The History of Whitewashing in Comic-to-Screen Adaptations
Hollywood whitewashing comes in a variety of forms in cinema. Most commonly the term is used when a film adaptation of pre-existing media casts a white actor to play a character who is described and/or shown to be a person of colour, thus erasing the already miniscule representation of non-white characters in fiction. (Sometimes it is not even fiction, like all the occasions white actors have played historical figures of colour in film.) Whitewashing can also, however, be used to describe the exclusion of POC entirely from a setting where they ought to be in. For example, when a film that takes place in Ancient Egypt, yet only white people are ever seen on screen.
Whitewashing comes from colourism — the favouritism of light skin and Eurocentric features — which is a form of racism. Whitewashing is racist.
Marvel and DC comic book to film adaptations have quite the rap sheet of whitewashing casting choices. But before we get to that: a short background on whitewashing in the comic industry itself.
Whitewashing in Comics is no excuse for Whitewashing in Film
When racist fans attempt to excuse whitewashing in screen adaptations, they often hand-pick artwork where characters of colour are whitewashed on page. This happens more often than you may think, and can make it incredibly difficult for readers to even recognize the characters appearing in a story, because they might as well be entirely different people.
One such example: It took multiple fan complaints about the way X-Factor (2006) depicted Monet, an Algerian Black woman, before they finally darkened her skin somewhat and addressed the “confusion” in the letter responses of issue #4:
“Monet’s skin tone, and what it should be, set off a flurry of researching into her history. And boy, it was confusing and rife with contradictions. Bottom line, although Monet has very dark skin, we’re not entirely sure she’s African-anything. Nevertheless, we’re likely darkening her skin a bit.”
It apparently took “a flurry of research” to pick up an issue of Generation X (1994), where Monet was first a main character, and see what she looks like:
There is (usually) multiple people behind the work of illustrating a comic. The pencillers, the inkers, the colourists, and even the editors have a role to play in depicting characters on page. Part of the job requirement is knowing how to produce the final product with respect and skill for the audience you are depicting.
Matching whitewashing with whitewashing does not make a right. If anything, it only exemplifies how much whitewashing and colourism is an issue across all media.
With that all said, let’s get into the long history of on screen whitewashing in live-action superhero films and TV series.
Jubilation Lee / Jubilee
Film:
· Generation X (1996)
Jubilation Lee, AKA Jubilee is one of the most well-known Asian superheroes. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong, where they raised her in California. With the X-Men, Jubilee became something of a surrogate daughter to Wolverine, and a veteran member of the classic Generation X (1994) series.
If you are unfamiliar with the terrible Generation X television film that was originally intended to be a pilot of a show, you’re not alone. Its obscurity is largely due to its lack of quality. In it, Jubilee is played by Heather McComb, a white actress.
Bane
Films:
· Batman & Robin (1997)
· The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Bane’s mother was native to the fictional nation of Santa Prisca, an island in the Caribbean, where he was also born and raised. Ethnically, Bane is Latino. This has been overtly confirmed as such by his co-creator, Graham Nolan.
In animated adaptations, Bane is consistently portrayed as such, and also drawn with brown skin more often than not. But on the big screen, he has never been played by a Latino actor. In the 1997 film Batman & Robin, he was played by wrestler Robert Swenson — and for that matter, his entire character was also altered into that of a mindless henchman and not an incredibly cunning antagonist in his own right, to boot. In Nolan’s Batman series, Tom Hardy took the role for The Dark Knight Rises.
Victor Von Doom / Dr. Doom
Films:
· Fantastic Four (2005)
· Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
· Fantastic Four (2015)
Victor was born in the fictional Eastern European nation of Latveria, to a Roma mother and German father. Victor made his way to America through scientific scholarship, where he became university rivals with the equally brilliant Reed Richards. But Victor’s background never makes it to the big screen, where every single Fantastic Four film has him played by a white man. In Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), this white man is Julian McMahon. In Fantastic Four (2015), this white man is Toby Kebbell.
The failed 2015 Fantastic Four reboot received some internet praise and racist backlash for casting Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm. I would argue that for aside from any progressiveness it holds, this casting rings performative and tokenistic rather than true desire for diversity, when at the same time a white person is playing a non-white character.
Ra’s al Ghul & Talia al Ghul
Films/Shows:
· Batman Begins (2005) — Ra’s
· The Dark Knight Rises (2012) — Ra’s & Talia
· Arrow (2012) — Ra’s
· Legends of Tomorrow (2016) — Ra’s
Continuing to point out the racist whitewashing in Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, the poor al Ghul family are victims, too.
Ra’s al Ghul and Talia al Gul are what some might call a prime example of “ambiguous brown,” since their family’s exact origins are a murky mess — in fact, when asked about his origins, instead of answering, Neil Adams said:
“He’s not necessarily Arabic. He’s not necessarily Eastern. He’s not necessarily Western. He’s not necessarily anything! He’s just a villain and he’s equal to Batman.”
(Wow.) What is most widely accepted as canon, however, is that Ra’s was born into a group of nomads in Northeast Africa and/or the Levant, and that Talia is of Arabic and Chinese descent.
Liam Neeson plays Ra’s in Batman Begins, a choice that received heavy criticism. Yet for some reason, there was much less backlash for the exact same level of racism when Marion Cotillard was cast as Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises. Both are white people playing non-white characters.
In the CW Network’s Arrowverse, Talia escapes whitewashing, portrayed by Lexa Doig in Arrow. (Although there is of course another discussion entirely on seeing all Asians as interchangeable.) However, Ra’s was not so lucky, and is yet again played by a white man, Matthew Nable, in both Arrow and The Legends of Tomorrow.
The one and only screen adaptation to not whitewash one of Batman’s most iconic adversaries is Warner Bros. Gotham, in which Sudanese actor Alexander Siddig plays Ra’s.
Silver Fox
Film:
· X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
There are far more things different than there are the same between the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the comics it is supposedly based off of. A change that we might have actually been able to praise is the complete renewal of the character Silver Fox, if not for the whitewashing.
In the comics, Silver Fox’s entire existence boils down to one thing: That she is raped and murdered by Sabretooth for Wolverine’s angst. I should not have to tell you why using an Indigenous woman like this in your writing is sour to say the least. Deciding to keep Silver Fox alive in the film, giving her character and agency of her own, these are positive changes! It makes it all the more unfortunate that Fox chose not to cast an Indigenous woman to play an Indigenous woman. Silver Fox is instead played by Lynn Collins, a white woman.
Before casting Collins, the studio personally asked Michelle Monaghan, also a white woman, to play the role instead. Michelle claimed to only turn down the role because of scheduling conflicts.
Selina Kyle / Catwoman
Film/Show:
· The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
· Gotham (2014)
Catwoman (1993) issues #81 and #89 established Selina Kyle as having a brown Cuban mother and an Irish father.
Part of what led to her life of crime was the difficult home life she had, as her father was unaccepting of her mother’s culture.
Despite Selina being biracial, white actress Anne Hathaway portrays the classic Batman anti-hero in The Dark Knight Rises, and Camren Bicondova portrays her in the TV series Gotham.
I look forward to seeing what Zoë Kravitz will do with the character instead in the upcoming film, The Batman, as while she is not Cuban — what the real ideal should be — she is at least mixed race.
The Mandarin
Film:
· Iron Man 3 (2013)
In the classic Iron Man comics, the Mandarin is one of Iron Man’s biggest foes. He is a Chinese man with a set of alien rings that grant him a long list of powers. The Mandarin from the comics and the Mandarin on screen have nothing on common, and that includes race.
Writer and Director Shane Black said that they wanted the Mandarin to be “of indeterminate ethnicity” (see: ambiguous brown) “to avoid the Fu Manchu stereotype the comic books portrayed”. But those who can recall the plot of the film will remember the twisting revelation about the Mandarin’s identity: Ben Kingsley is not even actually the Mandarin; he is the Mandarin’s front man. The real self-proclaimed Mandarin? Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce, a white man. This is not drawing conclusions — though conclusions can certainly be drawn from Killian literally shouting that he is the Mandarin — Black also said as much:
“Ultimately we do give you the Mandarin, the real guy, but its Guy Pearce in the end with the big dragon tattooed on his chest.”
The idea of avoiding racist stereotype… with racist casting instead… is such a backwards notion, I cannot wrap my head around it. Why not simply not write the character into a stereotype? It’s not that complicated, as proved by Winston Duke’s character M’Baku in Black Panther (2018) getting a full revival from his Man-Ape comic counterpart.
Tony Leung is set to portray the Mandarin in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and I can’t wait for everyone to see what should have been done with a character like the Mandarin in the first place, now that he is in the hands of people who know better.
Roberto da Costa / Sunspot
Films:
· X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
· The New Mutants (2020)
Roberto da Costa is a biracial, Afro-Brazilian boy. His father is Black, and his mother is white. ‘Berto himself has darker skin, just like his father.
He was created during a time when Chris Claremont started to abandon metaphors and write stories directly involving racism. (Some pretty good, some… not so much, but that’s neither here nor there.) The amount of Latine superheroes that existed at this time could be counted off with a single hand, and creating a character like ‘Berto brought new representation and new voices into the X-Men; a team that has always been used as an allegory for equal rights.
Bobby makes his way through the world with a number of labels; Black, Latino, Mutant, and it gets complicated for him sometimes. They can intertwine with each other; his mutant powers manifested under duress from the racism he was facing. This is something that a lot of readers can relate to. (It’s also not the entirety of his character, but rather just a piece of it.) It makes all the things he overcomes so much more powerful; this is a boy who grows up to be a major Avengers player, despite so many people telling him he was destined to be a villain just like his father. But his whitewashing really subtracts from all that.
Sunspot has a very minor role in X-Men: Days of Future Past, where he is played by Adan Canto, a light-skinned Mexican-American actor. In a starring role for the so-called New Mutants film — as an avid fan of the comics, it pains me to address that thing as such — director Josh Boone defended his choice of casting Henry Zaga to play an Afro-Brazillian character with the following:
“I didn’t care so much about the racism I’ve heard about in Brazil, about light-skinned versus dark-skinned. To me, it was I wanted to represent Brazil in a positive way and I wanted to find somebody who seems like he could look like a guy who’s had the silver spoon in his mouth, who has like a really rich dad and [Henry] just exemplified all these things.”
No amount of Brazilian identity that Zaga has within him can make up for the fact that he is not Afro-Brazilian like Roberto. No amount of Zaga “looking rich” (whatever that means, and with the implication being that a Black actor could not “look rich” apparently,) can make up for the fact that he is not Afro-Brazilian like Roberto. No amount of denial that racism exists in Brazil can make up for the fact that Zaga is not Afro-Brazilian like Roberto. Roberto is of African descent. Zaga is not. It is the complete and total erasure of a crucial part of the character’s story, and who he represents. End of discussion.
Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff / Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch
Films/Shows:
· X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) — Quicksilver
· Age of Ultron (2015) — Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch
· X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) — Quicksilver
· Captain America: Civil War (2016) — Scarlet Witch
· Avengers: Infinity War (2018) — Scarlet Witch
· Avengers: Endgame (2019) — Scarlet Witch
· WandaVision (2021) — Scarlet Witch
Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, the twin superheroes also known as Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, have gone through more than one origin story retcon over the years.
The longest running and fan-favourite canon is that they are the mutant children of the Jewish mutant Magneto, and his once wife Magda, a Roma woman. Magneto and Magda were both Holocaust survivors, and settled down raise a family — however, traumatized by the loss of her first-born daughter and witnessing Magneto’s display of power, Magda fled her husband and eventually gave birth to the twins unbeknownst to him. Pietro and Wanda ended up raised by Django and Marya Maximoff among the couple’s nomadic Roma community, until as teenagers, they were separated from their family.
The current canon is that Pietro and Wanda are not mutants, but the children of Natalya Maximoff, a Roma witch, who were kidnapped as children and genetically modified by the eugenics-obsessed villain, the High Evolutionary. Dissatisfied with his experiments however, he had the twins returned to their people, Django and Marya Maximoff still being their adopted family in this somewhat-recent retcon.
In both cases, Pietro and Wanda have a Roma mother and were raised by Roma parents, within their culture. They are the only well-known Roma superheroes in Marvel Comics.
As is with most classic superheroes of colour, their identities have not always been depicted well; far from it, in many cases. Some modern writers have attempted to rectify this, however. Quicksilver: No Surrender (2018) for example is a beloved mini-series that does one of the best jobs to date. But while the comics have been making progress, both Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and Fox’s X-Men Cinematic Universe (XMCU) decided to go in the complete opposite direction by whitewashing the characters. (And rewriting their origin story to align them with Nazis). In the MCU, Elizabeth Olsen plays Scarlet Witch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Quicksilver. In the XMCU, Evan Peters plays Quicksilver, and the Fox writers go even one step further, Americanizing his name to “Peter”. None of these actors are Roma. They are all white people pretending to be Roma characters. They are all white people pretending to be Roma. Olsen only digs her grave deeper with her continuous use of the G slur, despite being taught its offence, and advocating for the use of racist stereotypes as jokes in the show WandaVision.
Magda
Film:
· X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
As said above, Magda has for the longest time been Pietro and Wanda’s birth mother. Regardless of this retcon however, she still exists as a character and was still Magneto’s love.
Magda in the comics was a Roma woman and a concentration camp survivor, like Magneto. Before this, they were already sweethearts, but got separated. She survived extermination by hiding among dead bodies, where Magneto found her and they were reunited, where he hid her until the camp revolted and they managed to escape. Magda is an example of how brave average civilians can be in comics where superheroes are flying around saving the world from one apocalypse after another.
On screen, Magda is played by Carolina Bartczak, a white woman.
The Ancient One
Films:
· Doctor Strange (2016)
· Avengers: Endgame (2019)
The Ancient One in the comics is a Tibetan monk who trained Doctor Stephen Strange in the mystic arts for many years, before he set up shop in New York. His character in the comics is, much like the Mandarin, highly stereotypical and full of racist tropes. Also just like the Mandarin, instead of hiring a writer capable of reimagining the character without the racism, Disney decided to yet again go the route of whitewashing the character completely.
Director Scott Derrickson said that the film’s Ancient One was written specifically for Tilda Swinton to portray, and intended from the very beginning to turn the character into a Celtic woman. The excuse was, yet again, wanting to avoid stereotypes. An admirable goal with the worst possible execution, sending the message that writing an Asian man without stereotypes is, apparently, too difficult a task.
Very recently, Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, said that he regrets the whitewashing of the Ancient One in Doctor Strange. Strangely enough, he has not mentioned any of the other whitewashing in the MCU. Perhaps because they still have use for, as fans of the comics have taken to calling her screen counterpart, Wendy Mayomoff.
John Proudstar / Thunderbird
Show:
· The Gifted (2017)
John Proudstar is an Apache superhero created for one purpose only: to die. In 1975, Giant Sized X-Men #1 revamped the Uncanny X-Men in a major way, staring a whole new roster of heroes. In order to show that things were serious and grittier now, Uncanny X-Men #95 advertised on their cover, “Not a hoax! Not a dream! This issue an X-Man DIES!” Sure enough, John dies in a fiery explosion, while the team begs him to get off the plane he’s destroying. It is his younger brother, James Proudstar, who goes onto become a far more used and at least occasionally appreciated character.
This put The Gifted in an incredible opportunity: To give actual character to a character whose only chance to shine was in death. I was looking forward to this, only to be incredibly disappointed by yet another case of Hollywood whitewashing, casting Blair Redford, a white man, as John.
Redford has made a vague claim of unspecified Native American “roots” or “descent”, which is a tune Indigenous people are very familiar with when it comes to all the “pretendians” in Hollywood. Finding out through a DNA test that one of your great great grandparents may have been Native does not make you Native, when you have no tangible connection to the people and the culture.
Cecilia Reyes
Film:
· The New Mutants (2020)
Dr. Cecilia Reyes is a Black Puerto Rican woman who took the trauma she witnessed growing up in a dangerous hometown, and forged herself into a force of helping people. She resisted becoming an active X-Men member because she felt she could do more good as a doctor. Even when shifting her focus to helping her fellow mutants, she’s always done so primarily as a healer and defender.
The Cecilia Reyes of the alleged New Mutants film has nothing in common with the Cecilia Reyes of the comics, other than sharing a name. This includes the fact that she is played by Alice Braga, a light-skinned Brazilian woman. Just like Sunspot, her Afro-Latine identity is cut to shreds and then only pieces of it picked up and sewed back together, in some ugly parody of herself.
Dishonorable Mentions
Sometimes films manage to skim below the ground-level bar by the skin of their teeth, but with casting choices that are still uncomfortably questionable. These are cases where characters who consistently have dark skin — some comic book whitewashing cases not included — are instead played by light-skinned or white-passing actors.
Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm is a dark-skinned Kenyan woman who has consistently been portrayed by light-skinned Black women on screen. Halle Berry and Alexandra Shipp are Black, and Storm is Black — this is the minimum requirement. But the favouritism of light-skinned Black women in media is ever present, and having a dark-skinned Black woman play the goddess that is the Wind-Rider would be a monumental shift from that.
There is also the case of Dani Moonstar, AKA Mirage in the New Mutants film “adaptation” (let’s use that word very lightly,) the role almost went to non-Native actress True O’Brien, despite the studio patting themselves on the back and claiming they were committed to casting a Native American actress to play the Cheyenne character, eventually landing with Blu Hunt. While Blu Hunt is Native, she is light-skinned / white-passing, while Dani is not. Again, this is colourism at work, especially transparent when partnered with the outright whitewashing also present in the film.
A number of Jewish fans have pointed out how disheartening it is when ethnically Jewish characters are not played by ethnically Jewish actors as well. Magneto, for example, may have his Jewish identity referenced on screen, but has never been portrayed by a Jewish actor. Meanwhile, you have cases like Harley Quinn, who not only is not played by a Jewish actress in the films Suicide Squad (2016) and Birds of Prey (2020), but Birds of Prey goes as far as erasing her Jewish background entirely, rewriting her history so that she was raised in a Catholic orphanage and has a picture of her with a group of nuns in her apartment.
Finally, it must be pointed out that to treat people of colour as interchangeable is in a lot of ways no better than whitewashing. Clarice Ferguson, AKA Blink’s parents were Bahaman immigrants, as established as early her mini-series Blink (2001). Part of her mutation is having purple/pink skin and hair with pointed ears like an elf, but that does not change her ethnicity, culture or family.
However, X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Gifted both cast Asian actresses to play Clarice for some reason. Days of Future Past renamed her Clarice Fong, where she is played by Fan Bingbing, and The Gifted continues this while recasting her with Jamie Chung. Including more Asian representation in media is not a bad thing, but taking away from Black representation to do it, is. POC are not interchangeable token items to randomly drop in a jar to call your show diverse.
In Conclusion
The sad thing is, this list is not even a complete one. A person could also look and ask why a show like Titans (2018) cast a white man to play Dick Grayson when they could have taken the opportunity to better treat his Roma heritage as culturally relevant. A person could also look at Arrow’s Connor Hawke and ask why it is only his Black identity is portrayed, but not his Korean identity. A person could also look at all the exclusion of superheroes of colour altogether from shows and films where they belong, like Karma being the only original New Mutant not to appear in the so-called New Mutants film.
No one is arguing that *insert actor here* is not talented. But it is necessary to ask, are they the right person to play their character, when they are not who their character represents? If not, then to say otherwise would be to say that there is not a more appropriate casting opportunity with someone just as talented out there, that could bring an authenticity and justice to that character. And when it comes to comic books, there is a good chance that character is already beloved by a group of people, too.
The superhero film genre is a big money-maker in this day and age, and these films can be career-changing roles for an actor. Continuing to deny roles that should go to people of colour is part of the reason Hollywood is so white — especially when there is no lack of white superheroes as is.
When Ed Skrien found out that the character he was set to play in Hellboy (2019) was an Asian man in the comics, he stepped down, reinforcing the importance of appropriate casting:
“It is clear that representing this character in a culturally accurate way holds significance for people, and that to neglect this responsibility would continue a worrying tendency to obscure ethnic minority stories and voice in the Arts. I feel it is important to honour and respect that. Therefore I have decided to step down so the role can be cast appropriately.”
If casting directors are going in the wrong direction, then actors can lead them in a right one. Because fans pointed out the wrong casting choice, and because Skrien listened, the role of Major Ben Daimio instead went to Daniel Dae Kim. This is a story that should serve as positive example to others in the future.
Because there certainly is a lot of past to make up for.
