Cinema and White Supremacy

Cinema is magic. We see things on movie screens that could never happen in real life. To me, watching a movie is like slipping into another world. A part of myself lives vicariously through the actors. Every aspect of the film from the lighting to the soundtrack serves to draw the viewer in and allow them to experience the reality presented in the film. It's what makes movies so great. 

Take a seat, nerd.

However, it is this quality that makes cinema problematic.  Movies are edited in a way that hides the fact that they were edited. Take for example a fight scene in "Pirates of the Carribean". Any given scene probably took days or even weeks to film, and even longer to cut and edit together. But when you watch the finished product on screen, the fight lasts only about a minute. No one can tell that it probably took months of filming and editing to create that flawless scene. By making cuts, camera angles and lighting seem natural, the line between reality and fiction is blurred. People no longer question what they see on the screen, rather they are immersed in it. This is what makes movies interesting and thrilling. It is also what draws us into the world of the film, and causes us to accept the reality presented to us without question. 

Great costumes and lighting, key to immersion.

Things get hairy when the reality presented in film carries or enforces something negative while presenting it as "normal". There is a whole slew of prejudices and norms that are presented in movies that people often do not question simply because the film makes them seem "normal". One prevalent issue is the whitewashing of movies.  Take for example a movie like "The Impossible" (2012). The film is about a rich white couple vacationing in Thailand and are caught in a tsunami. 

First off, the film is set in Thailand, yet stars two white actors. The film could have starred two Thai actors and have been just as good. Not to mention, tsunamis  are typically experienced by Asians. So why not tell the story through the people who actually live the story? It is the active choice of the director to cast white actors over actors of ethnic background. 

Ken Watanabe and Tom Cruise.

Here's another movie, "The Last Samurai" (2003) starring Tom Cruise. That sentence alone should raise a red flag. A movie titled "The Last Samurai" starring a white guy? It would be fine if the movie wasn't about Japanese fuedal-era warriors, but it is. The premise of the movie is that Tom Cruise is an American soldier who is shipped to Japan and learns the way of the samurai. An exciting film to be sure, but clearly whitewashed.

The whitewashing of movies has its roots in a history of white supremacy. Too often are western films are dominated by the idea of white supremacy. No matter the film's subject matter, the heroes or the stars must be white. A most appalling example of white supremacy can be seen in the upcoming movie "Exodus: Of Gods and Kings" set to come out this December.

The rulers of Egypt must have spent a lot of time indoors...

The movie is a retelling of the story of biblical Moses and his quest to free the slaves of Egypt. As you can probably guess, the lead roles are all played by white actors. (Christian Bale, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, Joel Edgarton) Now, what makes this case of whitewashing most appalling is that not only is the film set in Egypt, the characters played by these white actors are Egyptians. Meaning you have white actors playing historically Black figures.

"Well that's not TOO bad", you might say. "I'm sure there's some black actors in the film!" There are, but take note of their roles compared to the roles of the white actors.

Whereas the white actors take the leads of kings and queens, the black actors take the roles of servants, slaves, assassins and thieves. This is a blatant display of white supremacy where you have a story about black people, but cast all the important characters as whites and all the unsavoury characters as blacks.

The reality is that Moses probably wasn't white, nor was Ramses. No civil war veteran ever really became a samurai. White people are probably not the best people to tell stories about tsunamis. But movies work in whiteness in a way that make us accept these things as nothing out of the ordinary. But, given some thought, it's easy to realize that these premises are very far from ordinary. Not only that, it denies a voice to people of color. It denies them representation, and it prevents them from gaining power.

I'm not telling you to stop watching movies. I love Tom Cruise. He's great in Mission Impossible. But you can't turn a blind eye to the kinds of things that happen in Hollywood.  Stay woke.