www.vulture.com: Get out your TI-89 outrage calculators, because it’s time to calibrate the proper amount of emotion to expend on another instance of Hollywood whitewashing. On the docket is Annihilation, a trippy, LSD-infused sci-fi film by Ex Machina’s Alex Garland starring Natalie Portman as a biologist exploring a top-secret zone called Area X. The movie is an adaptation of a Jeff VanderMeer book of the same title, the first part of the Southern Reach Trilogy.
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This article captured my attention with the first lines, “Get out your TI-89 outrage calculators, because it’s time to calibrate the proper amount of emotion to expend on another instance of Hollywood whitewashing.” Although the opening reference is fairly funny, the situation at hand is less so. Hollywood time and time again refuses to put people of diversity into roles that are played by people that are diverse and it’s tiring and old. It’s 2018, we need to be more conscious of people that we decide to put on the stage, and people that we decide to put on the screen. Diverse actors are constantly put on the side lines, and casting directors and dramaturgs need to make a point of making sure that each person that is specified as being a character of a specific race, is played by a person of that race. Hollywood needs to be called out even more and if they keep doing this, people could just start boycotting.
This whole situation with Annihilation is a prime example of structural racism. I find it hard to place personal blame on the director or Natalie Portman as, according to them, they were both unaware of the race of the characters since they were not mentioned in the first book. I am, however, angry at how they respond to inquiries about the situation since it seems to be brushed off. It seems to me that, because Natalie Portman is a likeable person and Alex Garland is a talented director, people are brushing it off as a simple mistake. It should not be okay that anyone associated with this film can just say "oh we did not know and I believe white washing is a real issue" and then be let off the hook. It is utterly hypocritical and unproductive to apologize for a mistake by stating that they care about the issue. Those involved should explicitly apologize and take large measures to correct their mistakes retroactively.
At best this is a director who made a really stupid mistake, but more likely it is an indication about Hollywood’s normal system. Since most of the major actors are white, the current structure favors what is already established. With all all of the conversation about the way Hollywood is structured, I thought we were beyond this blatant white washing. In the last year, we have seen more diverse representation, and those films have been extremely successful. I hope in the future that executives will realize the power of non white faces playing more prominent role on screen. I think it’s sad that they had the opportunity to show varied representation, and they chose not to. The fact that the film is lead by women, makes the representation that much more complicated. As a supporter, of intersectional feminism I want to see more women, but definitely not at the cost of women of color.
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