White British director Danny Boyle recently said that if his Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008) were released today, he wouldn’t helm it, citing “cultural appropriation” and “baggage.” Instead, the film would need an Indian director. (See The Hollywood Reporter.)

As we contemplate a world in which writers and directors are limited to stories and characters that match their own ethnicities and backgrounds, I look forward to condemnations of Indian producer Ismail Merchant (of Merchant Ivory) and his quintessentially English films; Italian writer-director Bernardo Bertolucci, who directed The Last Emperor; White British writer-director David Lean, for, among other indiscretions, directing Indian and Arabic characters in A Passage to India and Lawrence of Arabia, respectively; and straight Taiwanese director Ang Lee, who famously depicted gays and White Brits in Brokeback Mountain and Sense and Sensibility, respectively.

Oh, and since Boyle seems eager to reject Slumdog, maybe he could hand over the Oscar to David Fincher, who, that same year, directed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a better film. However, since Fincher grew up in California and Oregon, and is White, was he really entitled to direct the film’s Black New Orleans characters?

But my greatest censure is saved for Stanley Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey. That mother-fucker never even went to space!

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