The Mortal Instruments Author Takes Stand Against Hollywood Whitewashing

Thank you Ms. Clare, I appreciate you doing this very much.

It is staggering to me that people would write letters to an author telling them that their characters should be white. It’s absolutely horrifying and disgusting. That shouldn’t be something you have to defend, but I’m glad she’s doing it. It would be nice to see people who look like me in real roles on television and in film.

I love the Mortal Instruments and I’m glad that Clare is standing up to whitewashing. Can’t wait for the movie to come out.

While I do not like her books (but really like “The Very Secret Diaries” series), I commend Clare for talking about this issue. :)

Ah, Cassie. I’ve followed your career since your fanfic days, and even if I was never a big fan (outside of The Very Secret Diaries of the Fellowship of the Ring- please finish it), you continue to impress and inspire.

The letter didn’t really say that the character should be white. I suspect it’s like when so many people flipped out about Rue being black- the book described her as “dark skinned” and a lot of readers didn’t make that connection. Plenty of the comments I saw didn’t even remember that part of her description, either. I bet this letter-writer just missed it, too.

Kudos to her.

I’ve always been a fan of Cassandra Clare and this is definitely one of the reasons why. Her inclusiveness in the stories she writes is a huge factor. Additionally, Magnus is an openly gay character with a very significant role in the books–in her entire series, since he’s in all of them, even the Infernal Devices one. He will also be in a wonderfully complicated relationship with one of the other major characters.

Well, bi-sexual, but this timeline, he is in love with a man.  (In the Infernal Devices timeline, it was clear that he once had a past with a woman)

Damn, I should read more carefully.

Standard issue Cultural Marxism.  Race doesn’t matter….unless it can benefit a non-White!

Does she have any input of why a NORSE god was cast as BLACK in the movie THOR?   Oh, “race doesn’t matter” THEN, right? 

Let’s see how this movie does in comparison to LOTR….care to place any bets?

And let me know when they make a movie about the Zebra killings.  What, you never heard of that?  That isn’t by mistake.  If anything, Hollywood is flagrantly anti-White.  Note that all villians are White (can’t be otherwise according to the dictates of Political Correctness.)  I am by no means the first to notice such things.

You are a buffoon.

This is very nice to read. It makes me excited now for the adaptation in a way that I wasn’t before.

Oh, and we should never forget the abominable travesty that was The Last Airbender movie. That is probably the prime, number one example of white washing in the last few years.

so she is the same person? I was wondering

That’s my understanding! I first heard about her epic, novel-length Harry Potter fanfics, though I couldn’t really get into them myself. Later on I’d heard she got herself into original fiction, which wasn’t at all surprising considering how devoted her fanfic audience already was!

At risk of feeding the troll, there’s a very easy explanation on the Norse god question you’ve issued: the gods were supposed to have ruled the whole world, not just Norway, so why WOULD they be strictly Caucasian?

“Race doesn’t matter….unless it can benefit a non-White!”

That is actually the point. Characters with unspecified or non-plot relevant races should be able to be cast as ANY race. But 99% of the time they’re cast as white people anyway. Your problem is that you assume that every character is white unless you’re told otherwise. It makes me sick when white people act like they’re being victimized.

Also, are you seriously complaining that a Norse god was portrayed in a way you find “unrealistic”? Have you met any Norse gods lately?

Who else thinks Morgan Freeman would have been a badass Dumbledore instead of that crazy awful angry Michael Gambon? As far as I know Dumbledore is never specified as being white, just that he has blue eyes…

 The villain in “Serenity” was played by the actor that played Heimdall in “Thor”, you git.

I have never read her books before, but now I will. Reading through this post as well as the tumblr posts that she links to in her blog, is literally bringing me to tears. I’ve gone through so much of my life trying to bring this issue to the people I know off the internet, but I’ve always been stonewalled by apathy or obliviousness. By people, I include a whole Chinese community in the city I lived for fourteen years in. White-washing is so ingrained. I’m ecstatic at seeing such well-articulated support, especially right now.

Unbreakable (2000) Villain, Sam Jackson

Demolition Man (1993) Villain Wesley Snipes

New Jack City (1991) Villain Wesley Snipes

Highlander: The Final Dimension (1994) Villain,
Mario Van Peeples.

Big Trouble in Little China(1986) Villain, James Hong

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) Villain, Jett Li

Those were the ones that popped into my in
the first five minutes after reading the post.  I didn’t even want to list all of the cowboy movies I watched as a kid when the “damn dirty injuns” were the villains.  

I’m not convinced Freeman has the right edge of insanity that I associate with Dumbledore.  But I loved him as God in that Jim Carey movie.  

True.  It’s said in the movie that they are simple a sufficiently advanced culture who came to earth ages ago, fought a war, and went back home.  The Norse people merely adopted them as their gods, but they themselves aren’t Norse.  They’re Asgardian.  They could be anything. 

Seconded.

Just watched the trailer for the most recent one (over 10 years old) and Jackson doesn’t sound like a bad guy… Guess I will have to take your word for it. Rest are about 20 years old.

I think 360man’s main problem is that he’s racist, and that he’s a Man Rights dude.

Read them all. Loved her even then. :D

Chiwetel Ejiofor played the Operative, Idris Elba played Heimdall.

But yes, that dude is a serious git.

No, he wasn’t. Idris Elba was in “Thor.” The villain in “Serenity” is an actor named Chiwetel Ejiofor.

The point stands though. There are non-white villains. And characters for whom race is not a defining aspect of their background don’t have to default to white.

Wondering why they cast a Norse  go in the Thor movie as black and why this “sacrilege” was considered ok? Here is a very succinct explanation that also can be used to answer all you other lovely arguments. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/3183-Skin-Deep  You’re welcome :)

 Thanks for the link–that’s a good one!

 Yeah, I realized my error later. He’s still a git.

Lots of Albinos around.  What about European-American or Caucasian actors?  Since we’re mentioning everyone elses cultural/racial background

This is incredibly refreshing to read. Every single day I come across another form of whitewashing, or find out about cases way after the fact, so to see someone not just stand up but demand that their books not be whitewashed is unbelievably inspiring. It’s easy to lose hope sometimes. 

I hope more authors and writers follow in her footsteps. If they do, we might see change happen in Hollywood just a bit sooner. 

Going to second your comment. I understand firsthand the apathy and obliviousness you speak of when it comes to these issues, with a healthy dose of denial, entitlement and anger as well. Biracial woman who grew up in a 90% white environment speaking, here. 

I’m ecstatic too. c:

This is just another case of people using “white” as the default color/race when participating in fiction. It’s quite common. I’m not shocked by this story at all.

After reading about the controversy of Rue’s character being Black and the racist outrage it spurned a few months ago, I’ll admit, I felt really sad and defeated. It reintroduced insecurities about my skin color and how other people see me as a Black girl. People don’t realize how racist remarks affect its victims because there’s no scar, no evidence, but by simply reading those tweets and comments, I felt horrible about myself.  It’s not a happy place to be, and I don’t want to go back to that kind of mindset.

Reading this made me smile. It gives me a some hope. Cassandra Clare is making a huge difference by just talking about whitewashing and getting people to realize that “omgz, non-white people can be major characters, too!”

The worst offenders would have to be the creators of the two Earthsea adaptations.  In 
Ursula K. Le Guin’s own words:  
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/GedoSenkiResponse.html/

I’m torn on this– (I don’t read the books but came across Clare’s posting from a different link, then saw it here)– on one hand, I applaud any objection to whitewashing. It’s silly and astounding that people would try to get away with it. On the other hand, as a biracial individual, also white & Asian, I’m sick of being interchanged with “Asian” (by whites) and “white” (by Asians.)

In a 50-50 situation, Clare is prizing the Asian, and it could be interpreted, however well-meaning, as rather Orientalist. I get the statement she’s making and stance she’s taking, but it smacks of the one-drop rule/hypodescent. That being said, she’s also the creator of the character and it’s up to her to determine how Asian or Caucasian her character appears.

Still– in the atmosphere and environment that is today’s media– I always enjoy being exposed to new (to us) talent that would otherwise not have gotten exposure, especially in such a huge venue.

 She is!  She just dropped the I from her name and deleted all of her old work right before she got published to cut her ties from the Harry Potter / Lord of the Rings community. 

 Pity that they were all plagiarized and that mortal instruments is just a modified Ron/Ginny story she wrote.

While I have *many* issues with Cassandra Cla*I*re, props to her for standing up for her creations.

Old, silly, and hater argument.

 This is all so very Fifty Shades of Grey.

He is British, though, so that still doesn’t work. And Gambon was awesome.

You’re still an idiot for those LOK posts you made though. 

Okay!

It’s nice to see that Cassandra Clare has matured a bit, she came off as quite insufferable brat during her fic writing days (although Very Secret Diaries were hilarious) and that and the  plaigarism bit kind of turned me off from reading her YA stuff. I am glad she is willing to talk about race and why whitewashing isn’t cool. 

yeah, what about whitey? At least the Albinos have “Powder”! Seriously, this comment is hilariously missing the point.

Not a hater argument if it’s true and documented.

Thanks for saying this better than I could. I felt she was almost fetishizing his ethnicity, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Meh. I like to see her being vocal about this issue, but it kind of moots itself when all of the POC in her books are half-white, and secondary. All of the main characters, the Shadowhunters, the “heroes”, are whiter than white. I’m bored of white heroines, bored of their white love interests, bored of the love triangle full of white people, and bored of the same sense of woman-on-woman rivalry that her books smack of (there is absolutely no sense of female solidarity anywhere in her books). Sure, she talks loudly about race and gender issues, but do any of these things come into play in her published works? Not really. We’re still following five white heroes, and then to top it off, we are expected to nod our heads along to the sound of racial representation? No, thanks. I’ll pass.