Alex Garland ’s upcoming scifi spectacle Annihilation reckon absolutely stunning and it ’s set to asterisk a roll of fantastic lead actresses as they embark on a perilous risky venture into a strange , mutate commonwealth . But some fan of the novel the pic is adapting have an issue with the moving picture ’s white heroine * .
“ The life scientist ’s hair had been long and dark brown , almost mordant , before they ’d plane it off . She had dark , thick eyebrows , unripened eyes , a flimsy , slenderly off - centre of attention nose ( broken once , fall on rocks ) , and high cheekbones that speak to the strong Asiatic inheritance on one side of her family . Her chap back talk were astonishingly full for such a lean frown .
likewise , we get word that the Psychologist from Annihilation was born to a aboriginal American female parent and a ashen founding father :
“ From bottom leave behind , clockwise around to the right : a square etching of the lighthouse from the 1880s ; a grim - and - white photograph of two military personnel and a girl cast by the lighthouse ; a long , reasonably amateurish water-color panorama show miles of reeds bump only by a few quarantined island of dark tree diagram ; and a color picture of the lighthouse lighthouse in all its glory . No real jot of the personal , no moving picture of the director with her Native American mother , her white father — or with anyone who might weigh in her life . ”
In Garland ’s adaptation of Annihilation , the Biologist is portray by Natalie Portman and the Psychologist is played by Jennifer Jason Leigh . Both of these women are white , and their cast has cause a number of VanderMeer ’s rooter to accuse Garland and Paramount of whitewashing .
During a recent audience withNerdist , Garland respond to the charge by saying that he straight - out did n’t know about the character ’ background knowledge :
“ It would not be in my nature to whitewash anything . That just would n’t be like me . I read a book and I adapted it because I thought the book was amazing . And I think , ‘ I ’m not exactly sure how to adapt this , but I ’ve got an thought . ’ And I just die with it . So that was it . ”
Hollywood has a long - give story of pretending that people of color simply do n’t subsist . reservoir material in which characters are explicitly draw as being hoi polloi of color is glossed over and big - name , white stars are cast in track roles for a motley of bullshit reasons that all boil down to the fact that the diligence has a deeply - rooted , infrastructural racism problem .
you’re able to make all the apology you want about why Emma Stone , Ed Skrein , Natalie Portman , or any of the otherdozens of other white player who ’ve been vagabond as people of coloring , have been take into account to do so but again , the literal response is all too wide-eyed and impossible to ignore .
Get it together , Hollywood .
We ’ve reach out to Paramount for scuttlebutt on this particular issue and will report back if and when we hear .
[ * Ed ’s note : The original lede could have been misinterpreted to imply that the Annihilation movie was adapting more than the first novel in Vandermeer ’s trilogy . This has been clarified . ]
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