Scarlett Johansson’s casting as the lead in Ghost in the Shell — a Japanese character in the original and beloved manga series — has been public since last year, but Paramount and DreamWorks Pictures recently revealed the first photo of the actor in character, re-igniting criticism. Then, Marvel responded to recent backlash over Tilda Swinton’s role in Doctor Strange as The Ancient One (who is Asian in the comics) by declaring the character is now “Celtic,” which only added fuel to the anger.
That’s why The Nerds of Color founder Keith Chow, YA author Ellen Oh, comedian Margaret Cho, and numerous other Asian-Americans started yesterday’s hashtag protest. They denounced Hollywood’s whitewashing, for not only casting white actors in roles that could or should go to people of color, but for persistently defaulting to white characters’ plots as the center of films and television narratives.
For Chow, “The whole idea of being whitewashed goes beyond just Asian characters being played by white people. It’s the idea of centering whiteness in every story,” he told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. “Whiteness to them is ‘colorblind.’ Everyone can project themselves onto a white guy.
“Being an Asian-American person, I’ve spent my entire life identifying with non-Asian people because you have to,” Chow continued. “And I want tell white movie-goers it’s not that hard to see a person [who isn’t of] your ethnicity and identify with that person. We’ve been doing it for years.”