If you’ve be online in the past few weeks, you may have come across images like these:
And no, this isn’t simply John Cho fan art. It’s the work of a number of people on twitter who are clearly far more skilled in Photoshop that I am, which is started an important discussion about racial diversity in Hollywood, particularly the representation of Asian-Americans.
John Cho himself is not part of the campaign, but hasn’t recently publicly supported the movement. Because it’s not really about Cho himself, but the larger problem within Hollywood that the campaign is attempting to (and succeeding) to begin a discussion about. He is simply the face being used to show people what a more diverse Hollywood might look like. There’s now also #StarringCostanceWu, depicting what Asian-Americans would look like in female roles.
The movement now has a website, starringjohncho.com, which clearly outlines it’s argument in one question:
IF STUDIES SHOW THAT FILMS WITH DIVERSE CASTS RESULT IN HIGHER BOX OFFICE NUMBERS AND RETURNS ON INVESTMENTS,
WHY DOESN’T HOLLYWOOD CAST LEAD ACTORS TO REFLECT THIS FACT?
The points raised in the movement reminded me a lot of a talk given a few years ago by one of my favourite YouTube personalities, Natalie Tran. She discusses the issue in much more depth and in a much more entertaining way than I ever could. It’s a little long, but you can watch the full clip below.