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Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Annihilation Is Being Criticized for Erasing the Main Character's Race
jezebel.com: Director Alex Garland adapted his movie Annihilation from a book of the same name, by Jeff VanderMeer. Some changes have been made to the film’s protagonist in the jump from page to screen: she’s no longer Asian.
6 comments:
Sydney Asselin
said...
Popular outcry against racism and whitewashing in Hollywood is a largely black and white issue. Many issues of whitewashing in terms of Asian and Asian-American culture still goes unnoticed. So I'm not surprised that this director had even thought of whitewashing when he cast the lead of this movie with Natalie Portman. It's 2018, and yet I still see the erasure and misappropriation of both my and other Asian cultures all over popular media. Most of the reason I was so angry that people reacted to the article about the Chinese casting of Mulan with comments about how "this shouldn't be news, it should be normal," was because no matter what we wish the situation was, complaining that "it shouldn't be news" will make it no longer news, and the white culture of Hollywood will feel free to whitewash all they want. I'm angry with the white savior (Danny Rand) of Iron Fist, with the Scarlett Johansson of Ghost in the Shell, with The Ancient One in Doctor Strange (a Tibetan man in the comics that became a Celtic mystic in the movie), and with every example of whitewashing of Asian culture and people in entertainment until it gets the same roar of popular outcry that currently dominates the conversation around sexism and black and white racism in the entertainment industry.
I absolutely 100% agree with Sydney. The race conversation within the entertainment industry is often a single line between white and black. Asians, stereotypically seen as a more "quiet" race, are often whitewashed with no consequences and every time a new story like this appears, I just feel myself getting angrier because there ARE asian actors/actresses who are talented enough to star in movies. However, this article is conflicting as I also read into its comments where many people mention that the description of the character does not appear until the sequel - which wasn't written until after the film entered production. In this situation, I do not find it right to criticize those who produced/ directed the movie since they did know better. Instead, I think this points to the larger issue of casting in Hollywood. Main characters are always imagined as white. The director read this book and did not even think to of the main character as any other race. I find it horrible that the only time we ever imagine an asian character is when they are specifically described as such. Even I, a Vietnamese American, cannot help but imagine the characters in the books I read as white because of the lack of representation I was exposed to as a child. There are so many stories where race is not even used as a character description but we automatically assume he/she is white.
"dark, thick eyebrows, a slight, slightly off-center nose (broken once, falling on rocks), and high cheekbones that spoke to the strong Asian heritage on one side of her family”. It's like the director of Annihilation stopped reading the character description after the first three words because Natalie Portman fits none of the other categories. Often times directors think that the solution to a race issue is eliminating race from the conversation altogether, they need to be told that this is clearly not the answer. Writing out the background of a character doesn't make something or someone "universal" it makes the creative team look like fools. It happens every time Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman or anyone with pretty much dark hair is offered a role that is made to be played by an Asian actor, then when a person of the characters actual race is cast, the company broadcasts it as if its somehow an achievement, it's just proper casting. To echo my peer, BinhAn, there are plenty of actors that are Asian American out there, they're not hard to find, so why issues like these keep happening is turning into a mystery to me.
I’m happy to see the official organizations for Asian American and American Indians are taking public stances against the white washing in Hollywood as this means everyone under the organization technically have the same stance. I also think the stance the director is taking on the matter is a little unprofessional and just makes him look either unprepared or lazy pertaining to his adaptation of the film. A good team would have had the book thoroughly researched and histories taken, kind of like a show with a dramaturg looking up the significance of background stories and other information. I feel like the descriptions for the characters are pretty blatantly stated in the novel and would be pretty difficult to argue against in the case that the race was being questioned, like right now. I know there have been other cases of questioning the races of characters adapted from books into movies that have been much more ambiguous than this.
How truly and honestly disappointing. I mean, at least the main character is still a woman in the film adaptation. And it's not like the description in the book is vague enough for the director to claim that the main character could be any race. The article reads: "In the book, this character is described by VanderMeer in a single sentence in which she has “dark, thick eyebrows, a slight, slightly off-center nose (broken once, falling on rocks), and high cheekbones that spoke to the strong Asian heritage on one side of her family.”" It is written clearly and without embellishment that the main character of "Annihilation" is Asian. This description of the main character still leaves a huge amount of diversity available in the casting; Asia is a huge continent where the people can fit the look of what the director wants. Unless, of course, the director wants the character to be white.
So this article brings up the one of the continuing problems that seems to have been plagued by for as long as I can remember, and this issue is that of white washing in the entertainment world. Despite the fact the filming of Annihilation has recieved very good praise, this does not remove the fact that it is being called out for white washing the main character’s Asian heritage. “Asian characters are particularly susceptible to whitewashing in Hollywood, and you would think the recent coverage of these mistakes and the increasingly vocal backlash would tip directors off that this is no longer acceptable; yet, Garland only seemed to realize something was up in an interview with Nerdist in December, when he was asked directly about the brewing controversy” this is a problem that we need to strive to address and fix in the entertainment industry. It has happened for years and it really needs to be put to an end.
6 comments:
Popular outcry against racism and whitewashing in Hollywood is a largely black and white issue. Many issues of whitewashing in terms of Asian and Asian-American culture still goes unnoticed. So I'm not surprised that this director had even thought of whitewashing when he cast the lead of this movie with Natalie Portman. It's 2018, and yet I still see the erasure and misappropriation of both my and other Asian cultures all over popular media. Most of the reason I was so angry that people reacted to the article about the Chinese casting of Mulan with comments about how "this shouldn't be news, it should be normal," was because no matter what we wish the situation was, complaining that "it shouldn't be news" will make it no longer news, and the white culture of Hollywood will feel free to whitewash all they want. I'm angry with the white savior (Danny Rand) of Iron Fist, with the Scarlett Johansson of Ghost in the Shell, with The Ancient One in Doctor Strange (a Tibetan man in the comics that became a Celtic mystic in the movie), and with every example of whitewashing of Asian culture and people in entertainment until it gets the same roar of popular outcry that currently dominates the conversation around sexism and black and white racism in the entertainment industry.
I absolutely 100% agree with Sydney. The race conversation within the entertainment industry is often a single line between white and black. Asians, stereotypically seen as a more "quiet" race, are often whitewashed with no consequences and every time a new story like this appears, I just feel myself getting angrier because there ARE asian actors/actresses who are talented enough to star in movies. However, this article is conflicting as I also read into its comments where many people mention that the description of the character does not appear until the sequel - which wasn't written until after the film entered production. In this situation, I do not find it right to criticize those who produced/ directed the movie since they did know better. Instead, I think this points to the larger issue of casting in Hollywood. Main characters are always imagined as white. The director read this book and did not even think to of the main character as any other race. I find it horrible that the only time we ever imagine an asian character is when they are specifically described as such. Even I, a Vietnamese American, cannot help but imagine the characters in the books I read as white because of the lack of representation I was exposed to as a child. There are so many stories where race is not even used as a character description but we automatically assume he/she is white.
"dark, thick eyebrows, a slight, slightly off-center nose (broken once, falling on rocks), and high cheekbones that spoke to the strong Asian heritage on one side of her family”. It's like the director of Annihilation stopped reading the character description after the first three words because Natalie Portman fits none of the other categories. Often times directors think that the solution to a race issue is eliminating race from the conversation altogether, they need to be told that this is clearly not the answer. Writing out the background of a character doesn't make something or someone "universal" it makes the creative team look like fools. It happens every time Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman or anyone with pretty much dark hair is offered a role that is made to be played by an Asian actor, then when a person of the characters actual race is cast, the company broadcasts it as if its somehow an achievement, it's just proper casting. To echo my peer, BinhAn, there are plenty of actors that are Asian American out there, they're not hard to find, so why issues like these keep happening is turning into a mystery to me.
I’m happy to see the official organizations for Asian American and American Indians are taking public stances against the white washing in Hollywood as this means everyone under the organization technically have the same stance. I also think the stance the director is taking on the matter is a little unprofessional and just makes him look either unprepared or lazy pertaining to his adaptation of the film. A good team would have had the book thoroughly researched and histories taken, kind of like a show with a dramaturg looking up the significance of background stories and other information. I feel like the descriptions for the characters are pretty blatantly stated in the novel and would be pretty difficult to argue against in the case that the race was being questioned, like right now. I know there have been other cases of questioning the races of characters adapted from books into movies that have been much more ambiguous than this.
How truly and honestly disappointing. I mean, at least the main character is still a woman in the film adaptation. And it's not like the description in the book is vague enough for the director to claim that the main character could be any race. The article reads: "In the book, this character is described by VanderMeer in a single sentence in which she has “dark, thick eyebrows, a slight, slightly off-center nose (broken once, falling on rocks), and high cheekbones that spoke to the strong Asian heritage on one side of her family.”" It is written clearly and without embellishment that the main character of "Annihilation" is Asian. This description of the main character still leaves a huge amount of diversity available in the casting; Asia is a huge continent where the people can fit the look of what the director wants. Unless, of course, the director wants the character to be white.
So this article brings up the one of the continuing problems that seems to have been plagued by for as long as I can remember, and this issue is that of white washing in the entertainment world. Despite the fact the filming of Annihilation has recieved very good praise, this does not remove the fact that it is being called out for white washing the main character’s Asian heritage. “Asian characters are particularly susceptible to whitewashing in Hollywood, and you would think the recent coverage of these mistakes and the increasingly vocal backlash would tip directors off that this is no longer acceptable; yet, Garland only seemed to realize something was up in an interview with Nerdist in December, when he was asked directly about the brewing controversy” this is a problem that we need to strive to address and fix in the entertainment industry. It has happened for years and it really needs to be put to an end.
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