Acting Cultural Trends (Whitewashing etc.)

As to the general theme of the discussion, I don't think there has been any serious attempt to prevent actors from playing a role, just because they are from a different country and need to use a different accent. As long as the racial ethnicity matches up and they don't screw up the accent.

Latino is a bit different, because many Latinos have mixed (Mestizo, Mulatto)  racial ethnicity, and I guess as is their right, that more Latinos are being demanding of  authentic representation in film, they want to see Latino roles played by Latinos. Can't really knock that.

You can still get away with it. It's not like they won't hire Ben Kingsley to play a Jew, Latino, Arab or anything under the sun. Same for Clifton Collins Jr. It's just something you have to give more thought to today when casting a movie. And probably rightly so.

In the US, the descendants of Italian immigrants have fully assimilated into white American culture. People who subscribe to the idea that Italians are "people of color" are in the extreme minority in 2018.

Okay...

Good post, I guess one answer for that would be, the project wouldn't get made if you didn't proceed with a white actor perhaps. 

I am thinking of Emma Stone in Aloha for example - maybe that's not quite the same thing since I don't know how "big" she was then and they could have cast someone else but there is always a part of this where actors cast themselves and are develop projects too - ie Scarface and Carlito's Way were more or less Pacino productions (through Martin Bregman) - so when actors are doing that too - buying properties and developing them for themselves, there would always be a chance where people would be saying "you should step aside and cast someone else" but if they refuse then and if they don't play it, it doesn't get done right : (hypothetically what if Bradley Cooper has a half Asian character film, he owns the rights, he wants to star - are we saying he can't star in it? Is it always a bad idea now etc.)

I don't understand why anyone would do something like that. It is beyond disrespectful. Besides, I think Cooper has enough sense to not go there. I understand that studios want to make money but people will support movie if is worth seeing.

The problem isn't the quality of those performances, but that good roles written for minorities are scarce enough as it is, and there's no excuse that white people should be taking them and thinking that putting on skin-darkening makeup is enough. Linda Hunt's performance is exquisite, one of the all-time greats . . . but if The Year of Living Dangerously were to be made today, I would think that the filmmakers would know that casting a short white woman as an Asian man is going to court controversy.

And you already know my feelings on Olivier. No one is saying it's a bad performance, but you can't deny that as the premiere Shakespearean of his time, he could've done a great thing in promoting an actor of color in the quintessential classical role for an actor of color, in a period where race relations were the biggest social issue. If you needed Olivier's name on the poster as a star, he could've played Iago (a role with even more lines) and that would've been fine. But he decided to slather bootblack on his face and call it a day. In 1965. It shows a cultural deafness at the very least.

I do still feel it's uncomfortable at the very least for the role of Othello to be played by any non-minority actor, but let me respond to you on this: if Olivier had played the role without the blackface, it would've been much more tolerable, because at that point you're acknowledging that Othello's Moorish-ness extends beyond skin color, and that sense of "otherness" could've been illustrated a different way. It would've perhaps been more difficult to communicate, but that's the risk one takes in doing something like this. But doing what he did, in blackface, narrowed it down to being a question of simple skin color, and again, Olivier using that as a crutch is more than racially problematic; it's straight-up lazy. And the thing is, he should've known better. If he wanted to do a race-flipped Othello where he was the one white man in a sea of minorities, it would've presented its own inherent issues, but there could've been an interesting commentary as well as the opportunity for minority actors to play roles that they hitherto had been unable to (Iago, Desdemona). But then, I can't exactly say I'd trust them to not put Finlay, Redman and Smith in blackface as well if they did that.

Could Rylance play Othello? I think the question is, rather, would he? He's played female characters before (and one could remark on the perceived denial of roles for women to women, even though Twelfth Night was also a stunt designed to mirror the days of Shakespeare when men played those roles), but I think he wisely would recognize that to play Othello is inviting more drama and criticism than he would want. It's not daring. It's not bold. It's denying a minority actor from a job just to stoke one's ego and self-importance.

Streep playing an elderly Jewish male rabbi was a stunt, though I don't harbor the same complaints that I would towards Olivier (primarily because the rabbi's on-screen for, what, twelve seconds?). Her casting in that role always felt like a wink from her and Nichols, acknowledging her "chameleon" reputation by smothering her in old-age makeup to the point of unrecognizability.

The way I see it is this, bottom-line: white male actors have enjoyed the pick of the litter when it comes to scripts and roles since the dawn of the art form. It's just the way that it is. We're at a point now where minorities and women are beginning to be able to have their voices heard and that there is a working effort to have them be properly represented. There's no shortage of fine talent from black actors, Asian actors, Hispanic actors, etc., etc. But if a white guy decided to do Othello and play the title role, with or without blackface, it still is a problem regardless of whether or not the end product is a good performance. Is Olivier's Othello better than anything that Paul Winfield or Sidney Poitier or James Earl Jones could've done? Olivier might have wanted to play the role for the artistic challenge, but there was also a level of egotism to his decision that blinded him to the very legitimate issues that him playing that part would stir up. And I just can't defend that. It's Kirk Lazarus Syndrome. Just because you are a great actor who can immerse into every role so thoroughly doesn't mean you should.

The difference is that Olivier's Othello, while not directed by him, was still very much a "Laurence Olivier" film. He held a lot of input and creative sway with the project. If Olivier wanted it, he got it. Hopkins didn't hold that kind of clout. White actors would routinely play Othello, and as you see with Hopkins he at least had the common courtesy not to go full-on Al Jolson with it (though again, using makeup to make him swarthy still deals with the same pitfalls). But what was acceptable thirty-five years ago may not be so today, nor should it be. Hopkins was renowned as one of the great Shakespeareans, the heir to Olivier, but it's still the same issue, and it's not just that of the actor but of the director and producers.

Do I think audiences would tolerate it if Isaac or Phoenix played Tony Montana? Well, both actors actually are of Latino heritage, so I feel like criticism would largely be muted there (although I guess it would depend on how they played the role; Pacino's Tony is such an outsized character that hews very close to brash stereotype that it certainly would be met with more criticism today). As for DiCaprio, I think the criticism would be louder and more justifiable.

I guess it ultimately depends on the role and how the character's race/ethnicity/heritage plays into it. Ed Skrein was supposed to play Ben Daimio in the Hellboy reboot, until criticism came out that the role was written for a Japanese-American actor, so Skrein wisely bowed out because he recognized that a.) the criticism was warranted, and b.) it would be inexcusable if he remained a party to it by sticking with the role even through that criticism. Of course, the role wound up going to Daniel Dae Kim, a Korean-American actor (and one could definitely have a lengthy discussion about how Hollywood views Asians as interchangeable, whether it be from China, Korea, Japan, etc.). I think that these days, for better or worse, audiences are much more reactionary and vocal about what they do and don't like, and preconceived notions can arise about something the second it is announced. If Olivier tried to play Othello in 2015 as he did in 1965, regardless of his status, he would've been creamed by social media and the press. Again, the Kirk Lazarus effect.

Paul Robeson played the role to great acclaim on stage over twenty years before Olivier did.

Wasn't he too old for the role when Olivier played it?

He had probably aged out of the role by then, but the point is that other actors were around who could've done it, and who had cut their teeth on the stage and film. Winfield and Jones both played Othello later on, garnering great acclaim, and Poitier was a newly-minted Oscar winner at the time (he turned down Othello later on because he felt that the image of a white man manipulating a black man to murder his white wife was a negative image he didn't want to promulgate, which is a fair reason). Olivier may have been the greatest Shakespearean actor of his time, but that didn't mean he had to play every single Shakespearean lead.