Rooney Mara and Peter Pan's Lily-White Tiger Lily Problem
Even without whitewashing the role, Tiger Lily is a problematic character.
Warner Bros. has cast actress Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in its upcoming live-action movie based on "Peter Pan."
It’s been a little over a week since news broke that Warner Bros. had cast Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in its upcoming live-action Peter Pan origin-story film, “Pan.” As predicted, the decision to give a Native American role to a non-Native American actress has caused controversy, including the obligatory Twitter freakout and an online petition that has thousands of signatures. The studio itself seemed to anticipate the backlash, with the film being described as presenting a “world that [is] very international and multi-racial, effectively challenging audiences’ preconceived notions of Neverland and re-imagining the environment.” New York Magazine’s Vulture blog translated this to mean, “Please don't yell at us for casting a non-Native American actress as Tiger Lily."
But the casting decision stings on multiple levels. For one, Native American actors and actresses are underrepresented in the entertainment industry in general. While Native Americans make up nearly 2 percent of the U.S. population, per the 2010 census, only 0.3 percent of the TV or film roles cast in 2008 went to Native American actors, according to a Screen Actors Guild report that's the most recent of its nature available publicly. Seeing a traditionally Native American role like Tiger Lily go to a Caucasian actress feels like an obvious missed opportunity to elevate a Native American actress to a high-profile project. Unlike other underrepresented minorities like African-Americans or Latinos, the Native American community lacks a big star to draw attention to its cause.
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Of course, the decision fits into a Hollywood tradition of Native American roles going to white actors; to mark the Tiger Lily news, The Huffington Post rounded up the most egregious examples. But there are plenty of counter-examples of Native American roles being filled by Native American actors throughout film history, including Jay Silverheels of the 1950s the“The Lone Ranger” franchise, Chief Dan George of 1970’s “Little Big Man” and Will Sampson of 1975’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
And while a vast majority of Tiger Lilies have been white in past “Peter Pan” TV, film and Broadway iterations, that mold has been broken before as well. The role in the 1924 silent film version went to Asian-American actress Anna May Wong – who one blogger wryly noted shares an ancestry line technically closer to Native American than Mara – and African-American actress Paula Kelly played Tiger LiIy in a 1976 television special. In its most recent screen incarnations, the role was inhabited by actresses of indigenous descent: Carsen Leigh Gray of the 2003 “Peter Pan” film and Q'orianka Waira Qoiana Kilcher in the 2011 “Neverland” TV series on Syfy. To go back to a white actress appears to be a step backward, akin to casting Johnny Depp in last summer’s “Lone Ranger” reboot for the role Silverheels made famous.
Further complicating the situation is the role of Tiger Lily itself, which typically is marked by the worst of Indian stereotypes (this clip from the Disney film version sums it up) and is an altogether poorly drawn character. Writes Jeff Yang at The Wall Street Journal:
"Anyone who’s read the original J.M. Barrie novel or seen any of its many adaptations knows that Tiger Lily is written as an “Indian Princess,” the Native American kind – daughter of Great Big Little Panther, wise and noble chief of Neverland’s Piccaninny tribe. (Yes, in the book they are indeed called “Piccaninnies,” which is a slur historically used against African Americans. Because random tangential racism.)
Tiger Lily is a mute but sassy “noble savage” stereotype with a thing for red-headed bad boys; but even without any dialogue, she becomes the fourth leg of the Peter-Wendy-Tinker Bell triangle, and actually is the only one of the three ladies to actually get her smooch on with the Pan."
The character exhibits the issues that many Native American characters do in the Hollywood imagination. According to Angela Aleiss – the author of “Making the White Man's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies” and an instructor at California State University, Long Beach – whether the Native Americans are depicted as savage villains or sympathetic victims, they almost always are connected to the imagery of old Hollywood Westerns.
“While 'Peter Pan' is not the Old West, it’s drawn off the imagery of the Old West and it’s a boy’s fantasy. It’s not Indians today, as people,” she says.
Given “Pan” director Joe Wright’s credits – which include the acclaimed “Atonement” and “Pride and Prejudice” – and the suggestion that he is offering a modernized version of the tale, the decision has prompted discussion of how he will address these stereotypes. Speculation has ranged from cautiously hopeful to wary to straight-up disbelief, and for some, his best intentions are not enough to justify casting Mara (Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o also reportedly was considered for the role).
Not helping Wright's case is that before the Mara casting news, the plot was described as having Peter become "the savior of the natives" – a theme reminiscent of the romanticized white hero trope that's present even in "Dances With Wolves," which often is praised for its sympathetic depiction of Native Americans. All of the other actors so far attached to the film also are white, including Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard and Garrett Hedlund as Captain Hook.
“The bottom line is Hollywood wants to sell a movie and they’re not going to sell it if they have people whose names are not recognized by American audiences,” Aleiss says. “We do have Native [American] actresses and plenty of them, but they don’t have a celebrity status and I don’t think studios are willing to get behind them and promote them, and that is really what is sad about this.”
Regardless, all this hubbub over a character in a fantasy land highlights how rarely we see Native Americans on film to begin with, which may be the larger problem.
“[There’s]
nothing about Indians today and their own identity as people,” Aleiss says. “By creating Native [American] roles that are linked to a Western
or set in the remote past or in some young boy’s fantasy, it robs Indian people
of their own identity and makes them nonexistent today.”
