Casting & Race Part 2: Defacing Color
Finally, I think that, for the large part, the mainstream audience has largely bought the Mighty Whitey myth. Part of that also includes this concept that white equals neutral, as opposed to a distinct race, and can consequently fill any role. Which is why I think the public response to characters getting actors of the wrong race cast can often be so minimal. Well, that and the cynic in me screaming that the mainstream audience (as well as the majority of people) tend towards apathy when it comes to more “invisible” issues like systemic racism that don’t obviously impact their daily lives in a tangible way.
However, at least American society has largely come to realize that colorface is racist as we can see from the response to the Australian blackface sketch. Or at least selectively so when the old iconography resurfaces.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that racism hasn’t found a way to get around our consciences yet again. Although colorface is almost on life support, actors of color (and correlatively characters of color, discounting cases of colorface) are still largely underrepresented in mainstream film and television. It turns out that the way around colorface not being acceptable and still getting white actors is to just erase the color and change the characters to white.
Next time, I’ll go into erasing color and possibly also talk about cross-ethnic casting and representation of actors of color.
But, before I go, I do want to mention that colorface isn’t inherently racist. Just as an actor taking on the role of a character that doesn’t look like them isn’t inherently racist. Rather, the history of film, the history of colorface and the continued use of colorface as a tool to (even if not intentionally) limit opportunities for actors of color, are what attaches racism to colorface. Should true society-wide racial justice ever be achieved one day, we might possibly find it more acceptable, since it will be going equally in all directions.
However, colorface is just bad practice when it comes to non-abstract filmmaking and cinematic verisimilitude. And for that, I hope it dies a horrid unmerciful death.
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