Is Cloud Atlas racist?

The new film, which hits theaters tomorrow, has been attacked by numerous commentators for using white actors to play Asian characters

Actor Jim Sturgess in "Cloud Atlas"
(Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures/Reiner Bajo)

Critics have tipped Cloud Atlas, the ambitious film based on David Mitchell's novel of the same name, as one of the year's most intriguing new releases — but charges of racism are also making it among the most controversial. (Watch the Cloud Atlas trailer below.) Several commentators have targeted the new film, whose centuries-spanning plot features an ensemble cast that includes Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, for the extensive makeup work it relies on to let white actors play non-white roles — particularly the "yellowface" makeup intended to make actors like Jim Sturgess and Hugo Weaving appear Asian for a segment of the film set in "Neo-Seoul" circa 2144. Is Cloud Atlas, which opens tomorrow, really racist, or is its extensive racial cross-casting justified?

Yes, Cloud Atlas is racist: Cloud Atlas "missed a great opportunity" and proved that Hollywood believes "badly done yellowface is still okay," says Guy Aoki, the president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, in a statement quoted in The Hollywood Reporter. The Korean liberator played by the white Jim Sturgess "would have been a great, stereotype-busting role for an Asian American actor"; such actors are rarely afforded the opportunity to play dynamic or heroic characters by Hollywood. And the unconvincing "yellowface" worn by Sturgess and Weaving makes the snub even worse, proving that "the makeup artists believed they only had to change their eyes, not their facial structure and complexion" to make the actors appear to be Asian.

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