Keeping mum
The hand-wringing over whitewashing
in Hollywood has taken a slightly more surreal turn when Will Smith is accused of not being black enough to play Richard Williams in a biopic.
I could see how casting Johnny Depp to play Tonto would be offensive. There are, after all, plenty of talented native American actors who are well-known enough at the box office and who could have filled the role. Mind you, given the critical drubbing and box office apathy that it received, they probably dodged a bullet on that one.
The mithering over Tilda Swindon playing the oriental Ancient One
in Doctor Strange raised little more than a meh
in me; largely because I'm unfamiliar with the comic stories, so the character could have been played by Ving Rhames and it wouldn't have made any difference. Although, once again, I can see plenty of talented Asian actors who would have been exemplary.
But a black actor not being black enough? It's getting kinda pathetic.
Surely the whole point of pretending is to be something that you're not? Otherwise, it's just being yourself; like Stan Lee in all those MCU cameos.
Smith was also not blue enough to play the genie in Aladdin, but that seems to have been fixed in post
. Perhaps the same could be done to appease the Williams naysayers?
Incidentally, while Tilda Swinton didn't look particularly oriental, she didn't look particularly ancient either. Or male, for that matter, since the Ancient One is supposed to be a Tibetan monk. Strangely, no one seemed to be too bothered about that though. Erasing the ancient one's Tibetan lineage was essentially Disney pandering to the CCP. They tried to spin the decision, by claiming the character to be a racist stereotype, but overlooked the fact that the bullshit detectors are tuned to their wavelength!
The Hollywood snowflakes would really blow their minds over British pantomime—traditionally, the male lead is played by a woman and the main comedic relief, the dame
, is played by a man. Pretenders pretending. Can't have that now, can we?