OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS BLOG (OXFORD, ENGLAND) -- Professor Celine Parreñas Shimizu is director of the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University and author of “The Proximity of Other Skins” (Oxford University Press, 2020), “Straitjacket Sexualities” (Stanford University Press, 2012) and “The Hypersexuality of Race” (Duke University Press, 2007). She also co-edited “The Unwatchability of Whiteness” (ADVA, Brill, 2018) and “The Feminist Porn Book” (The Feminist Press, 2013). Shimizu wrote this opinion piece for the Oxford University Press blog.
“I was puzzled to read about ‘The Kingmaker’ (2019) by Lauren Greenfield, touted for its ‘unprecedented access’ (Showtime) by a filmmaker ‘perfect’ for the subject (Variety),” Shimizu wrote. “Frankly shocked at the blatant erasure of Ramona Diaz’s pioneering access to Imelda Marcos, watching Greenfield’s film becomes a reckoning. When white people themselves are sick of watching white movies in this era of #OscarsSoWhite, and the demand for diversity so urgent and universal in the industry, it’s not a matter of whether they should make films about brown people, but how. ‘The Kingmaker’ is a wish that Ramona Diaz’s film does not exist, effacing a brown woman’s excellence in an industry known for its inequity.”