Yellowface: Asian Whitewashing and Racism in Hollywood

STOP THE PRESSES

Actors pretended to be somebody they aren't.

String them up!

[quote]Actors pretended to be somebody they aren't.

Only the white ones

Well, if that doesn't just Warner my Oland.

Asian guys are so hot. I don’t get why Hollywood didn’t want them

There is nothing better than Sidney Toler's Charlie Chan when he's paired up with Mantan Moreland's Birmingham Brown.

Feel better?

TCM has a series of Asian-themed films tonight including Daughter of the Dragon with Warner Oland.

Am I mentioned?

And still no documentary on “caneface”? From Shirley MacLaine in The Children’s Hour, to Cher in Silkwood, to Charlize Theron in Monster. Unlike “yellow-face”, this type of casting persists as one of the last acceptable forms of appropriation and cultural smudging.

You can pry Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s out of my cold dead hands.

How many white people have been in Asian films in the last 80 years?

R11 The correct analogy would be in those 80 years, how many of Asian movies did “whiteface”?

In Japan there was a famous stage version of Gone With The Wind, first done as a straight play, later adapted as a musical. With a Japanese cast. It may have played in London, as well. Is that "offensive"? I don't find it so. Maybe we should look at Hollywood's casting of Caucasians as Asians in the same way. If the production isn't mocking a race I don't see the problem. Dragon Seed, with Hepburn, was a pro-Chinese film, for ex.

R2 Exactly. When it’s the other way around and a white character is played by a black or Asian, all of a sudden it’s outrageous!”

Only in the last 15ish years has Hollywood stopped casting white people as people of color. It’s not like it was 50 years ago.

Angelina Jolie played a black woman not too long ago where she painted her face brown and wore a curly wig.

R13 Theres nothing wrong with adaptation. Did they paint their faces pink and wear wide contact lenses to do it?

“The Departed” is an Asian remake. I didn’t see Leonardo DiCaprio wearing orange makeup with tape to slant their eyes.

There’s a difference.

Robert Downey Jr in “Tropic Thunder” made fun of Hollywood by doing blackface in the movie.

That Angelina Jolie movie came out a year before!

Like the Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman story is not that far fetched. People think it’s ridiculous and they make the “white actor as Malcolm X” memes all over social media but people act like stuff like that wasn’t happening in Hollywood all the way into the 2000s.

Emma Stone in that “Aloha” movie too. She was Hawaiian.

It’s ok for whites to do it but the idea of black people or Asians being white is utterly ridiculous.

The double standard is stupid because it’s saying whites are default and universal and can play anything which is textbook white supremacy (yesss I said that term because that’s what it means).

There were actors throughout the decades who “passed”. Latinos like Jennifer Lopez had some white roles.

But that’s different from an actor having to paint their fucking face black or orange to be black or Asian.

Fuck that shit!!!

Also Ava Gardner. Played every biracial permutation under the sun.

[quote]Angelina Jolie played a black woman not too long ago where she painted her face brown and wore a curly wig.

Mariane Pearl is French of Afro-Cuban descent (mother) and Dutch Jewish (father).

Also, she had requested that Angelina play her in A MIGHTY HEART.

Don't forget Tilda Swinton as a bald, elderly Asian man.

R15 They played white and black people in the American south. With appropriate costumes, etc. I don't know what the makeup looked like. Is the makeup the main problem for you? The Departed was set in Boston not Hong Kong like Infernal Affairs, so your point escapes me.

R20 R21 These idea as so ingrained in people it's difficult to talk logically. But if a Eurasian person such as the role Jennifer Jones played in Love is a Many Splendored Thing is half Caucasian and half Asian, why must that person be played by an Asian? They are just as much Caucasian as Asian, so what's wrong with a Caucasian playing a mixed-race person? If Ava Gardner played an Anglo-Indian, same thing.

I would also add, in a movie like Dragon Seed, made during World War II. where was Hollywood going to find an all-Chinese cast to play in it? Not to mention, how were they going to sell that cast to a predominantly white audience?

[quote] Mariane Pearl is French of Afro-Cuban descent (mother) and Dutch Jewish (father). Also, she had requested that Angelina play her in A MIGHTY HEART.

Yeah, so brownface. Marianne Pearl is not an beauty, so it’s little wonder she wanted Angelina to portray her.

Cry me a river.

Don’t let blacks catch wind of this documentary. It’ll end in a shootout with the Asians.

Nothing but blatant racism can explain casting David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu when they could have gone with Bruce Lee.

Sometimes white actors playing black characters work. Steve Martin was excellent in the Jerk.

No yellowface was funny enough to play these roles!!

R28, I'm sure if this complaint were made about gay men, you might feel differently about it.

Whites have thick skin when it doesn’t involve them.

When Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were played by black actresses, they boycotted and sabotaged ratings and did what they could do to drag it down.

But paint a white person in brown or orange makeup and switch their races and “what’s the big deal? Sensitive crybabies!!”

[quote] Marianne Pearl is not an beauty

[quote] When Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were played by black actresses, they boycotted and sabotaged ratings and did what they could do to drag it down.

[quote] But paint a white person in brown or orange makeup and switch their races and “what’s the big deal? Sensitive crybabies!!”

Did the black actress paint her face white to play Anne Boleyn? No.

R34, you are very much correct. Some people can't even abide if a light, fluffy period piece -- say, Bridgerton! -- has black actors. But they'll claim it's because of historical inaccuracy.

[quote] When Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were played by black actresses, they boycotted and sabotaged ratings and did what they could do to drag it down.

This never happened.

More Marxism at play.

Ava Gardner was of Melungeon descent so she had African and Native American heritage in addition to her European roots.

I watched the documentary last week. Informative and entertaining.

[quote]R40 Ava Gardner was of Melungeon descent

I believe that’s just modern speculation.

Meghan played white for years and nobody had a problem with it. And when the Queen gave her a black equerry she went full on white supremacist. It's a wonder she didn't burn a cross in front of Buckingham Palace. She could have led a KKK charge right out of Birth of a Nation.

[quote]Dragon Seed, with Hepburn

And the carra rirries in broom?

R44 = founder of Lululemon

R38 Right

R38 Right

Whites didn’t care

R37 They were upset there were black people in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings!

There’s TWO Star Wars actors - black and Asian, who suffered from mental health issues because of the backlash in their roles in Star Wars. Ahmed Best and Kelly Marie Tran.

White people even complain when there are black adaptations of stories. I know cause it’s on DL.

But whites are free to re-interpret or adapt anything they like.

R49 You mean like all those movies where white people played Martin Luther King and Paul Robeson, and stuff like that?

Inevitably, this thread has turned into black/white shit, as they always do. All other minorities be damned; your concerns don't matter.

Blacks and whites are the only real Americans.

Next up: A documentary on misogyny in Hollywood and how actresses had to suck dick to get roles.

Next up: A documentary on homophobia in Hollywood and how gays and lesbians were portrayed as degenerates in movies since the 1930s.

Next up: A documentary on dwarfphobia and how dwarfs were cast as freaks in movies like The Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka.

Next up: A documentary on blonde women in Hollywood and how they were portrayed as hypersexual airheads for decades.

Did I forget any oppressed group?

R34 Blacks have thin skin when it doesn't involve them. Blacks playing white characters in movies today is OK and any criticism of that is racism but whites playing other races in movies from the past, now that was racist!

People are hypocrites.