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 | This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab. | |
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When a character who is supposed to be of mixed ancestry is played by an actor who obviously is not. This is not to say that people of mixed parentage do not physically resemble one race over another — they often do. This trope describes the flagrant instances of laziness and inattention in casting, which result in a attempt to force the viewer to accept that a character is the biological child of a character of another ethnicity, even though his/her physical features, particularly skin color, clearly preclude that possibility.
Due in large part to the lack of mixed-race actors in the American television/film industries — although one should point out that this is largely due to the biases of the industry itself, which has a tendency to shy away from performers who aren't readily identifiable as members of a particular race/ethnicity.
Often occurs where the parentage of the character is a defining issue of the plot. This is not uncommon in American dramatic shows, where it most often involves the children of black/white mixed marriages. Chalk this one up to the rigid and brutal history of the American color line—scriptwriters still use the twist of an ostensibly "white" character being fathered by a black man (or vice versa) to jolt the audience by invoking longstanding taboos against cross-racial romance. Therefore, one could say that the imperatives of plot justify this trope to a limited extent. However, in the majority of cases it comes across as utterly implausible. More often than not, the writer simply leans upon viewer ignorance — as if the relatively small number of biracial Americans makes it possible to accept that a character is biracial simply because the plot decrees it. Adding to the insult against viewer intelligence is clumsy writing, which often causes the parentage revelation to be completely disconnected from the preceding plot. It is often a ham-handed attempt to up the dramatic ante,without rhyme, reason, or foreshadowing. In other words, it is a Shocking Swerve, a cheap source of foundation-shaking conflict that can be invoked without regard for the narrative's internal logic.
A variant is often used in a comedic contexts, such as animation or sitcoms (see Family Guy quote above). A character will discover obscure roots in another ethnic group, usually by way of a distant ancestor. The character will often proceed to redefine his/her whole identity in a ludicrously exaggerated manner based on this information, regardless of the fact that the person lacks any substantive cultural or physical resemblance to the group in question.
This plotline's persistence can perhaps be explained by its versatility as a vehicle for dissecting and/or subverting ethnic stereotypes and assumptions.
Truth in Television, since mixed race individuals can be anywhere along the range of colors of any of the races in their makeup. This nonetheless attracts criticism because Reality Is Unrealistic. (it's true that they do most often look "dark", because of dominant genes. However, light-skinned, light-haired mixed-race people definitely do exist.)
Compare Gender Equals Breed.
Examples:
Film
- The Movie of The Human Stain had main character Coleman Silk (who is mostly black with some white ancestry, and appears white) played by Anthony Hopkins (who just looks... white). In flashbacks, the young Coleman is played by Wentworth Miller (who actually is mixed-race and can "pass" for white).
- Roger Ebert defended the casting choice, pointing out that Coleman would not have been able to pass in the first place if he had not looked completely white.
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park casts Jeff Goldblum's daughter with an actress who might not have a single white man anywhere in her family tree. Lampshaded in the film where another character mentions "Um... do they look related to you?" Then again, she might be adopted.
- Malcolm mentions three adopted children in the first movie.
- The movie A Mighty Heart about Marianne Pearl had this. Marianne Pearl was born to a Dutch-Jewish father and an Afro-Chinese Cuban mother. She was played by Angelina Jolie.
- This happens in both sound film versions of the Jerome Kern musical, Show Boat; the supposedly "miscegenated" Julie is played by the unmistakeably white Helen Morgan in 1936 and Ava Gardner (who was mixed, but did not look it) in 1952 (though Lena Horne did sing one of the part's songs in Till The Clouds Roll By).
- Denzel Washington as the long lost son of a white man in Carbon Copy.
- Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, who was 25% white, (his mother was of mixed race, due to her mother's rape by a white man) and far lighter-skinned than Washington is.
- In Kill Bill, Sophie Fatale is stated to be half-Japanese, half-French but is played by the very white Julie Dreyfus.
- In the second Charlie's Angels movie, Lucy Liu's father is revealed to be... John Cleese?
- Juni Cortez in Spy Kids is played by the Jewish/German Daryl Sabara, who actually looks even whiter than his ancestry implies.
- Not so bizarre considering his mother is obviously very Nordic white and his father is a Spaniard, ie European.
- George Clooney's main character (along with most of the characters) is part-Hawaiian in The Descendants. Clooney pulls it off but some of the other characters aren't as convincing.
- Averted in One False Move. The black woman who accompanies the two murderers on much of their rampage has a troubled past involving Bill Paxton's small-town sheriff. He is secretly the father of her young child. Moreover, she alludes to herself as having been fathered by a white man as well, saying that she "looks kind of white." Casting is actually quite realistic—both her and her son are brown-skinned, but fair enough for this to be plausible. Moreover, this film took the high road and didn't try to use the "illegitimate black child" angle as a source of melodrama or a principal driving force for the plot.
- The film was co-written by and co-starred Billy Bob Thornton, who also co-wrote A Family Thing (which plays this trope straight). In that film, Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones play characters who are revealed to be long-lost brothers, making Duvall's character half-black.
- Richard Gere plays a half-Japanese man in Akira Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August. Not the most convincing casting choice but not bad enough to distract the viewer.
- One of the common complaints about the Billy Jack film series is the half-Indian title character is played by the VERY white Tom Laughlin. The films try to justify it by having all the characters recognize him as an Indian, but that just makes it all the more laughable.
- The title character of Dr. No, a James Bond movie, is half-German, half-Chinese but played by a white Jewish actor.
- Armando Munoz, aka Darwin, is half-Mexican and half-African American. In X-Men: First Class, he is played by Edi Gathegi, who has no Latino ancestry of any sort.
- Inverted in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, where the fully Chinese protagonist is played by Kristen Kruek, who's part Chinese, part Dutch, and looks vaguely Asian, but still drew complaints from fans.
Live-Action TV
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