About

Goslingwashing refers to a trend of photoshopping various movie characters, usually POC characters, as actor Ryan Gosling. The memes are often used to parody race swapping and blackwashing and include Ryan Gosling as Black Panther and Fremen Ryan Gosling as notable examples.

Origin

On December 22nd, 2017, an anonymous 4chan user opened a thread about race swapping in media on the /pol/^[1] board. In the opening post, they urged others to post a poster promoting a fictional movie starring white actor Ryan Gosling as Black political activist Martin Luther King (shown below) and to create more similar posters.

Spread

More edits of Ryan Gosling as POC characters followed in 2018 and the following years. Notably, in February 2018, an unknown user posted an edited image of T'Challa / Black Panther in the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther, editing the head of actor Ryan Gosling onto the superhero's body (shown below). The image was posted to Imgur^[2] on February 9th, 2018, and to 4chan's /tv/^[3] board on February 10th that year.

On February 16th and 17th, 2021, iFunny^[4][5] users HowDoIGetWhiteBoyHair and noonShark posted a photograph of Gosling edited as a poster for a biographical movie for the former United States President Barack Obama, with the posts garnering over 330 smiles and 36,100 smiles in three years, respectively (authorship unconfirmed, image shown below).

The trend continued through the 2020s, with parody posters depicting Ryan Gosling as Tupac, George Floyd, Miles Morales, Himmel and other real people and fictional characters being spread.

On social media, the posters have often been used to react with parody to race swapping in films. For example, on March 24th and 26th, 2023, X^[6][7] users @geraldd_tv and @BitchAssBowie used the images to react to a post arguing in favor of actors of any race playing any historical figures (shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References