Hollywood Whitewashing – Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

“How is this still a thing?”

Is there such a thing as black-washing?

Check out this awesome article: What if People Reacted to These 10 Roles Like They Have to Michael B. Jordan?

The article is by Gina Luttrell at PolicyMic and it details the outcry against the reports that Michael B. Jordan, a black actor, has been cast as Johnny Storm aka. Human Torch, a white character, in the (much needed) Fantastic Four reboot and why this casting decision is important. She goes on to list 10 famous movies that featured blatantly whitewashed characters.

I am curious to know if Marvel’s or Twentieth Century Fox’s PR team anticipated the backlash from the die-hard comic book fans and what they are doing, if anything, to prevent the casting decision from potentially hurting the film at the box office. The reboot is set to release in June of 2015 (so perhaps the protesters will have moved on by then) and is being directed by Josh Trank, who also directed the found-footage sci-fi film Chronicle.

Here are my favorite bits from the article:

“The point here is that the erasure of people of color from cinema has been so widespread, even in recent years, from roles that are originally supposed to be be played by them, that it has done damage to those groups.”

“The fact of the matter is that black people have been booted out of roles that were originally black for ages…Hollywood has a sordid history of whitewashing. It hasn’t gotten better in the last 20 years, and there is very little outcry from those wanting to preserve “source material” when the person being outed is a person of color.”

Image Credit: Marvel