Introduction

In this exhibit, I will examine and talk about race/racism and its relationship with the entertainment industry. For the organization of this exhibit, it first starts with a look at the time of Old Hollywood and the status quo enforced back then. Then, it will transition into recent and more familiar times. Afterward, I will explain the concept of color-blind casting and give examples of it from movies from the past and also movies that are currently planned to be released. The two movies I plan on talking about are Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella and Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid. During this section, I will also talk about the concept of false equivalence and how it relates to outrage regarding most color-blind casting choices. For my third page, I will talk about the idea of “gingercide” and how it is an obvious coverup for the publics' true thoughts on some casting choices. I will look at Halle Bailey as Ariel and Zendaya as MJ as my primary examples. The fourth page will focus on Disney and its problems regarding racism and targeted hate toward actors who have acted in Disney franchises. Lastly, I end the exhibit by analyzing an actress who I feel has experienced almost everything that was mentioned previously. 

I was instantly drawn to do a project with this idea since I know talking about the entertainment industry is a strong suit for me. I consider myself invested in pop culture, so when I am able to bring that enjoyment into projects and work I know that my interest in said project will go up and so will my work ethic. The main point I am trying to make with this project and my items is that race and racism can be found in all corners of the entertainment industry and in many different forms.

Kiss of Death

The first page of my exhibit is titled “Kiss of Death”. The phrase “kiss of death” is used to describe something that will cause something else to fail or end in disaster. For example, one might say that if an open-minded person does not like a certain meal that would be a kiss of death for that restaurant. Or if a movie reviewer leaves a particularly scathing review it might be viewed as a kiss of death or a bad omen for things to come. I titled this specific page with this phrase since I think it accurately describes what the two actresses viewed their ancestry as. The first actress I talk about is Merle Oberon, who is most known for the film Wuthering Heights. During her time, Oberon was extremely well-known and was even nominated for an Oscar. What wasn’t known at the time was that Oberon was purposely hiding her ancestry and would continue to do so for her entire life. Oberon was born with more fair skin, but it doesn’t take away the fact she was half Indian from her mother’s side. Before her acting career started, she used many skin-bleaching techniques on herself to further present as white. At one point, when crafting her backstory, she said “her birth records had been destroyed in a fire” and even said her grandmother, who had raised her and her actual mother as sisters, was her maid since she was darker in complexion (Lawrence 2023). As for why Oberon would go to such lengths to craft such a meticulous identity that put down the family she had known all her life, the answer would be Hollywood society.

In the article talking about Merle’s life as a star, it details just how racist Hollywood was at the time: “Hollywood seized on the opportunity to police itself, adopting a set of rules known as the Hays Code- which, among many other things, frowned upon interracial romance. With representational casting essentially made illegal, studios embraced yellow and blackface” (Lawrence 2023). As said in the article, Hollywood was on no track for equality, so Oberon probably was doing what she considered was best for herself and her career.  There is no way to know 100% if she would have had the success she did if she was truthful about her identity, but knowing what I know about how society treated minorities at that time it is highly unlikely. Whether that choice was right is not mine to decide, but I found her story to be very relevant to the topic I had chosen, especially since she probably isn’t the only star to pull this (but instead the only one to be found out). 

Another person who came to mind while doing this project was Zoe Saldana. Zoe Saldana is known for a variety of movies and her many accomplishments. Saldana is also Afro-Latina, born to a Dominican father and a Puerto Rican mother. Despite her heritage, she has been very ambiguous at times about how she identifies and we previously talked about the act of “passing”, but this is a bit different. Most of the time Saldana only identifies or claims her latina side while disregarding the afro part. Doing this reinforces an idea that being ethnically ambiguous is the goal so you aren’t too much of one thing and on the other hand not white enough.

Colorblind Casting

My next page and set of items revolve around the topic of colorblind casting. Colorblind casting is a casting practice where things like race and ethnicity are not considered when casting characters. One of the first movies I remember watching growing up that featured colorblind casting was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The movie had many stars, like Brandy, Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, and more. When I watched it I never paid too much attention to why the prince or the stepsisters were a different race than their parents, but now that I am older I can look back and see how iconic this movie and its cast was. By utilizing colorblind casting, the movie made sure that it considered a wider range of people since the source material lacked representation. 

Another example of colorblind casting is a bit more recent. Disney announced that they were making a live-action rendition of The Little Mermaid featuring Halle Bailey as Ariel. As the rest of the cast was slowly revealed, people noticed that they all varied in race and ethnicity, even if some of the characters were to be related. Even though the movie isn’t out, Halle Bailey specifically and other members of the cast have received massive amounts of hate due to the fact they don’t resemble their animated counterparts. Because of the colorblind casting method used, some people have called the movie things like “woke propaganda” and refuse to watch it. Later on, I will talk more in-depth about this more so regarding the backlash Halle Bailey is receiving. 

I said before that colorblind casting allows the opportunity for people to audition to know that their race won’t be a limiting factor, but truthfully sometimes it should be. In some stories, like Cinderella and The Little Mermaid, the character's race gives no meaning to their story. It plays no central part and if it was changed, the essence of the story is the same. Some people confuse changing race with changing location or nationality as well. People will say things along the lines of “Cinderella is based in France so realistically…” and plead their case as to why a minority should not be able to play these characters. In truth, changing their race doesn’t mean it automatically changes their nationality if it is truly that important to the story, so that argument is false. The argument takes a new height when people argue about the logistics of a complete fantasy world or other stories where race does play an important part. In class, we talked about marked and unmarked identities, which I feel goes with this section since being white is considered an unmarked identity while being black or a minority is considered marked. Because of this, it’s easier to see why changing one into the other could bring more representation while changing it the other way around takes representation away and feeds the majority. People like to play the “what if we changed Tiana’s or Mulan’s race” card a lot, but fail to see how changing those characters' race is nothing equivalent to changing Ariel’s or Cinderella’s. I go more into detail about this concept and how invalid it is on the specific page as well as show a tweet example.

So...what's the problem?

The third page and set of items is titled “So…what’s the problem?” where I look and try to find what people are finding so angering about casting these days. One of the main things I saw was regarding the concept of “gingercide”. “Gingercide” is a word commonly used when people are talking about the casting of non-gingers in roles of previous ginger-held roles. The word is usually used to make fun of people who think it is a serious problem, but some people do consider it a serious problem. One of the items I found about this is a Facebook post that shows a picture collage of multiple characters who were originally ginger but were a victim of “gingercide” or another term they used called “blackwashing”, which is the concept of changing a character's race to black. What I found most surprising about this post is the fact that some of them still have red hair, so if the hair wasn’t the problem then what could it have been? The answer is the actor's race. All of the live-action counterparts shown are minorities and even if they do keep the hair color of their counterpart, they are still subjected to ridicule and hate every single day.

A couple of people who came to mind before I saw this post who were also in it include Zendaya and her portrayal of MJ in the Marvel Spider-Man trilogy and also Halle Bailey portraying Ariel in The Little Mermaid live-action. Marvel has said many times that Zendaya’s character is not meant to be a direct adaption of Mary-Jane Watson which is what many people think. Despite this being clarified many times, people still compare the two characters and subject Zendaya to much hate for her portrayal and even the fact that she doesn’t have red hair like her supposed comic counterpart. Halle Bailey also is subject to ridicule even though she does have ginger hair, instead, people focus on the fact that her hair is in locs and not exactly how it is in the animated movies. This tiny detail, once again, is not important and is nothing more than an excuse to direct anger at Halle due to her casting which is viewed as “blackwashing”. The locs follow the same physics any hair would underwater and still look realistic. The reaction shows that even if you have an actress who has some of the most prominent and recognizable features of her counterpart (ex: Ariel’s red hair) and who also has an amazing singing voice, people will not be happy under the circumstances. Another person who is included in the Facebook post item is Anna Diop’s portrayal of Starfire versus her comic counterpart. I go more in-depth about Anna Diop and her experiences on a separate page later on.

Disney has problems!

The fourth page is titled “Disney has problems!” and focuses specifically on Disney’s franchises and their history with racism and race regarding their movies. Other Disney projects were mentioned beforehand, but these ones are more related since two of them are from the same franchise and one of them is extremely recent.

As said, two of the items I chose are from the same franchise: Star Wars. Kelly Marie Tran is a 34-year-old Vietnamese-American actress who portrays Rose Tico in the most recent star wars trilogy. She was the first Asian-American woman with a major role in Star Wars for her portrayal of Rose, but ended up facing a violent hate train that led to her shutting down her social media accounts. The comments made ranged from being racist to sexist and all came from no clear reason other than spite or dislike. Disney seems to not do the best job at protecting its actors from hate as this is similar to another character and actor pair from a couple of movies back. Jar Jar Binks is a Star Wars character who is also highly disliked and whose actor faced scathing comments. It got to the point where the actor, Ahmed Best, came out and said the intensity of the comments made him need to retreat for years since he was losing himself. In the end, he recently made an appearance in the show The Mandalorian where many were happy to see him back in the franchise with a second chance. 

Another current situation going on with Disney has to do with their new live-action Lilo & Stitch. They announced they were making a live-action version of the beloved movie not too long ago and only recently did the beginning of the cast start to roll out. One of the first people who revealed was Lilo’s live-action actress who received a positive response. Some of the next ones, however, did not. The actors for Nani and Daniel were released a couple of weeks after and received lots of backlash. The reveal of the live-action actress for Nani was immediately met with upset reactions due to the fact they cast a lighter-skinned Polynesian rather than someone closer to Nani’s skin tone or someone who shared her features. In the article inside of the page, it says: “Nani’s looks were a big part of what made Lilo & Stitch iconic for many folks in the PI community. With her brown skin and body shape, Nani became the first mainstream representation for many Pacific Islanders” (Sloss 2023). Similar reactions were had when the actor for David was also originally portrayed by a lighter-skinned Polynesian until people found evidence that the actor was racist in the past and he got a much-needed recast. So far, Disney has not commented about anything regarding the casting but it goes to show how vast and different their choices can be when casting things like the live-action Little Mermaid versus Lilo & Stitch.

Case Study: Anna Diop

The 5th and last page is titled “Case Study: Anna Diop”, this is because I will be looking at one specific actress and her experiences regarding race and racism in the entertainment industry. Anna Diop is a Senegalese-American actress who has been in many different movies and shows like Nanny, Titans, and Us. In the show Titans she portrays a live-action version of the beloved character Koriand’r, more commonly known as Starfire. As a big Starfire fan, I was extremely excited to see her in live-action and to see her be played by a black actress. While other people were excited, there were many who had negative reactions and made it known.

One common thing regarding Starfire that people point out is how often her looks change. In her older comic appearances, she had more curly thick hair and other features that are commonly associated with black women, nowadays she has lost most of her original traits. When the first pictures of Anna Diop as Starfire hit the internet, she was met with wave after wave of racist comments. The comments almost always focused on her hair, which was a pretty comic-accurate color and also more accurate to the original look, or the fact that she wasn’t orange. Obviously, Starfires orange hue is completely unattainable for anybody to naturally have but even so, people think a black woman especially cannot play her. It goes to show that even if a character is portrayed to be black, people will not accept it unless it is explicitly stated. Diop eventually limited her social media presence like Kelly Marie Tran and others after people “were quick to react with outright racism and hate speech” (Abad-Santos 2018). The article continues to go on to talk about how Diop addressed the comments but is still experiencing a high level of attacks. The last item I put was a link to a youtube video where Anna Diop talks about an experience she had on set. She talks about how a showrunner told her that he wouldn’t change the lighting for her even though it was not flattering to her skin tone because he had to prioritize her lighter co-stars over her. The comment was flat-out colorist and disgusting, and as a viewer, I disliked the blue tone and feel like it would've been best to get rid of it entirely. I was simultaneously surprised and not surprised by this since I would’ve thought that these things might happen in what is supposed to be a professional work environment, but I still hoped they didn’t.