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HOLLYWOOD'S RACE PROBLEM
EXPLAINED:
There's been a lot of triggered folks recently about the casting of Black actress Halle Bailey as Ariel in the live-action version of 'The Little Mermaid'
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Folks are far less triggered when Hollywood whitewashes roles, casting White actors in roles that call for people of colour
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The recently-released 'Bullet Train,' adapted from a Japanese novel, changed the characters to non-Japanese and cast actors like Brad Pitt
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Infamously, the Marvel character The Ancient One is Tibetan in the comics but a white woman played by Tilda Swinton in the films
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Often, Hollywood passes of White actors as a character of a specific ethnicity – like Johnny Depp as Tonto in 'The Lone Ranger'
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There are any number of examples of this – from Natalie Wood playing the Puerto Rican Maria in 'West Side Story' and Elizabeth Taylor playing 'Cleopatra'…
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…to Scarlett Johansson playing a Japanese character in 'Ghost In The Shell' and Emma Stone as a Hawaiian one in 'Aloha'…
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…to Liam Neeson as the Arabic Ra'as Al Ghul and Jake Gyllenhaal in and as the Prince Of Persia to the cast of 'Exodus: Gods And Monsters'
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A problematic piece of casting is 'The Human Stain' which is about a Black man passing as White who is played by the White Anthony Hopkins
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Thankfully, Hollywood has outlawed black/brownface – like Mickey Rooney dressed up to look Japanese in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's'
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