Is it time to boy­cott movies guilty of ​“white­wash­ing”?

On Tues­day the first trail­er for Alex Proyas’ upcom­ing swords-and-san­dals epic Gods of Egypt was released. Aside from pro­vid­ing audi­ences with an ear­ly glimpse of what already looks a safe bet for the stu­pid­est block­buster of 2016, the occa­sion of this teas­er launch is note­wor­thy for high­light­ing an issue that refus­es to go away. ​“White­wash­ing” might be a glib term for what is a seri­ous artis­tic blind spot that per­sists at the very top end of the scale, but it’s an accu­rate way to describe the process by which a film set in a time and place his­tor­i­cal­ly devoid of white faces is pre­sent­ed, in its drama­tised form, as being chock full of them.

While it is nec­es­sary to call out this Old Hol­ly­wood hang­over every time it resur­faces (and boy, has it resur­faced with a vengeance in recent years), it is equal­ly impor­tant to try and pin­point the rea­sons why this par­tic­u­lar habit has been allowed to blight West­ern pop­u­lar cul­ture for so long.

Rid­ley Scott’s now infa­mous com­ments on the cast­ing of white leads in his 2014 film Exo­dus: Gods and Kings pret­ty much sums up Hollywood’s out­mod­ed atti­tude: ​“I can’t mount a film of this bud­get, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Moham­mad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the ques­tion doesn’t even come up.” More recent­ly, when asked to explain the cast­ing of Rooney Mara as a lily-white Tiger Lily in Pan, direc­tor Joe Wright explained that, ​“J.M. Bar­rie is not spe­cif­ic in the book where the ​‘native tribe’ comes from. [Tiger Lily is] the best and smartest war­rior in the film. That felt more impor­tant to me than pla­cat­ing oth­er concerns.”

In both cas­es each direc­tor calls into ques­tion the dis­par­i­ty between cre­ative con­trol and the com­mer­cial­ly-dri­ven exter­nal pres­sures that are com­mon­ly regard­ed as a nec­es­sary evil in Hol­ly­wood, the infer­ence being that ethics and eth­nic authen­tic­i­ty are sim­ply not a top pri­or­i­ty for stu­dios and by exten­sion film­mak­ers. Yet giv­en their respec­tive promi­nence and rep­u­ta­tions as so-called ​“vision­ar­ies”, is it real­ly too much to ask Scott and Wright to apply the same lev­el of atten­tion to detail to cast­ing and char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion as they demon­strate across all oth­ers aspects of pre-production?

We may wring our hands when­ev­er white­washed char­ac­ters (this year alone, The Mar­t­ian, Pan and Alo­ha have kept the top­ic hot) appear on our screens, yet part of the prob­lem is that it is often dif­fi­cult to know who to point the fin­ger at. Film­mak­ers and cast­ing direc­tors must all be held account­able to a degree, but the real­i­ty is that the root of the issue runs much deep­er. What is clear is that it’s time for the blame to stop being shift­ed onto audi­ences, who are rou­tine­ly spoon-fed PR spin that serves to rein­force the view that main­stream cin­ema­go­ers are sim­ply pas­sive con­sumers clam­our­ing for more of the same.

A Pavlov­ian rap across the knuck­les of the big stu­dios may even­tu­al­ly ham­mer home the point that dubi­ous cast­ing choic­es do not go unno­ticed. But for any­one who recog­nis­es the impor­tance of cast­ing actors who can real­is­ti­cal­ly rep­re­sent the char­ac­ters they are hired to por­tray, the best short-term pol­i­cy is to save your mon­ey for films which you believe reflect social progress.

There is now a press­ing need for more vis­i­ble diver­si­ty in West­ern cin­e­ma, which as it stands risks ostra­ciz­ing itself from an ever-expand­ing glob­al film mar­ket. For as long as stu­dios are seen giv­ing white actors the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play char­ac­ters of oth­er eth­nic ori­gin, Hol­ly­wood will con­tin­ue to occu­py dan­ger­ous ground. In cham­pi­oning art and sto­ry­telling that seeks to accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent the cul­ture and his­to­ry from which it emerges, we risk noth­ing except broad­en­ing our col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of the world.

What the Gods of Egypt trail­er posits is that Egypt­ian deities, being of myth­i­cal ori­gin, some­how tran­scend race. Fill­ing the screen with promi­nent white faces (in this case Ger­ard But­ler and Niko­laj Coster-Wal­dau), push­es the sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief over the edge. In 2015, with the con­ver­sa­tion con­sis­tent­ly revolv­ing around the need for change, it’s time we con­signed this brazen racial igno­rance to ancient history.

What are your thoughts on Gods of Egypt? Watch the trail­er and share your reac­tion with us @LWLies