Surprise, surprise! Another big-budget Hollywood epic was cast with almost all white actors once again, and the backlash isn’t pretty.
The trailer for the Lionsgate film Gods of Egypt was released on Tuesday, and you can’t help but notice that the titular Egyptian gods look anything but! Most of the lead characters are played by white actors, including Gerard Butler, Geoffrey Rush, Breton Thwaites and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. The only actor of colour in the film is Chadwick Boseman. Middle Eastern actors are completely absent from the line-up.
Chadwick Boseman Is the only non-white actor in Gods of Egypt.
Source: Lionsgate Entertainment
Aside from calling the trailer "over-the-top" and "CGI-heavy," audiences also responded via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube with a mixture of humour and disgust. Some raised questions about the “whitewashing” of Egyptian heritage and others called it “gentrifying of AFRICAN history.” At best, the trailer was seen as insensitive, and at worst, it was decried as outright racist.
This is, of course, far from the first time the Hollywood has chosen to colour history with its own distinctly pale palette. Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings faced a lot of the same criticism when it was released in December last year. But Scott’s claim to Variety magazine that he could not mount a big-budget production with “Mohammad so-and-so” as the lead actor was blatantly unapologetic, citing the almighty dollar as the apparent consideration behind casting decisions
Despite questions of cultural appropriation, accusations of using offensive “brown face" or "black face” makeup on white actors and the recent frenzied discussions about diversity or the lack thereof in Hollywood, studios seem undeterred. Critics are calling the retelling of another culture’s history through the eyes of a more powerful or popular outsider “cinematic colonialism,” and some have even raised concerns of the symbolic erasure of other races and their heritage by the Hollywood machine.
Watch the trailer for Gods of Egypt below and let us know what you think. Should the film be considered fiction and fantasy, with no expectations for accuracy? Or should studios be held accountable for misrepresentation and appropriation?
Article Sources: Alternet.org, Thinkprogress.org, The Hollywood Reporter
Main Image Photo Credit: Lionsgate Entertainment
Dilshad Burman
Author
Dilshad Burman is an award winning TV host and Canadian media personality. Born in Mumbai, India, she was surrounded by its creative energy and grew up with a passion for music, film and television. While completing her Bachelor of Arts in English literature from The University of Mumbai, she i...
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