Mr. Hanks, who had reportedly spent nine hours in makeup having his skin recoloured and prosthetic lips and noses blended over his own, provided the following statement: “please refer to William West, Al Jolson, and Orson Welles for comment.”
Thinkers on the internet were quick to shoot down any criticism, warning that black people are “shooting themselves in the foot” for not letting a white actor portray one of the most significant figures in black civil rights history.
In his defence, Mr. Hanks’ producer was quick to speak to us: “Unfortunately there are few actors with the star power to pull this roll off. It’s our gut feeling that no one would watch a movie that doesn’t have Tom Hanks, Chris Pratt, or Jennnifer Lawrence in a lead roll. Of the three, only Hanks was available in this case. Of course we will start hiring black actors, once they get enough star power from being hired for major roles in other movies, I guess. But we are just making reasonable business decisions until then.”
His sentiments are echoed by twitter users online, who argue that the best thing for black representation would be for uppity black people to stop complaining, or voicing any opinions in general.
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Okay, heavy handed satire aside, this is a response to Scarlet Johansson’s decision to abandon playing a trans gangster Dante Gill in an upcoming biopic Rub and Tug, and specifically the jackasses blaming trans people (and those siding with them) for the movie now being canned. Whilst trans speakers are hardly unanimous on the issue, a good start would be to listen to them When they put their opinion forward.
I for one hope that Johansson’s decision shows she is willing to listen to her critics, but that hope gets kind of squashed when she apparently hasn’t taken any steps to supporting a trans person into getting that now vacant roll. Here is my Frequently Made Arguments templates for dealing with the common reactions:
“But she’s an actor, it’s her job to play people they aren’t!”
It’s naive to think that anyone can play anyone else and it never has any political baggage attached, that’s never how it works. Come back to me when there is a completely proportionate number of trans actors being hired in to play every kind of role. Before then, I refer you to the above comedy analogy on blackface, which presumably you also think is totally okay by the reasoning you just gave.
“But this movie would only get made with a big name attached!”
All you’ve done is restate the problem on a wider scale. Much like the old “We only hire people to this job if they have experience, you only get experience by doing this job” problem, it’s a cyclical situation of the producer’s own making. Rather than take any responsibility for changing that dynamic, producers insist they are powerless and have to go with this arbitrary decision to have a big named actor in the lead. In truth, I have no sympathy for the gutless and cynical producers who are in a large part creating this problem whilst shirking any opportunity to do anything about it. Especially when “star power” is something of a myth in terms of box office draws.
“But now this movie won’t get made!”
Maybe no movie is better than a compromised movie. One of the main target audiences for this movie would have been fans of queer and trans cinema, and these are the people most put off by the casting decisions. If this movie had been made and
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