Today I Learned

I think the point is that if it was important for the character to be Hispanic, they could have hired a Hispanic actor for it. Her being Hispanic didn’t have any meaningful impact to the story, so why not just let her character be white? If they did it to make the film more appealing to Hispanic viewers, then surely an actually Hispanic actor would have been a better fit. White actors have historically been given distinctly non-white roles just because Hollywood is afraid of melanin.

The history of it goes all the way back to old black and white films, with movies like Dragon Seed or The Teahouse of August Moon, which both had major asian roles filled by popular white actors. The unfortunate part is that they often aren’t respectful when they do it; It often ends up being a caricature of the race instead. Anyone who has seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s will know what I’m talking about. Or hell, there are even cases of outright blackface, like a white actor playing Othello in the 1965 movie. Many people have criticized Al Pacino’s accent in The Godfather as offensive, bordering on caricature.

If you want more recent examples, we could point at Jake Gyllenhaal playing a middle-eastern prince in Prince of Persia. Or Johnny Depp playing a Comanche caricature in The Lone Ranger. Another good example is Scarlett Johansson being given the role of Matoko Kusanagi, in Ghost in the Shell. The movie is based on a Japanese anime, and is based in Japan. But Hollywood refused to hire a Japanese actor to play the role, and instead gave it to the whitest white woman who has ever whited.