The Eric Draven incarnation of The Crow, is traditionally played by an Asian-American actor. The fact that Bill Skarsgård, a white actor, has been cast as Draven in the upcoming remake is another sad example of Hollywood whitewashing.

I was chatting with New York artist Alice Meichi Li about this last week when some stills from the remake were released. Most of the discourse was about how much Skarsgård’s Draven looked like Machine Gun Kelly if he joined The Misfits. However, Li pointed out that this was a loss of one of the few Asian-American goth heroes.

“I’m upset that they whitewashed one of the first and most iconic goth roles, especially one that Brandon Lee was best remembered for,” she says. “As an Asian goth, I rarely felt welcome in goth circles back in the ‘90s and ‘00s, but I had The Crow, and he was played by Bruce Lee’s son.”

The Crow was an underground comic book by James O’Barr about a young man (Draven) who seeks revenge as the painted-faced avenger known as The Crow when his fiancée is brutally murdered. The 1994 film directed by Alex Proyas became a huge hit, particularly within the goth sub-culture.

Lee died tragically during the filming from a weapon malfunction. Grief, rumors, and conspiracy theories related to his famous father turned Lee into an instant gothic symbol, as well as cutting short a career on the rise. In his ascent to goth legend, Lee’s Asian-American heritage often took a backseat thanks to his features usually being obscured by his make-up.

Which is sad because Lee was very outspoken about his Chinese lineage. He started his career by working in Chinese action films like his dad. Here’s a clip of him speaking Cantonese. His Chinese name, Li Guohao, is written on his tombstone.

Proyas has repeatedly celebrated the Asian influence on The Crow. In an interview with Paul Rowlands, Proyas talks lovingly about how Lee introduced him to Hong Kong martial arts movies. According to Proyas, these shaped the final product to the point Proyas considers Lee a collaborator.

It’s also worth mentioning that Lee isn’t even the only Asian-American to canonically portray Draven. When the film was rebooted as a television series (Stairway to Heaven) in 1998, Draven was played by another mixed-Asian martial arts actor, Mark Dacascos, who is of Chinese, Filipino, Spanish, Japanese, and Irish descent. Draven is directly referred to as Vietnamese in the series. This means that more Asian actors have played Draven than white ones.

“Draven was white in the original comics!” But was he?

When I first read O’Barr’s The Crow as a teenager, I thought Draven was Japanese-American thanks to his almond-shaped eyes, anime hair, use of katanas, and general manga vibe. Draven resembles Guts from Kentaro Miura’s Berserk more than he resembles other white comic characters at the time. It’s true that Draven appears more Caucasian in some of the color covers, but there is enough ambiguity to go either way.

“Where in the comic does it say Eric Draven is 100 percent white?” says Li. “Every race gets whiter after death. That has nothing to do with ethnicity. It’s this exact attitude towards skin color that I’m referring to about how the goth scene prioritizes whiteness and excludes people of color.”

Even if Draven were confirmed to be wholly Caucasian in the book, that has little to do with the new film. It’s clearly a remake of the 1994 movie, not a new adaptation of O’Barr’s work. There’s no indication that the remake will include book-specific elements like the Skull Cowboy or Draven’s crow guide speaking. Full details on the film are still scarce, but no one involved in the project since it was announced in 2008 has stated an intent to go back to the source material for a more faithful adaptation.

For better or worse, The Crow is essentially Brandon Lee’s pop culture memorial and celluloid tombstone. While film sequels dealt with different Crows resurrected to avenge untimely deaths and “make the wrong things right,” by returning to Draven’s story, the new movie is deliberately calling to mind Lee’s last and most famous role.

Because of that, I think the producers had a duty to honor Lee’s ethnic heritage as the television show clearly did. I’m sure Skarsgård will turn in a fine performance. I’m also sure that Lewis Tan, Andrew Koji, Charles Melton, Ross Butler, or Henry Golding could have done just as well.

Skarsgård just feels like stunt casting because of his portrayal as Pennywise in It. That would have been fine for a new Crow story, but Eric Draven? Asian goths have so few icons. Why take one of the greatest away from them?