Ridley Scott and Rupert Murdoch Try (and Fail) to Diffuse the Racial Debate in Exodus: Gods and Kings

Posted by on December 1st, 2014   Filed under: Drama, Fantasy, Industry News
Source: Variety

exodusdebate

Ever since it was announced that Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton would be playing Moses and Ramses in Ridley Scott’s upcoming film Exodus: Gods and Kings, people have been taking issue with the fact that two white actors would be portraying Egyptians on screen. Hollywood has a long history of doing such things, but audiences are becoming more vocal in their disapproval after movies like 21, The Last Airbender and even The Hunger Games were also called out for similar whitewashing. Now that the release date for Exodus: Gods and Kings is just a couple of weeks away, the debate is only intensifying. Both director Ridley Scott and Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch have attempted to defend the decision, but sadly, in doing so they have only made things worse. First off, here’s what Ridley Scott had to say about the issue:

“I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up.”

Although the financial concerns are obviously the biggest reason for the casting choices, Scott’s response comes across as arrogant and ignorant. He doesn’t seem the least bit apologetic and offers no hope of the situation ever improving. Fortunately for him, his words have now been overshadowed by Rupert Murdoch’s own bone-headed response on Twitter:

Clearly they are both old men who seem completely clueless as to how this could be perceived as racially insensitive. Ultimately, it seems unlikely that any of these complaints will hurt the movie’s box office numbers, but every time the debate is brought up, it increases awareness which is a good thing. What do you think, does the whitewashed cast of Exodus: Gods and Kings bother you? Is there a solution to this problem that actually makes financial sense?



  • Owozifa

    Ridley Scott has always come off as somewhat socially challenged. What he said is probably true. Probably shouldn’t have said anything.

    The rest is just ridiculous to the point of being funny in a sad way.

  • “Since when are South Africans not white? All the ones I know are white.”

  • Todd S. Gallows

    I’m surprised Ridley Scott has managed to stay relevant. His last few movies, especially Robin Hood, Prometheus, and The Counsellor have been duds.

  • 1138sw

    OOOOOHHHH cringe….man talk about no proper PR skills whatsoever! But to be honest I am sure they really don’t care especially Murdoch…I understand the financial need to cast stars vs unknown Egyptian actors for the leads but one would think that explanation could have been revealed/defended in a more subtle manner…but Murdoch is his usual ass$%$%^ self.

  • Jonny Ashley

    Don’t think I’m giving Ridley a free pass on this one, but it sounds like he’s shedding light on a fairly racist system of financiers that he’s dealt with his entire career. Brutally honest response, if not revealing of Scott’s old age and prejudices. Financiers don’t take many risks on non white male actors. Look at the top 200 grossing films of all time, and you can count the number of leading men of color on one hand, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, Chris Tucker, Jamie Foxx, and the kid from Life of Pi.

    And then Rupert goes ahead and reveals, that yes, he the chairman of Fox is in fact a racist. What a telling week on the prevalent racism in America.

  • T. Heilman

    Moses and Ramses played by whities?
    Chuck Heston and Yul Brynner must be spinning in their tombs!

  • ReelJunkie

    The wording of Ridley’s response is so insensitive. He sounds old and out of touch.

  • Lori Cerny

    Well, Sean, let’s not lay blame on their being “old men”. Ageism is not a reason for their comments as not EVERY elderly person is biased; although, you seem to be heading in that direction based on your past podcast remarks. :)

    Wasn’t there a comment about confusing Lawrence Fishburne with Samuel L. Jackson?!

    Eurocentric would be better, or saying that they are out of touch with contemporary society.

    To paraphrase a great American, “Can’t we all just be politically correct?”

    That said, I will not being watching this film, regardless of the casting choices.

  • Flo Lieb

    Clearly they should’ve cast Egyptian actors for the lead parts. Like…eh…that one guy. You know who I mean. That one Egyptian actor, he would have made a great Moses or Ramses. Everyone loves that guy!

  • Sean

    Not saying their age excuses their ignorance, but it certainly seems like a possible reason for it.

    I don’t remember confusing Laurence Fishburne and Samuel L. Jackson personally (maybe I did) but I do remember discussing the fact that it’s a pretty common mistake that plenty of other people make. Either way, there’s a big difference between that and how these guys have justified the casting of Exodus.

  • Anthony

    I have a question: How come when we get a black person to play a fictional character that is White, we can’t say anything or else we’ll be racist, but if a white person is playing a character that “should” be non white, we’re allowed to lose our shit and accuse everyone of “whitewashing”? This may be a different case because Moses and Ramses are potentially non-fictional characters, but we still see this double standard with fictional characters. When Michael B. Jordan is cast in Fantastic Four, complaining makes you racist (I was not one of the people who complained, just to put that out there), yet when, say, Jake gyllenhaal is cast in Prince of Persia, it is open season to complain about that without a similar race card being allowed to be played.

  • Sean

    I think you kind of answered your own question. When it comes to comic book characters, they are usually re-envisioned and revamped to keep up with the times anyway. Their race is not necessarily a key component of who they are, it just fell to the default colour of the time.

    As far as Exodus goes, there aren’t a lot of characters of colour in major Hollywood blockbusters, so to take one of those obvious casting opportunities and simply ignore it is pretty offensive to a lot of people.

  • Anthony

    But I gave an example of a fictional non-white character played by a white actor, and people flipped over it. It’s a video game character, yes, but stillthe same principle I find. Not to mention all the examples you gave of white washing fictional characters. Are those not open to re-interpretation the same way that comic book characters are?

  • Sean

    In the case of Prince of Persia, he is a fictional video game character but his race is right in the name. Kind of hard to argue that he should be white. And it is still set against a historical backdrop as well.

  • DamnDirtyApe

    Racism is always a one way street, don’t ya know. Sure it’s ridiculous to have a black Asgardian, considering the whole theme of the entire culture is based on white Northern European Norse mythology, but like I said, this sort of issue only goes one way.

    But as much as I hate putting minorities into white roles for PC reasons, I hate modern movies that put white actors into clearly minority roles. Bale, Edgerton, Weaver etc all look laughably bad in the trailers. So bad that it almost seems like a joke. Even his haircut looks modern.

    Take a look at Apocalypto as example of a film with actors perfectly suited to the nature of the movie. Those non famous, non white actors made the movie feel authentic and believable. Hats off to Gibson for having the balls to use that cast, and then have the whole film spoken in Mayan. Makes crap like Gods and Kings and Noah look pathetic and gutless in comparison.

    And why the hell does Scott simply HAVE to make a giant expensive film that can’t get green lit without white actors? Does every movie he makes have to have an enormous budget? “Sorry boys – I refuse to make movie with budget under 150 million these days”

  • Matt

    totally agree on the Apocalypto point — Slumdog Millionaire is another example. Instead, we’re probably getting another lifeless Ridley Scott “epic” in the vein of Robin Hood and Kingdom of Heaven where every actor has a British accent

  • Loren

    No problem with it at all..If you got the money, get the actors. Some foreign films will get a A-list actor just to make money too. I probably would have left out Ripley and Knish (Sigourney Weaver and John Turturro), I’ll let Ben Kingsley slide. Just having Bale and Edgerton works for me. I’ll see if the overall casting pulls me out of the film or not when I see it.

  • Flo Lieb

    Wasn’t Gyllenhaal’s character in Prince of Persia adopted anyway? So he could be all kinds of races and still be a “prince of Persia”.

    Besides, there was some – minor – backlash after Michael Jordan was cast as Human Torch. People seemed to have no issues with Sammy Jackson turning Nick Fury from white to black though.

  • Michael M

    Hollywood keep insisting that the Worldwide Moviegoers are so racist that they would not go watch a movie if it is not lead by a White Man!!!

  • Sean

    Nick Fury was black in The Ultimates, so there was already a precedent set in the source material.

  • LordAwesome

    So Christian Bale shouldn’t be allowed to play Moses simply because he wasn’t boen Egyptian?

    Fuckin’ discrimination, man.

  • Lisa

    You’re making a very bad case here. The fact of the matter is that white people playing parts that are supposed to be non-white happens ALL THE TIME, whereas the opposite (you don’t even give good examples) are rare instances.

    I also have a feeling that you are writing this with an agenda…

  • Guest

    ” Slumdog Millionaire is another example.”

    Hahahahhahah, what!? What kind of “example” is that? Are you saying that it could have happened that they would have cast white people in the role of Indians?!

  • Lisa

    Yea, but that’s cause Samuel L. Jackson is a bad motherfucker.

  • Matt

    No, I’m simply saying that movies without recognizable white people can be successful.

  • Anthony

    No agenda here. I promise. It’s just a bit of a (non-huge, admittedly) double standard i’ve noticed.

    And it doesn’t matter how often something happens. You have to look at examples of both occurences at face value. Even if they are rare, should they not be called out? Or not be called out across the spectrum, if you feel it has to be that way. So do we have to wait for it to “even out” so to speak before we can take issue with it? You have to treat all of those instances equally across the board without bias. The solution to Fox News isn’t MSNBC, and vice versa, you know?

    Look, i’ll admit using Moses and Ramses isn’t the best example since we’re talking about potentially non-fictional characters (whether or not they are non-fiction or fictional characters is a whole other discussion we can get into another time), and even the Prince of Persia one is off. But there are still plenty of examples where this is happening. Sean says that comic books are open to interpretation with what race or ethnicity they can be (which I don’t disagree with), but then cites The Hunger Games and Last Airbender as examples of “white washing” and how that’s an issue, even though those are also both works of fiction that can just as easily be open to interpretation. I’m just wondering: What’s the difference? Why is it such a big deal in one scenario but not a big deal in the other scenario?

    I just want consistency. Is it racist to suggest that The Human Torch can’t be black, or (better example by the commentor above) that Idris Elba can’t play an Asgardian (I think that’s what he was referring to, correct me if otherwise)? Fine, then it should be equally racist to imply that a fictional character from Hunger Games or The Last Airbender that’s non-white in the book or cartoon can’t be played by a white person in their respective film adaptations.

    Likewise, if you think that it’s totally cool for non-white actors/actresses to portay characters that historically were white (which I agree with), then you have to be cool with white people playing fictional characters that were historically portrayed as non-white. Personally, i’d prefer this scenario, but just be fucking consistent with it.

  • Lisa

    It has nothing to do with it being rare, and therefore us not caring about it. You seriously have issues reading people’s messages, and getting their point.

    Let me make it clearer: the opposite cases happen in rare instances where usually the intention was never for it to happen. Whereas white people do parts of middle-eastern countries

    Continuously and purposely, and are very often depicting them as white Caucasian heroes (like a white male actor being Jesus, Moses or some ancient historical figure).
    And yes, the fact that this happens so many times, whereas the black-white thing happens seldom, is reason enough to care about the first one. Not because the latter might not be of importance (in the instances it is – which is rare), but because it’s ethically and logically moral to focus on what’s most sizably significant. Unless you think a black guy playing a white guy in 1 movie is as much of a big deal as white guys playing black guy in 100 movies? Because that’s the sort of ratio we are dealing with here.

    And you have to remember that this is a very underlying political thing. “Magical Negro”, for example, is a widely viewed term about supporting black actors in Hollywood who constantly end up dying. And the same goes for other races as well: there is a reason why Jake Gyllenhall plays the role of a Persian, or the cast of Scott’s Moses film playing Egyptian Arab roles. The mainstream image that has been created of a “hero” in the west, and in the US in particular, is that of a white Caucasian male. Having an arab, or even arab-looking actor, play the part Gyllenhal played, is an absolute “no-no”. Whereas having arab-looking actors playing villain’s is completely fine.

    And this has actually been reviewed in a great documentary called “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People”, where the 1000 recent Hollywood films containing Arab characters are looked upon, and almost all of them view them as evil and bad.

    I recommend you to watch this documentary to get a better understanding about how politicized Hollywood actually is, and how some decision-making and ideas are either based on current political ideas (like villainous arabs – clearly because of US’ stand in the Middle East right now, explaining the portrayal of muslims vs. Americans/Israeli’s in movies and TV shows). There is no doubt whatsoever those minorities (if you’re a female/black/muslim etc.) are severely repressed in Hollywood. And the issue of white actors playing non-white protagonists is a part of this.

    Please understand this, instead of making it into a discussion of something it is never about or have never been about.

  • Brittany Gresang

    I kind of think it is the people who like to finger point at stories like this that have the more racist agenda.

    Including people who use the term “whitewashing”.

  • Anthony

    So you start off saying it has nothing to do with it being rare…and then in your very next paragraph start off by saying it’s different because one happens more rarely than the other.

    I don’t disagree with anything you said about white people playing non-white people for the more “heroic” stuff and all that, while non-whites are depicted as villains. I don’t think that’s right either. But you’re still failing to answer what i’m saying “Why don’t we make a big deal when it happens the other way around?”, and the continued reasoning is “Oh, well it doesn’t happen as often where as whitewashing is happening constantly”. And my continued answer is “So what?”, if the same “injustice” (for lack of a better term, as this isn’t an injustice at all) is happening where a previously beneficial group is now on the other side of it, it doesn’t make it more right because they were previously on the better side of it.

    I’m not trying to justify white-washing or saying “yeah it should happen”, but, for the thousandth time, I just don’t like how it’s a one-way street. No matter how rare one occurence is and how common the other one is. Or maybe you’ll just accuse me of having an agenda again. Whatever.

  • Flo Lieb

    That he is.

  • Lisa

    Wow really? You seriously need to sit down and read my post better. By it happening more often with white actors, my point wasn’t just that it is more important because of size, but also because of natural consequence:

    If 1 such instance creates 100 angry posts on the internet, and you have 1 instance of black guys playing white and 100 instances of white guys playing black, what do you get?

    100 criticisms on the one side and 10,000 on the other.

    Do you get it now?

  • Anthony

    I always understood your point. I just didn’t agree with it, saying that 100 occurences vs. 10,000 occurences doesn’t make it any more or less excusable.

    Either that or we’re talking about two different things at this point.

  • Lisa

    Oh, jesus christ. You just don’t get it do you? NOTHING IS EXCUSABLE, OKAY! PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT IT HAPPENING BOTH WAYS. BUT WHEN ONE OF THE FUCKING INSTANCES HAPPENS 100-400 TIMES MORE THAN THE OTHER, YOU ARE BOUND TO HAVE MORE COMPLAINTS ON THE OTHER ONE. IF WE APPLY YOUR PRINCIPLE OF “EQUALITY”, WE ARE GONNA GET 100-400 TIMES MORE COMPLAINTS ON WHITE BEING BLACK THAN ON BLACK BEING WHITE.

    DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW?

  • Anthony

    But my point is that no one really complains about the issue that’s happening less (nor should they). I’m not talking about the fixed number, i’m talking about the rate, if that makes sense. The rate of complaints per instance of [insert race/ethnicity here] playing [insert other race/ethnicity here] is not on the same level per capita, you know?

  • Radalan

    So Ridley can’t do what Mel Gibson could?