ALOHA the movie: The complainers have missed the mark
Boy, oh boy, have people been getting up in arms about the new Cameron Crowe movie, Aloha. As a half-Chinese, half-Irish woman who grew up in Hawaii, possibly the only one my non-Hawaii friends know personally, I have been hit several times this week with links to articles decrying the whitewashing of the Hawaii-made Hollywood film. Most notably upsetting to these observers was the choice of Emma Stone in the lead role of a Chinese-Hawaiian-Swedish woman with the surname Ng. (If you don’t know it, Ng, in this case, is a Chinese name.)
Now, before I continue, I want to make clear a couple of things. The first is that I have not yet seen this film; I’ve only seen the trailer. The second is that I work in the film industry and have some pretty strong ideas about ways in which Hollywood could diversify roles, culturally, as well as when it comes to roles for women. I understand that Hollywood is a money-making machine run by fearful, aging, white men and the product reflects this. (I’m looking at you Expendables 4.) I’m not here to stick up for the choices of the producers of the film.
But what I want to say is this: The complainers have got it wrong, and there’s a whiff of reverse racism in their outrage.
Casting a bunch of white people in a film set in Hawaii is not inherently wrong or racist. It might be a wasted opportunity to give actors of different backgrounds a chance, but it’s not fundamentally wrongheaded.
As far as I can tell, this film is about military people in Hawaii, and not really about ordinary Hawaiians. I can confirm for you that there are plenty of white military people in Hawaii. There are also plenty of latinos, African-Americans and Asians in the military, but if you see a big strapping white guy with his shirt tucked in, speaking with a mid-Western accent in a bar in Hawaii, there’s a good chance he’s military. We’ll add to this point that the military folks do often tend to stick together. They don’t always have family ties to Hawaii, they work and live together, and they are often in Hawaii for a definite time, so I’d guess they might be less invested in laying down roots in the islands. A film featuring a bunch of white military guys hanging out with each other in Hawaii is not that unrealistic.
Now, to the scandalous decision of casting the Emma Stone as a Chinese-Hawaiian Swede with the surname Ng. OK, I’ll confess that I initially wanted to get on board with the complainers and get indignant about giving the role of part-Chinese woman to a blond, green-eyed actress. But the truth is, in Hawaii, where genetic mixing rivals that of Brazil, it’s entirely possible to get a blond Chinese-Hawaiian Swede.
Here’s a photo of one. (Yes, she is Chinese-Hawaiian-Swedish.) She’s a friend from high school, and she never lost that naturally bleach blond hair. The man in the photo is her father. Yes, that man had a role in producing that blue-eyed baby! That’s Hawaiian genetics!
Here’s another photo of a school friend. She’s part-Hawaiian. And she kind of looks like Emma Stone!
And here’s yet another photo of a more famous mix, Alex Chung. See the Chinese surname? She got that from her half-Chinese dad.
So let me ask the complainers this: Is it not just as racist to demand an actor or actress to have a certain background just because it fits the idea of WHAT YOU THINK a combination of races should look like? Would you have felt better to have seen someone in the role who is 100 percent Asian? Or Latina? (Close enough, right? She’d be brown at least.) Or should the role have been limited to actresses actually of Chinese-Hawaiian-Swedish descent (and that would maybe leave only my blond friend, not an actress, and…?)
The truth is, Hawaii IS really mixed, and while MOST people of mixed races are not blond and blue-eyed, MANY ARE. And would it be fair to deny them their background and ties to Hawaii, just because they need to use more sunscreen? Of course not.
What is far more worrying about Stone in the role is her utter failure to assume a natural Hawaiian-English speech pattern (a complaint that could be made of pretty much EVERY film made in Hawaii), and the fact that I hear Aloha is a real stinker. But it’s probably a stinker because it’s a stinker, and not because everyone’s white.
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