A couple weeks back Alyssa Rosenberg wrote a great piece about white actors Hollywood keeps trying to push despite their continuing failure to succeed. (For those who quibble about Sam Worthington’s inclusion: watch Man on a Ledge and then try to tell me differently.) These actors are not bad actors per se (although I would argue Jason O’Mara is pretty bad), but they are pointedly non-special-in-any-way actors who keep getting breaks until something happens for them. Alex O’Loughlin is a good example of this: he was boring in Moonlight and then he was boring in Three Rivers and now he is boring in Hawaii Five-O, but on that show he is surrounded by more entertaining actors and pretty scenery so it has become successful and now O’Loughlin is the Hollywood equivalent of a made guy. The point is that minority actors, by and large, do not get these same types of chances. Idris Elba in particular should be huge now. Morris Chestnut seemed tailor-made to be an action star – muscular, attractive, charismatic, – but it never happened and he got shunted into “urban” romcoms. And so forth.
Anyway, I mention all of this because I just saw the extended trailer for Step Up: Revolution. (Yes, I know some of you are going to just click over to Reddit instead of reading the rest of this post, but try to bear with me.)
Now, if you are not familiar with the Step Up films, there is a simple pattern to them: boy meets girl, they are both dancers, one or the other has a crew and for some reason that crew has to win a big dance battle which is awesome, Love Conquers All, happy ending. Now, the first Step Up starred Charming Potato but since Mr. Potato was not available to do Step Up 2 The Streets, as he was now rich and famous and too important for such things, instead the film transitioned to his character’s previously unmentioned little sister analogue and she took the role of The Girl in the second movie.
Since all of the Step Up films take place in the same universe where dance battles are bigger than UFC, the third film, Step Up 3D had to be connected to the second and this time around the primary transition character was Adam Sevani’s Moose. Now, Sevani is a pretty badass dancer, and in fact he gets a romance subplot, but instead of being the lead he is secondary to some blandly attractive model-esque dancers who aren’t bad or anything but certainly aren’t the sick dancers that the rest of the cast are – and really aren’t so amazing as actors that they merit any additional consideration on that front. But they’re definitely attractive and Sevani is, let us be honest, geek chic rather than traditional leading man.
However, Step Up 3D also introduced Stephen “Twitch” Boss to the cast, and Twitch, as any fan of So You Think You Can Dance knows, is charismatic, articulate, a decent actor, a ridiculously good dancer, has an existing fanbase, and most importantly for our considerations at this point is quite handsome:
And producers promised that Twitch would get a greatly expanded role in Step Up 4 (which later got renamed to Step Up Revolution as they jiggered the plot to tie it into Occupy Wall Street, sort of, if Occupy Wall Street danced in far more badass ways than they usually do), so a lot of people, myself included, naturally assumed that he would be the transition character into the fourth film. But instead of this happening, Twitch is still a supporting character and the leads are going to be a white girl and a not-terribly-dark Hispanic guy.
Granted, one can’t get too upset about Kathryn McCormick playing the lead white girl, because she is totally awesome in her own right, but why can’t she just romance Twitch instead? I mean, interracial relationships are common nowadays – particularly in the dance community. But this is one area where Hollywood continues to be weirdly reactionary.
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Alex O’Loughlin is on Hawaii Five-O for one reason only: he is hot, and that show’s target audience (women and gay men) watch that show like straight guys used to watch Bay Watch.
What, straight guys can’t watch Hawaii 5-0 for the Grace Park hotness?
Granted, I don’t watch it. I was annoyed that they didn’t just make Kim & Park the leads to begin with, and when I finally did try watching it was an episode all about the two boring dudes and I gave up after ten minutes.
Oh, and yes, Twitch deserves to star in a Step Up movie already!
Really it’s an offshoot of all of the usual issues. Like how any role that isn’t explicitly written as minority defaults to ‘white’.
Sadly I don’t know whether I’m more saddened by that, or the fact that I’ve pretty much given up hoping this things will change.
On a different note, I’ve got to say “Twitch” Boss has the most appropriate last name ever. 🙂 He was really good on his season, and has only gotten better since then.
It’s because Hollywood is a business which focus tests the crap out of every little detail and they have known for a long time what seems to be cropping up more and more lately – that America is still an incredibly racist place. Hollywood doesn’t want to lose anyone’s money so they make everything as “safe” as possible.
Agreed. Try counting how many interracial relationships or marriages you see in commercials. Not many. I know it’s not Hollywood per se, but it’s symptomatic.
I was about to quibble about Sam Worthington. Then I realised I was thinking of Joel Edgerton. (And holy crap there is some weird things going on with every american films ‘manly’ dude actor being english or australian)
And, fond as I am of Idris Elba, he is at best a decent actor who gets roles because he’s pretty and he was in the Wire (and also the current hollywood black guy). Which isn’t a bad thing but he’s not a great dramatist or anything
This seems to unfairly dismiss Luther, which is epic and mostly because of Elba’s talents.
@MonkeyWithTypewriter: That bugs me so much. It creeps me out to think that casting one partner as [race] means you have to look for another [same race] person.
Granted, maybe casting directors think, “Oh, I’d have to cast interracial children too in this family, and that’s difficult.” But you know, why not adopted children?
Are people not going to understand that a couple of adults plus children aren’t a family in a commercial about diapers/toys/mortgages because they don’t look the same? Also, gasp, gay couples. Maybe they’re tandem-babysitting.
I was tragically excited when I saw a banking commercial featuring an interracial couple in their 40s/50s a couple of years ago.
I do quibble about Sam Worthington, because Channing Tatum was awful in “G.I. Joe” and if you can’t be entertaining in a toy commerical, you can’t act. Worthington at least doesn’t outright suck in the “Titans” films.
But, yeah, the premise of both articles is completely valid. Russell Wong was charismatic and handsome as hell on “Vanishing Son” back in the ’90s, and where the heck has he gone?
Channing Tatum does make Sam Worthington look like Ben Kingsley.
I was distracted by the article’s mention of a new Abrams show about “a world where all forms of energy have mysteriously ceased to exist.” So, what, it’s forty minutes of a black screen and commercials?
But Tatum has done things where he’s been a success – see Step Up and 21 Jump Street, and even his part in the Dilemma. I don’t think Worthington is capable of doing anything other than “not that bad.”
But I guess when you’re spending $100 million on a movie, casting always not that bad is better than maybe terrible (which Tatum can definitely be).
Channing Tatum is very pretty? He had great chemistry with Jamie Bell in “The Eagle”?. He was very pretty in Burlesque?
I live safe in the knowledge that he knows exactly why he is famous, and isn’t going to be tackling the role of Henry V anytime soon.
What makes the Step Up thing even worse is that the movies are very much targeted at an under25 demographic. A demographic that is considerably less white than older groups. And a demographic that is v. much in approval of inter racial relationships.
Mostly this reminds me I still need to see 3D.
People keep saying that Hollywood is just reacting to the racism prevalent in America (sometimes with the intent of excusing Hollywood, sometimes not) but that sort of obscures the fact that Will Smith was arguably the #1 Box Office draw in the world, for several years if not right this moment, and also, THE PRESIDENT IS BLACK.
Stars are always at least partly manufactured by Hollywood, so there’s no reason whatsoever they couldn’t direct their attentions to some of the people listed in this post and produce at least a couple of big stars (granted, providing these would-be stars with good movies that people really want to see is a key ingredient too, and Hollywood’s been failing at that for a while–as both Vin Diesel and the Rock can attest).
(By the way, slight tangent: I had long thought that recasting John Carter as a black man would be a savvy move. Make him a freed slave in the post-Civil War era. That way the guy has a history tied into the era that a) isn’t problematic for modern audiences and b) is actually a little more unique and interesting than what the movie gave him. And there’s a depressing lack of people of colour starring in SF action blockbusters these days. You certainly can’t argue that the movie would have done worse than it did with that casting!)
“A world where all energy has ceased to exist”?
Even kinetic and potential energy? WTF?!? Could such a world even sustain itself for more than 0.1 nanosecond?
@Prankster, re: John Carter – YES, EXACTLY THIS. I’ve thought the same thing since forever.
(Except in my version he was a member of an all-Black Union regiment.)
Antonio Banderas IS.. Juan Carter, Warlord of Titan (also solving the Mars problem!)
Three factors are at play here, I think:
1) For male leads, Big H wants to cast males that the 18 – 35 (or thereabouts; I’ve seen the upper limit as high as 40) white male demographic can imagine themselves as or aspire to.
2) For female leads, Big H wants to cast women that the 18 – 35 white want to have sex with
3) Big H is…well, big. Which means they aren’t nimble. Which means they are slow to change.
So even though there’s ample evidence that today’s 18-35 demographic is very different when it comes to issues of race and sexuality than yesteryear’s 18 – 35 demographic, Big H simply cannot quickly pivot and address that. Especially since the vast majority of the major decision makers are older white dudes.
Oh — and there’s probably confirmation bias and attributional error going on, too: when they do dare to try something different with black leads and the movie doesn’t earn umpteen million dollars return on the investment, they say, “Welp, that proves blacks can’t carry a film.” But when, say, a Worthington film doesn’t do as well as they’d hoped, they say, “Well,we didn’t market it well enough; or it was released in the wrong season; or something else. So give him another chance.”
@The Unstoppable Gravy Express: “Even kinetic and potential energy?”
If one wants to get over-literal about “a world where all energy has ceased to exist,” one really should begin with the fact that energy can not be destroyed. It is conserved. Perhaps all the energy became matter without releasing any energy in the process? Etc. 🙂
Cool breakdown. Just, FYI, you should probably avoid describing black people as “articulate”. It’s at the least condescending, at at worst kind of racist.
“People keep saying that Hollywood is just reacting to the racism prevalent in America (sometimes with the intent of excusing Hollywood, sometimes not) but that sort of obscures the fact that Will Smith was arguably the #1 Box Office draw in the world, for several years if not right this moment”
Except that when it came to making Hitch the producers decided that Will Smith’s love interest should be Latina on the basis that a white love interest could provoke a potential taboo & a black love interest would alienate white audiences. Apparently not even Will Smith’s star power is enough to overcome this issue.
Incidentally I remember seeing Terminator Salvation & Avatar within weeks of one another & couldn’t detect a single difference in Worthington’s performance. His continued casting baffles me.
Describing a black person as articulate always makes me think of Undercover Brother. I just know that a fried chicken franchise is sure to follow.
I’m torn on Sam Worthington. As an Australian myself, I’ve seen him in a number of movies before the ‘made the leap’. In particular, he was fantastic in ‘Gettin’ Square’, although slightly overshadowed by the outrageous overacting of David Wenham.
I certainly think there is a tendency to go with ‘celebrity currency’ above acting ability or even marketability. The number-one example of this (and to show I’m not blindly pro-Aussie) is Nicole Kidman. How many mega-flops can one woman have on her resume? Portrait of a Lady, Dogville, The Human Stain, Birth, Stepford Wives, Bewitched, Invasion, Cold Mountain….
What’s wrong with Jason O’Mara?
Black John Carter of Mars sounds like a really cool idea, not only because the only black sci-fi character I can think of is Lando “The Last Black Man in the Galaxy” Calrissian, but because it would certainly make the whole colonialist/Mighty Whitey angle of the movie less troubling, and the idea of a guy who’s been oppressed and discriminated against all his life only to become a superhuman warrior on another world would certainly lend an interesting angle to the character.
And yeah, sick of bland white guys getting the lead roles. I know that when I heard about Chronicle (still haven’t seen it) and saw that it had two white guys and a black guy I actually hoped against hope that just once the black actor could be the main character. Then I found out that he predictably died to heighten tension. And then I sighed a heavy and resigned sigh.
God, I forgot all about that. I was trying to cross-compare Twitch to other professional dancers on an acting basis, not other black people generally. But your point is taken.
Was that Phillipchbeeb as a statue?
@Aussiesmurf :
I’m not entirely sure Dogville belongs on that list. It’s obviously an “alternative” movie with a niche audience. I don’t think anyone expected a movie like that to perform too well in the box office.
[only black sci-fi character I can think of is Lando “The Last Black Man in the Galaxy” Calrissian]
Has anyone here read the Eric John Stark books? Although his actual racial makeup is deliberately vague- probably due to the fact the first stories about him were published in the 1930s- the darkness of Stark’s skin is pointedly mentioned on a regular basis.(The books still hold up damn well; there’s a down-to-earth toughness mixed in with all that interplanetary swashbuckling that’s kept the books from ageing badly.)
Ironically (or not), Stark’s creator, Leigh Brackett, also co-wrote the film that introduced Lando Calrissian!
Wow, kinda miss WHO’S WHO.
If they ever get around to making a film of “The Stars My Destination”, you’ll get the best black sci-fi character ever.
Really it’s an offshoot of all of the usual issues. Like how any role that isn’t explicitly written as minority defaults to ‘white’.
Agreed. White people (and I say this as a puzzled white person) do not seem to like being asked to identify with a non-white character. Black Spider-Man, anyone? (Also, to a lesser extent, the ridiculous racist comments about Rue in the Hunger Games, who is EXPLICITLY WRITTEN as black in the books.)
Also, “Charming Potato” made me laugh more than it probably should have.
This article is so on point. Hip hop has grown more diverse, recruiting dancers outside of black and people of color communities, but to have these film be THE representation and put white leads in is just blatant white washing.
Channing and others are great dancers. Are there POC dancers who are equally or more great? Hell yes there are.
As anyone who watches SYTYCD or America’s Next Best Dance Crew could attest, badass/charismatic POC dancers exist.
Aging badly. The Step Up films’ failure to have poc in starring roles is a travesty. This was apparently not realized at the time (in 2012 world) by anyone except poc and MGK. This blog post is one of very few contemporaneous comments I found on Step Up’s abject cultural appropriation/racism.