Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Is there anyone here who doubts that Alita would be played by Summer Glau? Anyone? Bueller?
Ghost in the Shell, Live Action Film
- Thread starter Shanejayell
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Is there anyone here who doubts that Alita would be played by Summer Glau? Anyone? Bueller?
Claudette Savagely
Ball of flies
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- (and made of) Parts Unknown
You know, if those remade movies, like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, are about and star white people to begin with, are remade with other white people and remain stories about white people, then surprise surprise. People won't cry racism, because that's not whitewashing.
Taking a narrative world which examines issues through a particularly local (in this case Japanese) perspective, involving Japanese people in Japan, and making it about white people? That's whitewashing. Hence, people saying something.
Also various things about the kind of exposure these remakes get in the press and in fora and so on. This incident is notable because it's a notable franchise being remade (whitewashed) using notable professionals, edit: which means that it's more likely to be written about in the press and more likely to be shared amongst online social circles, which in turn means people are more likely to comment on it.
"but the anti-racists edit: aren't addressing all potential and actual racism everywhere at once in an entire industry!" isn't a terribly compelling argument.
edited repeatedly for spelling, grammar, content
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- The Pleroma
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that the racial politics of this decision are unquestionable because there was no outcry over The Magnificent Seven or A Fistful of Dollars? Because that would rely on the situations being comparable. Or are you suggesting that instead it's the failure to have an outcry over Kung Fu when it was on TV? Or is it something else?
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Blaming some nebulous group of higher-ups and peers who purportedly base it on some unspecified evidence or reasoning is a lame defense. Its like how after WWII everyone in Germany was conspicuously not one of the goosesteppers, it was all those other people, or their higher ups, and they were at worst just going with the flow. Its an excuse. The "I'm not a bigot, I'm just a spineless lemming who goes along with the bigots" argument isn't one that buys me much sympathy, especially from supposed freethinking progressives, and kind of ignores how most bigotry is unthinking thoughtless shit like that, rather than actions with malice aforethought.
"I'm just trying to keep my job" is the argument here. The problem is that this in the aggregate leads to bad outcomes. Comparing Hollywood casting agents to Nazis is uh, just a wee bit extreme here.
Unless you're willing to employ them elsewhere should they get fired it's much more important to focus on what causes defensive management rather than attack the lower level people who are trying to not get fired.
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Did you even read the article? It was talking about professors, who can't be fired by the film industry, or anyone really. And the "they" their arguments usually blamed was the audience, not bigwigs. And regardless, I don't believe that the higher level people are forcing the lower level people to do it on pain of being fired if they don't.
There is no sinister cabal of evil Nazi bigwigs who are stomping on the freethinking independent spirits that are the script-writers and casting agents and other associated agents of movie making. There is no wretched audience that is forcing moviemakers to cater to their LCD impulses. Its an excuse. This is Hollywood we're talking about. Yes they're for profit, but they have a lot of creative freedom.
FriedIce
The Authentic Fake
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- Hyperreality
So, I'm curious. I've seen a lot of internet outrage about Scarlet Johansen being unsuited for the role on the internet but has anyone actually found any outrage about the casting choices coming from Japan? Or is this just another case of liberal white people on the internet bitching about less liberal white people all being racists?
Because if the Japanese don't care then frankly neither do I, Scarlett Johanson's a quality actress who's good at action scenes. If they do, well then that's a different matter isn't it?
Because if the Japanese don't care then frankly neither do I, Scarlett Johanson's a quality actress who's good at action scenes. If they do, well then that's a different matter isn't it?
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I've been talking about how casting agents work, looking at the Landis piece for instance. It is entirely about trying to sell your movie to what you think your higher ups want (which can be as separated from reality as you please, but so long as you can don't get blamed you're generally fine). You have to play CYA until you're in charge.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
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- Bottom of the barrel
Does she still act/do major roles?
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What does CYA mean? And what's their excuse when they become the higher-ups? And who are these bigoted higher-ups anyways? James Cameron spent years gathering money and waiting for SFX tech to improve so he could make Fern Gully: HardCore. These directors and producers aren't exactly mindless slaves to shareholders, while even minor directors and producers still get pet projects done all the time.
I think the actual answer is much more straightforward. These people make whitewashed movies because they like whitewashed movies, because they were raised on a diet of whitewashed movies, because they don't care to know or comprehend something original and different from the backwards swill they grew up with. No one is forcing them, though the fact that all their peers are doing the same does no favors, though they of course are peers to others themselves.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
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- Bottom of the barrel
Cover Your Ass.
Doing everything you can to ensure the buck always stops somewhere else, and always having your alibi or escape planned out in advance. Some examples of making sure you've got a protest against something lodged 'on the record' so if it blows up later, you can always say you were against it and point to the proof.
Or in the case of Hollywood, not being the one to break the mold first, and sticking to safe established formulae.
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Cover Your Ass. It's pretty much the Occum's Razor of business decisions; whenever the safe option is picked there's a damn good chance it's because all the way down the totem pole people are making sure they won't be held responsible for failures. Lots of good reading in business administration about how to deal with this effect.
And it's a gradual process. We see more minority leads in films these days, more attempts with different ideas for what are still seen as primarily white audiences. We're not talking about minor and pet projects here, we're talking about big budget deals.
Well, Japanese people in Japan aren't a marginalized / minority group. You can't just group people who may well include Asian-Americans with a legitimate complaint about representation as "liberal white people".
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I tell you what, I will not say that yellowface is fucked up until I have over 1 million 2ch users signing a petition against it.
FriedIce
The Authentic Fake
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I never said yellowface (which is different to whitewashing) isn't fucked up, I'm more commenting on how this entire thread seems to be more dedicated to bitching about whitewashing in Hollywood (in what is actually a pretty niche case) than anything else. There's no discussion about the director they've got in, minimal commentary about set photos and no real discussion about how you might take Ghost in the Shell and sell it to the American public (I mean, other than ScaJo), instead its 11 pages of people bitching about how Scarlet Johansen isn't ethnically Japanese and therefore can't play a role. Amusingly, I'm seeing huge parallels between this and the whole 'Hermione can't be black' crowd, even though its very different people making up each group what they're saying is... basically the same. I mean, I'm not saying Hollywood doesn't have a problem, but, seriously, perhaps focus on the far more dire under-representation of Hispanic actors than... this.
I presume that you have a petition of 1m 2ch users against yellowface though, since you phrased it that way. Though what 2ch is mystifies me.
No, they're not? But if there is an issue (something I have yet to be sold on) here its against people of Japanese ethnicity, not Asian-Americans in general. Unless of course you're saying that people of Korean, Japanese and Chinese ethnicities are interchangeable, but that would be dumb and you wouldn't say that sort of dumb thing, right?
So tell you what, find me, lets say 4, reputable sources about Japanese, Japanese-American, hell, French of Japanese heritage people being offended in large numbers about this casting choice rather than the (now) rather routine roars of offence by (mostly) white internet liberals and I'll take this seriously. Hell, I'll even write an email to the production company complaining.
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Warning: Hey
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- The Hague
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hey
I don't know why you think you get to control and define this discussion in this way. You can feel this way if you like, but don't waltz into a thread purporting to set the rules for how it works. Either buck up and engage in the discussion which is happening or leave.
It's not fair to say each ethnic group only has "standing" to complain about their own group's lack of representation, when every instance is illustrative of the same wider problem.
those parallels cut both ways bro
Shanejayell
Yuri Fan without a Pause
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In the original manga we don't know if she is born in Japan or is ethnically Japanese. She's functionally a brain in a bottle.
(She IS shown as Japanese in the SAC anime, but that's not by the original creator.)
Her name is stated as fake in the first chapter, right after she pulls off a assassination in front of the guy who becomes her future boss. Heh.
trob030490
Professor Kokonoe
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Hermione in the books has no stated race/skin color or any features other than large buck teeth, very fritzy brown hair, and brown eyes. She's British, a culture which has a significant population of blacks who are considered British, and her stated features even sound black.
The story, while it deals with discrimination heavily, does not do so on the basis of real world races, and even then, Hermione herself is a discriminated against individual, so along with her features there's no reason to not think she's black or white. Black or white, it has nothing to do with who she is in the context of the story or affects the context of the story itself. It may be a story particularly about British facism, but to be in the role she plays in this context doesn't have anything to do with being white. And it's not taking a rare already role from a minority actor.
Motoko is a person with a visual and therefore clarified appearance who lives in Japan and occupies a high level government position. Japan is extremely racially homogeneous, and non-Japanese people occupying high positions of authority is not very likely due to factors alongside their rarity, especially in the context of the story, which deals intimately with the nature of the Japanese government as well as its immigration policies and xenophobia.
In this specifically Japanese story, Motoko isn't the very very rare other agent that fills that part of the narrative, but a native agent who has positions on both sides of the politics of Japanese nationalism at hand. Whites in the story, in how they're treated in that narrative's society, are solely rare agents of the current European and US regimes which occupy particular roles in the narrative, with the main story being about Japanese people trying to figure out their own sense of nationalism and how they treat other Asian migrants. The main character being Japanese actually matters in terms of how it deals with its themes and her feelings towards the migrant situation coming from that society.
One is "she can't be black" because people don't want the character they like to be black for racism reasons rather than for any narrative or thematic reasons. With Motoko, she has an essentially stated ethnicity, it's narratively and thematically important, and it's continuing the racism inherent in whitewashing leading roles in big films.
It's a false equivalency.
Edit: It's kind of like why Akira has to be set in Japan with a Japanese cast to work, since the entire premise and themes are based on particular aspects of the Japanese national identity following WW2 and their history with nuclear weapons.
You take those specific elements and its not actually Akira anymore in terms of the nuances of its themes and meaning.
And it'd take rare roles from Japanese American actors.
Edit: Plus casting Hermione as black is a transgressive move that makes a positive statement about discrimination in that industry, while making a US movie about a Japanese story where all the mains are white is the same old discriminatory crap that keeps minority actors out of lead roles. Very different situations.
You're of course free to not care until you have an arbitrary number of statements from various vetted peoples, but your equivalency there; it was nonsensical and misunderstood both works as well as how much the realities of discrimination color both sets of motivations to make them quite distinct.
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Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
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- Lost to the vagaries of time.
What I am saying is that the decision to entirely localize a story is not racist. Nor is it behavior unique to Hollywood.
I'm talking about stuff like Edge of Tomorrow, The Ring, or The Magnificent Seven, which were entirely localized and there were no major cries of racism. Because localizing a story isn't about race. It's about making a story more readily accessible to your target audience. Yes, it can be culturally insensitive and can completely remove whatever it is that made the original so good, but that's not the same thing.
Edit: Look, I agree that casting a white actor to play a Japanese person is racist. But hiring a white person to play a white person in a movie based on a Japanese movie/graphic novel is not.
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TWPC920
Knight of the Fury
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- The Moon
I mean its essentially the same issue as the Power Ranger/Super Sentai debate isn't it? While of course Power Ranger/Super Sentai doesn't have the budget or draw of a blockbuster movie, the same concepts can be applied. If people aren't calling Power Rangers racist then why should they call a localization of GitS racist? Of course the flip side can also be applied: I can appreciate the fact that people don't like that localization is being done to a particular franchise (God knows that Robotech irritates the living fuck out of me), but fact of the matter is that its a sound business decision and arguably less harmful than simply inserting white actor/actress into role while essentially nothing else changes. Hell, Godzilla was localized as two separate films and you don't see anyone screaming that they're racist.
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Well, unfortunately for you, they considered putting Scarlett Johansson in digital yellowface to forestall racial complaints. Personally, fursonally, I am glad that instead of brandvocating by posting about how hype they are, people are expressing the kind of rightful disgust anyone familiar with GitS should upon the announcement that the villain was going to be the Laughing Man, or indeed any of the decisions that have been revealed.
With that said, what you are saying is that the role of Django in Django Unchained is an ethnically neutral one. Why, it could have just as well been Michael Cera as Jamie Foxx in that role!
That is, what are the politics of making an assertive woman with a dominant presence, liberated (cyber-)sexuality and all that white from being non-white? What does it say that the Laughing Man, who gets his start protesting the inhumane treatment of refugees, is now to be a white guy instead of a Japanese guy? Why are the cool characters, the Major and Batou, white? Why didn't Aramaki get a racial change? What are the racial politics of making Section 9, a group of people that are largely dissident from mainstream Japanese society while protecting it, who regularly rebel against the Japanese government, mostly white?
2ch is an abbreviation for 2channel, which was the most popular message board in Japan for more than a decade and is still really popular. Which points to the silliness of "where's the Japanese outrage, liberals?" You don't know what 2channel is, you probably don't know what niconico is, so how would you know when you don't know where to begin to look?
But it's not being localized. All the characters still have Japanese names, the movie is still being set in future Japan. It's not localized.
Shanejayell
Yuri Fan without a Pause
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The japanese, mostly, don't appear to get why we're upset.
http://kotaku.com/the-japanese-internet-reacts-to-scarlet-johansson-in-gh-1771544034
http://kotaku.com/the-japanese-internet-reacts-to-scarlet-johansson-in-gh-1771544034
Jemnite
CVN-69 Fella
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- 清源书院
prolly not going to be shit tho
edge of tomorrow was pretty good
tom cruise did a nice job tbh and emily blunt was really good
I mean there's very legitimate reasons behind switching out for Scarlett Johansson, mostly behind localization and appealing to your audience. They're already bringing in an obscure movie title from overseas, and they want to westernize it, so Johansson being cast as lead is a good idea. The American consuming audience has a tendency to reject a lot of films viewed as 'too foreign'. There's a lot of stuff referring to the Japanese government that needs to be changed as is, so I doubt the story is going to be the same.
I mean, yeah, it looks really shitty from a 'white hollywood' perspective, but there's a good chance that if they don't change anything the film might flop. Also, there's like nothing wrong with derivative works. Like, if you alter a thing to adapt it to another audience, it's not all that bad? Edge of Tomorrow was pretty good even though Tom Cruise didn't kill Emily Blunt in the end.
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That's a funny way of reading those quotes.