Present day media is slowly trying to be more racially inclusive on screen. There have been some milestones achieved recently such as the casting of Halle Bailey, an African American, as Ariel in the 2023 live-action “The Little Mermaid.” While the casting provides young Black girls with representation that Disney films have lacked for years, the fact that this casting caused so much conversation in the entertainment industry shows just how uncommon this representation is.
Part of the issue regarding the lack of diversity in American films is due to the fact that there has always been far more white actors cast in movies and TV shows than any other race, and that still seems to be the case today. However, another issue that fuels this lack of diversity is the process of casting white people to tell the stories of people who are not white.
For example, “Shameless” is an extremely popular comedy show that ran for 11 seasons from 2011 to December of 2020. The show takes place in the South Side of Chicago, a historically non-white neighborhood. While the demographics have diversified slightly over the years, 2016-2020 data from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning concluded that the South Side is still primarily Black with roughly 75% of the population being African American. The same data concluded that the South Side is 2.9% white. Ironically, the show’s primary focus is on the Gallagher’s, a white family living in the South Side. The family of eight contains one Black child named Liam, whose race is briefly explained towards the beginning of the show as supposedly being due to an affair. Additionally, almost all of the friends of the main family members are white. The eldest Gallagher kid, Fiona, is friends with a Black woman named Veronica who gives birth to two mixed-race children later on in the show. Occasionally, Veronica’s mother makes an appearance.
For a show that is based in a primarily Black neighborhood, it is disheartening that I can only think of five Black characters in the entire show. Furthermore, two of those Black characters, Veronica’s children, have minimal lines in the seasons that they do appear in. And while the Gallagher child, Liam, has far more lines in the later seasons, he was actually known for never speaking in the first few seasons.
Regardless of the ratings “Shameless” received and the fact that it is a timeless show to many, it did not do a sufficient job in telling an accurate story of living in Chicago’s South Side.
Some media has taken even more extreme approaches to tell the story of a non-white person using a white actress. The 2007 film “A Mighty Heart” is based on the true story of Daniel Pearl, an American journalist who was captured and killed while reporting in Pakistan back in 2002. The movie follows Mariane Pearl, the wife of Daniel Pearl, who is a woman of African American, Cuban, Dutch and Chinese descent. The casting directors ultimately went with Angelina Jolie, of French and Canadian descent, to play the starring role of Mariane. Beyond casting a white woman, the production team took things further providing Jolie with fake curly Black hair, lining her lips, changing her eye color, and even darkening her skin tone. In addition, Jolie speaks with an accent in the movie that she does not have in real life.
As one of the most well-known American actresses of all time, it is shocking that not everybody is aware of the existence of this movie in which Jolie literally plays a different race. Since the movie’s release in 2007, Jolie has been the starring role in dozens of movies and clearly never needed the money she made from “A Mighty Heart.” How hard would it have been for the casting team to find somebody who was not already famous or at least somebody who is actually Black?
At the end of the day, casting white actors in Non-white roles is inherently racist and sadly far from new. “West Side Story,” a 1961 classic film, focuses on the discrimination against Puerto Ricans in America during the ‘50s, but the film itself was made in a racist manner. The movie was a remake of the famous play in which one of the main characters, Maria, is the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants. Considering that one of the major themes of the film is racism, it is again ironic how the Puerto Rican character is played by Natalie Wood, a white woman of Russian descent.
While “West Side Story” was recently remade in 2021 with a more diverse cast, the remake still had imperfections resulting in criticism from major media publications like The New Yorker. At the very least, the remake stars Rachel Zegler, an actress of Colombian descent, as Maria, which eliminates one major issue from the original film. The 2021 film did not solve all of the earlier issues, but at least there was an effort made to tell the story how it was intended to be told.
While the American film industry is continuing to diversify throughout the years, it has a long way to go. Casting aside, there are smaller things that can be done to get the film industry where it needs to be. For one, movies and TV shows that are undeniably racist need to be discussed, not celebrated as “classics.” While it is not inherently wrong to watch and enjoy something like “Shameless” or “West Side Story,” it is wrong to ignore the issues of race that come up while watching. If nobody mentions Angelina Jolie playing a Black woman or the South Side of Chicago being displayed as primarily white, filmmakers are never going to be held accountable and will thus get away with being as racist as they please.