Whitewashing in Drama/Fantasy Film History
The recently released 'Ghost In The Shell' has been hit with whitewashing accusations since the early days of its production. The reason being that what the film is based on is about as Asian as things get: Japanese cult manga, ground-breaking anime, Hong Kong-inspired locations, Eastern philosophy-based story. Most of that’s been downright ignored with its big-screen adaptation, and Scarlett Johansson’s casting as the dark-haired, obviously originally Asian lead sent people into a rage. Perhaps the most shocking element of this is that whitewashing in Hollywood is a problem dating back 100 years, since the very start of film – leading us to question, 'Why have we not moved on from this yet?'
One of the earliest and most famous examples of this would be in the 1915 production of 'Birth of a Nation', directed by DW Griffith, it has a reputation as one of the greatest movies ever made – and yet one of the most racially insulting. In the past few decades it has been rarely screened and hard to find, despite it being proclaimed as 'the forefather of every other film'. The film followed a South Carolina town during the Civil War and pitted white men in blackface against actors playing the Ku Klux Klan protecting the “Aryan” cause. What makes the nature of the films racism most horrendous is that the movie is said to have “proved horrifically effective at sparking violence against blacks in many cities.”, according to a New Yorker article in 2013.
Our next example lies more than 40 years later with actor Yul Brynner who, despite his penchant for exaggerating his exotic Russian background was certainly not Asian when he took on the role as King Mongkut in the original film adaptation of “The King and I.” (1956) Brynner would go on to reprise his role as King Mongkut for the rest of his life, portraying the character over 4,000 times on stage until his death in 1985.
Another massively infamous display of whitewashing comes from the truly iconic "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) with Mickey Rooney’s cringe-worthy portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi, the Japanese photographer who lives in Holly Golightly’s building. While no doubt intended as a “comic” performance, Rooney’s ill-conceived depiction of a Japanese man has rightly been selected as a translucent case-study of a terrible thing that should never be done again… And, after that, having learned nothing, director Blake Edwards did it again by casting Peter Sellers as Indian character Hrundi Bakshi in "The Party" (1968).
For a while after that throughout the 70's, although I don’t mean to imply that for 20 years whitewashing on film was a thing of the past, but it certainly did improve for a while. Things were finally looking up until the release of "Short Circuit" in 1986. Having been brought to my attention by Aziz Ansari’s thoughtful and quite brilliant Netflix show "Master of None"(2015-), the truth that Indian scientist Ben Jabituya was in fact played by white Chicagoan Fisher Stevens. Despite Ansari displaying admirable understanding on the issue, it doesn’t stop Fisher Stevens’ performance being very much not OK.
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