Masters of Disguise: Transracial Hollywood Part 1 – Caucasians

Welcome to the first part of our three part series on Transracial Hollywood and he first of our Masters of Disguise brand of articles that will discuss issues of identity alteration. This series focuses on examples from film that illustrate the art of disguising ones self by changing your ethnic identity. This article focuses on Caucasians also known as Caucasoids, Europids, or Europoids, but commonly referred to as white people. Caucasians in general have it easy when it comes to disguising themselves as a member of another ethnic group. This is because of naturally pale skin that can easily have its color altered by make up. The latter combined with the right combination of wigs and clothing makes it easy to disguise oneself as Hispanic or Arabian, but can pose problems for Asian and African disguises.

Caucasians as Asians

Disguising ones self as an Asian can be done quickly and easily with as little as remembering to squint in order to fake the appearance of having slanted eyes also known as an Epicanthic Fold if you already have black hair and a skin tan. Whites with pale skin and a different hair color can disguise themselves with a make up and by changing their hair color either with a wig or hair dye.

David Carradine (Kung Fu)

In the 1970s David Carradine beat out Bruce Lee to star in the television series Kung Fu where he played a half white and half Chinese Shaolin monk named Kwai Chang Caine. Kung Fu was best known for its display of martial arts as Caine kicked ass through the American Old West for three seasons.

John Wayne (The Conqueror)

The best actor in the history of American westerns and also well known for playing countless war hero's in WWII movies John Wayne became Mongolian in Howard Hughes's 1956 film "The Conqueror". Who knew that Genghis Khan looked just like John Wayne with a Mongol mustache, huge eyebrows, and a little makeup.

Sean Connery (You Only Live Twice)

In "You Only Live Twice" Agent 007 James Bond fakes his own death and disguises himself as Japanese to fool his pursuers and move around Japan unnoticed while investigating the real cause of what the United States believed to be the destruction of one of their space ships by the Soviet Union. Bond eventually exposes SPECTRE as the real organization behind the destruction of an American spaceship and prevents world war 3.

Caucasian Hispanics

Like orientals it is not hart to whites to disguise themselves as Hispanic for the same reasons. Hispanics are typically only slightly darker than whites with dark brown or black hair. What makes a Hispanic disguise easier is that you don't have to mimic slanted eyes, but this can be offset by the recommendation that you mimic the curly hair that is common among Hispanics.