Whitewashing the Movies: Asian Erasure and White Subjectivity in U.S. Film Culture

Whitewashing the Movies addresses the popular practice of excluding Asian actors from playing Asian characters in film. Media activists and critics have denounced contemporary decisions to cast White actors to play Asians and Asian Americans in movies such as Ghost in the Shell and Aloha. The purpose of this book is to apply the concept of “whitewashing” in stories that privilege White identities at the expense of Asian/American stories and characters. To understand whitewashing across vari...