I didn’t offer much in the way of personal commentary when we discussed the whitewashing of the film Annihilation. The film is mostly female-driven, with an ensemble that includes Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson and Oscar Isaac. That’s a good cast and a diverse cast, and if we were just looking at the cast with no backstory, we would be applauding this film for diversity/inclusion and for being female-driven. But the problem was that the original books included descriptions of Portman and Leigh’s characters – Portman’s character was supposed to be mixed-race Asian, and Leigh’s character was supposed to be Native American. I believe these are good conversations to have, just as I believe that we need to continue to have these conversations over and over again until people GET it. Whitewashing is bad. Stop doing it.
Annihilation’s writer-director (adapter-director) is a white guy named Alex Garland. He adapted the first of Jeff VanderMeer’s novels for the script. So they asked Garland for his thoughts on the whitewashing controversy. This is what he said:
“This is an awkward problem for me, because I think whitewashing is a serious and real issue, and I fully support the groups drawing attention to it. But the characters in the novel I read and adapted were not given names or ethnicities. I cast the film reacting only to the actors I met in the casting process, or actors I had worked with before. There was no studio pressure to cast white. The casting choices were entirely mine. As a middle-aged white man, I can believe I might at times be guilty of unconscious racism, in the way that potentially we all are. But there was nothing cynical or conspiratorial about the way I cast this movie.”
Unconscious racism is, I believe, unconscious bias. He was biased, as so many writers and directors are, into believing that every lead character must be played by a white person. He didn’t bother to even wonder if he should cast the lead role (Portman’s role) with a woman of color. That being said, VanderMeer didn’t include the physical description of Portman’s character until the second book. I guess Garland didn’t read past the first book?
Natalie Portman just found out during the press junket that her character was mixed-Asian in the books, and this was what she said when she found out:
“We need more representation of Asians on film, of Hispanics on film, of Blacks on film, and women and particularly women of color, Native Americans — I mean, we just don’t have enough representation. These categories like ‘white’ and ‘nonwhite’ — they’re imagined classifications but have real-life consequences. … And I hope that begins to change, because I think everyone is becoming more conscious of it, which hopefully will make change.”
“These categories like ‘white’ and ‘nonwhite’ — they’re imagined classifications but have real-life consequences” – I mean, I get what she’s saying, that race is mostly a social construct and because of that social construct, societies create “consequences” for different races. But she came across as somewhat blase about those real-life consequences.
Photos courtesy of Getty, IMDB.
So did she or did she not know about her xters diversity or is she avoiding directly addressing that by speaking “in general” and wagging her finger whilst securing her own position.
She sounds like ScarJo when she was asked about taking the role in ‘Ghost In the Shell’, just a whole lot of nothing.
I’m just glad a latina is not being sexualized in this movie.
What happened here was wrong but it is not whitewashing in the traditional sense. I don’t know what else to call it though another than unconscious bias or assuming everyone is white and an english speaking american. the last phrase doesn’t not come to mind as easily as whitewashing.
while I will always be skeptical of white people, I, overall do not have an issue with what Natalie or Alex responded with. It is not a tone deaf, reactionary typical white response to being called a racist, which I do like. There was a bit of nuance and general understanding of what people are yelling at them about. BUT I will remember this the next time a project is announced with either of there names attached to it-especially if they are directing or executive producing. They can talk a good game or they can actually be about it, as my old black uncle liked to say.
Lastly, you cannot replace one with another. just because something is female driven does not mean that it should cancel out racial or sexual diversity. I will continue to say it until the cows come home: white women do not represent all women.
I think it’s really useful to make the distinction between assuming whiteness and intentional whitewashing. Because we have not even started the conversation about how assuming whiteness manifests and the effects that it can have. In mainstream culture, I think a lot of people just take for granted that people assume whiteness and don’t challenge it as flawed thinking.
If any of you read the Babysitter’s Club, do you remember that chapter that all the books would have, where they would describe all the girls? Whenever it would get to Jessie the ballerina, the author would be like “I have to say she’s black because otherwise you would assume she is white.” It’s a descriptive conception of white-assuming. Imagine such a matter-of-fact description of practices that are obviously problematic to everyone: “Jessie is smart and I have to say she’s smart because otherwise you’d think she wasn’t because she’s black.”
So let’s start the white-assuming conversation.
@PPP you just nailed the difference. THIS.
Just like how people were shocked that Rue was black in the hunger games (how I do not know) but its because the default IS “white assuming” which stems from unconscious bias. He cast the movie with that default in mind which is just as bad as intentional white washing.
@ Nicole: the Rue thing came to mind for me as well, but I think there’s a difference when your bias is so strong that you overlook a literal description of race, and when it operates only in contexts where no description is given.
As for whether that’s just as bad… I think the difference between someone who intentionally whitewashes and someone who acted out of unconscious bias is that the latter can and is often willing to change their behavior once it’s identified, but no such claims can be made for the former. Note that people responding to intentional whitewashing respond incredibly defensively, whereas Garland seems to have correctly identified and admitted to the problem.
Generally speaking intent correlates highly with moral culpability. We are more likely to judge people as morally culpable when they act with intent; when they do something bad without intent, we’re less likely to assign moral culpability. That said, I’m not interested in Garland’s culpability or who he is or whether he’s inherently racist or if white people can ever be trustworthy or real allies.
There has been a recent line in feminist thought that we have to stop making sexism’s point of origin “who the person is” and change the focus to “what the person does,” and I think it’s worthwhile to take this approach to racial politics. I don’t want to judge Garland’s character and cancel him forever I want him to change his behavior. The more time we spend talking about Alex Garland and what his thought process is and whether he’s morally culpable, the less time we talk about what happened: which is that an opportunity for an Asian woman to lead a prestige film has been lost. That’s an enormous opportunity loss, and I want to talk about that loss, about what that film would have looked like, who would have taken Natalie Portman’s role. This act of imagining can motivate us to recreate this opportunity, and I’d much prefer the conversation to go there than be centered on some white guy.
@PPP I feel I’ve been ranting the last few days on Celebitchy but wanted to point out I really admire and value your comments here! Very insightful.
There’s a word we use in culture that is along the same lines of what you’re talking about. After we’ve completed “business” we reflect on what happened and what we could do better. It focuses on the procedures and not the people and what we could have done to make it a better that way the procedures and systems change and we change along with it.
@Tania– thank you, and same. Are you referring to actual business classes or community activism or what? I’d love to read more about it. My research centers on political persuasion.
Does someone know of what races the characters of Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson and Oscar Isaac are in the books?
Sadly a “diverse cast” seems to only mean white, black and sometimes latino.
Garland adapted the first novel when it was in galleys, and none of the ensemble were given names or ethnic descriptions. It was entirely his choice to make the cast diverse, as no such diversity existed in the franchise prior to the publishing of the second novel, which didn’t exist when Garland first began adapting the first book.
At this point it seems that everyone was in the dark about the ethic background of the main two characters because of the writer. I can’t really fault the directors or Natalie’s answers. It doesn’t appear to be a situation like Emma stone’s or Scarjo’s where both the actresses and directors deliberately chose a White actress over the WOC as specified in the source material.
If they decide to adapt the second book they are on notice that we are all watching, the leads better be of Asian and Native ancestry.
But if they adapt the second book how can they all of a sudden turn a White woman into an Asian woman. Isn’t the second book just a continuation with the same character.
What continues to surprise me about this is that it’s just lazy. He started working on a movie that is part of a book trilogy and couldn’t be bothered to read all three books? That’s just poor professionalism and he got tripped up by it. I believe the unconscious racism argument because I now just think he’s cuts corners rather than actually thinks through his project. If I were the book’s author, I’d be annoyed.
I don’t think it is lazy. If making a movie about the first book, it makes sense not to read ahead because that may influence decisions you make in ways that are not authentic to the first book.
these comments only apply if all 3 books were not out when the casting began (and even then, wouldn’t you be in contact with the author and maybe he would have been able to say “the 2nd book isn’t out yet, but in it I say that this character is part asian/native american/etc)
but why didn’t anybody on the casting team read the books?
I think nobody bothering to read all 3 books connects back to “PPP”‘s point about ‘assuming whiteness’. When they were thinking of a cast, they probably already envisioned white women in the roles and thought ‘oh, i can see Portman as this character, she fits perfectly in look and acting skill what I’m thinking in my head about this character”
I read that the second book hadn’t been released when the script was being adapted from the first book. And for some reason the author didn’t find it important to bring it up with the director/movie production …
The other two books weren’t out yet when he started the project so there weren’t a 2nd or 3rd book to read then.
Serious question as I don’t know the series. Did the second book only just come out? Did it get published after casting? I really don’t believe the director of a movie would only read the first book in a series before adapting it. Would he not want to know as much of the story as possible before re-telling it? I just feel really skeptical of the claim that he didn’t know.
I think @T.Fanty right above your comment just gave a great answer to what you’re asking.
Annihilation was published Feb 2014
Authority was published May 6 2014
Acceptance was published September 2, 2014
November 2015 was when Portman’s casting was finalized
Feb 2016 is when Leigh joined the cast
And there you have it.
MissAmanda with the receipts that matter. Well done.
Thank you for the receipts @MissAmanda.
Re: Natalie Portman’s comments — I do agree with @Kaiser in that I think she is being dismissive of the complexity and enormity of how these human-made racial classifications function to drastically impact the way we all experience life on Earth. And evasive of the actual question posed to her, which I’m not surprised about. I remember way back when she read “The Souls of Black Folk” (I think) and foolishly told an interviewer that she totally “got” or understood what it was like to be Black.
He’s repeatedly said he adapted the first book when it was in galleys, and that the film uses the source material as a rough sketch rather than gospel.
But, sure, continue jumping on Garland without awareness of all the facts.
See here lies one of the problems, people continue to make excuses for people like Garland. There’s a difference between not using the book as gospel and completely changing the race of a character. He had plenty of time to get it right. With all books being out he or someone in his camp should have known the race of this character. I call BS. I will continue to blame Garland and not ignore the FACTS that the second book was already released before he cast Natalie.
She wasn’t shocked? I would have been if that had been the first time I had heard about it.
No offence but this film sounds like a survivor pic in which case, I’m betting Portman isn’t going to pull a Psycho and get killed off early to let one of the WoC be the last one standing.
If that’s the case then the addition issue of whitewashing just makes it even worse.
I’m also guessing that the intersectionity reading of the end of Ex Machina is just an authorial accident because all of this says Garland doesn’t get it as much as he was claiming.
Also meant to say/add:
The receipts on the book dates seem sound to me. It’s difficult to believe he wouldn’t peruse the later books because that can add clarity to the first book he was adapting in terms of details important for the later books in case of sequels, so I don’t believe he didn’t realise what he was doing. Hiring Rodriguez and Thompson looks like an effort to mitigate/diffuse the issue if it came up later by saying: look how (fake) diverse ( because I bet the WoC get killed off early in the film) our cast is.
It also looks a hell of a lot like Portman (and possibly Oscar, as he starred in Garland’s earlier film) were cast to greenlight the project. Nothing wrong with admitting that but add in Portman’s blithe dismissal of two groups that are rountinely whitewashed and that have dismal representation in general, it’s pretty obnoxious.