“Whitewashing the Bible”

There’s outrage about the just released movie “Exodus.”

It seems a bunch of folks are upset that the main characters are white, while Egyptian assassins and thieves are darker skinned. 

Some see this as a continuing whitewashing of the Bible by Western cultures intent on presenting lighter-skinned Caucasians as inherently better than their darker brethren.

An article online I read today claims this movie perpetuates historical inaccuracies reinforced by Renaissance painters.  Adam and Eve,  Moses, Jesus and other religious figures were almost always depicted as white. In reality, given where they lived, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and others at that time probably had skin colors more like Middle Easterners than Mid-Westerners. 

Then there are the Egyptians in the movie. Apparently, the ruling class is depicted as mostly white; slaves and bad guys are not. It’s not known what skin color Egyptians were back then. They were in North Africa, so maybe more Middle Eastern looking, but were probably darker overall having interbred with other Sub-Saharan Africans in lands they conquered. 

Then the article morphs into a discussion of white supremacists and slavers in America who used the Bible as justification for subjugating black Africans as an intellectually and physically inferior race. It's clear to the author that this "dangerous association of whiteness, divine favor and heroism" such as seen in this movie and in what's referred to as the "bleaching of the Bible" has "plagued modern Christianity." 

Whoa. 

Let me get this straight …   

A movie is called into question because it’s not historically accurate?  And because it’s not reflecting the actual skin colors of the people of that time it’s perpetuating racist stereotypes?   

Hello. It’s a movie. It’s not real.

Maybe that’s been lost on these people.  Maybe they didn’t notice that everybody in the movie is speaking English.  Or that the story line itself is loosely based on the Bible – a collection of stories which, while meant to be inspirational, aren’t generally considered to be all that historically, or factually, accurate.  And then on a specific set of stories in the Bible most folks have a particularly hard time taking literally – like the killing of all the first-born of Egypt and God’s parting of the Red Sea.

So it’s kind of hard to get too worked up over the other details when the basic foundation of the whole movie is more than just a tad sketchy.  A bit like worrying whether they got the sandals just right for the time period. Who cares. 

The people who made this movie did it to make money, not to set the record straight. 

Lighten up, Francis.

But now that someone has opened this subject, what about the remakes of classic movies, recasting them with different races than originally intended? 

Where was the outrage and charges of racism when they remade the Wizard of Oz with an all-black cast?  Or now with the new black Annie? 

Oh. That’s right. 

Never mind.