Jordan Peele’s popular horror film about racial anxieties and anti-black racism in the United States, Get Out, made over $100 million in its first three weeks, making Peele the first black writer-director to earn that much on a debut film. The success of Get Out reflects the high demand for quality visual media about the lives of people of color by people of color. Even though the United States is becoming more racially diverse, Hollywood still tends to create and recognize content with majority-white casts. This trend is so persistent that even when Hollywood creates adaptations based on source material about people of color, it’s often altered to showcase white characters.

One of the most egregious cases of whitewashing occurs in the new Netflix film based on the popular Japanese franchise Death Note. The main character in the original series is a college student who finds a notebook lying in the street. Upon further investigation, he discovers that anyone whose name is written in the book (a “death note”)  will die. He decides to kill all criminals, including people who try to stop him, by writing their names in the death note because he believes that killing criminals extrajudicially is the only way to create a more just society. The original manga series has spawned an anime, several live-action movies, and a recent live-action drama, all in Japanese. The show draws on themes of good and evil, which is evident even in the main character’s name. In Japanese, his name is Light Yagami (夜神月). His first name (月) is pronounced “Raito” (the Japanese pronunciation of the English word “light”) and spelled using the character for “moon.” His surname, Yagami (夜神), uses the characters for “night” and “god” in place of the traditional characters used to spell this name. Light Yagami is literally a god of night, a role consistent with the show’s overarching themes. However, in the majority-white American version, Light’s last name is “Turner;” his new name is meaningless. It doesn’t convey any of the themes of the original source material, which makes me wonder if the people behind this adaptation can even see the depth of the original series or if they’re merely blinded by dollar signs.

This is one of the largest issues with whitewashing – people who whitewash these creative works typically show a lack of understanding of the depth of the very shows and films they are hired to create. For instance, the popular animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender is remarkably diverse. Though the creators are white, the show’s characters represent different Asian ethnicities. All of the writing that is seen throughout the series is in Chinese (though the characters speak English), and many of the fighting styles seen in the show are based on Asian martial arts. In contrast, in the M. Night Shyamalan adaptation The Last Airbender, all of these characters are white except for the Japanese antagonist, Zuko, who is portrayed by an actor of Indian descent. Casting choices like these aren’t just superficial issues – they reveal a deep lack of understanding of both the series and its target audience, a telltale sign of poor commercial decision. (Did the film executives behind The Last Airbender really think that such a dedicated fanbase wouldn’t notice that they had substituted white characters for every single person of color – the entire cast – except for one?)

Less and less often are audiences supporting films and television shows that blatantly whitewash characters. The 2016 film The Great Wall, which is set in China and stars Matt Damon as a white savior, was highly unsuccessful domestically and overseas; according to The Hollywood Reporter, it’s slated to lose nearly $75 million. Its score on the film review site Rotten Tomatoes is only 35 percent (compared to Get Out’s 100 percent). The Netflix series Iron Fist, which has a whitewashed main character, has similarly poor reviews. The film Ghost in the Shell, controversial because of its whitewashed main character, made only $19 million in its opening weekend with a production budget of $110 million.

Audiences refuse to see these films and television series not just because they are whitewashed, but because this whitewashing represents poor storytelling. In the cases of film adaptations, the source material is wrung of its meaning. In the case of new remakes of old, problematic stories such as Iron Fist, there is an obvious refusal to update these stories for modern-day fans who are tired of seeing the same faces, stories, and races over and over again. These adaptations are also highly unoriginal. For instance, the new Death Note adaptation didn’t have to be related to the plot of the original series at all. Why not follow the story of a low-income black teenager  living in an urban American setting to see what would happen if he obtained a death note? Because these adaptations are afraid to take creative risks, film executives cast white actors and make superficial changes to the plot, resulting in lazy storytelling.   

Times have changed. Audience members want diverse movies and television shows, and we won’t be appeased by content that has one or two characters of color or erases the diversity of existing characters. To appeal to an increasingly diverse audience, film and television executives must hire more casts and crews who reflect the diversity of the country. In addition, existing creators should go out of their way to educate themselves on the ways in which negative portrayals of people of color and members of other minority groups are perpetuated. Without this awareness, they are bound to recreate the same tropes repeatedly. The Netflix series Orange is the New Black has come under fire in the past year for killing one of their only black queer female characters in an act of police brutality. While the show has been heralded for its diverse cast, the writers’ room is mostly white. Without adequate training in the media representation of marginalized groups, it’s inevitable that writers will recreate and sustain harmful tropes and stereotypes.

Thankfully, there are now alternative routes such as web series and diversity fellowships that people from marginalized backgrounds can take to enter the entertainment industry, though more must be done. In addition, audience members have more control over their response to a lack of diversity. We can refuse to give money to productions that whitewash roles. We can boycott films that rely on lazy stereotypes. We can work hard to enter the film and television industry and create the stories that we were unable to see as children. We can actively support (with our money or viewership) films and television programs that, like Get Out, bring distorted reflections to light.