Ridley Scott’s new movie, “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” has a lot of people asking the question, “Why is everyone so white?”
The movie stars are Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton. Much of the main cast are white actors.
Shockingly, ancient Egyptians, what with living in northern Africa and all, were not white.
But Hollywood has a history of whitewashing characters in big box office productions in order to draw more crowds, and Christian Bale as Moses seemed like a good idea.
But a white man playing an African prince of Hebrew descent was not a popular decision. The movie drew in $24.5 million on its opening weekend, but overall numbers have been low.
Now the hashtag #boycottexodusmovie is trending to express frustration at the common casting of white actors in roles more suited to minority actors.
Whitewashing is common throughout the history of Hollywood film.
The last major Exodus story, “The Ten Commandments,” was produced in 1956 and starred an all-white cast. Chalk that up to casual racism.
But now it’s 2014, and we can see people of color onscreen without rioting.
The criticism of the movie was only exacerbated when Scott spoke on his choice of cast, saying, “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,” according to a report from the Guradian.
Interestingly, the movie does not shy away from race. Many of the Middle-Eastern and black actors are cast as slaves or set pieces. It seems a poor excuse to say you cannot cast a black man in a starring role, but you can cast him as a slave.
I would love to write a column about all the things in that quote and about the movie that are offensive and wrong, but I think Scott’s admittance of bias against people of color points more deeply to a serious issue with representation on American and European screens.
Whitewashing is often more subtle than Scott’s blatant attempt at turning ancient Egypt into a mayonnaise and cheese ?sandwich.
In the insanely popular “Hunger Games” trilogy, Katniss Everdeen, the heroine, is described as olive-skinned and dark-haired, with implications that she is biracial. The only thing the movie reportedly did to compensate was give ?Jennifer Lawrence a tan.
The only African-American characters were Rue and Thresh, and they were only African-American because the book said it ?explicitly.
Hollywood does not want to cast people of color. Given the history of race in America and the draw famous white actors can pull, this used to make sense, but it doesn’t anymore.
We are a nation that contains Mohammad so-and-so’s. We need to see them onscreen.
ewenning@indiana.edu
