I woke up this morning from a dream inexplicably involving Eric, Sookie, Bill, and D (as in Vampire Hunter D), and there was this secret group of some kind of super-powerful, Japanese supernatural being moving in on, I don't know, Vampire Land's territory? Somebody's territory, anyway. Only when the Japanese supernatural beings showed up, they were all white. And I don't mean white-skinned Japanese people (or white-skinned Japanese monsters or whatever), I mean white people. I - well, for a very loose value of "I" - I wasn't in the dream, these were just my thoughts as I was watching - anyway, I was baffled by this when they showed up, as it didn't make any sense, and it started making me feel so uncomfortable that I got really distracted from the proceedings. And yet there was this eye-rolly feeling of resignation and total lack of surprise, too.
Dave: "...Wait, you were complaining about the whitewashed casting... in your dream?"
Me: "...yes?"
Dave: "Okay, you only have yourself to blame for that."
WHITEWASHING, Y'ALL. EVEN OUR DREAMS ARE NOT SAFE.
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Comments
While not quite as blatant as a whole group, as in your dream, in the books the bartender vampire Chow (Longshadow's replacement) is a super-fine hot explicitly Asian guy.
http://truebloodwiki.hbo.com/thread/2039135/CHOW%3F!%3F!
Patrick Gallagher, Chow's True Blood actor, may be mixed blood, but Chow is supposed to be instantly recognizable as East Asian.
I honestly had no idea that Patrick Gallagher was mixed until I looked him up on Wikipedia.
Eh, I have mixed feelings on that one, since if we only cast actors of mixed race as characters of mixed race, actors of mixed race would pretty much never have a job. Idk.
I guess my line on that one is the following: If the character's history/family background is explicitly not mixed (re: Runaway's Nico Minoru or implied in Chow's case), then I don't feel that the actor should be mixed (I know race is a construct, but to take a broad example, Nico Minoru's actress shouldn't be of European/Chinese mixed descent when the character is explicitly Japanese).
I'm not arguing that mixed actors should only play mixed characters, but rather that I'm seeing a trend for 'well, if the casting sheet says young Asian woman, let's cast someone who doesn't look too Asian, just exotically Asian in a white way.'
The default Hollywood casting trend is generic character = white, which I know neither of us approve of.
My point was more along the lines of it makes me very uncomfortable when I see characters who are explicitly non-white being played by half-white/mixed actors. It's not true to the character, and a lot of times it makes absolutely no sense.* It seems too much to me like a sop so that movie can say that they technically didn't case the role as white. =/
*In an inverse of this problem, I just find it beyond belief that the audience in Firefly is supposed to accept that both of River Tam's parents are white. I can accept Simon looking white, mixed blood does funny things, but there's no way River Tam came from these two. >_>