#TIMELESS CAST NOAH FREE#
It's an ancient civil rights story about liberation and justice, of one man speaking truth to power, and of a God who desires for people to be free and equal. The Exodus narrative ironically has something to say about this. And this needs to happen before movies are made, not after they are released.
Instead, we should see Exodus as an opportunity to begin engaging major studios in vibrant, ongoing conversations about race. But protests don't always work, and we need more lasting change. There is even an ongoing Twitter protest, accompanied by a number of hashtags, such as #boycottexodusmovie.
#TIMELESS CAST NOAH MOVIE#
Some potential movie watchers have responded to Scott's whitewashed cast by calling for a boycott of the film. "When God always seems to be on the side - or with - the white characters in Biblical representations then we can't imagine God having different racial sensibilities." "In these Biblical stories, God isn't absent and God takes a side," Blum says. As a friend of mine who is African-American told me, he assumed as a child that Jesus was "the white man's God." When these stories are whitewashed, it creates unnecessary distance between people of color and important spiritual stories, and worse, between minorities and God. "The 'truth' in these representations is that white is coded good, heroic, and godly, and dark is coded evil, wrong, or wicked." They are seen by many as reflections of truth," says Edward Blum, a professor at San Diego State University and author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. "Biblical stories are more than just stories. As Alex Abad-Santos of Vox commented, "That means they're more likely to become big stars, making it even harder for non-white actors to take those lead roles and become big stars themselves." According to a 2011 study by UCLA's Bunche Center for African-American Studies, white actors are cast in approximately 90 percent of lead roles of theatrical films. To be fair, Hollywood's race problem is endemic and not limited to Bible films. The insensitivity in Scott's comments and assertion that a movie's viability depends solely on casting it with famous white people is depressing, if not disturbing. Scott told Variety that he never considered the matter of race because he simply could not have financed the film if he had cast "Mohammed so-and-so from such-and-such" in it. Here's the real answer to that question: Hollywood does not believe people of color are lucrative enough. Why is progressive Hollywood so allergic to casting people of color in Bible films? Noah's screenwriter explained his all-white cast by saying that the movie was "mythical." Apparently, every fantasy land is inhabited by Caucasians with pristine, high-caste British accents. The film was taken, in part, from footage from History Channel's The Bible series, which featured a mostly Caucasian cast, except for the role of Samson, a raging brute with a weakness for pretty white girls. Son of God (2014) cast the Portuguese Diogo Morgado as Jesus and the Irish Roma Downey as Mary. Noah cast Australian Russell Crowe as Noah, American Jennifer Connelly as Noah's wife, Welshman Anthony Hopkins as Noah's father, American Logan Lerman and British Douglas Booth as Noah's sons, and Briton Emma Watson as Noah's daughter-in-law.
The Nativity Story (2006) cast Australian-born New Zealander Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary. King of Kings (1961) cast American Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus and Irish actress Siobhan McKenna as Mary. Surely Hollywood's sensitivity to ethnicity has changed in the last half-century, right? DeMille's The Ten Commandments." It starred a fake-baked Charlton Heston.
The last time a live-action Moses appeared on the silver screen was in Cecil B. Whitewashing Bible films is something of a Hollywood tradition spanning decades, and it won't change until audiences demand better. They are, however, historically inaccurate and, frankly, inexcusable for a film in 2014. We can't claim that Scott's casting decisions were pernicious. (Exceptions may include smaller roles for Ben Kingsley, a Brit with an Indian father, and John Turturro, an Italian-American.) The Independent adds that black and ethnic minorities do appear in the cast as "Ramses servant," "Egyptian thief," and "Egyptian Lower Class Civilian." Vanity Fair notes that most of the actors of color who have been cast were relegated to nameless roles.
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