Friday, May 12, 2006

The Narnia movie

Tilda Swinton, who played the White Witch in the Narnia movie, is at it again:
Speaking about The Chronicles of Narnia, which in the run-up to its release was given a huge push by the Church, Swinton said: . . . "At least we made her whiter than white, the ultimate white supremacist, and we managed to railroad the knee-jerk attempt to make her look like an Arab."
I find this simply unbelievable. Who would have ever suggested that the "White Witch" should "look like an Arab"?

1 Comments:

Blogger anomdebus said...

Not to mention how ineffective it would most likely have been.
What would they have done, given her a turban, abaya or burka?

I did find this earlier interview which does not mention that plans, only that it was traditional to use an Arab or Jew as a bad guy.
From here:
How did you come up with the White Witch’s look?

The entire look – we started talking about it six months before the shooting. She needs to be iconic. I worked closely with costume designer. I thought it was a way to break Hollywood tradition of giving generations of children villains that were dark. I thought that it was an opportunity to shake that up. Because apart from anything else, I thought that it wasn’t responsibly now for a globally distributed American film to give a villain that wasn’t either Arab or Jewish. I thought it was historical accurate—even thought this is a fantasy film –it’s also a historical film because these are Second World War children and their father is away fighting Nazis in Europe in the Forties. If anything I thought the epitome of all evil should would be Arian, Nazi and White Supremacist. So I thought if anything, she be super white. I wanted her to look like a creature. I didn’t want her to look like a woman with makeup. And her hair, I wanted her hair to look like roots – for her to look like she was part of the land. Her crown was made of ice and melt with the waning of her powers.

4:59 PM  

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