This is brilliant. From The Washington Post Magazine:
How Hollywood Sees Me … And How I Want to Be Seen
Actors of color often get typecast. Two photographers asked them to depict their dream roles instead.Since the dawn of Hollywood, nonwhite actors have been asked to play stereotypes — from maids to immigrants to thugs — while struggling to get cast in layered, authentic roles. In order to highlight this phenomenon, we decided to photograph actors in two ways: embodying the typecast roles that they have been asked to play and imagining the roles that they aspire to play.
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We hope that these photos encourage viewers to reflect on the way that stereotypes persist in mass culture. And we hope they allow people to envisage a world where all Americans can see themselves represented — in all ways — on the screen.
The photographers are Haruka Sakaguchi and Griselda San Martin. Actor Dan Chen is pictured above. A selection of the project’s photos is at The Washington Post Magazine, with many more at the project website Typecast: What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Race and Ethnicity.
Of course this isn’t any great shock, we’ve always known about typecasting, but it’s so good to see it brought out into the spotlight. I’ve found it interesting to think about trope characters and wonder if the actors are specializing in them, is it typecasting, or what? Not long ago I was considering how I’d like to see Jim Parsons now that he’s no longer Sheldon Cooper. I pictured long greasy hair in his eyes, scruff, gold chain, beat-up jean jacket, no shirt. Of course, ethnicity is not his problem, but now that I see this article maybe he’d want to be Captain America too, though.
This situation is one of those that drive me bonkers. I want to do something about it, somebody should do something about it, how the hell do you do anything about it? Write letters to casting directors? Send encouragements to ethnic actors? Boycott movies and TV that typecast? (Uh-oh…)
I think it’s an important question you’re raising
In my view this problem is tied to a deeper question of who represents us – who decides what sorts of projects get greenlit and distributed, on what scale, who is involved in conceiving and creating these projects – for what audiences are they intended?
It’s a question of media reform. What kind of reform is needed, and who’s currently engaged with this? We’ve been hearing talk of diversifying the people hired at different levels in the media industry –
– this is helping, I think, but there are much larger questions about the relationship between those who produce our media and those who consume it – there needs to be diversifying in the industry structure, and its ability to meet the needs of different audiences – communities need to play a larger role in generating their own media, determining projects that will reflect their own views and concerns – I think this would help diversify the ideas as well as the faces delivering them
If I were trying to think of a victim of typecasting, I’m not sure that Jim Parsons would be the first person who came to mind, but if even an extremely successful white, male actor is at risk of being pigeonholed, it demonstrates the lack of imagination that leads to so many terrible Hollywood movies and TV shows.
Parsons has, of course, played gay men in several projects in a row, but I think that was an attempt to give a voice to people who’ve been underrepresented in film and on stage, rather than an example of typecasting.
I suspect that the best way to fight typecasting is to spend money on projects that add diversity to Hollywood. The success of Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Crazy Rich Asians hasn’t hurt the cause.
This reminds me of a philosophy teacher who’d worked in Eastern Arabia and asked his students to imagine what heaven might be like – one female student responded “it’s where I could show my beauty”
In a sense this whole project seems predicated on that premise – to imagine one’s ideal role is by extension to imagine an ideal world where we could assume that role
And representation is all about envisioning possible realities – if we can see it manifested in front of us, then in some sense we’ve experienced it as a reality
Imagining another world in many ways means imagining a world where our unrealized selves might emerge – what’s so heartbreaking about this project is how it gives us a glimpse at these embryos waiting, waiting to be born – how much of our inner self is comprised of this embryo of potential?
For me, this is the underlying point of human culture and society – this yearning for realization – we soak in our circumstances as clearly and fully as possible, let them marinate in our imaginations, and then express our responses to one another, exploring the possibilities together – and, as we go, we act on the implications of our discoveries and insights along the way. I believe to a large extent a society is valid and functional, or not, to the extent that it facilitates this process, or doesn’t.
Our shared sense of reality is managed and expressed via our media industry. In many ways, this industry shapes what we see when we look into our collective mirror – its narratives shape our sense of what we are and what we might expect from our lives and from the world around us. Shortcomings in our collective view of reality need to be traced to the media institutions that reproduce these views – modifying the wider outcomes involves modifying the institutions that generate these patterns.
How to do this, using this project as an example, with an eye to producing and receiving more self-determined images (and images of self-determination), rather than these cookie cutter stereotypes that our current media industry endlessly imposes on us?
Maybe relevant :-) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uydROg26I-A
We’ll know we’ve progressed if they ever let Star Trek’s iconic Sikh villain, Khan Noonien Singh, actually be played by a Sikh actor – or even a South Asian actor – imagine that