Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 11:30AM Robert here! It's a day that ends in a Y which means it's time for another Hollywood whitewashing scandal. This time around we've got the announcement that famously white actor Zach McGowan, of "Shameless" and "Black Sails" fame, will be playing the part of real-life native Hawaiian decorated World War II hero Benehakaka "Ben" Kanahele in an upcoming film called Ni’ihau. Below are pictures of McGowan and Kanahele for comparison.
This latest controversy feels even more egregious than other recent foibles, such as Ghost In the Shell's "it's a Japanese woman's brain put into a white woman's body" or Doctor Strange's "we changed it from Tibetan to Celtic just 'cause." It doesn't take a keen eye to see that McGowan is not even close to right for this role, and furthermore, he's not even a bankable movie star. That, of course, is all beside the point as we've seen time and time again that the ol' "we have to put a white person in the movie or else it won't be profitable" line is not true. Also if they really felt that they needed bankable star power for this movie there are two incredibly popular actors of Native Hawaiian/Pacific-Islander decent working today: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Jason Momoa. There is simply no excuse or reason to cast McGowan in this role.
The nature of the film and the way it's being handled has also caused a lot of concern with the Japanese American community.
Kanahele's story revolves around a Japanese kamikaze pilot who crash lands on the Hawaiian island of Ni'ihau during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Kanahele's family initially took the pilot in, but when the pilot revealed his true intentions and tried to rally the Japanese citizens of the island in an attempted coup, Kanahele and his wife, Ella, killed him. Ben Kanahele declared a hero by no-less than President Roosevelt. Ni'ihau was the inciting incident that lead led Roosevelt to issue his executive order that Japanese-Americans would be put in internment camps. It is obviously a difficult and painful subject to cover, and given how careless the production has been already, there is not a lot of faith that they will handle the complexities well.
Kanahele's story is certainly one that is worthy of the film treatment, but I can't imagine that anyone other than the producers of this movie would think this is the proper way to tell his story.
Reader Comments (18)
The Ancient One in Dr. Strange was changed to celtic, to avoid problems with Chinese censorship, as the original is... tibetan. It was forced whitewashing to not lose the chinese market... I agree they could have changed to another race - are they saving Doctor Voodoo for phase 5? - but we got Tilda Swinton, so I am not complaining at all.
Just to clarify that particular case of Hollywood whitewashing. There was no other way, given how much of a candy the chinese market is, and the risk of closing for future MCU films.
Kudos to people who fight the good fight, but dear god, I am exhausted by this. Even when it's a true story about an actual native Hawaiian person, Hollywood finds a way to be really racist and somehow finds the gall to act confused when there's controversy. I love films, but that we as people of color have to keep justifying - justifying! - the right to play people who look like us over white people in film is a humiliating experience. We're not even "good" enough to play ourselves.
I'l be surprised if this movie ever sees the light of day. Why would anyone put money behind this joint? It is obviously not a money maker, and if vying for the awards/prestige angle, then it will get mired in racial politics controversy and be sunk before it ever stands a chance.
@ Jesus - I 100% get your point about China and Tibet, and how that is an obvious financial decision that a studio has to grapple with, but facts and reason don't matter. It's all about virtue signaling. I will never fork up dollars to support any of the original Japanese Ghost in A Shell, but you can bet your ass I'll tweet a firestorm about Scarlett Johansson and whitewashing. I have an ego to feed!
I loved his frontal in Shameless.
I find it perplexing that the internet is on fire, attacking a rather unknown actor on an indy, low budget film (which most likely isn't getting it's money from Hollywood, but more likely private funding and foreign sales) when, on the same day, HBO announces that Peter Dinklage will star as Hervé Villechaize.
Any news of white washing yesterday centered on Zach but not Peter, why?
Is Peter Dinklage Filipino?
HBO is owned by WB, and is definitely Hollywood money. So where's the outrage?
It's the selective outrage that always leads to Liberals losing their arguments. Why no attacks on Peter? Obvious. Peter's a dwarf and you can't attack a dwarf. Right? So Peter won't get attacked for white washing. It's okay in Peter's case.
But Zach's just a white guy. We'll attack the "just white guy".
I speak from experience, Zach McGowan is not anyone's 1ST choice. All these attacks assume that producers went right to Zach first. They assume no other actors were looked at.
How about asking the producers who passed?
This story sounds important. Why hasn't it been told before? I never heard it. Maybe filmmakers have been trying for years and couldn't get it made. And it's either hire an actor to act in the role or not get the film made.
Attack Zach all you want, but he's not the problem.
This is absolute bullcrap. Hollywood will find any excuse to cast white people in ethnic roles. I mean, come on, I have never heard of this guy until now. So they can't pull the tired "we need a star" copout.
They weren't exactly looking for star power when they put "global superstar" Jim Sturgess at the forefront of 21 where the real life person he portrays was actually Asian.
Hollywood needs to get over themselves and get with how progressive audiences have become. How To Be A Latin Lover and Baahubali 2 beat The Circle with Tom freaking Hanks for crying out loud and with fewer theaters.
There's the end of my rant.
This is absolute bullcrap. Hollywood will find any excuse to cast white people in ethnic roles. I mean, come on, I have never heard of this guy until now. So they can't pull the tired "we need a star" copout.
They weren't exactly looking for star power when they put "global superstar" Jim Sturgess at the forefront of 21 where the real life person he portrays was actually Asian.
Hollywood needs to get over themselves and get with how progressive audiences have become. How To Be A Latin Lover and Baahubali 2 beat The Circle with Tom freaking Hanks for crying out loud and with fewer theaters.
There's the end of my rant.
Hollywood is shook. They are still hanging on to the good old days when they could blame "society" for their racist casting practices. Well "society" has evolved and is fighting back, but Hollywood still wants to continue being a bastion of institutionalised white supremacy. They can't blame society any longer, so they are basically fucked. Society as a whole has decided that white people really are not as fascinating, beautiful and interesting as they actually think they are, and I think whites in the industry are having a hard tome coming to terms with this (not putting all white industry folk in this category. Some are actually woke).
It's sort of hilarious. White actors and and producers and executives really have no idea what to do. They used to get away with this shit on the regular with no comeback whatsoever. Only a few years ago if Ben Affleck (Argo) or Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) want to play real life Latinos and turn those characters white, they could win Oscars for that shit. Now they'd be eviscirated as soon as their casting was announced, and the entire future of those projects would hang under a cloud of terrible PR.
Again, as well as being the world's premiere entertainment factory, for the better part of a century, Hollywood had promoted and perputuated white supremacy. White people are just better, smarter, more heroic and more attractive than anyone else (according to movies and stuff). The industry is simply used to that being the way it's always been, and many are just too slow to realise that it's basically over.
This Zach McGowan guy and the film's producers could actually still salvage their reputations and the potential future of this movie. McGowan can drop out, say he listened to the concerns of the public and realised he's not right for the role. The guy loses an acting job, but comes out looking like a man of extreme character and it'll probably lead to him getting roles in films that will actually do well. He'll get super great PR from dropping out. The producers can then do a casting call for an actual Hawaiian actor, and this movie might actually go from being a straight to DVD/5% on Rotten Tomatoes disaster, to something people might actually anticipate. There's still a real opportunity for everyone involved to turn a PR nightmare into a PR triumph. Doubt they are smart enough to do it though. These actors and producers tend to stick with their awful decisions to the bitter end.
George Mallow -- i didn't write this piece but speaking for myself, I hadn't even heard of the Peter Dinklage thing until you brought it up. It's possible to hear of one news item and not another. It isn't always a conscious choice like "let's ignore *this*"
as for the this
I agree that the actors in these situations are rarely the chief person to blame. They're just looking for work and some of them see an intriguing character rather than the history of what's going on (in cases like Tilda Swinton whose charaacter was totally reconceived and she probably wasn't a comic book devourer as a child, you know?) But it doesn't make any sense to suggest that this film can't be made without this particular actor who has some decent credits to his name but is in no way a "bankable" figure or all that well known. That makes no sense. If it's just "hire someone" to get it made, why can't that someone be Hawaiian?
Zach McGowan is an executive producer on this movie. So I'm guessing he had a hand in casting himself. He doesn't get the "oh, I'm just a powerless jobbing actor looking for a gig" excuse. He's obviously been involved with the production of this movie on a deeper level, and likely helped develop the project with the intention playing Ben Kanahele. They don't just cast random D-list actors and give them executive producer credits. He's in on it.
I get it. He's an actor looking for a breakout role. Something juicy with Oscar potential. And everyone tells him he looks exotic when he has a tan. So why not develop this project for himself? But he probably should have thought this through a bit more, especially they way things are now.
Abort. Abort. Abort.
He is going to need a lot of make up
WHO IS THIS ACTOR?!
God I totally get it when they cast Scarlett or Tilda because they are bankable and all around great. But casting this nobody as a Hawaiian is total bullcrap.
Repeat after me: The only color Hollywood cares about is green. Oh, and white. Definitely white.
"Again, as well as being the world's premiere entertainment factory, for the better part of a century, Hollywood had promoted and perputuated white supremacy. White people are just better, smarter, more heroic and more attractive than anyone else (according to movies and stuff). The industry is simply used to that being the way it's always been, and many are just too slow to realise that it's basically over."
RETWEET
They're practically Twins! *eyeroll*
McGowan is actually a very talented guy (tremendous on black sails).
I get hungry up and coming actors like him going for these parts. The Tilda Swintons and Scarlett Johannssons of the world? Fuck them, they have a wealth of juicy parts at their disposal.
McGowan may or may not be a talented actor. Wouldn't know, as I have only seen him play a generic Russian gangster on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Can't really judge him on that since it's a generic role that understandably gets a generic performance. But you've basically seen that same performance in a hundred other shows and movies. He's certainly a competent professional on the evidence of that series work, and might well be capable of much more.
But what he does next will probably much decide his future and career trajectory. He can double down and make this movie to show the "haters" he doesn't care, and said movie will be guaranteed to be a ridiculed flop if he does. Or he can take the high road, excuse himself from the role, and everyone will remember him as that cool "woke" white actor that did the right thing. The guy genuinely has more chance of becoming a star by not taking this role, than by taking it. Hope his agents or "team" are reading this shit and come to that realisation. People know his name now, which is something to work with. If he becomes practically the first white actor to leave a role of his own voalition because of "whitewashing", he gets a shitload of social media goodwill and a lasting celebrity. Which in turn, he can utilise into replacing Bradley Cooper, which is clearly his goal.