African Heroes

I finally got around to watching "The Last King of Scotland" and I was impressed.

Forrest Whittaker deserves all the praise he received for playing African Dictator/Supervillain Idi Amin. There was also a great cameo by Gillian Anderson. She really deserves to been seen on screen more often without playing Scully.

It was also interesting to find that the film's climax involved the backdrop of the Entebbe hostage crisis.

Despite the film's strengths, it has left me with a lingering question. Is Hollywood unwilling to produce movies about Africa without casting white actors in the lead? The only exceptions I can think of are Hotel Rwanda and possibly Invictus. Also, "The Number One Lady's Detective Agency" series for HBO usually has an all-black cast.

I guess the simplest explanation is that major film producers don't trust that audiences will show up for movies about Africa if they don't have white characters to identify with. This practice isn't limited to Africa. Similar techniques are apparent in films like "Dances With Wolves", "Lawrence of Arabia", and "The Last Samurai". Frequently when certain foreign cultures are featured, we are treated to a whitewashing of the main protagonist.

Which leaves me with my second question. How large a market is there for non-foreign produced films that feature exotic (to Americans) cultures with a "native" as the protagonist?