Black or white and playing Michael Jackson
Local media experts react to controversial casting
Whether it’s a case of whitewashing or colour-blind casting, the announcement that British actor Joseph Fiennes would play Michael Jackson in a 30-minute TV road-trip comedy sparked a fresh round of diversity debates. The news landed amid #OscarsSoWhite campaigns, protests and boycotts that forced change at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Fiennes told Entertainment Tonight he was “as shocked (about the casting) as you might be.”
Jackson had vitiligo, a condition that makes the skin lighter in patches, Fiennes pointed out to the magazine that Jackson’s “pigmentation issue” meant the singer’s complexion was “probably closer to my colour than his original colour.”
Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon is based on Sam Kashner’s Vanity Fair story “Elizabeth Taylor’s Closing Act”, which recounts how Taylor, Jackson and Marlon Brando supposedly got out of New York on Sept. 11 in a rental car and headed for Ohio.
Here are some local reactions to the controversy. Radheyan Simonpillai (NOW freelance movie critic)
I think this is a very unfortunate situation. I get that there’s a slight physical resemblance between Joseph Fiennes and Michael Jackson in his skin-whitening days. Perhaps using an African-American actor with makeup would be jarring (though with the cosmetic talents available to Hollywood, I find that hard to believe). A big problem here is that we have a diversity crisis in Hollywood, where there’s not enough characters written for black actors. And now we have a major, inspirational African-American figure who will also not be played by a black actor. This doesn’t sound like blackface or whiteface. Instead, it’s giving in to a troubled icon’s self-hate and misguided attempt to erase his black identity. Arisa Cox (Host of Big Brother Canada)
The question isn’t whether Joseph Fiennes can play Michael Jackson in a comedy, because of course he can. He’s an actor. That’s his job. In the grand scheme of things, this casting decision is irrelevant. I suppose its only significance lies within the context of so few starring roles available to people of colour, let alone the granting of awards season hardware. The real question I’m interested in is how, not when, changes are coming. Because casting is nowhere near as important as the inclusion of different kinds of people in film financing boardrooms, writing rooms, director’s chairs and media newsrooms. Whether it likes it or not, Hollywood is destined to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.
And eventually, who plays MJ won’t matter. Paul Moore (Media historian, Ryerson University sociology professor)
Speaking as a scholar of popular culture, even if the claim is that this is colour-blind casting, it cannot be coincidence that it’s colour-blind casting to play Michael Jackson. There have been books and theses written about his precise and ambiguous relationship precisely to race. I think it’s a statement that they’re provoking racial politics (as) part of the casting and publicity and eventual fascination with this particular piece of entertainment. It’s far more provocative to cast a white, British actor than to cast a mixed-race or lightskinned black female actor. They could have cast Maya Rudolph. Ironic and ambiguous as parody.