The Daytime Village At The 2015 iHeartRadio Music Festival - Backstage (Photo : Getty Images)
The furor created by Matt Damon playing the lead role in “The Great Wall,” a co-production between American and Chinese movie producers, has barely died down and a similar controversy is hounding an upcoming Netflix movie.
Netizens Call for Movie’s Boycott
“Death Note,” an upcoming Netflix movie based on a popular Japanese manga series, is the subject of an online petition to boycott the film because of whitewashing. Nat Wolff, actor of “The Fault In Our Stars,” got the lead role of Light Turner, and it displeased a lot of netizens. In the original manga, the lead character’s name is Light Yagami which was westernized to Light Turner, CBC reported.
La Keith Stanfield, a black actor, got the role of private detective running after Light Yagami. The female lead role was given to Margaret Qualley of “The Leftover.” In the film, Light Turner, a student, acquires a supernatural notebook which gives him the power to kill anyone whom he could identify by face and name.
Sarah Rose initiated the online petition that opposed the casting of white actors in the movie since it went “against the very soul of the story.” She accused the American adaptation of “Death Note” as whitewashed. So far, the petition has almost 10,000 signatures.
In 2015, a new Asian actor, Edward Zo, posted a YouTube video where he claimed he was told not to audition for a role iin the movie’s American adaptation of “Death Note” because of his ethnic origin. Netflix, which would stream the movie on Aug. 25, would not comment on the whitewashing complain, according to a spokesman of the streaming service.
Casting Sparks Twitter Debate
A Twitter member who uses the handle @midlysrprsng pointed out that the movie is set in America which is why the main characters are white. But @plantblogger pointed out that “Death Note” is heavily based in Japanese culture and it does not make sense outside that context, Metro reported.
