In revisiting my position on the recent spate of racist casting changes in Hollywood I’ve circled back around to see that yes, it would be nice if we didn’t see color anymore and yes, the news that Disney’s Little Mermaid Ariel will soon be played by a black actress is great news for those of us who are able to feel that black women are underrepresented in Hollywood.
Problem is, we do see color today because the media (news, social and entertainment) is always reinforcing that we do. With its sudden push toward diversity and inclusion Hollywood has opened the door to a different kind of racism in that “celebrating diversity” is by necessity “seeing color” — and in recent times what feels like “seeing the lack of it”.
But race-switching is not new; way back in the 60s, TV’s Batman had both 2 white (Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether) and a black (Eartha Kitt) Catwoman characters alternating throughout the series (i’m not sure why they changed up) and it worked out fine because there was no social media outcry and race-baiting like there is today. Catwoman’s race would go on to change again when in 1992 she returned as Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns and changed in 2002 to Halle Berry in Catwoman.
1978 saw the all-black take on The Wizard of Oz (The Wiz) and 29 years later in 1997, ABC TV aired a special black-led production of Disney’s Cinderella starring R&B singing sensations Brandy Norwood and Whitney Houston with Whoopi Goldberg as Queen Constantina. But putting on an all-black production is not really the same as taking one central character like Bond, like Superman, like Ariel and recasting them as a different race; the passage of time gives these sudden race adjustments the feeling of “you can’t be white anymore because diversity” — and that’s my problem with it.
Fast-forward to now: interestingly enough it is Disney and the Disney-owned Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) that are leading the charge in this “whole new world” of color (and gender) inclusion. Since its inception the MCU has given us:
Idris Elba as Heimdall; Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie; Zendaya Coleman as Mary Jane Watson; Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury; Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm; Hannah John-Kamen playing Ghost (who was also male on paper but feminism); and Michael Clarke Duncan as The Kingpin — all characters drawn white on the page but recast as black for the movies.The obvious question is:
“why is race negotiable when rendering these particular characters?”
Most of these work because they are non-specific characters who are not central to the story, but both Heimdall and Valkyrie are Norse God characters from the Thor comic book series — obviously they would be white of skin, why change them? Similarly Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four comic book series is a member of a heretofore white family system (husband, wife, her brother, and husband’s best friend) but now for some reason has become the black brother of the white wife — why?
In another head-scratching move, in Marvel’s Doctor Strange movie the doctor’s mentor (The Ancient One) was recast from an Asian male elder to a white female — why??!! And Disney itself has given us a black Sir Lancelot (Once Upon a Time tv show) as well as a black feminized version of A Wrinkle in Time) — why?
Like the upcoming Ariel recasting, none of these changes make any story-logical sense; they feel gratuitous and forced, mostly because they are unnecessary and nonsensical. Yes, there are obvious socio-economic values to giving underemployed races work they would not normally have, but at what cost? And couldn't the industry better achieve that goal by simply investing more in black-created IP, in simply creating new black characters, rather than blackfacing their own already-established IP? No, because their aim is not to employ more people of color, but rather to virtue-signal its own racial enlightenment while simultaneously white-shaming its own IP.
Diversity and inclusion has become the two-headed monster devouring the white normative Hollywood that has existed since its inception and that in fact created it. Can you really be color blind if you’re constantly noticing that a character is white and then stripping that character of it’s whiteness as though it were a mistake to begin with? Isn’t that racism prime? By choosing to replace (rather than supplement) white with color , Hollywood is overwriting its own whiteness as though it were a bad mistake that never should have happened!
It should be noted that all cast-announced Disney cartoon-to-live action remakes (Aladdin, Lion King, Mulan, Pocahontas) are or will be race-accurate EXCEPT the white girl mermaid. Why? It’s not because she’s not a real-life character, because neither is a pack of talking lions. What makes her race expendable?
And this is where The Black Panther Rule comes into play. Black Panther is black superhero also from the MCU and his movie went on to break all records during its release; it was lauded for featuring an almost all-black cast and for putting female warriors at the forefront of battle — blah blah blah virtue-signalling feminism etc, this is not about that. The Black Panther Rule states that, while you may change a white character’s race to anything you want, you may not change a black character’s race to white! Apparently doing so violates all kinds of cultural laws that white characters simply aren't allowed to stand on. That’s RACISM! Either you can do it both ways or you can't do it at all — pick a side Hollywood!
So while blackwashing can be fun and interesting , it needs to be balanced out with whitewashing if it is not to be seen as the anti-white bias that pervades so much of the industry these days. Casting by race is still racism, and casting on the basis of “you can’t be white anymore” is racism at its purest.
