Can You Whitewash (Potentially) White People?
They also note this weekend’s release of “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” a live-action adaptation of a video game that stars white actor Jake Gyllenhaal in the title role instead of an actor with a Middle Eastern background.
“This part really needed to go to someone who’s Persian,” said Jehanzeb Dar, a blogger and independent filmmaker who is a fan of the video game but has no intention of supporting the movie.
“It’s not only insulting to Persians, it’s also insulting to white people. It’s saying white people can’t enjoy movies unless the protagonist is white,” he said.
Far be it from me to appear the defender of either Jerry Bruckheimer or Jake Gyllenhaal, but is this right? [Sidenote: I very much enjoy his sister Maggie’s acting.]
The question I have is around the concept of Persian as non-white. I’m cognizant of the difficulty inherent in the polysemous nature of the word Persian, but still this doesn’t seem quite right to me. Persian as a language (really Farsi) is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. So we should have a Persian playing the role means we should have an English-speaking film with a native Persian speaker as the actor?
Persian also of course refers to a “people”, which as this Wiki helpfully points out is a more challenging construct given the history of the Persian Empire and inter-mixing of ethnicities across the Central Asian plateau. But generally speaking Persians are considered Aryan (i.e. white/Indo-European) in nature–see video below for more.
Persian in its current formation today typically means Iranian, a term often used interchangeably with Persian, but also having certain difficulties in terms of this discussion (re: national borders, languages, and ethnicities). As an example of the complexity, Azeris make up a significant percentage of the Iranian population, though they too could be considered (at least partially) white (i.e. Caucasian), but are not Persian. Though also there is Turkic influence there as well. If you look at this picture of Azeri young women, Maggie Gyllenhaal could basically fit in there skin-tone wise, right?
What does “Middle Eastern background” mean exactly in this context, particularly in relation to actors? He’s not Arab? But Persians aren’t Arabs. If Persian is a variation of Aryan, then why can’t Gyllenhaal pass for that? If I’m missing something completely obvious, please anyone let me know. Especially given the more or less ancient/medieval timeline of the (admittedly fictitious) video game upon which the movie is based….Greek influence (including genetic) via Alexander’s conquests was rampant throughout Persia all the way through Afghanistan to India.
I realize given the history of blackface, North African Moses played by Charlton Heston and so on, this is a sensitive topic. But I’m not quite sure I get this one. On the flip side, if we changed the term Persian and white with gay and straight, would we want to argue that a gay actor can’t play a straight guy* or vice versa (this would be particularly relevant in this case of Gyllenhaal).
If this matters, Gyllenhaal’s mother is Jewish. Her maiden name Sachs is Ashkenazi (of Germanic origin), i.e. of European Jewry. Interestingly, Gyllenhaal identifies himself more as Jewish (in the Jewish tradition of mothers bearing the tradition), rather than his father’s Swedish ancestry. Granted his mother is of European Jewry and we therefore get into the vexed question of the historical lineage and ethnic makeup of European Jewry (if his mother’s side was Sephardic there would probably be no ability to say he couldn’t play Middle Eastern, unless one meant Muslim by Middle Eastern, which given Persian history would be rather anachronistic since the classic Persian and Parthian Empires existed centuries before the rise of Islam). If it were say shown that his mother’s Jewish heritage traces back to Palestine/Israel, would that qualify as Middle Eastern background?
Here’s Iranian-American comic Maz Jobrani making the same point (minute 1, NSFW at the end):
* Given many of the League’s profound embrace of Neil Patrick Harris playing Barney on How I Met Your Mother, we can throw that out the window.
It pisses me off that Othello always played by blacks, taking away the one great role for actors of mixed Arab-Berber descent.Report
Reason to rejoice:
In previous incarnations, the general idea was to have “the good guy” played by a white dude and “the bad guy” played by an authentic representative of the country in question. (Or, in the case of Disney cartoons, have the good ones have Caucasian features with skin tints appropriate to the setting and the bad ones have overstated stereotypical features… see, for example, Aladdin.)
But the bad guy in this one? Ben Kingsley!
So that’s progress.Report
Sounds like Dar has way too much time on his hands. It all comes down to money, as the studios want a name actor that can bring in the bucks, no more, no less.Report
Jesus, what would he have made of Sabu in the The Thief of Baghdad?Report
I long for the days of classic Hollywood, when Greeks were Hispanic and Hispanics were Greek.Report
@Paul B,
That makes me laugh. Anthony Quinn was cast as just about every ethnicity during his career.Report
One of the (many) things I loved about Hill Street Blues was its total disregard for its actors’ ethnicities. Joe Spano was wonderful as Henry Goldblume, but I didn’t believe he was Jewish for one minute. There was nothing remotely Italian-looking about Ken Olin’s Harry Garibaldi. And who played Irish cop Joe Keenan? Naturally, Hector Elizondo.Report
@Paul B,
Heh. I saw a lot of references to Zorba the Chicano back in the day.Report
I couldn’t care less about the race aspect. I just want to know when my local multiplex is going to go back to showing a few films that aren’t aimed at 14 year old boys. About this time of year the endless kiddie matinée starts to become grating.Report
I could see Gyllenhaal’s character fitting in the spectrum of “Persian”, and particularly “ancient Persian” (considering that the capital city, in the games at least, was Babylon).
I’m a pretty big fan of the game trilogy that inspired this movie, so I’m definitely giving it a shot (and unlike some other video game movies, it looks like they’re actually trying to make this into a serious franchise).Report
If it weren’t that the information provided by the post is thouroughly accurate, I’d smell satire.Report
Prince of Persia’s nuthin compared to Avatar (or rather The Last Airbender). In that case we have rolls for two Inuit children being filled by two Caucasians; the title roll for a mainland Asian boy being filled by a Caucasian and the roll of Japanese characters being filled oddly enough by an East Indian boy.Report
@North, that’s a good point. The Airbender one I don’t get at all.Report
I presume the blogger here is talking about actual cultural background and not skin tone. There are actual Persian actors in the business, right? Because the skin tone in the video game is within the spectrum of white, which, as you note, is consistent with some of the folks who’d be considered Persian. The briefest research shows that Persian royalty’s usually portrayed as light-skinned in period art, as well.
Far and away, the best phony racial portrayal in Hollywood history is Charleton Heston’s angry Mexican in Touch of Evil. The most odious is blackface in, well, any application (except for Fred Astaire’s tribute to Bill Robinson in Swing Time, which is still unseemly at best). On the flip side, you’ve got Omar Sharif going white in Dr. Zhivago.Report
@Zach, Basically. But I’m not really sure beyond skin tone why you need a Persian actor? Or possibly worse what middle eastern means here. Should every part for a Mexican be played a Mexican? Or at least Latinos only?Report
@Chris Dierkes, I’m not saying that it’s a valid complaint. Just that it might not be about skin tone alone if at all. As long as its not for the purpose of perpetuating a stereotype or done out of some misperception that the actors of the race in question can’t act (two reasons blackface was primarily used), I don’t care. Chuck Heston as the proud Mexican law man is fine by me if sort of hilarious.Report
For phony actor, how about Sam Jaffe in “Gunga Din,” …man, loved those shorts!
“Sawebe, sawebe!” …sorry about the spelling.Report
Reminds me of Patrick Wayne as Sinbad.
Middle Eastern or not, Jane Seymour is HAWT!!Report
Iran is a multiethnic society, which includes “black” Iranians and “Asian” iranians and blonde-haired blue-eyed Iranians. The vast majority of Iranians are Caucasian. You could not tell an “average” Iranian apart from an average Greek or Italian. So stop with the “White” thing already.Report
Iranians I have known have been very eager to point out that they are not Arabs and are in fact “Aryans.” I.e., the “same race” as Europeans–whatever that may mean.
As for the origins of Ashkenazi Jews, you need to update your ideas, which seem to derive from fringe theories now associated only with right-wing anti-Semitism–i.e., that European Jews are not “real Jews” and are not of Middle-Eastern origin. (This is the now entirely discredited theory that Ashkenazi Jews descend from converts made from among a people called Kazars. At one time this was regarded as a legitimate possibility, but genetic studies have shown it to be false, so only crackpots still believe it.)
Genetic studies done starting in the 1990s have confirmed that European Jews are primarily of Middle-Eastern origin, and are related genetically to other Jewish groups, with only a minority of their genetic material deriving from the European peoples among whom they have lived for more than a millennium. I.e., a small amount of intermarrying, but basically Middle Eastern, just like Sephardic Jews.Report
Aryan (i.e. white/Indo-European)
I thought that kind of terminology went out with Hitler.Report
@Mike Schilling, Iranians (many of whom don’t like that term, either, and insist on being called Persians) still use the term, seemingly unaware of its connotations here and in Europe.
I have also noted a return of the term “Caucasion,” which seems to my ears ludicrously quaint, deriving as it does from a now-exploded theory that the European “race” originated in the Caucasus mountains of central Asia.
It always makes me think of Piltdown man or some other decayed jawbone.Report
Er, “CaucasiAn,” sorry.Report
The jews of today of ashkenazi origin according to Auther Koestler who
wrote about the 13th tribe of Israel is far from being considered right wing and identified the Khazars as their origin. A majority of the european jews are blonde hair or have blue eye’s hardly a semitic trait of the shaphardim. Most european jews origins are from southern Russia the ukraine and Asia Minor except for those Jews from Spain
and Italy who’s origins might be able to be traced back to Ancient Holyland. The arguement is who are the lost tribes of Israel. Israel
and other scientist have recently discover that the Pathan’s of Afganistan
have the same genetic similarities of sephardic middle eastern jew. The
pathan’s of eastern afghanistan have the star of david in their culture and there not practicing judaism. They are Islamic. Most likely the lost
tribes of israel settled in Iraq Afghanistan and contrary to opinion did not go up into europe during the Assyrian dispersion. Judaism today is
a RELIGION not a race or nationality as the Zionists, British Israelist and far rightwing group would have you believe. Jerry Springer , Michael Landon, Joseph Lieberman to name a few are blonde and blue eyes and thats not from intermarrying. Christian, Jewish and Islam are
western religions and will never be considered a race or nationality.Report