Racist claims against ‘Cloud Atlas’ unfounded

The Wachowskis, the mindbending masterminds behind “The Matrix,” are back with “Cloud Atlas,” a new movie based on David Mitchell’s novel of the same name.

The film, which is composed of six separate — yet thematically similar — storylines, features a main cast of actors who play multiple characters. One of these stories is set in a futuristic South Korea. As a result, the non-Asian actors had to undergo a slight transformation.

Movies like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and the film adaptations of “Dragonball Z” and “Avatar: the Last Airbender” have opted to use Caucasian actors instead of their Asian counterparts due to historical anti-

Asian sentiment. This type of job discrimination is both unjust and unconstitutional; actors deserve to have their chances weighed on talent, not skin color.

As a result, critics have accused “Cloud Atlas” of “yellowface,” the use of makeup or CGI — specifically, to alter the actors’ eyes — to portray Caucasian actors like James D’Arcy or Jim Sturgess as Asian.

These critics, however, seem to have missed the point of the film.

Under the tagline “Everything is connected,” the film has one major theme: Despite racial, social and temporal barriers, all humans’ lives are interwoven. The recurrence of the main actors in various roles visually links the six storylines together, further contributing to the film’s theme of unity. If anything, the fact that the actors could superficially alter their race and gender so easily helps break down some of society’s barriers.

The truth about Hollywood is that most of the dominant names are not Asian. As an independent film with a relatively small cast, “Cloud Atlas” needed to rely on big-name actors to gain popularity. This is simply a consequence of the movie industry, not a fault of the Wachowskis.

By attributing the Wachowskis’ casting choices to racist intent, critics are misinterpreting the film’s ideas. The film and novel encourage people to look beyond the boundaries of race; one of the characters notes that social class is “curiously [based on] the quantity of melanin in one’s skin.”

Intrinsically similar plot lines—such as the 19th century fight against slavery and a future rebellion against a system of cloned slave labor—show that humans are tightly linked, regardless of ethnicity. To call the film racist is an insult to Mitchell’s vision of a bigotry-free world.