Let there be white
If you went to see the new movie "21" this last weekend, you weren't alone. It was No. 1 at the box office. But this mediocre film, which I gave a lukewarm review to in Friday's 7 magazine, certainly isn't No. 1 in terms of faithfulness to the source material. Lily Tung, writing on the ARTicles blog, reminds us that Hollywood took some big fat liberties with this story, detailed in a book titled "Bringing Down the House," of a bunch of uber-smart college students who figured out a way to outsmart the big Las Vegas casinos:
The real people profiled in Bringing Down the House are actually Asian American, and when Asian-American actors learned that the story was being made into a movie, they rejoiced. Finally, they would have the opportunity to play three-dimensional characters and branch out from their fine portrayals of nerds, waiters, kung fu artists, and refugees.
Studio executives dashed those hopes. They felt that Caucasian actors would make the film more marketable, despite the fact that the characters' ethnicity was essential to the story. The book states that the card-counting scheme was successful partly because the students used their ethnicity to their advantage; in the casinos, a young Asian man betting large amounts of money is less conspicuous than a young white man.
Tung notes that writer/performer Prince Gomolvilas has a monologue titled "21 Reasons Why This Movie Already Sucks," in which he lists 21 reasons one should NOT see the film 21, including:
#7: This is not the kind of movie [Jim Sturgess, who is white] should be in. He actually should've been cast as Ray Charles in Ray or as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland or as Frank Lucas, you know, the Denzel Washington character in American Gangster.
All kidding aside, isn't it just plain weird that a movie that is supposed to be about a bunch of Asian-American students -- and whose plot is affected in part by that ethnicity -- ends up starring Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth? I can't figure out why this is just an odd tidbit about Hollywood playing loose with the facts and not something of massively offensive proportions. If a white director had swooped in and tried to make the story of "The Great Debaters" with mostly white students instead of black, wouldn't there have been an uproar?
Comments:
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but how important is their ethnicity to the story? Your 'Great Debaters' analogy isn't the same. Jeff Ma (the inspiration behind the book's main character Kevin Lewis) has stated that he doesn't care that he's being played by a white actor. In fact, he said he's glad they didn't cast an Asian just because HE is Asian.
Posted by: Bryan Harley at March 31, 2008 6:38 PM
Finished the book a few weeks ago, then heard about the cast. This isn't a joking matter...all the characters but three are Asian American. One is Hispanic (and that makes a difference!), one is the Kevin Spacey character, and one is Kevin (the leads') actual squeeze, an LA Rams cheerleader he meets up with in Las Vegas.
In the book, it's ALL about the blackjack. Kevin has no problem with school loans, that's so not his motivation for participating. He's not 'squeezed in' to the card counting group...rather he knows a couple of the guys, and sees their rich lifestyle, and they select him to participate cuz he's great at math.
Which would make for a boring film. Buncha mathgeeks who excel at card-counting, beating the system. The drama comes from the anxiety, the worry over getting caught, and then actually getting caught. The in-fighting among the group. The ego-trappings of Vegas and big money. The thousands upon thousands of blackjack hands. The winners and losers.
And, based on this last paragraph I just wrote, it doesn't matter WHAT the ethnicity is of the performers.
Sure, they were able to get by cuz big-spending Asian gamblers were more commonplace and expected in the casinos, but the ethnicity didn't make a difference when it came to strapping money on their legs, betting huge, moving from casino to casino, and being on the run from the weathered old white private Dick. Played by a black actor, Laurence Fishburne.
I don't think it makes a huge difference in THIS film, as it might have in Ray, in The Last King, or in American Gangster. The environments in those films were shaped by the ethnicity/geography of the setting.
In '21,' it's all about the drama.
Posted by: Stephen at March 31, 2008 8:17 PM
To Bryan: I agree that my "Great Debaters" analogy isn't the greatest. Ethnicity was the driving force of the plot of that film, whereas with "21" it was more on the periphery. Still, it sounds as if the ethnicity of the main characters in "21" was part of the story, and opinions vary on just how integral it was. What bugs me is this automatic Hollywood assumption that the lead characters have to be white to have a broad "appeal." If this were a fictional story, I guess it'd be one thing, but for a movie supposedly "based on fact," the replacement of Asian-American characters with whites is a pretty telling sign that even though our society talks a lot about diversity, there's still a long ways to go.
And to Stephen: It's interesting that you talk about the "drama" in the book version of "21," because that certainly didn't come through much in the movie. The producers opted to focus on a bland love story (between Sturgess and Bosworth) and an even blander plotline involving the main character's attempt to get into med school. I wanted more tense casino action!
Posted by: Donald Munro at April 1, 2008 11:10 AM
i haven't read the book, but i have seen a few tv specials on the crew of guys, and am pretty sure i've heard one or more on the jim rome show.
the thing that always gets played up is the intensity of gambling, that fear of getting caught, and, as the main card counter guy got too flamboyant and risky, the drama within the group.
i'm not sure i ever realized the guys were asain. in those tv re-enactments, i don't ever remember the players being asain. i'm not disputing their heritage, just saying what i remember. so, perhaps the ethnic portrayals of these guys isn't that important to the actual characters.
Posted by: ed at April 1, 2008 1:37 PM
I can see what you're saying, Donald.
But maybe if "21" was a better movie, we could ignore this casting blunder! Haha.
Posted by: Bryan Harley at April 1, 2008 6:49 PM
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