Opinion / Is colourblind casting, such as Gemma Chan in drama ‘Mary Queen of Scots’, the way of the future?
Hollywood has been accused of ‘whitewashing’ – or casting Caucasian actors for people of colour roles – for years, but are the tables turning finally?
Search on Google for the name of American actress Scarlett Johansson and you will not even need to scroll down before you hit one article or another referring to the controversial casting of her as Major, a cybernetically enhanced soldier, in the film adaptation of one of the world’s most-loved Japanese anime series, Ghost in a Shell.
The complaints about the “whitewashing” of this Asian role were so rampant that they were said to be one of the reasons why the 2017 live action release was a big box-office disappointment.
We can all accept that whitewashing has been pretty widespread in Hollywood, particularly during the Golden age of the California-based film studios – from the silent era up until the 1960s.
We saw English-born Elizabeth Taylor cast as an Egyptian ruler in the title role of 1963’s Cleopatra, American John Wayne as Genghis Khan in 1956’s The Conqueror, and Russian actor Yul Brynner as the King of Siam in another 1956 film, The King and I.
If John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, I can play Bess of Hardwick
Yet this practice continued into the 2000s with Angelina Jolie being cast in not one but two roles. The first saw her play Mariane Pearl, someone of mixed race, in the 2007 drama A Mighty Heart. In the second, she played the part of Fox, in 2008’s action thriller Wanted – based on the comic book series of the same name – a character originally shown as being African America.
There was some criticism within the African-American community about Jolie’s casting as Pearl, but Pearl herself, who chose Jolie for the part, defended the choice.