Kirsten Fitzgerald - "Racebending" in Film

While blackface and yellowface are now acknowledged to be racist and distasteful, the practice of casting white actors to either replace or represent characters of color often endures in the United States. Actors of color are already limited in the roles offered; in 2005, 81.9% of lead actors in movies were white non-Hispanic. When people of color are cast, those roles are often supporting roles and/or laden with stereotypes. Opponents of the practice argue that the casting of white actors for characters of color, or "racebending" limits both the options for people of color working in Hollywood and the way that pop culture consumers view people of color.

Recent controversies surrounding these casting choices include the casting of predominantly white actors to play Asian and Inuit characters in the live-action movie adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, from which the term "racebending" was coined. Notably, the exception to this casting is the "bad guy".

In the original Star Trek series, the famous villain Khan was explicitly described as Sikh, though this was complicated by the casting of Ricardo Montalbán, who, while a man of color, was not actually Sikh or even Asian. However, it was 1967, and it was, like many things in the original Star Trek, still considered revolutionary that a man of color was selected to portray a genetically superior super-human. This year (almost fifty years later), Benedict Cumberbatch, a white British man, played the role of Khan in the Star Trek: Into Darkness, which many critics argue not only contributes to the trend of whitewashing, but sends a much uglier message once one considers the "genetic superiority" of Khan.

On the left, Benedict Cumberbatch. On the right, Ricardo Montalbán.

Original series Khan looks at a portrait of himself, in which he is wearing a traditional Sikh turban.

The critical perspective offers valuable insight into the reasoning behind and the impacts of the practice of racebending. The erasure of people of color from lead roles may serve to reinforce stereotypes when they are cast, as well as contribute to the dominant ideology that white people are somehow more palatable to the overall population, or that white actors are more capable than people of color to portray not only the "default" universal narratives, but also the narratives of people of color themselves.

The following video satirizes and provides further examples of racebending: