Whitewashing the Movies

Asian Erasure and White Subjectivity in U.S. Film Culture

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by David C. Oh

Type

Studies

Subject

Sociology

Keywords

sociology, Asian Americans, racial issues, racism

Publishing date

2021

Publisher

Rutgers University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 210 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-1-9788086-2-1

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Book Presentation:
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 various contexts, the book analyzes films produced in Hollywood, Asian American independent production, and US-China co-productions. Through the analysis, the book examines the ways in which whitewashing matters in the project of Whiteness and White racial hegemony. The book contributes to contemporary understanding of mediated representations of race by theorizing whitewashing, contributing to studies of Whiteness in media studies, and producing a counter-imagination of Asian/American representation in Asian-centered stories.

About the Author:
DAVID C. OH is an associate professor of communication arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah.

Press Reviews:
"David C. Oh’s Whitewashing the Movies: Asian Erasure and White Subjectivity in U.S. Film Culture makes a strong case that these are still relevant approaches for scholars and critics seeking to make sense of Hollywood’s continued displacement of Asian characters on-screen, even when box-office analysis confirms over and over that stories about nonwhite characters reap significant financial returns....[I]f Oh’s target is Hollywood, he strikes it with example after example, a repetitive bull’s-eye that shows no mercy for the liberal hypocrisy and creative stagnation of Hollywood’s 'colorblind' racism."
— Film Quarterly

See the publisher website: Rutgers University Press