In the last year, we’ve seen many whitewashing efforts by Hollywood and none of them have escaped major criticism. As more whitewashed products come out, *cough* Death Note *cough*, the more it seems that in an attempt to avoid stereotypes showrunners have chosen to whitewash characters.
What is whitewashing?
Well it’s a when a Caucasian actor is put in the role of a character that was initially written for a person of another race. Recently the focus has been on Asian and Asian American characters. See the t-shirt “Scarlett & Tilda & Emma & Matt” above on Lewis Tan who should have been Iron Fist. The irony is, that in attempting to resolve stereotypes they have created bigger problems by taking away opportunities for actors of color and then not doing enough to build a real character.
One example is, in an attempt to get away from “the only Asians in this are ninjas problem” (which, guess what, in Daredevil Season 2 DEFINITELY ALL THE NINJAS WERE ASIAN), Marvel (who I will pick on because I love them and want them to do better) has removed any trace of actual Asianness from the people from their products. In addition, they have actually reinforced those same stereotypes (and added new ones) by giving major roles for Asian people (the Ancient One) to white people and then only leaving the lackeys to actually be Asian (yay!). Additionally, in Privilege in Action (aka Iron Fist) they only reference the fictional K’un Lun and never the real Kunlun (a Tibetan Mountain Range where there are probably real Asian Monks). Yay! So even the idea of a real Asian philosophical tradition that belongs to Humans who live on earth, is actually magical and 100% does not exist on this plane. Yay. Literally real Asians, from real human cultures, that have meaning and history and inform the character’s choices do not exist in the Marvel universe. The closest Asian-Americans get to a character who is Asian and uses that in their character is Colleen Wing, who has to suffer in the hands of truly terrible writing and will drop things like the “bushido code” when in the show that has no real impact to her motivations.
Whitewashing is in many ways worse than stereotypes because you are taking the already marginal representation of those of Asian descent in American Media away from the people that was written for. It also demonstrates that you have not taken care to understand what was actually wrong with the stereotype that property was based on because you are actually removing the Asianness from it. “But we’re changing the context” In many cases, they don’t actually change the context enough for that to be true. For example, the Ancient One was initially old Tibetan man and the way that he’s portrayed in many comics is stereotyped. However, that does not erase the fact that many martial arts masters and founders, at least the ones that they are always referencing in these works, were Asian. Current masters are diverse, and many are white, but they respect the origins of these works by acknowledging the Asian heritage that they owe their existence to. They say that the Ancient one in Doctor Strange is Celtic. Ok Fine. Why is she in Nepal then? Why is there not a center of power in a Celtic Nation? If she’s going to be Celtic then she actually has to be Celtic and that has to have some sort of impact on the character you are creating. Instead of dispelling the stereotype of an old Asian man teaching a white guy mystic arts, it replaces him with someone who makes the story disjoined and doesn’t dispel any stereotypes it instead just relies on different ones.
Being so caught up in the idea of “fixing” the problems of source material, which in many cases is fundamentally and obviously flawed, has actually in some cases made the original incarnations look better than the modern ones because you know there were inherent problems with racism and sexism when they were written. While now, people claim that those don’t exist. In addition, it’s also clear that the stereotypes that those characters came from were based on actual things, at least in relation to Asian characters. Stereotypes in the least contextual sense are a way to essentalize cultures and people to be easily absorbed or understood by others that don't understand cultural complexities. However, forty years (more or less) later this no longer is an acceptable position to tell a story from. We have stereotypes already and since then we have had plenty of time to learn about other people and fill characters in with real details and actual knowledge that preserve the meat of the character and their stories without conforming them to one-dimensional token diversity heads.
And it’s clear that actually MARVEL KNOWS THIS. No seriously I’m 100% certain these companies know what they are doing Why? Because we have well adapted version of Luke Cage and Black Panther coming to consumers. These two characters have had immense changes that have transformed them from two extreme stereotypes of black men to authentic realizations of black identity.
The heart the whitewashing problem is that it demonstrates weakness, laziness, and poor construction on behalf of the script. As Clara Mae wrote in regards to Mantis, stereotypes aren’t bad if you use them to impact the character and if the development of those skills become specific to their context. Mantis is another Asian-descent character in the Marvel universe who relies on Martial Arts for some of her skills, except in the movie where she has become another Madame Butterfly rather than a Turandot. However, as Mae outlines, in the comics, her martial arts skills inform Mantis’ character. The training influences how she makes choices and impacts what she does.
This is important because as much as we can experience Asian cultures through Korean dramas, food, and video games, many people, myself included, grew up and helped to bring those Asian cultural products into the mainstream. I remember wanting to read more volumes of a Manga and finding out that the publisher decided not to translate the rest of a series so I was shit out of luck. While these are all things that anyone interested in Asian culture experienced it does not mean that we all experienced the hardship equally. Especially because many of the things I listed are products, and not cultural behaviors. Behavior is important, not something easy to "correct" by eliminating stereotype, because it ends up divorcing the real, though sometimes mythologized, experience of Asian Americans from the rest of the United States. While we have an abundance of Asian products available to us, even so accessible we are able to whitewash them, we don’t have the same number of real Asian and Asian American stories. While mainstream white culture is aware of many of those “stereotypes,” they are also stereotypes because it is what people experienced. Removing those and there by eliminating the unique experiences of the Asian and Asian American communities continues to alienate us within our own nations and should not be covered over but instead addressed.
It honestly should be obvious by now to people who make films like this that whitewashing is not acceptable but it continues to happen. Even as recently as this month, the movie reboot for the Hellboy Franchise had cast Ed Skrein (aka FRANCIS) as an Asian American character. Thankfully, Ed, NOT THE PRODUCTION COMPANY, decided that was a bad choice and to step down. Thanks for doing the right thing, now tell your friends. So rather than replace/rebrand, writers and showrunners need to engage with the stereotypes of their characters and understand them. Rather than see stereotypes as inherently negative (although some are) view them as seeds to grow from. We now know enough about cultures around the world or can hire writers that do (for fuck’s sake you can get one Asian writer on your goddamned staff) and leverage on their experiences where you can or, you know, research the lives of the people you are depicting, to inform the characters you are writing. Stereotype should not be ignored because in many cases that’s what drew early diverse comic book readers to those characters and to keep us as adults, we want the depth that those characters deserve.
