Exodus: Gods and Kings has ignited a fire within the public’s eyes, because the public claim that the movie’s director, Ridley Scott, made a poor decision — and possible racist one — casting predominantly white actors as the leads of the movie. Exodus: Gods and Kings follows Egyptian Prince Moses and his journey through hardships. The key word in the previous sentence is Egyptian, not to be confused with white, because in the public’s eye Ridley Scott was confused. For example, the main character cast of the movie includes; Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Maria Valverde, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, and frighteningly the list could go on. The similarity between all of these actors is that they are all white, interestingly, the public is spot on with its criticism with the amount of white actors playing Egyptian roles. In lieu of this uproar, I took it upon myself to investigate other potentially racist films, and see what other writers had to say about them, and answer the question: why do we keep seeing films with racist elements in them?
Surprisingly, I found that there are many films with potential subliminal racist elements within them. Subliminal meaning: at first glance one might not see the film as racist, but it very much so could be at a second glance. I found two articles online that rated all films with potential racist grounds. The first article, from Complex Magazine, takes fifty movies and rates them in numerical order. Gremlins happens to be number fifty, while The Birth of a Nation is rated number one. The writer of this article argues that most of these movies are racist, because they pick on stereotypes, and use the stereotypes in a negative way. For example, the Gremlins may be depicting little, green skinned, monster, but the actions of the monsters, such as break dancing and looting, are based off of negative stereotypes of the poor black community. The second article by, What Culture, takes a similar approach discussing racism among films, because the article also points out stereotypes within films. Another similarity this article has with Complex Magazine’s article is that there is a cross-over between what movies were selected to make the list. For instance, there were eight total movies that were similar between the two, in fact, The Birth of a Nation made the cut as number one for both articles. So, clearly there is agreement among journalist that certain movies could be considered racist.
However, these articles both fall short for discussing why Hollywood believes it is okay to, for example, cast white actors for Egyptians, or use negative stereotypes, in their films. The truth is, the blame falls on two parties, the first being Hollywood, and the second being the customers (yes, us). Hollywood makes the films, so at the end of the day whatever comes out of their many studios is essentially their idea, their product. This is where the customer comes in, Hollywood runs their movies through “test audiences”, meaning before their movie hits theaters, a small sample size of people have already seen the movie. These “test audiences” have the power of deciding what they like or what they do not like about the movie. The unfortunate truth about the “test audience” is that they can sometimes dislike certain elements within a film. A good example of this is the movie, Romeo Must Die. The movie follows a plot similar to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; however, this film decides to cast an Asian man (Jet Li) and a black women (Aaliyah). Apparently, Romeo and Juliet’s final kiss scene between Jet Li and Aaliyah did not test will with the “test audience”, so the producers ripped it out completely.
This relationship between Hollywood and the consumer is relatively simple: Hollywood makes movies based on what people will go and pay to see. So, if we were to find a solution to this problem with racism in film the answer is relatively simple. The public should not pay to go see these potentially racist films. One could take a step farther, and join the crowds of people who are in an uproar over the film Exodus: Gods and Kings.
Motion Picture Prejudice 