Friday, September 12, 2014

A Lack of Color

I have a celebrity crush on Nonso Anozie. I watched Ender's Game and tweeted that he was just as cute in that as he was Game of Thrones. He favorited it and I did a fangirl squee.

Who is he? He's the black guy in GoT, Dracula (the series), Ender's Game, and The Grey.

I never truly appreciated how white washed my media was until I had to explain who he is but I was definitely starting to see it in Ender's Game. One of the characters was known for being Spanish and an incredibly beautiful young boy. In the book it is very clear this character has tan skin and black hair. While Moises Arias is mixed and fluent in Spanish, he looked as Anglo as anyone in that movie.

Arias did a very good job in the role but they didn't do much to make him look the part. It makes me wonder if the auditioned anyone who did. Something similar happened on The Hunger Games. Jennifer Lawrence did an amazing job but I don't think the casting should have been a call for Aryan breeding.

Looking at GoT, almost everyone is white. There are 2 black characters, the pirate and the richest man in Qarth. Even the background characters have little diversity. I'm against colorblind casting in a period piece but this is a fantasy where characters' hair colors aren't restricted to the norms. Why is the skin color?

Why can't there be any background Wildlings that look like Eskimos? Why can't some of the average citizens in King's Landing have some diversity? Why was the BFF in Warm Bodies a white girl when she's a one-armed black chick in the book?

I have a friend from India who has a roommate named Igor. His group house is like a mini-UN with all the places of origins in that house. The group of people I socialize with includes a variety of faiths, races, genders, and professions. (This includes a Chinese doctor and very WASP-y lawyer. Make your own jokes.)

Why can't Hollywood reflect my reality? If the level of whitewashing in Hollywood is starting to grate on white people, you know it's time to change.

Music: City of Angels by Thirty Seconds to Mars

No comments:

Post a Comment