Hollywood grappling with its lack of diversity

JUST when it appears that Hollywood is going to make some serious movement towards diversity, along comes the announcement that Joseph Fiennes is going to play Michael Jackson in a movie.

Really? When I mentioned the need for creative casting in an earlier post on this subject, this is not what I meant.

The entertainment industry trade newspaper Variety, thought the problem of #OscarsSoWhite was serious enough to use their Jan. 26 front page with a white Oscar and properly placed the blame where it belonged on the industry. "Shame On Us" was the headline.

"The 89-year-old motion picture academy is absorbing the brunt of the public disdain. But the fault lies not just in the star-making Oscars, many agreed, but in ourselves," read the cover story by senior reporter James Rainey and Awards Editor Tim Gray. "The Hollywood studio hierarchy remains an exclusive club chaired by white men and one white woman. The big talent agencies have almost no minority partners. And the media that cover it all — Variety included — employ only a few people of color."

RELATED: #OscarsSoWhite - The Sequel

With calls for a boycott of the Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts approved changes that would increase the diversity in its voting membership over a four year period and move some of the older, white members who have not been active in the industry for years, into a new non-voting category.

More celebrities began to voice their opinions - Jada Pinkett Smith and husband Will Smith, George Clooney, Idris Elba and Michael Moore were among those calling for more diversity; Michael Caine urged patience; Julie Delpey, Charlotte Rampling made some questionable statements that demonstrated their lack of understanding but both later backtracked on their statements; even President Obama and Hillary Clinton weighed in on the issue.

But it was late night host Bill Maher who made the most outrageous assertion that the reason African/Americans didn't get enough roles was because Asians don't like blacks in their films.

If the motion picture industry was a single business or a school, there would be picket lines in front protesting the lack of diversity or activists banging on the door demanding to be let into the exclusive club. Certainly, Bill Maher should be the object of scorn.

“This (#OscarsSoWhite) obviously reflects the lack of diversity in Oscar voters as well as in films generally. It behooves Hollywood — as an economic imperative, if not a moral one — to begin more closely reflecting the changing face of America,” said the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition in a statement.

While much of the conversation has focused on African/Americans, statistics for Latinos and Asians are comparatively invisible.

"Asian and Indian people are decades behind even black culture." said Alan Yang, co-creator of the Netflix series Master of None, in a Hollywood Reporter interview. "We don't have lead characters. When we made Aziz the lead on [Master of None] and we made the character based on me one of the leads, it didn't exist. We need that Asian Denzel (Washington). We need an Asian Halle Berry, and that doesn't exist yet.

"But the demographics of America are changing, and it's exploding," continued Yang. "The interest in culture from the Asian and Latino and black population is increasing every day. And as America changes, the culture will need to keep up."

Clearly, the debate is not going to end soon - at least up to the Oscars telecast next month. Then we'll see how much of Hollywood's response to all the angst and fury is just a public relations strategy or if the institutions and the Euro/American men who run them, are really sincere by instituting the changes necessary to create a culture more representative of the audiences pay for the tickets to be entertained. 

For more news about Asian/Americans and Pacific Islanders, go to AsAm News.

Hollywood grapples with 'whitewashing' Asian roles - AGAIN!

"The Martian's" Mindy Park, center and Dr. Kapoor, right, don't look Asian at all.

ITS BAD ENOUGH that Asian American actors don't get enough roles in Hollywood productions, but when a role comes up written specifically for an Asian character, they keep getting shut out.

The latest example of "white-washing" is in The Martian starring Matt Damon. In the book by Andy Weir, two key characters specifically identified as Asian were played by non-Asians in the movie.

The best-selling novel featured Dr. Venkat Kapoor, a character of Southeastern Asia descent, whose name in the film is changed to Vincent Kapoor, and is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, an African-American actor.

Additionally, character Mindy Park, who is Korean-American in the book, is played by white actress Mackenzie Davis in director Ridley Scott's film.

“This insulting practice of white-washing has got to stop,” said Aki Aleong, president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, which has been battling the problem for decades. “Alarmingly, it has been increasing in frequency.

To be fair, we should mention that Asian actors weren’t employed in the film: Benedict Wong (Marco Polo) plays the role of Bruce Ng, the director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Other Asian actors playing small roles in the film include Chen Shu, Yang Haiwen, Eddy Ko, Yang Liu, Xue Xuxing and Narantsogt Tsogtsaikhan.

Perhaps producer Ridley Scott there were "too many" Asian actors in his move. Can there be too many Asians? Where's the cut off point?

“So few projects are written specifically with Asian-American characters in them, and he’s now changed them to a white woman and black man,” MANAA founding President Guy Aoki said of Scott’s casting choices. “This was a great opportunity to give meaty roles to talented Asian American actors — and boost their careers. … This feel-good movie, which has attracted Oscar buzz, shouldn’t get any awards for casting.”

"This was a great opportunity to give meaty roles to talented Asian American actors — and boost their careers — which would've enabled our community to become a greater part of the rescue team," Aoki continued. "This feel-good movie, which has attracted Oscar buzz, shouldn't get any awards for casting."

Emma Stone, Hawaiian/Chinese, uh, really?

No wonder Asian/Americans are so "invisible" in American society. We keep getting erased!

Another glaring example of the erasure of Asian/Americans: The hero of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Johnny "Juan" Rico is written by the famous author as a Filipino. But ultimately, white actor Casper Van Dien got the role.

Director M. Night Shyamalan was heavily criticized for casting white actors in lead roles instead of Asian actors, for the movie adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

And apparently, it won't be the last time roles are "white-washed." Tilda Swinton has been cast to play The Ancient One, who’s identified in the comic book the film was based on as being an old Tibetan man. There’s also the upcoming Ghost In The Shell project, in which Scarlett Johansson is set to portray Motoko Kusanagi, a Japanese character in the popular anime series that the film is based on.

A live-action adaption of the anime Akira has been stuck in development hell, but fans of the original animated film have started a campaign against some of the possible changes that have leaked out, which includes replacing the Asian characters of the original with white actors.

Most recently, one of the most egregious example of "white-washing" is in the Cameron Crowe film Aloha, in which Emma Stone played a Hawaiian/Chinese character. Crowe and Stone were so embarrassed by the reaction that each made public apologies.

On a positive note, a 14-year-old Hawaiian girl, Auli‘i Cravalho, has been selected to give voice to Moana, a Disney production about a Polynesian girl learning and understanding her culture. Also cast in the same animated movie is Samoan.American Dwayne "Rock" Johnson.

Hollywood, as always, takes one step forward, ten steps back.