race lift

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English

Etymology

Modeled on face lift.

Noun

race lift (plural race lifts)

  1. The changing of the race of a character, protagonist, etc., in a work of art, literature, etc.
    • 2014, Richard Rosenbaum, Raise Some Shell: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, →ISBN, page 26:
      Characters who are ethnic minorities in original works are recast as Caucasians in adaptations so frequently that the phenomenon has its own nickname: it’s called a race lift.
    • 2016 April 1, Arthur Chu, “Not your Asian ninja: How the Marvel Cinematic Universe keeps failing Asian-Americans”, in The Daily Beast:
      But here's what gets me: They did do a "race lift" of a martial arts-oriented character. They took Elektra Natchios, who, if you couldn't tell from her name, is supposed to be Greek, and cast the French-Cambodian actress Elodie Yung to play her.
    • 2017 March 17, Phoebe-Jane Boyd, “Imagine if all our childhood TV favourites went 'dark and gritty'”, in The Guardian, Opinion:
      2017 Rangers' "gritty" teaser trailer sees five stroppy teenagers (all smooth enough to have come from the High School Musical set) glower at one another in clothes most of us probably can't afford (styled to look almost-crap), get CGI powersuits, and fight a villain that's had a Hollywood "race-lift" for no reason other than I-don't-know.
    • 2018 July 18, Arthur Chu, “Model minority rage: Why the Hulk should be an Asian guy”, in The Daily Beast:
      No, I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon in the wake of Marvel Comics' announcement of a black Captain America and a female Thor—although if there were ever a politically opportune moment to give the Hulk a Race Lift, this is it.

Verb

race lift (third-person singular simple present race lifts, present participle race lifting, simple past and past participle race lifted)

  1. To change the race of a fictional character.
    • 2011 November 14, Steve Rose, “G2: Bend it like Heathcliff: An Afro-Caribbean Heathcliff, a Caucasian anime hero and an all-black take on Tennessee Williams”, in The Guardian, page 6:
      The movie industry has supposedly cleaned up this particularly shameful act, but it has been replaced by a subtler form of race-lifting: rather than hiring actors of the same ethnicity to play non-Caucasian characters, Hollywood often simply changes the ethnicity of the characters themselves. Instead of hiring a black actor to play Othello, you just make Othello white.
    • 2012 April 22, Prathibha Joy, “Row over Samuel L Jackson's portrayal”, in The Times of India:
      "This is not the first instance of race lifting in Hollywood. In the past, Idris Elba has played the Norse God Heimdall. Will Smith's character from I am Legend was originally white, as was Shawshank Redemption's Red (played by Morgan Freeman)," says movie buff Vinu S

Usage notes

Changing the race of characters may be intended to reduce the inherent racism of the original work.

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