from joining certain fields. Minority groups continue to be underrepresented in STEM, politics, leadership, and law enforcement, fields that are currently oversaturated with white men.

There has been a long standing Hollywood cliche that states, the only color Hollywood executives see is green. This excuses the industry from their role in helping maintain white supremacist patriarchy because they are allowed to say, “We’re just giving the people what they want.” It’s clear in films like Peter Pan, Tonto, and Aloha that Hollywood has no qualms with telling the stories of women or minorities. They have no problem with disenfranchised characters, but it has become apparent in recent casting choices that Hollywood is not ready for disenfranchised actors. This kind of transgression is irresponsible at best, and damaging to our cultural fabric at worst. So for the sake of actors, films, and the future of the industry, I hope eventually someone will start listening.

Danika Kimball is a musician from the Northwest who sometimes takes a 30-minute break from feminism to enjoy a TV show. You can follow her on twitter @sadwhitegrrl or on Instagram @drunkfeminist.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week – and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

There Will Be Blood: The Precarious Politics of Representing Abortion Onscreen by Gretchen Sisson at Bitch Media

#NotOurStonewall Calls Out the White-Washing of LGBT History by Anita Little at Ms. blog

The 22 Best Woman-Directed Films Streaming On Netflix by Matt Barone at Tribeca

Amiyah Scott Reported to Become First Trans ‘Real Housewives’ Cast Member by Sameer Rao at Colorlines

Mapping Brutality: How Last Year’s ‘Belle’ Perfectly Explains White America’s Response to Racism by Shannon M. Houston at Shadow and Act

European Film Industry Passes Gender Equality Declaration (UPDATED) by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

NBC Orders Tina Fey Sitcom, Two Other Female-Driven Comedies by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

Here’s What’s Missing From Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat Up by Dee Barnes at Gawker

Dr. Dre Apologizes to the ‘Women I’ve Hurt’ by Joe Coscarelli at The New York Times

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week – and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Report Finds Wide Diversity Gap Among 2014’s Top-Grossing Films by Manohla Dargis at The New York Times

Confronting Teen Sexuality in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” by Andi Zeisler at Bitch Media

What to Watch This Weekend: 15 Short Films That Say #BlackLivesMatter by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

11 Times Jon Stewart Threw Down For Feminism by Amanda Duberman at The Huffington Post

7 Feminist ‘The Daily Show’ Moments To Rewatch Over & Over, Because These Women Are Totally The Best News Team On Television by Maitri Mehta at Bustle

Over 15k Sign Petition to Boycott ‘Stonewall’ And Its White/Cis-washing of History by Sameer Rao at Colorlines

The Women of Color Heroes We Both Need and Deserve by LaToya Ferguson at Women and Hollywood

We Heart: Hannibal’s Stance on Sexual Assault by Carter Sherman at Ms. Blog

How Halt and Catch Fire is taking on sexism in the tech industry by Andy Meek at The Week

Julie Klausner Of Hulu’s ‘Difficult People’ Turns Unlikability Into An Art Form by Sara Benincasa at BUST

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

“Colorblind Casting,” Whitewashing, and the Erasure of PoC Histories

Thus, theatre erases the histories of People of Color in Europe by claiming that they use “colorblind casting” instead of just “casting” when they cast a Person of Color in a role that, historically, could have been a person of color. Meanwhile, TV and film European period pieces erase that history by Whitewashing it, not casting and thereby not providing employment to, or visibility and representation of, actors who are People of Color at all.

Written by Jackson Adler.

According to Wikipedia (please, just go with me), “Colorblind casting” is “the practice of casting a role without considering the actor’s ethnicity.” This definition (and the first that many people will read when they first Google it) is problematic, as that is rarely how “colorblind casting” is carried out. In theatre, “colorblind casting” is most often used for European period pieces, in which at least one Person of Color is cast as a role that the White public has usually thought of as White, regardless of whether people of that actor’s ethnicity were prevalent in the character’s location and social standing. While often used in the theatre, “colorblind casting” is rarely used in TV and film, supposedly because TV and film claim to be more concerned with historical accuracy, despite the fact that People of Color of various groups have had long histories in Europe. Thus, theatre erases the histories of People of Color in Europe by claiming that they use “colorblind casting” instead of just “casting” when they cast a Person of Color in a role that, historically, could have been a person of color. Meanwhile, TV and film European period pieces erase that history by Whitewashing it, not casting and thereby not providing employment to, or visibility and representation of, actors who are People of Color at all.

The film Les Miserables, featuring White people. — The film *Les Miserables*, featuring White people.

An excellent example of both “colorbind casting” and Whitewashing is the musical Les Miserables, which takes place in early 19^th century France. In the film, most all of the cast, from the leading characters to the background characters, were White. In its various London, Broadway, and other stage incarnations, “colorblind casting” has been used. The film was historically inaccurate in its Whiteness, because, particularly in Paris where trade was incredibly prevalent, there were many People of Color of various groups, with Black and Chinese people being particularly large minorities. For the stage productions to claim that they use “colorblind casting,” especially when casting Black and Chinese actors, is ignorant and racist because it is erasure of the history of People of Color in France. Did the dramaturges not even do the bare minimum historical research? Did the newest revivals not even use Google or Wikipedia to look up French history? These creative teams of the stage production are, unknowingly, not employing “colorblind casting”; they are employing “casting.” Meanwhile, the creative team behind the film was just racist, as well as unknowingly historically inaccurate.

A more recent example is in the casting of Vanessa Hudgens as the titular Gigi on Broadway. Vannessa Hudgens is Filipina, as well as Chinese, Spanish, Irish, and Native American. While rare for a girl of Gigi’s social standing in Paris in the year 1900, it would not be impossible for Gigi to have had the same exact ethnic heritage as Vanessa Hudgens, and very possible for Gigi to have had an ethnic heritage similar to Hudgens’. Also, in the original novella, Gigi’s maternal side of the family is Spanish, with her grandmother in particular being described as “dark.” The rest of Gigi’s ethnic background is not described in the novel. Not only is it historically accurate to cast Hudgens as Gigi, but it is supported by the original text off of which the musical is based.

Norm Lewis as Javert in Les Miserables — Norm Lewis as Javert in *Les Miserables*

It should also be noted that even creative teams who claim to be “colorblind” are not. An actor’s appearance, possibly even more than their performance skill level, is always taken into account. It is always “seen.” Few creative teams would cast Cosette and Eponine as 6’1’’ and Marius as 5’4’’, for example, due to stigma against tall women and short men. In fact, when theatrical creative teams use “colorblind” casting, usually Eponine is more likely to be a Woman of Color (take note that she DIES, and in the service of Marius, no less), than is Cosette (the girl Marius marries). It is also rarer to have a Person of Color play the protagonist Valjean than the villain/morally ambiguous Javert. But it’s totally not racist, everyone. The creative team doesn’t see color! …right? (Sigh.)

Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido in Belle — Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido in *Belle*

It is not only the poor and middle class in Europe who had ethnic diversity, but even European royalty, especially in Spain and Portugal. Queen Charlotte, wife to King George III of England, was visibly biracial/mixed race. Needless to say, Amma Asante’s Belle, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, should not be the only film, or one among a few films, to present these stories of upper class People of Color in Europe.

“Colorblind casting” is not entirely the fault of the creative teams behind these projects, however, as it is also largely the fault of White historians Whitewashing and revising history, especially in school textbooks. However, dramaturges and creative teams should be expected to do their research well. The creative team behind the TV miniseries The Bible (not a European story in origin, but a story important to many ethnic Europeans, so please go with me) felt they had to justify its casting of (only a very few) Black actors as Biblical figures in a special that gave its viewers a (very) short history lesson. The creative team did their homework, and applied (some of) it, even knowing that they would still get criticized by White viewers for not having an all White cast (though many, if not most, of the actors they cast were still White, with Joseph even having a Cockney/Estuary dialect). However, in reality there would have been even more People of Color, and it wouldn’t have been historically inaccurate to even have cast no White actors. No one should feel they have to justify depicting Mary Magdalene as Black. Meanwhile, how many Arab or Black actors have played Jesus? While how many White actors with light hair and blue eyes have played Jesus? Hollywood has also Whitewashed the stories and characters of Noah, Moses, and Cleopatra, and shows little sign of stopping this long-time trend.

Even in European folklore, there are People of Color. An example of this is the Black or Arab Arthurian knight Sir Palamedes, who was a rival to Tristan for Isolde’s hand in marriage. However, most film adaptations of Arthurian legends leave out that character, and have an all White cast. Many of the fairy tales in “Into The Woods” have origins outside of Europe, such as Cinderella, elements of the story having origins in Chinese history and Ancient Egyptian history and folklore. The setting of Disney’s Into the Woods was purposefully made to be vague, but even if it were set in a specific time period and place, it would not be historically inaccurate for even The Princes to be played by People of Color. However, while the background characters of the film Into The Woods were ethnically diverse, the main and supporting characters were all White.

Cast members, including those playing The Genie, Aladdin, and Jasmine, in Disney's stage musical Aladdin — Cast members, including those playing The Genie, Aladdin, and Jasmine, in Disney’s stage musical *Aladdin*

The Bible is far from the only example of non-European stories being Whitewashed both in film and onstage. The story of Aladdin has a problematic background, with it being “discovered” in France, but probably taking place in China, and definitely having Arab characters. The creative team behind Disney’s stage musical of Aladdin, originally cast no Arab performers at all, despite the Disney film clearly setting it in the Middle East (albeit with many ethnic stereotypes and depicting Aladdin and Jasmine as light-skinned and more European-looking than other characters). Similar to the situation with Les Miserables, it is not “colorblind” casting to cast someone light skinned and White-passing (in this case, biracial Filipino and Ashkenazi Jewish) as Aladdin, while casting someone who is Black as the comedic and literally tap-dancing Genie. These actors were specifically chosen for these specific roles, and there is nothing “colorblind” about it, nothing about their appearances that was ignored. Meanwhile, even contemporary works such as Avatar: The Last Airbender and Ghost in the Shell are and have been Whitewashed by Hollywood.

People of Color, historical and contemporary, in Europe and outside of it, are still being silenced, as well as colonized and erased, by Europeans, even onstage and on film. There is no excuse that can back it up. Even though historians Whitewash history, there is still a lot of material available to dramaturges and creative teams, whose jobs require them to do that research. Whether racism is intended or not, whether it is through ignorance or not, it is still racism, and still erasure. It is still wrong.

All You Need is White People: Whitewashing in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

Learning that ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ is based on a Japanese work with a Japanese hero with the action set in East Asia really changed my feelings about the resulting film. I actually really enjoyed the movie despite its derivativeness and lapses in sense-making, well-chronicled by my colleague Andé Morgan here. But now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Because I’m fine with liking an unoriginal and illogical sci-fi movie, but I’m not so cool with liking an unoriginal, illogical, and racist sci-fi movie.

Because turning Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, casting Tom Cruise, moving the action to Western Europe, and casting white people in 98% of the speaking roles are all racist acts perpetuating bullshit white supremacy in Hollywood.

Tom Cruise is White Dude in 'Edge of Tomorrow' — Tom Cruise is A White Dude in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

I watched Edge of Tomorrow without knowing it was an adaptation. It seems like a movie without source material, because the plot depends on you not thinking too critically about any of the details. (How does this time loop work? Why does it also involve psychic visions? Why are these alien invaders called “mimics” when the only thing they mimic is the Sentinels from The Matrix?)

Edge of Tomorrow is in fact based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill, which was also adapted into a manga of the same name by Ryōsuke Takeuchi and Takeshi Obata. Edge of Tomorrow is SWIMMING in source material.

Cover of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel 'All You Need Is Kill' — Cover of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel *All You Need Is Kill.*

I have read neither the novel nor the manga, but learning that Edge of Tomorrow is based on a Japanese work with a Japanese hero with the action set in East Asia really changed my feelings about the resulting film. I actually really enjoyed the movie despite its derivativeness and lapses in sense-making, well-chronicled by my colleague Andé Morgan here. But now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Because I’m fine with liking an unoriginal and illogical sci-fi movie, but I’m not so cool with liking an unoriginal, illogical, and racist sci-fi movie.

Because turning Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, casting Tom Cruise, moving the action to Western Europe, and casting white people in 98 percent of the speaking roles are all racist acts perpetuating bullshit white supremacy in Hollywood.

Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski, the most interesting character.

Sure, there are no Japanese actors as big as Tom Cruise. There are few actors, period, who are as big as Tom Cruise. That didn’t stop Edge of Tomorrow from pretty much tanking at the box office, though. And they could cast their precious white Name Actor as the female lead Rita Vrataski, who is a white American in the book and a white Brit (Emily Blunt) in the film. She’s a more interesting character anyway, and the film would probably benefit from re-centering on her. And maybe a sci-fi movie headlined by a woman and a Japanese man would have gotten more notice from audiences who dismissed Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow as generic enough to wait for home video?

And why change the setting to Europe? What makes that more interesting or dramatic a setting, other than racism? I was reminded of this summer’s Godzilla, which used “increasing whiteness of populations at risk” as its form of raising the dramatic stakes as the monsters trekked across the Pacific Ocean.

Wait... why are we in Europe? — Oh man, that is pretty racist.

I need Hollywood to figure out that white people’s lives are not intrinsically more valuable. And that white movies stars are often not as valuable as they’re supposed to be. “Bankability” is not a justification for whitewashing. I’d like to think the weak performance of Edge of Tomorrow might clue Hollywood in on this. Especially because Edge of Tomorrow was saved from being a total bomb by the foreign grosses from the very countries deemed not interesting enough to be the setting of the adaptation (although, notably, there was tepid reception in Japan).

In Edge of Tomorrow, every time Tom Cruise’s character dies he learns from his mistakes. But when a movie like it dies at the box office, Hollywood just shrugs and says “it probably needed more white people.”

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

On Television, More Transgender Characters Come Into Focus by Neda Ulaby at NPR

Surprising Films That Pass The Bechdel Test on BuzzFeedPop

Jenny Slate In The OBVIOUSLY Hilarious And Charming Abortion Rom-Com by Kelsey Haight at Bust

Mad Men Season Seven Recap: “A Day’s Work” by Andi Zeisler at Bitch Media

Crosspost: What’s It Going to Take for Gender Equality to Come to Hollywood? by Sasha Stone at Women and Hollywood

What New Shows With Black Actors Might Be Coming To TV This Fall? We Have A Full List For You! by Vanessa Martinez at Shadow and Act

Women bridge gender gap as French film embraces a new nouvelle vague by Kim Willsher at The Guardian

Did the Only Black Character in ‘Jem and the Holograms’ Get Whitewashed? at For Harriet

Kristina Wong Takes on Asian Fetishes in ‘I’m Asian-American And…’ by Jamilah King at Colorlines

Net Neutrality is a Feminist Issue. Here’s Why. by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Racebending and the Academy Awards: Get Ready to Cringe

The very sad moral of the story is that Hollywood never “has to” cast a person of color. White supremacy in Hollywood finds a way.

The Academy Awards’ gross under-recognition of performances by people of color, both in terms of nominations and wins, is pretty much universally acknowledged. Check this thorough list from Your Media Has Problems on tumblr if you had any doubts.

One of the interesting dimensions covered in that piece is that the majority of people of color nominated for Oscars played roles that “had” to be portrayed by a person of that race. This is a sad reflection on the limited roles available for actors of color.

Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously — Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in *The Year of Living Dangerously*

But what’s even sadder is the fact that Hollywood has a long history of squeezing that limitation even further by casting white people as PoC characters. From Racebending.com‘s crucial “What is racebending?” primer:

The term “racebending” refers to situations where a media content creator (movie studio, publisher, etc.) has changed the race or ethnicity of a character. This is a longstanding Hollywood practice that has been historically used to discriminate against people of color. In the past, practices like blackface and yellowface were strategies used by Hollywood to deny jobs to actors of color… Because characters of color were played by white actors, people of color were hardly represented at all–and rarely in lead roles. While white actors were freely given jobs playing characters of color in make-up, actors of color struggled to find work.

(The term “racebending” is also used refer to the usually positive and exciting practice of casting a person of color in a role previously/traditionally played by a white person, but this article focuses on the sadly much more common dark side of racebending.)

I decided to take a look back at the acting nominations in the Academy Awards’ 86-year history to see how many examples of racebending were honored with nominations or awards. The results are unsurprising, yet still incredibly disappointing.

There are a few distinct forms of the bad kind of racebending. The most obvious and arguably most egregious is “black/brown/yellow/red-face,” where a white actor plays a person of color by wearing makeup.

Hugh Griffith's Oscar-winning brownface performance in Ben-Hur — Hugh Griffith’s Oscar-winning brownface performance in *Ben-Hur*

Then there is the strange Hollywood treatment of all “vaguely ethnic” actors as interchangeably castable in any PoC role. In the past, this meant actors we’d now code white playing characters of color, e.g. George Chakiris as Bernardo in West Side Story, but this lives on today with “brown is brown!” casting, e.g. Maori actor Cliff Curtis‘s globe-spanning character roster. There’s some overlap between this and the first category.

Greek American George Chakiris as Puerto Rican Bernardo in West Side Story — Greek American George Chakiris as Puerto Rican Bernardo in *West Side Story*

And then there is whitewashing, the insidious form racebending that erases the race or ethnicity of a character (often a real-life figure) to cast a white person in the role.

Jennifer Connelly's Oscar-winning portrayal of a whitewashed Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind — Jennifer Connelly’s Oscar-winning portrayal of a whitewashed Alicia Nash in *A Beautiful Mind*

Each of these types of racebending are represented in Academy Award-nominated and -winning performances. My list below is most likely incomplete. Lists on Wikipedia and TV Tropes and articles by Michelle I. on Racebending and Tanya Ghahremani on Complex.com got me started. I then attempted to thoroughly review the complete lists of winners and nominees to find other instances. I am sure I missed some, particularly in the whitewashing category. If you can think of other examples, please share in the comments!

There are also “gray area” examples such as half Indian Brit Ben Kingsley playing Gandhi in heavy brown makeup, Siberian Russian Yul Brynner playing the King of Siam, and Robert Downey Jr.’s role as Kirk Lazarus as Lincoln Osiris in Tropic Thunder, which was meant to parody this entire phenomenon, but, you know, was still a white actor in blackface receiving an Oscar nomination in 2008. I’ve left these examples in the list but with asterisks.

Oscar-winning race-bent performances with a white actor in makeup to play a PoC:

Luise Rainer's Oscar-winning yellowface performance in The Good Earth — Luise Rainer’s Oscar-winning yellowface performance in *The Good Earth*

1937 Best Actress: Luise Rainer as O-Lan in The Good Earth
1959 Best Supporting Actor: Hugh Griffith as Sheikh Ilderim in Ben-Hur
1982 Best Supporting Actress: Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously
*1982 Best Actor: Ben Kingsley (light-skinned half-Indian in makeup) as Mohandas Gandhi in Ghandi

Oscar-nominated race-bent performances with a white actor in makeup to play a PoC:

Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata! — Marlon Brando in *Viva Zapata!*

1937 Best Supporting Actor: H.B. Warner as Chang in Lost Horizon
1944 Best Supporting Actress: Aline MacMahon as Ling Tan’s Wife in Dragon Seed
1952 Best Actor: Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata!
1955 Best Actress: Jennifer Jones as Han Suyin in Love is a Many Splendored Thing
1959 Best Supporting Actress: Susan Kohner as Sarah Jane Johnson in Imitation of Life
1965 Best Actor: Laurence Olivier as Othello in Othello
*2008 Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey, Jr. as Kirk Lazarus as Lincoln Osiris (a white character in blackface, meant to parody this phenomenon, still offensive to many cultural commentators)

Oscar-winning race-bent performances with an “interchangeably ethnic” actor playing a PoC not of his race or ethnicity:

Yul Brynner in The King and I — Yul Brynner in ‘The King and I’

*1956 Best Actor: Yul Brynner (Russian of Buryat/Mongolian descent) as King Mongkut (Thai) in The King and I
1961 Best Supporting Actor: George Chakiris (Greek American) as Bernardo (Puerto Rican) in West Side Story

Oscar-nominated race-bent performances with an “interchangeably ethnic” actor playing a PoC not of his race or ethnicity:

Jeff Chandler as Cochise in Broken Arrow — Jeff Chandler as Cochise in *Broken Arrow*

1936 Best Supporting Actor: Akim Tamiroff (Armenian) as General Yang (Chinese) in The General Died at Dawn (also in yellowface makeup)
1950 Best Supporting Actor: Jeff Chandler (American Jewish) as Cochise (Apache) in Broken Arrow (also in redface makeup)
1962 Best Supporting Actor: Telly Savalas (Greek American) as Feto Gomez in Birdman of Alcatraz
2003 Best Actor: Ben Kingsley (Half-Indian Brit) as Massoud Amir Behrani (Iranian) in House of Sand and Fog

Oscar-winning race-bent performances with a white actor playing whitewashed PoC:

Whitest Dude Alive runner-up William Hurt as South American prisoner Luis Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman — Whitest Dude Alive runner-up William Hurt as South American prisoner Luis Molina in *Kiss of the Spider Woman*

1984 Best Actor: William Hurt as Luis Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman
2001 Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Connelly as Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind

The very sad moral of the story is that Hollywood never “has to” cast a person of color. White supremacy in Hollywood finds a way.

See also on Bitch Flicks: The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa

2013 Golden Globes Week: It’s “Impossible” Not to See the White-Centric Point of View

Written by Lady T, originally published at The Funny Feminist.

So this is a trailer for the upcoming film, The Impossible, telling the story about the 2004 tsunami:

There are a few title cards in the trailer that provide the necessary background for the story. The trailer helpfully tells you, “In 2004, tragedy struck southeast Asia.”

However, I don’t think those title cards are specific enough. I’d like to revise those title cards so they read, “In 2004, tragedy devastated entire nations, but we’re going to focus on one white family that was on vacation there.”

The Impossible is based on a true story of a real family that was separated during the tsunami and eventually reunited, each family member miraculously surviving. I can easily see why this story would appeal so much to filmmakers. “Family separated, in peril, in a devastated nation that is completely foreign to them” is such a great hook that it’s practically Captain Hook. Who wouldn’t be interested in the story of a family who have to survive in a country that isn’t their own?

On the other hand, this is a real-life tsunami that affected entire nations, that devastated the lives of the citizens who lived there, and the first prominent film about the tragedy is about white people who were staying at a hotel?

The family in The Impossible

Landon Palmer at the Culture Warrior has more to say on this:

“There is no reason to say that this experience wasn’t any less traumatic and devastating for those visiting (regardless of their particular race) than the inhabitants (once again, regardless of their particular race) of any of the affected nations. The problem with The Impossible trailer isn’t the depiction family’s experience of the tragedy itself, but its implications about what happens when, say, the film ends. While watching the trailer for the first time, an image kept appearing in my head of an exhausted, scratched-up family sleeping comfortably on a plane returning them safely to their home of origin. Being able to survive and then leave a tragedy is altogether different than having everything that is familiar, including one’s home, fall apart before your eyes. However, years of uncertain reconstruction and rehabilitation doesn’t fit the formula of a Hollywood ending quite like a welcome return to a home far, far away from moving tectonic plates.”

Or, you can read a briefer, much more blunt article at 8Asians here, titled “The Impossible Trailer Features Pretty White People Surviving Indonesian Tsunami.”

There are some who might say that one can’t judge a film before seeing it, but to quote our illustrious vice-president, that’s a bunch of malarkey. The purpose of trailers is to market the film and let viewers decide whether or not they want to see it. If a person does not want to see The Impossible because they don’t want to see, as my friend put it, “the tsunami from the perspective of the 1%,” that is a legitimate reason to not see the film.

You tell ’em, Joe.

As for me, I will probably see The Impossible. Naomi Watts scored a Best Actress nomination for the part , and I’m a huge Oscar fan who likes to see as many nominated films as possible from the Picture, Director, Acting, and Screenplay categories. The film also looks beautifully shot. Who knows? The Impossible could be a legitimately good movie.

Still, I can’t help but feel that the real impossible task is making a movie about tragedies that affect non-white people and expecting the film to get the same attention as one that stars Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor.

———-
Lady T is a writer and aspiring comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.