Director’s stars ‘too white’
BRITISH FILM director Ridley Scott has been accused of ‘‘cinematic colonialism’’ after he cast white actors to play the noble leading characters in his retelling of the Moses story, with black actors portraying the slaves.
Exodus: Gods and Kings, which is due for release in December, stars the British actor Christian Bale as Moses and the Australian Joel Edgerton as the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses the Great. Another white actor, Aaron Paul, plays the role of Joshua while Sigourney Weaver portrays Ramesses’s mother, Tuya.
Critics have pointed out that paintings on the walls of the tomb of King Tutankhamun depict people with brown skin.
‘‘ The servants, thieves and assassins are played by Africans,’’ said David Denis, a writer for medium.com. ‘‘To make the main characters white and everyone else African is cinematic colonialism.’’
Speaking at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Edgerton said that he sympathised with online calls to boycott the film, which are being made under the Twitter hashtag #BoycottExodusMovie.
‘‘I do understand and empathise with that position,’’ said Edgerton. ‘‘It’s not my job to make those decisions. I got asked to do a job, and it would have been very hard to say no to that job.’’
It is not the first time that Hollywood has been accused of ‘‘whitewashing’’ historical figures in ancient history. Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra in 1963, and in 1956 Cecil B DeMille cast Charlton Heston as Moses, and Yul Brynner, who was born in Vladivostok, as Ramesses.
Recently, however, audiences have grown more vocal in complaining.
The film Nina, currently in postproduction, and will tell the life story of Nina Simone, provoked criticism after the lightskinned Zoe Saldana was cast to play the dark- skinned jazz singer. ‘‘ Getting light- complexioned actors to play the roles of darkcomplexioned historical figures is not only a sign of blatant disrespect to the persons they are portraying but it is also disrespectful to their families, to history and to the intelligence of the audience,’’ an online petition read. ‘‘ For too long Hollywood has gotten away with revisionist history.’’