More than just a ‘feeling’
The latest scandal to rattle the world of online social politics, is as follows: some of the makers of the upcoming Disney film ‘Aladdin’, have opened up about the difficult time they’re having, finding an appropriate brown actor to play the lead role.
Naturally, the internet responded in the most hilarious of ways. Among billions of Arabs and Indians who populate this planet, surely it must not be too difficult to find a few who can sing and dance in front of a camera, and deliver dialogue reasonably well in proper – albeit accented – English.
More cynical liberal commenters have accused Disney of having no interest in finding an ethnically appropriate actor to play Aladdin; arguing that they are simply putting up a theatre before inevitably selecting a browned-up white actor to play the lead role. Such cynicism may not be entirely unreasonable, because Hollywood does seem to have a mortifying history of white-washing.
Such objections may appear not just trivial, but utterly irrelevant in view of the larger political dilemmas we face. But there is good reason to take such matters seriously.
For one, the argument that there are “more important” issues out there is fundamentally illogical. None of us has the capacity or the wisdom quantify the ‘objective’ importance. Surely, a matter may be more or less important, based on the individual or group being primarily affected.
Secondly, the way the Aladdin controversy is being dressed up in the international media, is distressingly identical to the problem that just about any marginalised group in the world faces. Even when the media agrees that a brown movie role must not be handed to a white actor, the argument is mostly about not hurting the ‘feelings’ of brown people, and the easy-to-malign “social justice warriors” (SJWs) who advocate for them.
This extremely problematic misrepresentation is not new. Although it is true that the whitewashing brown characters in films “offends” many people of colour, the reason for why this is offensive is never adequately discussed. This ‘reason’ has absolutely nothing to do with how thin-skinned or choosy the racial minorities and their liberal allies are; it has to do with hard politico-economics issues.
Hollywood remains to this date a predominantly ‘white’ establishment, with no dearth of white characters. Only a handful of opportunities are made available each year to produce mainstream movies with non-white characters in the lead, and many of these roles are given to white actors instead.
In a parallel universe where racial harmony has been achieved, this would never be a problem. All stories evolve, and if race is not particularly important to the character’s story, surely it shouldn’t be a major concern if a white character is played by an Asian actor, or vice versa. In fact, anti-SJWs sometime point towards the fact that white characters too sometimes get played by actors of colour, like John Bosley in the sequel to Charlie’s Angels played by Bernie Mac – a black actor.
What’s noteworthy, however, is that there are far fewer non-white characters in Hollywood than white ones, and they too are usually secondary characters. It is only 8-10% of the times, by some experts estimate, that we find non-white characters in the lead in mainstream Hollywood films. When these limited roles are also handed back to white actors, this leads to a serious socioeconomic – and possibly political – problem for the non-white communities.
If you’re a brown actor in Hollywood waiting for ages for an audition call to play something other than a terrorist or a taxi driver, an opportunity to play someone like ‘Aladdin’ can be a game-changer. However, given Hollywood’s history, this role may be awarded instead to a white actor who is internationally renowned.
Why is the brown actor not internationally renowned and not capable of creating the same buzz as George Clooney or Leonardo diCaprio? Because he’s never had the opportunity to showcase his talents, and is perpetually stuck living off secondary roles with heavily limited screen time.
It’s the same cyclical nonsense that young workers in just about any profession often complain of: you can’t get a job because you don’t have enough experience, and you can’t get enough experience because you don’t have a job.
We know enough about oppression to write a guidebook for the upcoming subjugator class of tomorrow. One of the rules of maintaining oppression, is pretending that the concerns of the dominant class are based on realpolitik and stone-cold logic, while the underprivileged are only interested in discussing their “feelings”.
That may be so, but those “feelings” too arise from the lack of access to socioeconomic opportunities that the dominant class takes for granted.
In Pakistan’s case, consider the act of referring to a Christian citizen by a slur that’s associated with sanitary workers. This is not a simple matter of rudeness at par with using a mobile phone in a movie theatre. It is an act of reinforcing a toxic culture in which Christians are systematically confined to the lowest rungs of capitalism, by making the society perceive them as nothing more than cleaners.
What hurts the Christian person’s feelings is not the slur per se, but the discrimination of which this slur is a verbal manifestation.
This is true for virtually any interaction between a privileged and an underprivileged group of people, irrespective of the racial, ethnic, economic, or sexual context. The demands of the marginalised people and their allies are always trivialised as a matter of easily-hurt feelings, and not a case of socioeconomic deprivation.
It’s important that whenever we accuse a large group of people of being thin-skinned and too easily offended, we make an effort of understanding the reasons behind the offense. It is not a psychological issue of emotions running amok. It is political resistance against the real-world effects of that offense.
