Hollywood Paints the Town White
In the wake of Airbender's Racebending controversy, a few moments of Hollywood's whitewashing misteps.
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By Matt Patches April 5, 2010 |
30 Days of Night
It's difficult to say if the claim is true or not, but most whitewashing in Hollywood seems to occur after the producers realize that they can't find a suitable actor of a particular nationality or race.
Such was the case with 30 Days of Night, in which the lead character Eben Olemaun was swapped from Inuit descent to the Caucasian-sounding Eben Oleson after the casting of Josh Hartnett.
When asked about the choice at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con, producer Sam Raimi addressed the change, suggesting that they searched for an Inuit actor and were unable to find someone of Josh's caliber. If you say so.
Legend of Earthsea
It's never a good sign when the author of the source material writes an article with the subtitle: "How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books."
In 2004, the Sci Fi channel aired a mini-series based on Ursula K. Le Guin's epic Earthsea series, which pissed Le Guin the hell off. Promised an adherence to the original source material, Le Guin found Ged, her red-brown skinned protagonist, converted to a fluffy-haired white guy. Gone was the spectrum of her supporting cast, replaced by white actors and Danny Glover, the only black main character in the series.
Read the whole rant in the original Slate article, "A Whitewashed Earthsea".
21
In 2008, Columbia Pictures released 21, a loose adaptation of Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House, and Asian-American groups were up in arms.
Mezrich's original novel was semi-fictional account of an MIT Blackjack team (mostly Asian-American) that cracked the card-counting game and scammed Vegas casinos for profit. While real life ringleader Jeff Ma is of Asian decent, the lead role in 21 went to British actor Jim Sturgess, while the other roles were also filled by white actors (save for co-stars Aaron Yoo and Liza Larpira).
The casting decisions caused a stir amongst Asian-American groups, but producers of the film went on to say that casting was based on talent, not race. Producer Dana Brunetti told Entertainment Weekly, "Believe me, I would have LOVED to cast Asians in the lead roles, but the truth is, we didn’t have access to any bankable Asian-American actors that we wanted," while Jeff Ma himself told USA Today, "I would have been a lot more insulted if they had chosen someone who was Japanese or Korean, just to have an Asian playing me."
