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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Actors' Ethnicities

Al Jolson - Jewish. I am still not certain Al Jolson belongs in this article, especially for the Jazz Singer, which involves a Jewish actor playing a Jewish character. In addition, if you are looking for examples of people wearing blackface to mock African Americans, Jolson is literally one of the worst examples you could choose; his relationship with the African American community is well documented.

Jennifer Connelly - Half Jewish

Ben Barnes - Half Jewish

Winona Ryder - Jewish

Susan Kohner - Mixed Ethnicity: Hispanic, Irish and Jewish

Yul Brynner - Mixed Ethnicity: Swiss, Russian, Buryat (Northern Mongolian) and Romany (Gypsie)

Alfred Molina - Spanish and Italian

Jake Gyllenhaal - Half Jewish

Joel Grey - Jewish

Douglas Fairbanks - Half Jewish

The others in the list are generally a mixture of Western and Northern European heritage (except for Natalie Wood, whose family is Siberian, but I can't pin it down any more specifically than that). You might also have something to work with regarding Jewish actors who whitewashed themselves to avoid discrimination (Fairbanks did this, as, possibly did Brynner, whose mother's family may have had Russian Jewish heritage) Torven (talk) 20:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

I think you are still missing the point. We do not judge which films make the list. That is determined by the sources. We are neutral impartial editors. As stated before we can present sourced counter-arguments but they have to explicitly address the claims made by the conflicting source, otherwise it would be synthesis.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 23:03, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
No, I understand the point. But the article should have some kind of internal consistency. We should not simply be labeling people as "white actors" when their mixed or minority ethnicity can be reliably sourced, especially for living people. Torven (talk) 03:53, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Again, it's not up to us.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 07:06, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
actually, it is. wiki admins or editors should make a clear distinction between an opinion piece for an educated reliable source. 213.164.250.32 (talk) 16:29, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Most reliable sources, even ones from scholarly publications, offer opinions or points of view. What is not permissible are our own opinions or points of view.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 16:36, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
yes. but usually they're well researched. unlike the examples mentioned above. 213.164.250.32 (talk) 16:52, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Actually, in several of these cases, it is not only up to us, it is also our responsibility under BLP. If we have reliable sources showing that these actors are of a non-white or mixed heritage, then labeling them as white and accusing them of whitewashing would be a violation. Torven (talk) 18:35, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Many Jews identify as White. But we cannot pretend that a Jewish person in blackface isn't whitewashing. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 20:18, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
no one is disputing that. but a jewish actor playing a jewish character is not whitewashing. 213.164.250.32 (talk) 20:34, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Edit to History Section

I am removing the unsourced sentence about Al Jolson from the first paragraph of the history section. Jolson did wear blackface in The Jazz Singer, but he was playing a Jewish character (based on himself). It was not a case of whitewashing and doesn't really belong in this article, unless we are going to seriously twist the definition of whitewashing. Similarly, I am removing the mention of Warner Oland. I don't have a problem with mentioning him, but according to this and other sources, he did not actually wear yellowface. It was definitely whitewashing, but if we are going to suggest he wore yellowface, it needs to be sourced. An alternative might be Boris Karloff's role in The Mask of Fu Manchu, a portrayal viewed as racist, even at the time. Torven (talk) 20:00, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

I partially reverted. I removed the Al Jolson par, but kept the Oland part. The sentence doesn't say he's in yellowface, just that he portrayed an Asian character. Needs rewording or moved though since the first sentence is about blackface and yellowface. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 20:32, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
The entire paragraph is about blackface and yellowface. If someone wants to move it to a different part of the section, that is fine (it is still down in the list, I think), but sandwiching it between the introductory sentence about yellowface and the reference to Andy Rooney continuing the practice seems a bit misleading. That was why I thought Karloff would be a better fit, though it would need some restructuring, since the role was absolutely not well received by the Asian community. Torven (talk) 23:16, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Alright, I see your point. Yeah, go ahead and remove it. If you know of a better home for it, put it there. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:22, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

The Villain

In the 1979 film, The Villain, white actor Paul Lynde portrays a Native American by the name of "Nervous Elk." Would someone please find a reliable source that shows that it's an example of whitewashing so that it can be added to the list? Hitcher vs. Candyman (talk) 16:06, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Explanation of intent

I was reverted on the Doctor Strange entry and saw it as, honestly, willful ignorance to ignore both Ancient One and Kamar-Taj and continue to plow ahead knowing that calling the Ancient One a Tibetan man is false. However, I'm new to the editing process and was simply looking to improve the quality of information and now I'm wondering if I just don't understand the intent here. Why would we leave in something we know to be false simply because other people got it wrong and happen to publish articles on a site considered reliable, especially when we have already sourced articles on Wikipedia stating otherwise that has not been disputed? I read the page cited in the revert and didn't see how it applied since the information is already on Wikipedia itself. Thanks in advance for taking the time to explain. 166.94.13.10 (talk) 16:10, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

This might help to explain the situation to you: Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth. Basically Wikipedia articles must not carry the editor's "voice" or personal knowledge. If you have evidence that contradicts the claims made in this article then the best course of action is to bring sources to this talk page so editors can compare the sources and discuss the matter. It is not unusual for sources to get their facts wrong but they must be evaluated in the context of other sources, not an editor's sole opinion. Betty Logan (talk) 16:35, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
You say it's false, but the sources provided say otherwise. Please see WP:TRUTH. We describe what reliable sources say, not our own interpretations of things. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 16:46, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Whitewashing not nearly as common as non-white washing

Why isn't there an article about non-white actors playing white characters? The exact reverse of what this article is about, is much more common than so called white washing. 194.237.157.205 (talk) 15:07, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Because there's no notable coverage of it by reliable sources. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 16:47, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Power Rangers (2017)...

I think that whitewashing is a serious cultural problem, but I'm not sure the reference to the upcoming Power Rangers film belongs on the list.

The character of Rita Repulsa was played by a Japanese woman in the original Super Sentai series on which Power Rangers was based, but I'm not sure that character was inherently "Asian." Casting an Asian actress in this role would be truer to the original Japanese source material, but several actresses played the character in the American series once the Japanese footage ran out.

Moreover, the source cited just aggregates a number of tweets on the topic. There seems to be as many neutral or positive voices on the casting decision as there are detractors. If anything, this inclusion detracts from the seriousness of the problem in other examples.

WQZarn (talk) 19:38, 3 May 2016 (UTC)-WQZarn

Rita actress was Japanese, but her voice for Power Ranger was done a american actress and Power Ranger is American series using super sentai footage (mich (talk) 23:06, 10 June 2016 (UTC))

Edge of Tomorrow

The list includes Edge of Tomorrow saying "white actor Tom Cruise plays William Cage, a whitewashed version of the novel's Japanese protagonist Keiji Kiriya". The novel was set mostly on an island off Japan, with Japanese and some American soldiers. The movie is set in the UK and Europe, with American and British soldiers. Very little of the original story is retained in the film. Cage is a different character entirely. You must include in your list then The Magnificent Seven as all the characters have been Americanised when it was adapted from The Seven Samurai. 202.81.248.219 (talk) 17:16, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

The list only reflects what has been stated in reliable sources, not the personal opinions of editors. So if you have a reliable source stating that The Magnificent Seven has been whitewashed then we will include it. If not, then it will remain off.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 17:20, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry if you thought I was advocating that. I was trying to point out the logical consequence of stating that characters in Edge of Tomorrow were whitewashed, not suggesting more films be included on the same grounds. I realise of course that logic has no place in any discussion in Wikipedia, any opinion published anywhere is a WP:RS and that's the end of it. 202.81.248.219 (talk) 17:52, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Here's a great quote in the article, from a "reliable source": "race-blind casting, as long as it works both ways. But in reality, it never has; one rarely sees, for example, an African American, Latino, or Asian actor cast as a white character." Simply ignoring examples like Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury; Will Smith as James West in Wild Wild West, on the recent DC TV series: Jimmy Olsen and Hank Henshaw in Supergirl, Iris West in The Flash; Deadshot in Suicide Squad; to score his point. But it's a reliable source, so none of those counter examples can exist. Wikipedia endorses truthiness over verifiable facts. 202.81.248.67 (talk) 03:49, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Several of the most "recent" examples may actually have been released following the publication of this source. The particular source quoted is a book from 2010. Even reliable sources can get dated and certain things do change. Do you think there has been sufficient changes over the last 6 years? Dimadick (talk) 07:44, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for taking this seriously. I wouldn't claim that whitewashing doesn't exist, but the opposite, whatever you want to call it certainly takes place, and the statement I quoted above "one rarely sees..." is hard to take seriously. I found a long list of counterexamples here: Race Lift / Diversifying A Cast, with 75 or so film roles and about 100 TV show roles. Actually, quite a few predate the quote. I don't claim TVTropes is a reliable source, but the facts are easily verified. I guess the problem is to find a citeable source that says this. 202.81.248.67 (talk) 16:00, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

The Hunger Games: fanon is truth

In the description of The Hunger Games there is the justification "Readers perceived Katniss and her people to be nonwhite;". I deleted this because an unnamed person "perceiving" something is weasel words, a way to introduce an assertion without any justifaction (see e.g. statements by Donald Trump, for similar -- "I hear that", "people are saying", "I saw it on facebook"). And that was reverted because there is a source, and somehow printing weasel words makes them citeable. Since the source is a book I have no idea what it actually said, there is no quote of the source text. So because an unnamed reader of The Hunger Games imagined that a character was nonwhite, despite it never being in the text of the book, the producers of the film are deemed to have whitewashed the role because they didn't follow this "perception" of some fans. How absurd is this? So fanon is now encyclopedic? 202.81.248.43 (talk) 03:54, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Reader perceptions are an encyclopedic matter, particularly when noted by sources. And in this case, we probably already know why the readers thought so. Per the article on the character Katniss Everdeen, she and her people are described in the novel as having "straight black hair, olive skin, and grey eyes".

Olive skin is "light or moderate brown, brownish, or tannish". Which is not actually mutually exclusive with being "white", as it is quite common in areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea (in other words Southern Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia). It is also common in the entire Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Latin America, and various parts of Asia and Africa. Dimadick (talk) 18:27, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

"The BBC said..."

This quotation, and the paraphrase succeeding it, come from Guy Aoki, who was interviewed by the BBC. While I am sure many at the BBC agree with Aoki (I do), a concern arises with the use of the problematic term "Asian". In America, "Asian" as a racial term typically refers to someone of east or southeast Asian descent (the article describes Aoki himself, who is clearly of Japanese ancestry, as being part Hawaiian and part Asian), but in the UK "Asian" more typically refers to people from the Indian subcontinent. Aoki, an Asian-American himself, clearly uses the term in the former sense, but attributing his view to the BBC changes the meaning slightly, since our readers can only assume that the British national broadcaster would be using the standard British definition of the word. (I come from Ireland, where there were almost no people from outside Ireland until the 1990s, and so the majority of people I grew up with used the American terminology they heard in American media, but I don't know if the same is true of Americanized people in the UK, and even if people in the UK do use the American definition of "Asian", it seems unlikely that the BBC would follow this trend either way.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:56, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I think you are misusing a geographic term. Southeast Asia includes Brunei, Cambodia, Christmas Island, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. It has nothing to do with Japan, which is categorized in East Asia. Dimadick (talk) 16:46, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Asian as used to describe race is not an 'american term' go to the parts of asian where the people are asian and they will call their race asian. indians, pakistanis, iranians ect may call themselves asian geographically but they do not describe their race as being asian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.143.9 (talk) 10:48, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

RE: Star Trek into Darkness

Would it be possible to add a notation to the Khan item explaining that the comics illustrate that he was subjected to surgical and cosmetic alteration (in addition to a mind wipe) to hide his true identity, thus allowing Admiral Marcus to exploit his mental ability? I feel this would at least mitigate the intent of the 'white-washing' claim.

I would add this notation myself but I am not comfortable doing so.

Reference - http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh_%28alternate_reality%29 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.170.146.146 (talk) 23:37, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Chile / The House of Spirits

Should the sources be reviewed for this entry? The Wikipedia article for Chile says that the population of the country is 52.7% white, with 59% or more identifying as white. Listing the film The House of Spirits here seems to contradict the Wikipedia article for Chile.

As including a film on this list amounts to, in a manner of speaking, an accusation against the film, should we err on the side of caution when determining whether to include a film? It seems to me that if there is reasonable doubt as to whether a film is truly an example of "whitewashing," it should not be included. Otherwise we should develop caveats for some cases (with appropriate sources, of course).

The line dividing "white" from "non-white" is inevitably somewhat arbitrary, and the standard applied in this article should be explained more thoroughly. The question of "whiteness" is quite ambiguous in Latin America and the Middle East and the article does not do much to acknowledge that. Instead, egregious and widely-recognized examples of whitewashing (such as Charlie Chan, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and The Conqueror) are grouped together with films depicting characters who may have identified as white in real life (House of Spirits, Not Without my Daughter, Argo, A Beautiful Mind, Scarface, Prince of Persia, etc).

By the standard the article appears to apply, we could include the film Steve Jobs, in which an Irish-German actor plays a Syrian character (Jobs), or When Boris Met Dave, in which an Anglo-English actor portrays a person of Turkish descent (Boris Johnson). Neither of these films, to the best of my knowledge, have ever been described as examples of whitewashing, nor would other depictions of the two figures.

We should find a way to clarify the standard applied to examples in this article, with some sources, and make sure it's available to readers on the main (non-talk) page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.50.19.62 (talk) 10:41, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Is Manuel Pellegrini a person of color? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.50.19.62 (talk) 11:29, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Yep. These are fictional people of the upper class in Chile, there is no reason to believe they shouldn't be white, given as two thirds of Chileans are. This also paints the actors as bigots like the minstrel shows of old. It is only silly Americans who think that all people who speak Spanish are non-white, the same idiots who post things on Tumblr saying that it is "cultural appropriation" when a white person (the majority of Spain, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay) speak their own language! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.18.9.247 (talk) 17:14, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Chile

The silly Americans are still believing that all people who speak Spanish are one big mixed race, even when I provide an academic source against it. Chile is a predominantly white country, especially the uppper class portrayed in that film. To say that Winona Ryder and Jeremy Irons are effectively doing the same thing as minstrel shows or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, is obscene. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.18.9.247 (talk) 17:21, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Your personal analysis isn't usable in an encyclopedia. What do sources have to say about the film and race? VQuakr (talk) 18:17, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
he's basically saying those articles are stereotyping hispanics into one homogeneous category. 'White'- washing has a racial element to it. White U.S. Hispanics and Latinos, Asian U.S. Hispanics and Latinos, and Black U.S. Hispanics and Latinos are often overlooked in the U.S. mass media and in general American social perceptions, where being "Hispanic or Latino" is often incorrectly given a racial value, usually mixed-race, such as Mestizo or Mulatto,[1][2][3] BelAirRuse (talk) 17:13, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Richard Rodriguez. "A CULTURAL IDENTITY".
  2. ^ "Separated by a common language: The case of the white Hispanic".
  3. ^ "Hispanics:A Culture, Not a Race". Campello.tripod.com. Retrieved December 2, 2011.

How this article can be improved.

I think that this article doesn't need too much improvement as it is pretty accurate on the topic of whitewashing. However, it mostly listed movies where whitewashing actors had occurred, rather than talking more about how whitewashing has affected Hollywood. I also think that maybe the page could have more detail on whitewashing in general. Aside from everything, it flows really well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8802:6503:5D00:9D04:717C:F8B4:CC29 (talk) 22:40, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

It would probably also benefit from inclusion of some international perspectives. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:51, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Cleopatra

Cleopatra was from the Ptolemaic Dynasty, a heavily inbred Greek (EUROPEAN) family. Any third-rate book will tell you that. Real Egyptians laugh at the claims of African Americans that somehow Cleopatra would have looked like Whoopi Goldberg, often backed up with such arguments as "Egypt is in Africa".

The sources for including this film are not academic, they are four American tabloids making clickbait lists.

First: Huffington Post using evidence cited from the Daily Mail, a notorious British tabloid http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1095043/Sorry-Liz-THIS-real-face-Cleopatra.html

Second: Complex calls Cleopatra a "woman of color", a phrase which didn't exist 100 years ago never mind 2,000 years ago. Probable echoing of Afrocentric meme http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/04/25-minority-characters-that-hollywood-whitewashed/cleopatra

Third: US News: "The British-American actress (she had dual citizenship) doesn't look even remotely Egyptian or North African. " Not an argument, Cleopatra was Greek. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/12/white-actors-portraying-people-of-color-in-hollywood

Fourth: Madame Noire. An ethnocentric website claiming that both the Egyptians and Hebrews were black, both of which are discredited fringe theories. http://madamenoire.com/496138/cast-non-blacks-in-black-roles/

If you actually had some reliable sources, preferably academic studies, this could pass muster. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.18.9.247 (talk) 17:09, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

I've reported this to Fringe Theories and Reliable Sources list. It's ridiculous to call these reliable sources for your Afrocentrist fantasy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.18.9.247 (talk) 17:11, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

  • I have to agree that Cleopatra is not appropriate for this list. It is very well established in academic sources that the historical Cleopatra was almost entirely of Greek ancestry. The casting of Liz Taylor in the movie was not a case of "whitewashing". Blueboar (talk) 18:16, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
Please remember this only a list of films that have been subject of criticism due to whitewashing. That much is undeniable. Wether or not the film was actually whitewashed is debatable. Feel free to list any counter arguments from reliable sources.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 22:31, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
@Blueboar: please be careful to avoid original synthesis. Sources about the ethnicity of the Ptolemies would only be usable if they mention the film; and if found then that means that their viewpoint should be included in the article, not that the section should be eliminated. VQuakr (talk) 18:21, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
From my brief survey of this topic, the film is a good candidate for this list. SageRad (talk) 14:19, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Edit notice

There is a proposal at Template talk:Editnotices/Page/Whitewashing in film on whether or not an edit notice should be included in this article. All opinions are welcome.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 18:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Cleopatra entry should be removed or heavily expanded to add necessary nuance

@Erik: Could you explain this revert? Your edit summary appeared to contain at least two ungrammatical sentences and I can't figure out what you meant. If there is a lot of literature about Cleopatra's race, doesn't oversimplifying it as "she was not white, so this is an example of whitewashing" questionable? Alexander isn't on this list because everyone knows Alexander and his generals were Macedonian, but the vast majority of Cleo's ancestors would have looked the same as them. The reason people think this is whitewashing is because they hold a misconception that she was an Egyptian queen and so she must have been of the same ethnicity as Tutankhamun or Ramses (whitewashing of whom in popular culture is a legitimate cause of concern). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:27, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Alexander is not on this list because there are no reliable sources discussing whitewashing in that film. There are some other films with clear instances of whitewashing, but they have not been worth noting in reliable sources to warrant inclusion in this list. For Cleopatra, there are numerous sources about Cleopatra being portrayed as white. Why should we omit this entirely? There was criticism in the first place, and there can be counter-criticism stating that it is accurate that Cleopatra was white. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 15:06, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
Let me see what detailed listing I can put together today or tomorrow to capture as much as possible what reliable sources say. Sort of busy IRL plus dealing with some box office territory (another dispute that I'm trying to address through researching and editing). Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 15:18, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
I know that is why Alexander is not on the list. My question is whether a source that seems to be getting the relevant facts wrong can be considered reliable for that purpose. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 21:44, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
I have not really had time to edit on Wikipedia, but in poking around online a little, one contrast that is brought up is Elizabeth Taylor being white in contrast to her black slaves and dancers. There is a lot of information about her whiteness in this film if you look in Google Books. It really is not something to just leave out. If the criticism is rejected by others, than we can quote others in that. It does not mean the criticism never happened. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 13:09, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
If there are published sources on the topic, there should probably be summarized on the article about the film. At the moment, the article Cleopatra (1963 film) has sourcing problems, the production section does not mention the casting decisions, and the "Reception and impact" section only has a hand full of random sources. Some of them are far from expert opinion, such as the website of Film4. Dimadick (talk) 13:29, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
I agree that our focus should be on making sure the individual film articles are detailed and accurate, but I don't know how we can define "expert opinion" as not excluding the Film4 website but including sources that secifically call out the casting of a white actor in a role that they don't know actually should be white because they are more influenced by Asterix and Cleopatra than real-world history. (The example is not arbitrary. I thought Cleopatra was an "Egyptian pharaoh" who looked like Uderzo drew her from when I was 8 to when I was 24 and I have that specific comic to blame. I don't doubt that other people who are not specialists are in the same boat as younger me.) Note that I'm still not saying the film wasn't overall whitewashed -- I think it almost certainly was; I'm talking specifically about the lead role. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:20, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
There is a book called Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon that has a chapter called "Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra and the White Grotesque". I cannot view all of the pages, but what I can view appears quite detailed. It's not going to be a straightforward case like other films are, but that should not deter us from summarizing the debate. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 17:30, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
The book Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance also has commentary about the role. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 17:33, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I am also an Asterix fan and I am still fond of Albert Uderzo's depiction of Cleopatra. I was also aware, however, that the comic series takes a lot of liberties with history and often uses the 1st-century BC setting to satirize 20th-century cultural trends. Asterix and the Normans offers a satirical look of 1960s youth culture, and references rock and roll. Asterix in Britain satirizes then-modern Great Britain, and features cameos from Harold Wilson and the Beatles. Obelix and Co. satirizes capitalism and the main villain is based on Jacques Chirac. Half-the fun in this series is how the writers manage to point absurdities in our way of thinking. I don't particularly like Asterix and the Secret Weapon. It is supposed to be a satire of feminism, but seems to rely on outdated stereotypes and has a very weak ending.

A few years ago, I bought a couple of books trying to analyze the historical references, the satirical references, the anachronisms, and the political context of the series. It makes for fascinating reading. What is the reason for historical fiction, if it does not make you want to read more on its subject? Dimadick (talk) 15:41, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Extended content

"Alexander and his generals were Macedonian, but the vast majority of Cleo's ancestors would have looked the same as them."

Assuming what a historical figure looked like, without actually referring to any sources on the topic is a dangerous exercise.

Our article on the Ptolemaic dynasty could use expansion and better sources, but the description of their appearance is not that common.: "Contemporaries describe a number of the Ptolemaic dynasty [members] as extremely obese, whilst sculptures and coins reveal prominent eyes and swollen necks. Familial Graves' disease could explain the swollen necks and eye prominence (exophthalmos), although this is unlikely to occur in the presence of morbid obesity. In view of the familial nature of these findings, members of this dynasty likely suffered from a multi-organ fibrotic condition such as Erdheim–Chester disease or a familial multifocal fibrosclerosis where thyroiditis, obesity and ocular proptosis may have all occurred concurrently."

The following source discusses various information on the dynasty and the possible effects (or lack of effects) inbreeding had on its members: https://books.google.gr/books?id=dJdErRqoBeQC&pg=PA172&dq=Ptolemaic+dynasty+obese&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Ptolemaic%20dynasty%20obese&f=false

Here is the description of Ptolemy VIII Physcon by Justin. "To the Romans ... [Ptolemy VIII] was as ludicrous a figure as he was a cruel one to his fellow-citizens. He had an ugly face, and was short in stature; and he had a distended belly more like an animal's than a man's. The repulsiveness of his appearance was heightened by his dress, which was exceedingly fine-spun to the point of transparency, just as if he had some motive for putting on display what a decent man should have made every effort to conceal."

Here is the description of the same Ptolemy by Athenaeus: "Through indulgence in luxury [Ptolemy VIII's body] had become utterly corrupted with fat and with a belly of such size that it would have been hard to measure it with one's arms; to cover it he wore a tunic which reached to his feet and which had sleeves reaching to his wrists; but he never went abroad on foot except on Scipio's account... Ptolemy's son [Ptolemy X] Alexander also grew fatter and fatter... The master of Egypt, a man who was hated by the masses, though flattered by his courtiers, lived in great luxury; but he could not even go out to urinate unless he had two men to lean upon as he walked. And yet when it came to the rounds of dancing at a drinking-party he would jump from a high couch barefoot as he was, and perform the figures in a livelier fashion than those who had practiced them."

The modern writer analyzing the texts in the source above, believes that the dynasty's poor health and extraordinary appearance was not due to inbreeding. They were the results of a lifestyle disease, because of excesses in nurture and luxury. Dimadick (talk) 18:31, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, but you don't need inbreeding in a family to maintain a fairly consistent skin pigmentation over two centuries. All the women we know in Cleopatra's ancestry were of the same Macedonian/Greek stock, and there were plenty of other Greeks all over the Mediterranean, including in Egypt, anyway. The argument that she might have been "browner" than the majority of her well-known ancestors is an argument from silence about those few female ancestors we don't know anything about. Yes, it's possible, but it's not the scholarly consensus, and any click-baity list of films where people of colour are played by white actors that ignores this information (or seems to not be aware of it) should be disregarded. Sources that don't ignored it should be accurately summarized, not simply used as an excuse to keep in text that looks like the click-baity stuff. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 21:44, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
@Dimadick: I just noticed that roughly half the text in this section is yours, and it has nothing to do with race, ethnicity or whitewashing. You were responding to your own misinterpretation of one line of my comment (I was talking about skin colour, not obesity or exophthalmos). Your comment could only possibly be relevant if you were making the point (which you never got around to actually making) that Taylor's casting was historically inaccurate anyway, regardless of the racial issue, because Cleopatra probably didn't look like Taylor (and I would agree with you), but that argument is not really related to this page. If you want to expand our article on the Ptolemies with coverage of what they actually looked like, fire ahead. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:28, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

In the historical drama comedy epic romance film

Why are these genres listed for most of the entries in the table? They read awkwardly, and there doesn't seem to be any point other than baiting genre-warriors. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:23, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Are the genres listed in the cited sources? Dimadick (talk) 10:52, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Does that matter? Whether we continue to list peripheral information like the films' genres should probably not be based on whether external sources that aren't encyclopedia articles do so. And given how so many of the entries have several sources piled on top of each other, I can't imagine they are all uniform in the genres they describe to the films. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:57, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
It does matter, because we are supposed to reflect whatever the sources say. And simply deleting all mentions of genres is not a solution to a problem, it is a problem in itself. Dimadick (talk) 13:31, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
it is a problem in itself How? Seriously, please explain it. We don't know why this or that source decided to include mention of a film's genre, but by the same logic we should not list the genre if a source can be located that doesn't, since we are supposed to reflect whatever the sources say. As far as I can tell, the only reason to keep in such apparently irrelevant trivia is to create some kind of database of what kind of genres are more guilty of whitewashing than others. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:12, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The genre of a film typically explains what kind of narrative it has, the historical context or basis of a narrative, and whether the depiction was supposed to be taken seriously. It is not a trivial subject. And ignoring what sources actually say in favor of fitting them into our own convenient boxes, misrepresents them.

It is just a contextual term for a listing. Really, such listings should state the premise briefly (with genre as part of it), so the role can be put in better context. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 13:11, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
Then why are not genres added to the ones that don't have them? I dunno, maybe it's more the "in this xyz film" sentence structure that bothers me; it makes it look like a junior high school film review, at least to my eyes. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:12, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
Which films are missing genres? I see Charlie Chan Carries On could use one, but the vast majority have them. I just think there should be some kind of introduction before stating why the particular film is listed. The genre was an easy add-on, but the premise would help too. How would you want to introduce a film? Genre + premise or something else? Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 14:51, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

If context was what you were going for, perhaps one should pay more attention to the setting of the film and the depiction of the characters. In some cases, the current summaries are a bit on the misleading side. In the case of The Sheik it says: "the Sheik, a character of Arab descent".

Sheik is his title, the character is named Ahmed Ben Hassan. And one of the somewhat-infamous plot twists of the film (besides the abduction, rape-like situation, and Stockholm syndrome presented as a romance) is that the Sheik has no Arab descent. He is an orphan boy who was raised as an Arab by his adoptive father, a previous Sheik who had no biological children. His biological parents were reportedly European, his father being British and his mother Spanish. The subplot is based on the source novel The Sheik (1919). There the character of the Sheik passionately hates the English nation, because he remembers his own abusive English father.

And in the case of the sequel, The Son of the Sheik, the list currently says "the main character, who is of Arab descent". The character in question is the son of the previous Sheik and Lady Diana Mayo, a British aristocrat. Dimadick (talk) 14:26, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I only copied the genres from their respective Wikipedia articles. They are largely uncontroversial, and if you think a film has the wrong genre attached (which tends to mean it is not clear-cut), then we can revise and source it. As for the Sheik, I included these films based on the source, but I see the protagonist being revealed to be Spanish, but the source does not make this distinction. I can't tell if it means they did not actually see the movies or if they perceive it as white-passing-as-Arab regardless of the story. I'm finding several other sources make the distinction but nothing to really analyze this particular film. We could remove these films or add on the new information, depending on how much weight we want to put on the original source. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 14:51, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

"may have also been one-quarter to one-half Egyptian"

@Erik: Thank you for commenting out pending improvement. I think with a complicated case like this, the longer the better, so anything would be an improvement. I was gonna say, though, that I was confused by "may have also been one-quarter to one-half Egyptian". Yes, the cited source does say this, but it also says that her mother, paternal grandmother, or both could have been ethnically Egyptian, although they probably had some Macedonian ancestry anyway, and then at the end sums up by saying she may have been a quarter but was certainly not more than half Egyptian. This seems like a slight contradiction in the source, and perhaps an oversimplification in the "one-quarter to one-half" estimate (if both her mother and paternal grandmother were Egyptian with some indeterminate but low degree of Macedonian ancestry, she would be slightly more than one half Egyptian). So I wonder if citing the full argument he presents rather than just his mathematical conclusion would be better. I may just be misreading the source and there's some way of reading it that one could get "one-quarter to one-half" from the arguments he presents rather than just from his brief summary at the end, though, but I'm not seeing it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:08, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The Teahouse of the August Moon

The entry for The Teahouse of the August Moon should mention that it wasn't the studio (MGM) or the director who cast Marlon Brando as an Okinawan, it was Brando himself. Brando saw the play on Broadway and was so impressed by it that he was determined to get a film of it made and play the starring role. I don't have a citation at the moment, but this is fairly well known. In fact, his next film Sayonara was also a highly pro-Asian film, which promoted inter-racial marriage. Therefore far from being racist, The Teahouse of the August Moon and casting were, at least to him, a form of social and racial justice and leveling (since the Okinawans consistently outwit, and are more intelligent than, the Americans). Softlavender (talk) 18:45, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

If there is a source discussing this as a response to the particular portrayal, then it can be included. This appears discussed in Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film, but there is also a passage that says, "In retrospect, Brando himself characterized the picture as 'horrible' in his autobiography, stating that he was miscast in the role of the Okinawan interpreter." Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 19:03, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
That's the trouble with this wiki article and with trying to retrofit the concept of whitewashing by applying it to eras in which it did not apply. It's like criticizing Shakespeare and his contemporaries for casting all of the female roles with men. You're quoting an autobiography that was written an entire half century after the fact, when attitudes were completely reversed from the time in which Brando got the film made. What you should be referencing is the causality and decision-making processes, and the availability of leading actors, at the time. Moreover, you've missed my point: The point of this wiki article seems to be blaming studios and directors for not casting according to original race. My point is that that did not happen -- Brando caused the film to be made, as a vehicle for himself. The same is true of things such as Olivier's Othello -- why should the studio or director have deprived audiences of one of Olivier's greatest Shakespearean performances (it was a near-exact replication of his stage performance/production at London's National Theatre)? (Plus how many A-List black leading-man Shakespearean-trained actors were there in 1965?) This erroneous retrofitting of PC-culture to films more than a half-century old and with citations from a 21st-century sensibility doesn't make sense. Especially when the reverse -- the current (for the past 2 to 3 decades) deliberate, incongruous, and unexplained casting of incorrect races in historical plays, films, and television shows -- is not mentioned in contrast. Softlavender (talk) 20:24, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
Full disclosure: I read Softlavender's first comment and replied to that. I only read the rest of this thread to ensure that I wasn't embarrassing myself by saying that "ideally a source could be found" when one was already cited in the same discussion. I just want to clarify here that while I agree with nuancing or removing examples that don't properly count as "whitewashing" as defined in our article, I don't agree with the last two sentences of the above comment. It is not a counterbalance to the ongoing whitewashing trend, in which films whose scripts call for all-white casts tend to be the ones that get produced, and films whose original scripts or source material call for largely non-white casts get rewritten so they can be cast with white people, that some unspecified plays and television shows get anachronistic colourblind casting, especially when, as the title says, this article is about film. And I assume what is being referred to by television shows is the famous case of one or two white characters from A Song of Ice and Fire who were race-swapped for HBO's TV adaptation, but we then have the parallel problem that the non-white characters from the books were cut from the show at a disproportionate rate (per this self-published opinion piece from a respected member of the ASOIAF fan community who has been profiled in a magazine, makes practically a living wage writing about the books, published an interview with the author, and probably meets this article's criteria for a reliable source). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
There is no trouble with this Wikipedia article's scope since it is based on reliable sources. Such sources are identifying older films as cases of whitewashing, including The Teahouse of the August Moon. There are undoubtedly many more examples that could be eyeballed, but this list is specifically limited to what sources have deemed worth noting. I see nothing in this article to indicate that specifically the studios and directors should be blamed. To add content about actors' motivations to try to offset the criticism, despite no connection, would be synthesis and thus inappropriate. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 20:53, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
This is actually a decent source that contextualizes the portrayal at the time. We should reference that to flesh out the film's listing here. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 23:08, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it is a problem to cut it from here because sources identify it as a case of whitewashing. There is going to be overlap of such topics and term use. I'm concerned that you're trying to undermine this topic. You seem to have condemned this article in its entirety on the editnotice talk page. Maybe you should not be editing if you cannot adhere to sources. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 03:14, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
Again, there is no need for the list to be exhaustive, and per WP:NOR we don't need to create a false dichotomy between including misleading information with no nuance and clarifying it by including original research in the article. Ideally, a source would be found that explicitly says that, since it was not a conscious effort not to cast non-white actors but a concession to a famous actor who wanted to play a role he was objectively not suitable for, it doesn't technically qualify as whitewashing. Our including this fact as a counterargument in a reliable source when it has not been presented as such is a form of OR, so the best would be to just leave it out unless a source can be found that explicitly clarifies the problem. If it bothers you that much to remove sourced material, I wouldn't have a problem adding the text Some critics have cited Brando's casting as an example of whitewashing in film. to the "Portrayals" article. In fact I think the information should be in that article anyway, so it's really a choice about whether we should mirror that article's information here or not, not whether we should remove sourced material from Wikipedia. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:02, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
You said we should remove The Teahouse of the August Moon from here and slot it elsewhere despite sources identifying it as a case of whitewashing. You said, "Ideally, a source would be found that explicitly says that, since it was not a conscious effort not to cast non-white actors but a concession to a famous actor who wanted to play a role he was objectively not suitable for, it doesn't technically qualify as whitewashing." This is the problem. That is a very specific definition, to require intent. "The actor meant well, so it wasn't whitewashing." This does not negate the criticism. I have not seen any overarching criticism that indicates that a film can be excused based on an actor's intent. We can add context as to why the Teahouse portrayal was done at the time, but as the Filmstruck reference said, in retrospect, the portrayal was problematic. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 12:35, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
Even if our article doesn't currently define "whitewashing" as a conscious decision to cast actors of the wrong race to keep a film "clean" (*shudders*), that is what the term means, as made clear by comparison with the more traditional meanings of the word that appear in standard dictionaries. There's a control for this: if the film includes Asian extras rather than white ones in yellowface, that means they went out of their way to hire non-whites (since legitimate whitewashing of the entire cast would have been logistically easier than casting minority extras, who by definition are fewer in number and harder to come by in America). The way I see it this is the reverse of the Cleopatra situation, where the film probably was white-washed with Caucasian actors playing all the parts, even ones that would historically belong to non-whites. Again, I'm not arguing for outright removal, just nuance. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:36, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Fiction Films

It seems silly to include to include fictional characters in this list. Fiction can be anything you want. If a film's maker's want to change the race of a fictional character, who cares? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:21, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Who cares? The sources that cover the topic, the audience who assesses the film, and a lot of people who actually analyze fiction as a serious topic. Far from the realm of imagination, fiction often both reflects and influences social views on a variety of topics. Filmmakers' choices are seldom out of public scrutiny. Dimadick (talk) 19:31, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
Based on what I've seen in the sources, the notion of whitewashing is criticized because people of color are under-represented in film roles. When a role that is traditionally POC in either history or the fictional source material and is no longer POC, that is seen as a missed opportunity to cast a POC actor. Furthermore, the under-representation issue is not only about these roles but not enough POC actors being cast in roles where color would not matter, yet white actors are over-represented in that casting. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 20:08, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

questionable background

Please explain what is questionable background on me and why you have deleted my link to the Blackwashing in film article. I'm new to English Wikipedia. I didn't know there is such harassment. --Lokutus (talk) 18:32, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Your Twitter account uses the Czech equivalent of the n-word several times, so this evidences the WP:POV you possess in your editing. Furthermore, your attempted article is completely unsourced and simply copied this article's sentences and categories as if the inverse of this topic was equally valid (again with no sourcing in support of this). Unlike whitewashing, "blackwashing" is a neologism per WP:NEO, not actually having significant coverage in multiple sources beyond the AOL.com news article, which is already referenced at color-blind casting to reflect the criticism of this practice. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 18:44, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
Since you don't speak czech you can't say that you understand a content of those tweets. Therefore, your evidence is simply not an evidence at all. Furthermore, it's an ad-hominem argument. Whitewashing and blackwashing are the same terms, the only difference is that blackwashing in film could be seen only for a few last years; it's a new practice. If this topic is covered at color-blind casting why is it duplicated in Whitewashing article? And if you want to cover specific color2white casting in the separate article, there should be the similar article covering the opposite. From my point of view, you just targeted as inconvenient truth just because you don't like it. The list of blackwashed films is rational, those film exist and those characters have been blackwashed. That's a fact. Try to argue with facts and not with ad-hominem, please. --Lokutus (talk) 19:09, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
You have a racial axe to grind. Do you really deny that? WP:POV says, "Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another." Your attempted article does not reference anything, and you want to escalate your topic to be on equal grounds to this topic, despite no reliably sourced coverage reflecting equivalence. Furthermore, the films listed here are explicitly tied to whitewashing based on sources. Your term is a neologism that does not warrant its own article, much less putting films under it that have never been associated with that term. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 19:22, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
Oh, a racial card. It always works, I guess. In fact, I'm a libertarian, I don't like racism. And this war on me and my article seems to me more and more as a racial war. You can't deny that in past few years there were several movies and remakes casted with black actors instead of original white. Yet it seems, it's banned to just talk about it or even give any credit to it. Nick Fury is one of my favorite character and I can't find anyone better then Samuel L. Jackson. As well as Will Smith's Deadpool. Black nordic god Heimdall is wierd I must admit, but from the other side, Idris Elba is perfect actor for it. Now, where is my racism. Wouldn't you admit that you simply overreacted? And what should I reference? Some articles in HuffPost or what? Thoese films are real as well as the casting. You event didn't give it a few weeks of maintenance and you want it deleted. From my point of view, it's a prejudice. --Lokutus (talk) 19:35, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
An editor's role on Wikipedia is to summarize coverage from reliable sources about a topic and to balance aspects based on the sources. You copied the categories from here as if they were perfectly applicable to your topic. Furthermore, you wrote the general and unsourced claim, "The film industry has a recent history of frequently casting black actors for roles involving people of other colors." There is no banning here, nor denying of credit, because your content has no sourcing to reflect its basis. Is there a reason the films cannot belong at color-blind casting, which needs better sourcing, but from what I can tell, is the far more common term than "blackwashing"? Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 19:47, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
Well, I see one reason. The whitewashing in film was on purpose. There were times in America, when majority wouldn't like colored heroic character. Not only in movies but in literature, too. There is a great episode of Star Trek DS9, which covers this period. So the main non-white characters were commonly whitewashed. We don't argue about that, it's a simple fact. And now I see something similar. Maybe it's related to BLM movement or maybe there is a linkage to Oscar protests, or maybe there's just some inertia in political corectness, but I see some purpose in blackwashing in the few last years. You can't deny that it's more and more frequent. And I see it as a very interesting fenomenon. If you want to delete it, just do it, but my opinion is, that it's not a topic to be fully covered in color-blind casting, since it doesn't show the full corellation. Now, do whatever you want with my article. You know my opinion. --Lokutus (talk) 20:09, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
We have to ground article content in what sources say, though. Whitewashing, according to sources, relates to under-representation in the Western film industry, at least on the acting side of things. (I've seen coverage of a similar debate for crew work behind the scenes.) It means that when POC actors are under-represented, and they could have played POC roles but do not get them because filmmakers decide that it does not matter what race (and wind up with a white actor), that they wanted a specific white actor, or that the economics does not make sense, or that or the marketing would not work well. There is no discussion like that that I can find under "blackwashing" per se. There is such discussion on a case-by-case basis or grouped under discussing color-blind casting, which from what I've seen means to increase representation of POC actors in plays, then movies and TV. This is also rooted in under-representation. We cannot make layperson assumptions here, and that applies to article structuring as well as content-building. If it is a notable topic, it is certainly not under that term, and is there really a case based on sources that it is separate from color-blind casting, which in itself is evolving? Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 20:33, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
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