Scarlett Johansson and who's playing who

After a storm of protest (okay, maybe just a squall; it’s hard to quantify these things) Scarlett Johansson has dropped out of the movie Rub & Tug where she would have played a trans man.  She had previously dismissed criticism by citing three award-nominated performances of cis actors playing trans characters, but the fact that she had been criticized for previously starring as a “whitewashed” Asian character in Ghost in the Shell apparently added enough fuel to the fire to get her to back out.

I’ve written before on this subject, and as I said before, I don’t think you can draw bright lines as to what is “right” and “wrong.”  The three actors Johansson cites, Jeffery Tambor in Transparent, Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club, and Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, are examples of excellent actors playing roles different from their everyday existence with sensitivity and integrity.  This is fundamentally different from a buck-toothed Mickey Rooney playing an Asian stereotype in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which was offensive to both Asians and those who appreciate good acting.

You can point to hundreds of examples of movies and television shows (particularly in the past when there were fewer minority actors) of egregious casting decisions when anyone with dark hair could play someone Hispanic or Native-American.  And if those roles had been filled by race-appropriate actors, Hollywood would have been a more diverse place then and now.

But I can’t condemn instances like German actor Peter Lorre playing the Japanese character Mr. Moto in a series of films in the 1930’s.  Lorre was a brilliant actor who portrayed the character not as a stereotype, but as a three dimensional person who was intelligence and fought for justice.  Add to the fact that there were almost no Asian actors available at the time, and that attitudes towards the Japanese in pre-World War II America weren’t positive (subsequently Pearl Harbor didn’t help matters), I would argue that Lorre’s performance enhanced diverse attitudes rather than impeded them.

With relatively small films like Rub & Tug, landing a name star is possibly critical to getting funding.  Now that Johannsen has dropped out, will the film get made?  Is there a trans star with as much star recognition as the actress who plays Black Widow in the Marvel Universe (and will soon have her own stand-alone film)?  I don’t think so.  If only a trans actor can play a trans man, can trans actors complain that they don’t get cast in cis roles?

Let’s apply this to the controversy over the character of Apu in The Simpsons.  The Simpson’s showrunner has said he doesn't have a problem with the way the show has handled Apu, but the voice actor who plays Apu has said that maybe they should recast the role with an Indian actor.  But what has helped the The Simpsons survive for 30 years is the fact that their cast of actors includes three suburb voice artists (Dan Castellaneta, Hank Azaria and Harry Shears) who are capable of playing multiple accents and dialects. If they have to hire an actor with an Indian background to play Apu, do they have to hire someone from Scotland to play Groundskeeper Willie?  A Jewish actor for Krusty the Clown?  An Hispanic actor to play Bumblebee man?  A gay actor to play Wayland Smithers?  Their cast is going to have to get much, much larger if each character is entitled to its own ethno-socio-sexualogical cast member.

Where do you draw the line?  Is a white voice actor playing a stereotypical Indian character bad, but the same actor playing a stereotypical Scottish character okay?  Is it okay to cast an actor of Korean descent as a Japanese character in Star Trek (John Cho playing Hikaru Sulu), which was blessed by George Takei, the Japanese actor who played Sulu on TV and in previous films?  Can a Native-American actor from one tribe play a Native American character from a different tribe?  Can someone from Michigan play a character from Texas, or someone from England play a Frenchman (Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau)?

It is the nature of actors to want to stretch, to play characters as different from themselves as possible.  It may be a mistake when Marlon Brando wants to play an Asian in Teahouse of the August Moon, or for Johnny Depp to play Tonto in The Lone Ranger.  But it can be amusing, as when Alec Guiness played both male and female members of a royal family in Kind Hearts and Coronets.  American actress Linda Hunt played a Chinese-Australian man in The Year of Living Dangerously and won an Oscar; Robert Downey Jr. played an Australian actor playing an African-American character in Tropic Thunder and got an Oscar nomination. 

On the one hand, we shouldn’t put people in boxes; on the other, putting people in boxes sometimes serves a purpose.  Increasingly there are questions about what constitutes a “box,” what elements a part of someone’s identity.  Color-blind casting sounds like a good model until there is a multi-race production of A Raisin in the Sun.  What constitutes an element of a character’s identity that must be shared by the actor playing them—their race, their nationality, their gender, their left- or right-handedness?  I don’t think the answer is black and white.