It seems a little off to me as well, but I have not heard the casting director’s explanation for that casting choice.
It doesn’t matter what the casting director’s explanation is.
On the other hand, if the actor had blue eyes, but turned out to be part Hawaiian, would the criticism still be valid?
Your question suggests that you don’t understand what the criticism even is. As I was trying to convey in my previous response to you it is not about appearance . It is about Native people’s right to control their identity.
My personal view is that the primary issue is the believability of the character in the role.
Tough. You don’t get a vote, just as you don’t get a vote about Native American names being used by sports teams.
I would hate to see an actor mocking the Hawaiian people or Mr. Kanahele.
That’s nice, but mockery is not the issue.
But I think we as a multicultural nation should be less obsessed with everyone’s racial origins than Julius Streicher was.
For one thing, Hawaiʻi is not a part of your nation. It is an illegally occupied sovereign nation. For another thing, it’s easy for someone who has not been at a disadvantage because of their “racial origins” to complain about “obsession” on the part of those who have been at that disadvantage. There is a lot of talk about white privilege these days; this “color blind” attitude always comes up in those discussions as an example of white privilege. Well-meaning, perhaps, but regrettably out of touch with the experience of people of color.
This seems to be a moving target, and much depends on which side you sit on. Broadway has apparently made peace with non ethnically correct casting, notably with Hamilton. We saw _Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812_over the weekend, and the Russian Countess Natasha was played by Denée Benton, an African-American woman. It took a little while to ignore the anomaly, but it takes a little while to get into the groove of listening to Shakespearean dialog too. It’s theater, not a historical document. Much as been made of discontinuing blackfaced Othellos, but has anyone ever cared whether Shylock was played by an actual Jew?
Someone cast Paapa Essiedou, a black actor, as Hamlet. Oh wait. That was the RSC. And black female actress Zainab Jah played the same role in Philadelphia. And then there was Patrick Stewart at the Washington Shakespeare Theater playing Othello in an otherwise all black cast. Does that count as Shakespeare being blackwashed? Ordo the rules change depending on your ethnicity?
Ethnicity and gender issues are and have always been a serious problem in Hollywood, but popping up like a groundhog to shout “Whitewash” at every casting opportunity you see doesn’t help. Casting people because of their ethnicity is the worst kind of tokenism. The whole point of acting is to be able to inhabit another life and bring some artistic meaning to it. If I were an actor, I’d kill to play Hamlet, and the fact that I’m not a blond haired blue eyed Dane shouldn’t stop me. Nor should it stop Essiedou or Jah. But if you accept that principle, then it cuts all ways, because art does not have a race.
Native Hawaiians, as well as First Nations peoples on the North American continent, are in broad agreement that it is their right to retain control of their own culture and of how they and it are portrayed in the media. This is part of what we mean by “self-determination”. I take it that you feel that native culture is up for grabs?
[quote=“pacifica, post:66, topic:100784”]
Native Hawaiians, as well as First Nations peoples on the North American continent, are in broad agreement that it is their right to retain control of their own culture and of how they and it are portrayed in the media.
**[/quote]
Sorry, but I think that’s a stretch for anyone, and bound to lead to frustration. It’s in direct conflict with the American notion of freedom of speech. No one controls how they are portrayed, whether they are native Americans or POTUS.
Cultural appropriation is as old as civilization, the Romans stole culture from the Greeks, who stole it from the Egyptians and so on. The only way to fight it is to make it unacceptable to the public, but tell that to Pat Boone and every white rapper.
Please review your comments in light of the example I gave above regarding the use of Native American tribal names for sports teams. Your argument would logically suggest that you support sports organizations such as the Washington Redskins in their use of such names. However, I doubt that that is actually the case. This is the sort of self-determination that I am talking about. And if you think this lies outside the mainstream of American rights and principles, maybe consider it as “reparations”. And let me point out once again that Hawai‘i is not a part of the United States, it is an illegally occupied sovereign nation.
Thanks! I actually thought I was being a bit on the gruff side. I was kind of going for that “Zen master who believes in your potential but doesn’t hesitate to wield the bamboo staff sometimes”.
Nope, I said the way to battle it is in the court of public opinion, as has been successful, rather than asserting a right to control cultural imagery and such. I just don’t believe I as a Jew have a right to control how Jesus or Moses are portrayed. Obviously Muslims feel more sympathetically to you, FWTW. I believe in free speech and that culture is public domain.
That free speech includes your right to protest as much as you want and change the playing field of public opinion. Its worked so far, the portrayal of native peoples has dramatically changed in my lifetime, with no “property rights” to culture affirmed. The sports team imagery is now “in bad taste”, which is fine with me.
I appreciate your feelings and position, but I look at the slippery slope. We would end up with writers and artists who could not portray anything not of their heredity and gender. What about age, region, or even education? Should a college boy be able to write about a dropout? Isn’t that appropriation? If it was, then there would likely be few giving voice to that demographic.
I think it’s a bit hypocritical to get all breathless about a white guy playing a Hawaiian, but completely ignore African Americans etc playing white people.
Well, I suppose that would seem equivalent if you completely ignored history.
White people have been enforcing white cultural norms by co-opting and covering over existing culture for centuries. Whitewashing roles is just one aspect of that. If you replace a black or Asian part in a production with a white person, that representation is gone. Whiteness is simply too omnipresent to be erased by putting a person of color in the role of a white historical figure. Also, because so few roles are written specifically to allow POC and because on neutral/unspecified roles white people get the role 99 times out of 100, the opportunities for POC in theater, TV, and movies simply aren’t there. We need to let them in. Sometimes that will mean POC playing white historical figures, and that is ok and not equivalent to whitewashing.
Edit to add: this week’s Code Switch podcast is about the paucity of roles for Asians in theater and how that relates to Miss Saigon. It’s worth a listen.
No offense, but from an indigenous perspective, your approach seems to be all intellectual. Hawaiians talk about the na‘au, which is an energy center in roughly the area of the solar plexus, and is the center of emotional intelligence (and more). Kind of like “gut feeling”, but far more rich and subtle. This gives rise to such words as na‘auao (enlightened belly) and na‘aupō (benighted belly).
You wrote:
“The sports team imagery is now “in bad taste”, which is fine with me.”
Yes, “in bad taste”! When we allow our bodies a voice along with our intellects, it is not always necessary to prognosticate about such things as slippery slopes.
Your also wrote:
I believe in free speech and that culture is public domain.
Hawaiians most definitely do not believe that culture is in public domain. As an example, under US copyright law, once a song has been recorded, anyone is free to record it, as long as they pay royalties. In Hawaiian custom, it is also necessary to ask permission from the composer or their descendants. Failing to do this can result in various strictures, including but not limited to getting stink eye from the aunties when you go grocery shopping.
And BTW, as a non-Jew with a Jewish (Hungarian refugee) partner, I’m a bit shocked that you are so cavalier about the portrayal of Jesus in European culture. The image of Jesus as a brown-haired, blue-eyed, light-skinned European has been a key enabler of anti-semitism for as long as European painters have controlled his image.
I’m going to borrow what you wrote, if you don’t mind. I know this won’t be the last time I come across this false equivalency, and you put it really well!
I think it’s ludicrous, but I have no illusions that I can, or should, have the “right” to do something about it. That line of thought leads to cartoonists being murdered. Slippery slope. If I cared enough I’d make fun of it as publicly and as often as I could.
I like to believe that just laws aren’t about making everyone happy, but of protecting the most freedom for the most people. Once you give everyone a “right” to denounce anyone whose art even slight strays from their own demographic, freedom of speech is in trouble.
If you think it’s ludicrous, why NOT do something about it? Like say, pointing out that a relative’s white Jesus painting is just that, a silly whitened one. You certainly do have such a right.
Please, feel free. I’m just just pleased I appear not to have put my foot in my mouth. I’ve tried to express this sort of thing and stumbled on it in the past.
