Is "Cloud Atlas" Racefail?

I was hoping to write this post after seeing "Cloud Atlas" and getting some more information about the controversy, but there's already been some significant discussion going on, so I thought I'd better at least get some preliminary thoughts in.

"Cloud Atlas," the highly anticipated new film from the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer contains multiple interlocking stories where the same actors play different characters in each story. Settings include a dystopian future Korea, 1930s Belgium, modern day California, and a far distant future inhabited by the remnants of a once technologically advanced society. The cast includes a mix of Caucasian and non-Caucasian actors, including Halle Berry and Korean actress Doona Bae. Several of the characters' ethnicities have been specifically been changed from what they were in the original David Mitchell novel, to accommodate the actors, but there are also multiple cases where the actors use prosthetics and makeup to affect different ethnicities for their different roles in each story. So we've got Berry and Bae made up to look like European noblewomen in one segment, Jim Sturgess with epicanthic folds in the Korean segment, and Hugh Grant covered in tribal war paint to play a cannibal in yet another.

In a perfect world, the artistic decision of the filmmakers to do this wouldn't be a problem. Reincarnation is clearly a big theme in "Cloud Atlas," and in theory it's a perfectly legitimate choice to want to have the same actors recurring as different characters in the different stories as they progress through time. However, we've got a lot of cultural baggage to deal with any time someone of one ethnicity plays someone of another ethnicity. Changing a character's ethnicity to allow a particular actor to portray them can be problematic enough, especially when whitewashing removes opportunities for non-Caucasian actors to take the spotlight. However, using makeup to change an actor's appearance enough to allow them to play a different ethnicity simply isn't done anymore. Blackface, brownface, and yellowface are absolutely not okay 99% of the time because it's insensitive, inaccurate, and extremely difficult to do well. The last time someone got away with it in a major film was when Ben Stiller put Robert Downey Jr. in blackface in "Tropic Thunder" to poke fun at cultural appropriation.

I want to emphasize again that I haven't seen "Cloud Atlas." However, from the trailers that have been released and from the stills that have been circulating online, there are certainly some problematic spots here. The Caucasian actors playing Asian characters look very off, and the non-Caucasian actors in whiteface (oh yes, there's a term for that too) are incredibly distracting. The only reason this works at all is because the filmmakers are being consistent about their approach. Every major member of the cast goes through several drastic changes in appearance and everybody winds up playing someone of a different color, ethnicity, or race at some point. However, this doesn't mean that all the tricky appropriation and representational issues aren't still there and they don't need to be addressed. If this is one of those incredibly rare times when actors playing different ethnicities is appropriate, it needs to be recognized as the exception rather than the rule.

I'm less concerned about the use of the brownface and the whiteface in the actual movie than I am with how some of the actors and filmmakers are going to try and sell it, and how certain members of the press and the critical community are going to try to spin in. I worry that they'll defend the practice of using makeup and prosthetics to play another ethnicity by appealing to artistic integrity and freedom of expression, while ignoring the very real sensitivities that put them out of use in the first place. If I were doing press for the film, I'd emphasize at every opportunity that the context of the film's narrative and the uniqueness of the story are what make the practice appropriate in this one, very special instance. Defending it in broader terms than that is guaranteed to create more controversy.

At this point, I'm not sure if "Cloud Atlas" deserves defending yet. Maybe there are more problems with the race-swapping that aren't apparent, or some particularly egregious examples of caricature or other racial insensitivity in the film. The Hugh Grant cannibal certainly doesn't look very promising. However, I think I've got a good sense of what the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer are trying to do here, and I have to salute their ambition. Whether they managed to pull it off, however, is another matter entirely. I'll see the film in a couple of weeks and if I find I have anything more to say about the matter, or if the controversy gets more interesting, I'll write up another post. Otherwise, I'll just save it for the review.
---