Thoughts on In The Heights
I loved the movie. The music is great, the dancing is great, it had me crying and laughing in all the right places. It’s a great movie and I highly recommend it.
They should definitely have had more Afro-Latines in the main cast and not just the background roles. Something like 75% of all Dominicans are Black, and this is a story about Dominicans. And yet, the main cast is very light-skinned except for the two black guys. It’s a much better representation ratio than in the standard movie, but it should have been better.
I’m not sure why everybody’s dumping on Miranda himself for this; he was neither the director nor the producer nor the casting director nor the writer of this movie. He was not in a position of power. Unless you’re J.K. Rowling, the amount of power you have over the movie being made of your story is … very limited. Now, Miranda has enough star power that he probably had more influence than the average creator, and he has acknowledged that he should have advocated more for darker-skinned actors, but even if he had done so … I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t have affected the casting much.
If you’re going to point the finger at Miranda, the place to do it is the stage version, which is … on average, about the same shade as the movie. Miranda did have casting power on the stage version.
For movie casting, the person to pick a bone with is Jon Chu, the actual director. Who, according to his interviews, didn’t know that there were Black Latines! Um. That’s. That’s a basic research fail. Like I said, something like 75% of all Dominicans have African heritage, how the hell can you do a faithful portrayal of a community when you don’t even know basic demographics? When you’re that clueless, you’re going to fuck up. And he could have educated himself, he could have learned enough about the community he was portraying to do a better job, and he didn’t, and that’s on him.
I am particularly disturbed by the cast members going “but they auditioned Afro-Latines for these roles, they just picked the best people for the role and the best people happened to be light skinned!” Excuse me. This is the exact same argument that people use to excuse all-white casts, and it is just as wrong here as it is there. All it means is that the gut reaction of the director and casting director was racist, and they didn’t put enough thought into it to compensate for the prejudices they’ve absorbed over their lifetime.
The other thing with the movie and race, which I haven’t seen mention of, is that the movie drops the subplot about Nina’s Dad being racist about her dating a Black guy. Not only would that have added some depth to the story, it would also have at least ameliorated and addressed the casting they went with. (And, again, Miranda was not the one making the call about what subplots to keep and which to scrap, the only thing he was able to affect was saving Piragua Guy by getting himself cast as Piragua Guy.)
While I agree that this is an issue that needs to be addressed, I am sad that it’s the main conversation about the movie. Because there are a million all-white movies out there that are much worse in terms of diversity and representation, and which never get this kind of scrutiny. And you just know that white directors and producers are looking at this and at the box office returns and deciding to stick with all-white or majority-white or white-focused stories because it’s “safer.”
And with all the issues it has, In The Heights is still a great movie well worth seeing.
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