Hollywood Turns A Blind Eye To Skin Colors

By Briana Scalia

Diversity in Hollywood is a heated issue, and has been for some time now. It would be ignorant to claim that Hollywood has not made any strides in diverse casting in the past years, but when the starting point is so low, any increment is viewed as progress.

Even today, film studios continue to make shallow decisions when casting roles in their movies or television shows, disregarding people of color in favor of white actors.

Throughout history, Hollywood has casted white actors in place of people of color, but even in recent years there have been many examples that have created controversy in the media.

One heated topic of cinema lately is the casting of Scarlet Johansson as the lead of the still in production movie Ghost in the Shell. The movie, set to release sometime next year, is a remake of a popular animated film that received high praise from both critics and the masses. The protagonist of the film is a cyborg soldier named Motoko Kusanagi, and the plot centers around her thoughts of being a cyborg with a human brain.

The original movie was explicitly set in a fictional city in Japan, and all of the characters have some Asian background. Yet, DreamWorks decided to offer the role to Scarlett Johanssen, who is not Asian in any capacity, let alone of Japanese descent.

Though they have not commented about their choice, film experts speculate DreamWorks feared low box office earnings for the movie due to its small fanbase, so they chose a conventionally attractive white woman to play the lead.

Another recent example of poor casting choices is the casting of Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in the upcoming Marvel movie Doctor Strange.
Though inaccurate casting of diversity is inexcusable, Marvel has a clear reason for not casting the Ancient One as a Tibetan actor, contradicting the lore of the story.

Those familiar with Chinese affairs know that China and Tibet have a strained relationship at best, and American films receive a huge box office boost from their Chinese audiences.

Instead of remaining altruistic and progressive, Marvel has opted to cast a white actress in place of a Tibetan actor to remain impartial in the Chinese-Tibetan feud, thus leading to China greenlighting the movie to be played overseas.

Hollywood’s problems with diversity have been addressed by dozens of actors, both white and non-white, along with fans of movies in general.
Recently, Disney agreed to a live action remake of their famous animated movie Mulan, the story of a fierce and driven woman sneaking away to become a soldier in place of her wounded father.

Within hours of the news circulating, a petition was started to cast Mulan as an actress of Chinese descent, and already has over 90,000 signatures.
Though it is encouraging that so many people care about diversity in film, it seems depressing that a petition is necessary for movie studios to cast a Chinese actress in a Chinese role.

A more well-known effort was the strike several actors took against the Oscars this past year to bring attention to the lack of people of color being nominated for Academy Awards.

Prominent figures such as Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee refused to attend the event, and the Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite was trending for a few days.

The exclusion of Michael B. Jordan was particularly upsetting, due to both his incredible talent in his role of the protagonist in Creed and his fellow white co-star Sylvester Stallone being nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Though a majority of fans recognize the issue, there is little more they can do than start a petition for film studios to cast their roles with regard for ethnicities of famous characters.

Unfortunately, these issues will not be resolved until Hollywood starts to place importance on ethnic accuracy instead of box office numbers.

Briana Scalia, FCRH ‘20, is a broadcast journalism major from Long Island, New York.