Think about all of the mainstream Egypt based movies that you have seen throughout your childhood and adulthood. The Mummy (1999), Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), Gods of Egypt (2016), and a plethora of other movies based in Egypt share one common thing, whitewashing. What does this term mean anyway? In media, whitewashing is the use of lack of accurate representation to silence the voices, struggles, and triumphs of people of color. In the film industry specifically, whitewashing is especially prominent in the casting process, which results in movies like The Mummy, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and Gods of Egypt. Egypt is an African country that links Africa and the Middle East, as a result, the people that inhabit Egypt have unique features that resemble African and middle eastern ancestry, but not European ancestry. Despite this fact, the majority of mainstream films that are based in Egypt have casts that are mostly comprised of white actors. This not only encourages lack of representation and decreases the already low rate of roles given to non-white actors, it also alters historical fact. As a result of the constant whitewashing of Egypt based movies, many will actually argue that ancient Egyptians were white, even though Egypt is an African country.
According to the Root, Exodus: Gods and Kings director responded to whitewashing backlash by saying, “I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such…I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up”. In our society, having an all-white cast illustrate a story based in an African country is “cleaner” and more marketable, as opposed to illustrating the story in a historically accurate manner. However, whitewashing does not stop at Egypt based films, it is ubiquitous in film and media, and has deep historical context.
Whitewashing results in low casting rates for people of color, lack of representation, and encourages backlash towards film and media characters played by people of color. According to a study of the top 100 films in 2014 conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California, only 17% of those films featured non-white lead actors or co-lead actors. Almost ¾ of the characters in the top 100 films studied were white, while 12.5% were black, 5.3% were asian, 4.9% were hispanic, and 4.2% other. This perpetuates the idea that people of color are not multi-faceted human beings, and are therefore incapable of being extraordinary actors that star in diverse roles outside of those that revolve around ethnic experiences. Since members of our society are so used to whitewashed media, the idea of people of color having significant roles makes people uncomfortable and breeds backlash. For example, Amandla Stenberg, a brilliant, 17 year-old African-American actress who played Rue in The Hunger Games, received an astronomical amount of backlash from racist hunger games fans. The fans were angered by the fact that Rue was being played by an African-American actress, despite the fact that the character was described as having dark-brown skin in the orginial book (Huffington Post, 2012).
Michael B. Jordan, a talented African-American actor known for his roles in Fruitvale Station and CREED, faced the same form of backlash for playing Johnny Storm in the newest Fantastic Four movie (Variety, 2015).