White Filmmakers Must Ask: Do We Need More Movies About White People?

The lives of white men are surely worth representing on screen, but creating the illusion that systems of oppression have no part in those lives is a noticeable mistake.

I n the New York Times cover story “The Passion of Martin Scorsese,” the centerpiece was Scorsese’s film, Silence, starring Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, and Adam Driver as Portuguese missionaries sent to Japan in the 17th century. It was a fascinating profile, featuring a revealing interview with the director himself, in which he discussed how a lifelong struggle with faith informed his work.

And yet, in this portrait of Scorsese’s decades-long career, in which he has almost exclusively made films about white men — including one set in Japan — one couldn’t help but notice a glaring omission: There were no questions posed about whiteness, nor any which explored the links between Christianity and Scorsese’s understanding of his own race and gender.

It reminded me of another, much shorter interview, in which Bustle’s Rachel Simon spoke directly to Oscar-nominated director Tim Burton about the lack of people of color in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. In response, the famed mind behind…