How Hollywood White Washed Society.

I recently saw a trailer for the movie Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which is loosely based on the video game series Prince of Persia. The video game follows the adventures of a Persian prince and the powers he has. The main character, the prince, is of middle eastern decent, but in the movie he is played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Now Gyllenhaal is a white actor portraying a middle eastern man. This is a continuous trend throughout the history of Hollywood. In 2008, the movie 21 which follows MIT scholars who begin counting cards also follows this trend. The movie is based off of a book which features primarily Asian main characters, but the movie portrays the main characters as white. Now the makers of this movie did put several Asian characters on the team but they were reduced to what Nick Rogers of The Enterprise calls, "a kleptomaniac and a slot playing loser." This is completely different from the book. The teams Asian characters had a much huger role in real life. Two other movies that come to mind in this scenario are based off of two animes. The movie versions of the Dragonball and Avatar the Last Airbender are greatly white washed. Both animes contain characters that are portrayed as Asian or of Asian background, but the movies are the complete opposites. One website says, “[Avatar is] wholly and inarguably built around Asian (and Inuit) culture. Everything from to the costume designs, to the written language, to the landscapes, to martial arts, to philosophy, to spirituality, to eating utensils!—it’s all an evocative, but thinly veiled, re-imagining of ancient Asia. (In one episode, a region is shown where everyone is garbed in Korean hanboks—traditional Korean clothing—the design of which wasn’t even altered at all.) It would take a willful disregard of the show’s intentions and origins to think this wouldn’t extend to the race of the characters as well. You certainly don’t see any blonde people running around in Avatar. (I’m not saying that would have necessarily been a bad thing, I’m just stating the facts of the show and the world in which it is set.)” Another spot in the article has a direct quote from the main character of Avater where the actor said he needed to get "a tan" to play the character.
So this begs the question why does Hollywood feel the need to whitewash its characters? What do you think?

Another movie thats all about race

Iron Man 2 will be released soon and I have noticed that it falls into the Die Hard, Rambo, and every other action movie ever made category. For those that don't know Iron Man is the story of billionaire Tony Stark (in this case actor Robert Downey Jr) who is forced to build a futuristic suit of armor for terrorists. After escaping the terrorists, Stark then decides to use the suit to protect the world from different evils. Iron Man 2 picks up where the first movie left off. The world knows Tony Stark is Iron Man and he must now deal with the trials and tribulations of being a superhero. Not that you know what's different about the story let me tell you what hasn't changed. Iron Man 2, like every other action movie, is all about race. The movie perpetuates many different racial stereotypes that other movies do. The first stereotype involves the hero. Tony Stark, like most action stars, is a white male with the privileges of looks, money, intelligence, strength, or whatever else makes up a hero. This idea of the true hero needing to be a white male is nothing new in the history of action movies. This stereotype portrays the white male as the one with true dominant masculinity. The next stereotype revolves around the use of Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes who is played by Don Cheadle. This stereotype is that the African American heroes could only have gotten where they are with help from the white characters. This movie continues that stereotype through Rhodey. Rhodey dawns another suit built by Stark and becomes his sidekick War Machine. This continues to perpetuate that belief that minority action heroes could not get where they are without the white characters. The last stereotype is the foreigner as villain one. The character of Ivan Vanko played by Mickey Rourke fills this void. Vanko is the son of a soviet physicist who builds futuristic laser whips to attack Stark with. This character has a Russian accent and is portrayed as barbaric (spends most of the fight scenes without a shirt on) and evil because he is attacking the true patriot Stark. This continues to give others the image that foreigners are evil. So as you can see the media has produced another action movie filled with stereotypes from everyday America. Does this produce a winning formula for a movie? Would changing this formula hurt the movie industry? Is this what we as Americans wanna see or are we forced to watch this because there is nothing else? Watch the trailer and tell me what you think.