UK Edition
#StarringJohnCho: the campaign fighting Hollywood’s whitewashing problem with a healthy dose of wit
John Cho, star of the Harold and Kumar movies and the rebooted Star Trek franchise, is one of a small handful of Asian-American actors to be regularly cast in mainstream Hollywood films.
He’s now unwittingly become the face of a campaign fighting against the whitewashing of the US film industry. #StarringJohnCho is a website and viral campaign that takes movie posters and replaces the leading man’s face with Cho’s.
William Yu, who started the campaign, explains: “#StarringJohnCho is a social movement that literally shows you what it would look like if today's Hollywood blockbusters cast an Asian-American actor - specifically, John Cho - as their leading man.
“Today, only 1% of lead roles go to Asians. But if studies show that films with diverse casts result in higher box office numbers and higher returns on investments for film companies, why doesn't Hollywood cast lead actors to reflect this fact?
"But a future is coming when an Asian-American actor is the next tent pole star. #StarringJohnCho creates a reality that brings that vision of tomorrow's Hollywood to today.”
“It isn’t easy being an Asian-American actor in Hollywood,” wrote Keith Chow in the New York Times last month. “Despite some progress made on the small screen a majority of roles that are offered to Asian-Americans are limited to stereotypes that wouldn’t look out of place in an ’80s John Hughes comedy.
“This problem is even worse when roles that originated as Asian characters end up going to white actors. Unfortunately, these casting decisions are not a relic of Hollywood’s past, like Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of I. Y. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but continue right up to the present.”
The issue of whitewashing roles originally written for Asian actors rose to the fore last month with the release of the first image of Scarlett Johannson in Hollywood's remake of Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell.
Ming-Na Wen, who portrays Melinda May in TV series Agents of SHIELD, was one of many actors of Asian origin to express anger over Johannson's casting. “Nothing against Scarlett Johansson, “ she tweeted. “In fact, I’m a big fan. But everything against this whitewashing of Asian role.”
Jon Tsuei, a California-based comic-book writer, said: “Ghost in the Shell … is a pillar in Asian media. This casting is not only the erasure of Asian faces but a removal of the story from its core themes.”
"I'm tired of hearing from people that they can't 'see' an Asian American actor playing the romantic lead or the hero,” said Yu, “so I created #StarringJohnCho to literally show you."
As a disclaimer on the website points out, John Cho is not affiliated with #StarringJohnCho.
"As much as the campaign is about John Cho, #StarringJohnCho is also about the greater conversation of how Asian Americans are represented in film," Yu told the BBC. "But I would love to hear from him!"
• Hollywood 'whitewashing' row returns over Scarlett Johansson's Ghost in the Shell role