As the Academy Awards approach next Sunday, controversy over the Oscars' lack of diversity has hardly abated.
Comedian John Oliver on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight, ripped Hollywood failing to include an accurate representation of the population in movies with a piece on "whitewashing."
In the video, a voiceover calls out Hollywood for not only giving roles meant for non-white actors to whites, but for the uproar created when prominent roles go to non-whites.
In Prince of Persia, white actor Jake Gyllenhaal played to lead. In the movie Aloha, white actress Emma Stone played an Asian character, Allison Ng.
These are two of many examples.
The piece then calls out the fact that audiences often get unduly upset when people of color are cast in roles that are supposedly unexpected, including John Boyega, an African-British actor as a Storm Trooper-turned-rebel in the latest Star Wars movie, and Amandla Stenberg, an African-American actress who played Rue in the Hunger Games.
Watch the video, as posted to YouTube, here:
