Disney Spray Tans White Actors in ‘Aladdin’ to Look Middle Eastern Because None of the Billion People in India Are Qualified

You know what racists in the UK are always complaining about? How many Indian, Persian and Arab people there are in London. UKIP is always on about how you can’t turn around in London without bumping into someone from the Middle East. There are over a million people of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent in London.

You would think, then, that Disney would have no problem finding a few dozen people to play the vaguely Arabian cast of Aladdin, which Disney is producing a live-action version of. But at every step of the process, Disney has instead said, “Can’t we just use white people to play all the characters?”

When casting the lead roles, Disney publicly whined about how they couldn’t find anyone who could act and sing that was also from the Middle East or India. Hmm. That’s a head scratcher, where can you find someone in India who can not only act, but also sing and dance?

Oh yeah, there are literally hundreds of movies with lavish musical numbers starring Indian actors made every year. Wow, that’s embarrassing. Although now that Disney has been informed Bollywood exists, they’re probably in negotiations to buy it.

But now the producers of Aladdin are having so much trouble finding background actors that, as first reported by The Times, they’re using white people with spray tans to fill out backgrounds and crowd scenes. Seriously, there’s a million people from Western and Southern Asia in London, you’re filming an hour away, and you can’t find a few hundred people to literally just stand there?

Well, Disney made a statement to the BBC on the controversy, explaining that the reason they made some actors up to look darker is that they had a specific skill set.

“Great care was taken to put together one of the largest, most diverse casts ever seen on screen,” a Disney spokesman told Newsbeat. “Diversity of our cast and background performers was a requirement and only in a handful of instances when it was a matter of specialty skills, safety and control (special effects rigs, stunt performers and handling of animals) were crew made up to blend in.”

I mean, that seems reasonable, you needed actors with specific skills and it’s not like any of the billion people in India would know how to do stunts or handle an animal, right?

But in the end, this is about one thing and only one thing, and that thing isn’t race, it’s money. It’s cheaper just to grab the first person they can find locally and put them in makeup to look more Middle Eastern than it is to fly in actors from India for minor roles. But this isn’t El Mariachi where Robert Rodriguez is making an action film for $20,000 in Mexico. Disney is spending tens of billions of dollars to swallow up half of the entertainment industry. They can shell out a few thousand extra on a movie that everyone knows is going to be a massive hit before it even films a single frame.