Ultimately, it is an empirical question though, if the artists say "I intend this to represent a girl who looks just like my little sister, but with pink hair, and flowers for pupils" or "that is my grandfather, but with a weird shock of green hair and blue eyes" then that question is solved.
If an anime is supposed to be some idealised form that doesn't have any particular representative content/a physical representation independent of ethnicity then that is another thing.
Well, from the perspective of argumentative consistency. I don't think representation of ethnicities is a sufficiently well defined issue to assent to judgements of moral import.
You mean in animation, or in real-life? Or in real-life adaptations of animated properties?
All of which is to say that we can infer the races of the Simpsons from context about the world that they represent, so we conclude do the Japanese. It's set in Tokyo, Tokyo is full of Japanese people, ergo the majority are Japanese.
The wrinkle is this: do they represent Caucasians differently?
One cannot hold up any single anime or manga as emblematic of all representations of Japanese, nor of Caucasians. That said, artists over there generally do depict Caucasian individuals differently. The typical stereotype, of course, is blond hair, blue eyes and a big nose.
Depending on the cartoon, it can be clear when then draw different races. For instance, Attack on Titan has a predominantly German inspired cast, with names that are typical German names and drawn with blonde hair or blue eyes. The only Asian depicted is specifically referenced as Asian, and drawn and named differently to reflect this. There's also Hetalia: Axis Powers, which gives good insight into what Japanese stereotypes of foreigners look like. And my personal favorite, G Gundam, where eash nation has his own racist Gundam such as "Gundam wearing a Sombrero" or "Gundam that represents China's repression of Japanese culture" or "Gundam from France who is a giant robot version of Napoleon"
Most of the gundam's in that actually weren't that bad, most of them were just based on whatever thing the country of origin is most known for, and were fairly innocuous, if dumb. Zeus, a bull, a fish/mermaid, in a super dumb but not really offensive example, a windmill.
Then you get to Mexico, "Tequila Gundam", a mech in a Sombrero, and a spiked bandity appearance. Plus Kenya, with the "Zebra Gundam", which was a Zulu warrior. I don't remember the pilot from this one.
The american pilot was definitely kind of the normal stereotype, eager to butt into fights and expecting people to be grateful, etc.
Ultimately, it is an empirical question though, if the artists say "I intend this to represent a girl who looks just like my little sister, but with pink hair, and flowers for pupils" or "that is my grandfather, but with a weird shock of green hair and blue eyes" then that question is solved.
If an anime is supposed to be some idealised form that doesn't have any particular representative content/a physical representation independent of ethnicity then that is another thing.
Well, from the perspective of argumentative consistency. I don't think representation of ethnicities is a sufficiently well defined issue to assent to judgements of moral import.
The problem is, when you drop the cultural context then yes, stories can be translated across many forms of media and retain some of the themes. But when you excise the character's race and only the race, while keeping the setting in future Japan, have them retain a Japanese name, and the story is specifically about Japanese values and the rise of technology, you destroy and detract from the original work. Like, the Sailor Scouts uniforms are based directly on school girl outfits in Japanese schools. Taken out of context, and they are just goofy outfits they put on for ??? Context matters, and when these stories are written by Japanese people and viewed through the cultural lense of the Japanese, you have to wonder why they needed to change the main character and leave the rest intact. It's why whitewashing is so fundamentally stupid, as it shows a lack of respect and a disregard for the source material in favor of selling more tickets and DVDs.
Basically, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a friggin' duck.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
On the other hand, how would you cast a Sailor Moon feature film? Given Usagi is blonde and blue eyed but lives in Tokyo someplace and is certainly Japanese.
The answer is they have normal Japanese hair colors until they transform into their sailor scout mode, after which they wear brightly-colored wigs.
Which is contrary to the source and doesn't make for a convincing effect.
But part of the problem there is the budget is garbo, but I remain sceptical.
And it doesn't answer either question
How a Hollywood Sailor Moon production should handle such a production
And
How the obvious discrepancy between appearance and ethnicity is to be resolved in terms of what the manga style is supposed to represent.
Edit: to say "animation isn't limited to reality" doesn't answer the question of what they are intended to represent.
I have no idea how Hollywood would pursue making a Sailor Moon film, but they probably aren't going to keep it set in Japan.
Eventually you get to a point where you have to ask yourself what exactly about the property you want to preserve and what you don't want to.
Look, people's problem with the live-action The Last Airbender film went far beyond the cast (except the villains) being super white. The film also managed to completely lack any of the spirit of the original that made it so enjoyable. The cast for The Last Airbender could have been cast with each of the four nations being properly represented by people of different Asiatic nations, but it wouldn't have saved the film from being a complete turd. That the cast was whitewashed wasn't a guarantee of a poor film, but it was definitely the first warning sign to people that maybe the film was going to miss out on what made the original so great.
???!!! The bolded is QUITE the claim and beyond bad films and whitewashing both being things which you think are bad there is no clear connection that doesn't ultimately rest upon the contention that not having white characters made the show better
Ultimately, it is an empirical question though, if the artists say "I intend this to represent a girl who looks just like my little sister, but with pink hair, and flowers for pupils" or "that is my grandfather, but with a weird shock of green hair and blue eyes" then that question is solved.
If an anime is supposed to be some idealised form that doesn't have any particular representative content/a physical representation independent of ethnicity then that is another thing.
Well, from the perspective of argumentative consistency. I don't think representation of ethnicities is a sufficiently well defined issue to assent to judgements of moral import.
The problem is, when you drop the cultural context then yes, stories can be translated across many forms of media and retain some of the themes. But when you excise the character's race and only the race, while keeping the setting in future Japan, have them retain a Japanese name, and the story is specifically about Japanese values and the rise of technology, you destroy and detract from the original work. Like, the Sailor Scouts uniforms are based directly on school girl outfits in Japanese schools. Taken out of context, and they are just goofy outfits they put on for ??? Context matters, and when these stories are written by Japanese people and viewed through the cultural lense of the Japanese, you have to wonder why they needed to change the main character and leave the rest intact. It's why whitewashing is so fundamentally stupid, as it shows a lack of respect and a disregard for the source material in favor of selling more tickets and DVDs.
Basically, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a friggin' duck.
Sailor Moon can easily be taken out of Japan and plopped down into ANY other country, with nothing really lost. The uniforms are just their private school uniforms that every country has.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Ultimately, it is an empirical question though, if the artists say "I intend this to represent a girl who looks just like my little sister, but with pink hair, and flowers for pupils" or "that is my grandfather, but with a weird shock of green hair and blue eyes" then that question is solved.
If an anime is supposed to be some idealised form that doesn't have any particular representative content/a physical representation independent of ethnicity then that is another thing.
Well, from the perspective of argumentative consistency. I don't think representation of ethnicities is a sufficiently well defined issue to assent to judgements of moral import.
You mean in animation, or in real-life? Or in real-life adaptations of animated properties?
Ultimately, it is an empirical question though, if the artists say "I intend this to represent a girl who looks just like my little sister, but with pink hair, and flowers for pupils" or "that is my grandfather, but with a weird shock of green hair and blue eyes" then that question is solved.
If an anime is supposed to be some idealised form that doesn't have any particular representative content/a physical representation independent of ethnicity then that is another thing.
Well, from the perspective of argumentative consistency. I don't think representation of ethnicities is a sufficiently well defined issue to assent to judgements of moral import.
The problem is, when you drop the cultural context then yes, stories can be translated across many forms of media and retain some of the themes. But when you excise the character's race and only the race, while keeping the setting in future Japan, have them retain a Japanese name, and the story is specifically about Japanese values and the rise of technology, you destroy and detract from the original work. Like, the Sailor Scouts uniforms are based directly on school girl outfits in Japanese schools. Taken out of context, and they are just goofy outfits they put on for ??? Context matters, and when these stories are written by Japanese people and viewed through the cultural lense of the Japanese, you have to wonder why they needed to change the main character and leave the rest intact. It's why whitewashing is so fundamentally stupid, as it shows a lack of respect and a disregard for the source material in favor of selling more tickets and DVDs.
Basically, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a friggin' duck.
I don't think source material needs to be respected or regarded, so that doesn't really wash for me.
But anyway, do we know that the only thing they have changed about GITS is that the Major is played by ScarJo? Or more specifically, do we know what has been changed? Like is the Major an American woman named Makoto Kitsuragi? Or a Japanese woman robot that looks like ScarJo? Or is it set in a non-specified city and lots of things are changed but the fundamental cyberpunk conflicts of authority and identity are maintained?
Would it be better if they changed everything and it was in a super-high tech New York? If they kept it set in Japan and cast a Japanese actress ought the characters speak Japanese?
Actually, lots of adaptations that alter source material on a fundamental level often miss the point of the original art.
Oldboy's remake lost all of the meaning, the original was an allegory for the Greek tradegy but they fiddled with it until was a generic action film with Josh Brolin.
Dragon Ball: Evolution took a marital arts master named Goku, based on a Japanese character who was in turn based off a Chinese folk legend, and made him played by a white dude named Justin, had him go to American high school instead of fighting in martial arts tournaments and missed the point of Dragon Ball altogether.
Avatar The Last Airbender is entirely based on the conflict between Asian nations and then they took the tribe based on the friggin' Eskimos and made them white (a move so blindly hamfisted I nearly vomitted on sight), but y'know, Eskimos get plenty of representation in American films... Oh wait, no they don't, not at all.
In Pan, the recently Peter Pan prequel, they recast Tiger Lily. One of the only explicitly not-white people in the story, as written in the original as a Native American, she suddenly is a white girl with crazy rainbow hair and eccentric eye make-up. The whole point of Tiger Lily's character is to show that the island is multi-cultural, but they managed to squash that one. Native Americans in particular feel the whitewashing is fucked up, as not only were they nearly geneocided by white men, but now even the bit parts for them in movies are handed to white folks.
GitS is specifically a Japanese story, the setting is basically Neo Tokyo if you have actually seen the film. In fact it is such a Japanese story they couldn't fiddle with the setting or the character names because they are important... But apparently portraying the character as actually Japanese would be silly.
The context for these characters isn't confusing. You can translate a work to another culture and still do it justice. But if they feel the key to telling the story the right way is to make everything and everyone white, it is missing the point of that character already. It's a fair criticism.
Still kind of curious about the lack of reacting to the Attack on Titan film not having a single Eastern European in the entire cast.
Dumb and kind of missing the point of the Mikasa character. Is that movie actually coming out anywhere other than Japan though?
Also semi related, the IMDB page picture for the actress playing Mikasa doesn't even show her front and center, it's a picture of a guy with her in the background.
e: I think it's the male lead from the AotT movie.
Morkath on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Actually, lots of adaptations that alter source material on a fundamental level often miss the point of the original art.
Oldboy's remake lost all of the meaning, the original was an allegory for the Greek tradegy but they fiddled with it until was a generic action film with Josh Brolin.
Dragon Ball: Evolution took a marital arts master named Goku, based on a Japanese character who was in turn based off a Chinese folk legend, and made him played by a white dude named Justin, had him go to American high school instead of fighting in martial arts tournaments and missed the point of Dragon Ball altogether.
Avatar The Last Airbender is entirely based on the conflict between Asian nations and then they took the tribe based on the friggin' Eskimos and made them white (a move so blindly hamfisted I nearly vomitted on sight), but y'know, Eskimos get plenty of representation in American films... Oh wait, no they don't, not at all.
In Pan, the recently Peter LAN prequel, they recast Tiger Lily. One of the only explicitly not-white people in the story, as written in the original as a Native American, she suddenly is a white girl with crazy rainbow hair and eccentric eye make-up. The whole point of Tiger Lily's character is to show that the island is multi-cultural, but they managed to squash that one. Native Americans in particular feel the whitewashing is fuckes up, as not only were they nearly geneocided by white men, but now even the bit parts for them in movies are handed to white folks.
GitS is specifically a Japanese story, the setting is basically Neo Tokyo if you have actually seen the film. In fact it is such a Japanese story they couldn't fiddle with the setting or the character names because they are important... But apparently portraying the character as actually Japanese would be silly.
The context for these characters isn't confusing. You can translate a work to another culture and still do it justice. But if they feel the key to telling the story the right way is to make everything and everyone white, it is missing the point of that character already. It's a fair criticism.
Yes, lots of adaptions miss the point, or make it worse, that doesn't demonstrate anything about the connection to the race of the characters or make the point that there is some connection between race and a movie being good or not that isn't going to be a pretty radical principle to maintain.
I have seen Ghost in the Shell and none of it strikes me as indelibly Japanese, and the important parts in particular seem entirely less so. That said, I am hardly a huge fan so I am open to correction if you could point some such things out?
Actually, lots of adaptations that alter source material on a fundamental level often miss the point of the original art.
Oldboy's remake lost all of the meaning, the original was an allegory for the Greek tradegy but they fiddled with it until was a generic action film with Josh Brolin.
Dragon Ball: Evolution took a marital arts master named Goku, based on a Japanese character who was in turn based off a Chinese folk legend, and made him played by a white dude named Justin, had him go to American high school instead of fighting in martial arts tournaments and missed the point of Dragon Ball altogether.
Avatar The Last Airbender is entirely based on the conflict between Asian nations and then they took the tribe based on the friggin' Eskimos and made them white (a move so blindly hamfisted I nearly vomitted on sight), but y'know, Eskimos get plenty of representation in American films... Oh wait, no they don't, not at all.
In Pan, the recently Peter LAN prequel, they recast Tiger Lily. One of the only explicitly not-white people in the story, as written in the original as a Native American, she suddenly is a white girl with crazy rainbow hair and eccentric eye make-up. The whole point of Tiger Lily's character is to show that the island is multi-cultural, but they managed to squash that one. Native Americans in particular feel the whitewashing is fuckes up, as not only were they nearly geneocided by white men, but now even the bit parts for them in movies are handed to white folks.
GitS is specifically a Japanese story, the setting is basically Neo Tokyo if you have actually seen the film. In fact it is such a Japanese story they couldn't fiddle with the setting or the character names because they are important... But apparently portraying the character as actually Japanese would be silly.
The context for these characters isn't confusing. You can translate a work to another culture and still do it justice. But if they feel the key to telling the story the right way is to make everything and everyone white, it is missing the point of that character already. It's a fair criticism.
Yes, lots of adaptions miss the point, or make it worse, that doesn't demonstrate anything about the connection to the race of the characters or make the point that there is some connection between race and a movie being good or not that isn't going to be a pretty radical principle to maintain.
I have seen Ghost in the Shell and none of it strikes me as indelibly Japanese, and the important parts in particular seem entirely less so. That said, I am hardly a huge fan so I am open to correction if you could point some such things out?
Air bender is the best example of it, the entire story and setting is based around there being very distinct visual and cultural differences between the differing nations. When a water tribe person walked into the earth kingdom, everyone could tell who they were and you could see their reactions being colored by it. It was a key part of Aang's quest to learn about each culture/bending, and bring peace to the land.
When you whitewash all the characters you lose that, and it just becomes a story about some protaganist punching the antagonist.
Here's a hypothetical I've pondered regarding this topic.
A white actor is a giant fan of a specific piece of work and uses all of her connections to get together a team to make a movie adaptation of it. She then casts herself as the lead because she loves the character. Except she's the wrong race.
I'm trying to decide how much backlash she would face in such a case.
Actually, lots of adaptations that alter source material on a fundamental level often miss the point of the original art.
Oldboy's remake lost all of the meaning, the original was an allegory for the Greek tradegy but they fiddled with it until was a generic action film with Josh Brolin.
Dragon Ball: Evolution took a marital arts master named Goku, based on a Japanese character who was in turn based off a Chinese folk legend, and made him played by a white dude named Justin, had him go to American high school instead of fighting in martial arts tournaments and missed the point of Dragon Ball altogether.
Avatar The Last Airbender is entirely based on the conflict between Asian nations and then they took the tribe based on the friggin' Eskimos and made them white (a move so blindly hamfisted I nearly vomitted on sight), but y'know, Eskimos get plenty of representation in American films... Oh wait, no they don't, not at all.
In Pan, the recently Peter LAN prequel, they recast Tiger Lily. One of the only explicitly not-white people in the story, as written in the original as a Native American, she suddenly is a white girl with crazy rainbow hair and eccentric eye make-up. The whole point of Tiger Lily's character is to show that the island is multi-cultural, but they managed to squash that one. Native Americans in particular feel the whitewashing is fuckes up, as not only were they nearly geneocided by white men, but now even the bit parts for them in movies are handed to white folks.
GitS is specifically a Japanese story, the setting is basically Neo Tokyo if you have actually seen the film. In fact it is such a Japanese story they couldn't fiddle with the setting or the character names because they are important... But apparently portraying the character as actually Japanese would be silly.
The context for these characters isn't confusing. You can translate a work to another culture and still do it justice. But if they feel the key to telling the story the right way is to make everything and everyone white, it is missing the point of that character already. It's a fair criticism.
Yes, lots of adaptions miss the point, or make it worse, that doesn't demonstrate anything about the connection to the race of the characters or make the point that there is some connection between race and a movie being good or not that isn't going to be a pretty radical principle to maintain.
I have seen Ghost in the Shell and none of it strikes me as indelibly Japanese, and the important parts in particular seem entirely less so. That said, I am hardly a huge fan so I am open to correction if you could point some such things out?
Well, the tweets posted the last page surmise why it is 'indeliby Japanese'
The point of why anime characters have weird colored hair and eyes is simple: so you can tell them apart. If the art style is simple, then the vast majority of Asian characters will look like dark haired, dark eyed with fair skin. They don't tend to have a lot of defining facial features, so it's easier to show the difference by giving them unique color schemes.
That said, if you don't think Goku, star of a manga in Japan based on a Chinese folk tale that dates back to before they even knew white people existed, has an Asian complexion... Well we are hitting critical mass of hair splitting. Again, nobody calls out Superman for miraculously being a stereotypical looking white male.
The cultural view of Toriyama’s Dragon Ball universe is a reference to Pure Land Buddhism, where the chaos of the universe is juxtaposed against the afterlife that Goku so frequently enters upon dying. Like American super-hero comics, Goku never truly “dies,” but enters a new realm where he may attain enlightenment through his martial arts training with the regional deities that oversee his part of the cosmos.
Goku does not die in dragonball. But most importantly he does not look like the explicitly Chinese and Japanese characters that are in dragonball. I mean it's fine if he is Asian but it's not actually supported by the manga.
Look, people's problem with the live-action The Last Airbender film went far beyond the cast (except the villains) being super white. The film also managed to completely lack any of the spirit of the original that made it so enjoyable. The cast for The Last Airbender could have been cast with each of the four nations being properly represented by people of different Asiatic nations, but it wouldn't have saved the film from being a complete turd. That the cast was whitewashed wasn't a guarantee of a poor film, but it was definitely the first warning sign to people that maybe the film was going to miss out on what made the original so great.
Whitewashed casting is basically the casting equivalent of "Studio refuses to screen movie for critics."
GITS is a story about Japanese isolationism and xenophobia*. So it's pretty hard to expel the explicitly japaneseness of the story.
*in addition to the post apocalyptic themes which run through it which is also pretty explicitly Japanese. The world of GITS closely resembles the real world post WWII Japan after they finally regained autonomy (minus the occupation iirc). It's like, the most Japanese story.
Goumindong on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Actually, lots of adaptations that alter source material on a fundamental level often miss the point of the original art.
Oldboy's remake lost all of the meaning, the original was an allegory for the Greek tradegy but they fiddled with it until was a generic action film with Josh Brolin.
Dragon Ball: Evolution took a marital arts master named Goku, based on a Japanese character who was in turn based off a Chinese folk legend, and made him played by a white dude named Justin, had him go to American high school instead of fighting in martial arts tournaments and missed the point of Dragon Ball altogether.
Avatar The Last Airbender is entirely based on the conflict between Asian nations and then they took the tribe based on the friggin' Eskimos and made them white (a move so blindly hamfisted I nearly vomitted on sight), but y'know, Eskimos get plenty of representation in American films... Oh wait, no they don't, not at all.
In Pan, the recently Peter LAN prequel, they recast Tiger Lily. One of the only explicitly not-white people in the story, as written in the original as a Native American, she suddenly is a white girl with crazy rainbow hair and eccentric eye make-up. The whole point of Tiger Lily's character is to show that the island is multi-cultural, but they managed to squash that one. Native Americans in particular feel the whitewashing is fuckes up, as not only were they nearly geneocided by white men, but now even the bit parts for them in movies are handed to white folks.
GitS is specifically a Japanese story, the setting is basically Neo Tokyo if you have actually seen the film. In fact it is such a Japanese story they couldn't fiddle with the setting or the character names because they are important... But apparently portraying the character as actually Japanese would be silly.
The context for these characters isn't confusing. You can translate a work to another culture and still do it justice. But if they feel the key to telling the story the right way is to make everything and everyone white, it is missing the point of that character already. It's a fair criticism.
Yes, lots of adaptions miss the point, or make it worse, that doesn't demonstrate anything about the connection to the race of the characters or make the point that there is some connection between race and a movie being good or not that isn't going to be a pretty radical principle to maintain.
I have seen Ghost in the Shell and none of it strikes me as indelibly Japanese, and the important parts in particular seem entirely less so. That said, I am hardly a huge fan so I am open to correction if you could point some such things out?
Well, the tweets posted the last page surmise why it is 'indeliby Japanese'
Here's a hypothetical I've pondered regarding this topic.
A white actor is a giant fan of a specific piece of work and uses all of her connections to get together a team to make a movie adaptation of it. She then casts herself as the lead because she loves the character. Except she's the wrong race.
I'm trying to decide how much backlash she would face in such a case.
All of it. Any criticism could easily be quantified by, "If she was a real fan, she would want to portray it in the most accurate way, with the best actress available."
How much they should actually get would very much depend on the property in question.
Here's a hypothetical I've pondered regarding this topic.
A white actor is a giant fan of a specific piece of work and uses all of her connections to get together a team to make a movie adaptation of it. She then casts herself as the lead because she loves the character. Except she's the wrong race.
I'm trying to decide how much backlash she would face in such a case.
All of it. Any criticism could easily be quantified by, "If she was a real fan, she would want to portray it in the most accurate way, with the best actress available."
How much they should actually get would very much depend on the property in question.
Yup. Just like all the backlash Lin-Manuel Miranda is getting for his Hamilton musical.
I linked these tweets from jon tsuei in the movie thread before, rather than posting like ten tweets i'll just transcribe them
I've been seeing a lot of defenses for the ScarJo casting that seem to lack a nuanced understanding of a Ghost In The Shell as a story.
The manga came out in 1989, the first film 1995. An era when Japan was considered the world leader in technology. Everything hot in that era came out of Japan. Cars, video games, walkmans, all of that. Japan was setting a standard. This is a country that went from poised to conquer to the Pacific to forcibly disarmed. They poured their resources into their economy. And as a country that was unable to defend themselves, but was a world leader in tech, it created a relationship to tech that is unique.
Ghost In The Shell plays off all of these themes. It is inherently a Japanese story, not a universal one.
This casting is not only the erasure of Asian faces but a removal of the story from its core themes. You can "Westernize" the story if you want, but at that point it is no longer Ghost In The Shell because the story is simply not Western. Understand that media from Asia holds a dear place in the hearts of many Asians in the west, simply because western media doesn't show us. Ghost In The Shell, while just one film, is a pillar in Asian media. It's not simply a scifi thriller. Not to me, not to many others. Respect the work for what it is and don't bastardize it into what you want it to be.
I find it doubtful that the filmmakers considered the story through this lens, but more than anything what this casting does is telegraph to me that this probably isn't gonna be a good movie? Like they flubbed this part this badly already, how am I supposed to expect them to handle the actual meaty, cerebral bits of the story with any sort of care or understanding? The IMDb page has the Laughing Man listed, but are they actually going to incorporate the salient themes of Stand Alone Complex or are they just using the name as a shortcut, because it's recognizable, etc?
My expectations at this point are that it's gonna be a generic scifi action movie dressed up in GitS trappings and I haven't really seen anything to suggest otherwise
Here.
And the video I posted above is really definitively best watched, because it shows footage and music from the film to emphasise its points.
To boil it down, it's that the story unfolds in an undeniably Japanese way. They have long, lingering shots to mimic the manga artform, they show consecutive world building shots to emphasise what kind of place this Future Japan looks like. "Aspect-toAspect" transitions are used to abandon time in favor of exploring the space and world around them. It's to create a tangible atmosphere.
The themes of city and the people who occupy it are a mirror to the themes of Ghosts and their Shells, and wondering about the relationship between them. The city is based off of Japan, and also Hong Kong; these stories reflect the conflict they felt after being under rule by a foreign nation. He speaks about how Hong Kong was long under British rule, and in that way embodies the identity problems a cyborg would have; how do they shape identity when you were made by someone who came before? Are you who you are by free will, when you know you are also a manufactured machine? The same questions we have of religion and existence itself... cyborgs would feel the same- but in a more definitive; they only exist as they are now by the actions of others.
Every shot in this movie is meticulously placed and for a reason. The shots of the decrepit and overgrown city, it is one of the best themes in cyberpunk: it shows the mix of technology and culture can mirror the mix of technology and mankind. We make the spaces we live, but they also shape ourselves. The dynamic of ourselves and the spaces we occupy, are one and the same...
Also, the Stand Alone Complex storyline they seem to be basing the movie on based on the name of some of the characters, is a political thriller story heavily entwined with Japanese politics and political culture.
It's basically saying "Chinese, Japanese, whatever", with an added dose of being extremely blithe to the cultural genocide going on right now against the Tibetan people by the Chinese government.
While it wouldn't be phrased so indelicately, this is not an uncommon attitude in my experience among those concerned with social justice when it comes to the question of whether it is problematic for, say, Japanese characters to be played by Chinese actors. The general idea seems to be that because the West has largely overcome national differences and don't bat an eye when a German actor plays an Australian, for example, Asia should do the same.
Uh. Out of curiousity, how many East Asian people are actually in this thread?
I don't mean to disqualify the opinions of all other participants here, but I'm East Asian, and I'm looking at some of the ongoing discussion and scratching my head at what you're all even going on about. I'm unsure if we're all missing the point of why it's an issue for East Asian-Americans, or if we're all agreed on that already and just interested in discussing more intellectually abstract semantics, because overall, I feel like this thread is completely missing what my other Asian friends are (and have been, over the years) saying and thinking about this
There's a long-standing gap between how these kinds of issues are perceived by Asians and Asian-Americans. See the Boston MFA kimono controversy, for example, which the local Japanese consulate responded to by saying "We actually do not quite understand what their point of protest is." Growing up a minority can make one see things differently.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Uh. Out of curiousity, how many East Asian people are actually in this thread?
I don't mean to disqualify the opinions of all other participants here, but I'm East Asian, and I'm looking at some of the ongoing discussion and scratching my head at what you're all even going on about. I'm unsure if we're all missing the point of why it's an issue for East Asian-Americans, or if we're all agreed on that already and just interested in discussing more intellectually abstract semantics, because overall, I feel like this thread is completely missing what my other Asian friends are (and have been, over the years) saying and thinking about this
I don't think it matters what you, as an East Asian-American thinks about it. In that I don't believe racial identity gives you special access to truth or moral imperative. I don't think that a moral principle of diversity in representation has been adequately defined as anything except an aesthetic preference and thus don't view it as normative - at least, insofar as it has been presented.
Most of my activities have simply been responding to the Simpsons/Stickmam/White is generic argument, which I would stress in no way relates to my position or vice versa - I want to point out that it is a bad argument.
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miscellaneousinsanitygrass grows, birds fly, sun shines,and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered Userregular
Uh. Out of curiousity, how many East Asian people are actually in this thread?
I don't mean to disqualify the opinions of all other participants here, but I'm East Asian, and I'm looking at some of the ongoing discussion and scratching my head at what you're all even going on about. I'm unsure if we're all missing the point of why it's an issue for East Asian-Americans, or if we're all agreed on that already and just interested in discussing more intellectually abstract semantics, because overall, I feel like this thread is completely missing what my other Asian friends are (and have been, over the years) saying and thinking about this
Uh. Out of curiousity, how many East Asian people are actually in this thread?
I don't mean to disqualify the opinions of all other participants here, but I'm East Asian, and I'm looking at some of the ongoing discussion and scratching my head at what you're all even going on about. I'm unsure if we're all missing the point of why it's an issue for East Asian-Americans, or if we're all agreed on that already and just interested in discussing more intellectually abstract semantics, because overall, I feel like this thread is completely missing what my other Asian friends are (and have been, over the years) saying and thinking about this
I don't think it matters what you, as an East Asian-American thinks about it. In that I don't believe racial identity gives you special access to truth or moral imperative. I don't think that a moral principle of diversity in representation has been adequately defined as anything except an aesthetic preference and thus don't view it as normative - at least, insofar as it has been presented.
Most of my activities have simply been responding to the Simpsons/Stickmam/White is generic argument, which I would stress in no way relates to my position or vice versa - I want to point out that it is a bad argument.
.................
yeah ok i'm going back to watching ghost in the shell 2nd gig
Uh. Out of curiousity, how many East Asian people are actually in this thread?
I don't mean to disqualify the opinions of all other participants here, but I'm East Asian, and I'm looking at some of the ongoing discussion and scratching my head at what you're all even going on about. I'm unsure if we're all missing the point of why it's an issue for East Asian-Americans, or if we're all agreed on that already and just interested in discussing more intellectually abstract semantics, because overall, I feel like this thread is completely missing what my other Asian friends are (and have been, over the years) saying and thinking about this
I don't think it matters what you, as an East Asian-American thinks about it. In that I don't believe racial identity gives you special access to truth or moral imperative. I don't think that a moral principle of diversity in representation has been adequately defined as anything except an aesthetic preference and thus don't view it as normative - at least, insofar as it has been presented.
Most of my activities have simply been responding to the Simpsons/Stickmam/White is generic argument, which I would stress in no way relates to my position or vice versa - I want to point out that it is a bad argument.
You don't think, for example, it matters what black people think about how black people are portrayed in the media? Black people might not be any closer to platonic truth than anybody else, but it would seem that it matters greatly what they think about it, if not just out of moral imperative then for the fabric of society....
The very idea that one has to make an argument that the mass media portrayal of a particular demographic has real-world impact on how people of those demographic are treated in society and how those people view themselves, and thus is subject to moral evaluation as a precedent to possibly immoral behaviour or inequitable outcomes stuns me.
hippofant on
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Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
Uh. Out of curiousity, how many East Asian people are actually in this thread?
I don't mean to disqualify the opinions of all other participants here, but I'm East Asian, and I'm looking at some of the ongoing discussion and scratching my head at what you're all even going on about. I'm unsure if we're all missing the point of why it's an issue for East Asian-Americans, or if we're all agreed on that already and just interested in discussing more intellectually abstract semantics, because overall, I feel like this thread is completely missing what my other Asian friends are (and have been, over the years) saying and thinking about this
I don't think it matters what you, as an East Asian-American thinks about it. In that I don't believe racial identity gives you special access to truth or moral imperative. I don't think that a moral principle of diversity in representation has been adequately defined as anything except an aesthetic preference and thus don't view it as normative - at least, insofar as it has been presented.
Most of my activities have simply been responding to the Simpsons/Stickmam/White is generic argument, which I would stress in no way relates to my position or vice versa - I want to point out that it is a bad argument.
whose opinion does matter in this scenario, if you don't mind me asking
Ultimately, it is an empirical question though, if the artists say "I intend this to represent a girl who looks just like my little sister, but with pink hair, and flowers for pupils" or "that is my grandfather, but with a weird shock of green hair and blue eyes" then that question is solved.
If an anime is supposed to be some idealised form that doesn't have any particular representative content/a physical representation independent of ethnicity then that is another thing.
Well, from the perspective of argumentative consistency. I don't think representation of ethnicities is a sufficiently well defined issue to assent to judgements of moral import.
The problem is, when you drop the cultural context then yes, stories can be translated across many forms of media and retain some of the themes. But when you excise the character's race and only the race, while keeping the setting in future Japan, have them retain a Japanese name, and the story is specifically about Japanese values and the rise of technology, you destroy and detract from the original work. Like, the Sailor Scouts uniforms are based directly on school girl outfits in Japanese schools. Taken out of context, and they are just goofy outfits they put on for ??? Context matters, and when these stories are written by Japanese people and viewed through the cultural lense of the Japanese, you have to wonder why they needed to change the main character and leave the rest intact. It's why whitewashing is so fundamentally stupid, as it shows a lack of respect and a disregard for the source material in favor of selling more tickets and DVDs.
Basically, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a friggin' duck.
Sailor Moon can easily be taken out of Japan and plopped down into ANY other country, with nothing really lost. The uniforms are just their private school uniforms that every country has.
Gonna go ahead and disagree. Sailor Moon, like DBZ and GitS, is inherently Japanese. The expressions of love and friendship are unlike shows for girls in the US before it showed up.
Sailor Moon gave girls a strong female lead, in the form of an awkward middle school kid like anyone. Even at eleven years old I knew the show wasn't about life in America. That they wore outfits to school and hung out at temples, it was different than my experience growing up. They even heavily censored the show in the West, to get rid of the gay relationship between two of the scouts.
So no, a show like that is very obviously Japanese, and I think it would require some serious retooling if they made them all white American females. The result probably wouldn't do justice to the show, much like the coming Power Ranger film won't capture why we loved the shows as a kid.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I linked these tweets from jon tsuei in the movie thread before, rather than posting like ten tweets i'll just transcribe them
I've been seeing a lot of defenses for the ScarJo casting that seem to lack a nuanced understanding of a Ghost In The Shell as a story.
The manga came out in 1989, the first film 1995. An era when Japan was considered the world leader in technology. Everything hot in that era came out of Japan. Cars, video games, walkmans, all of that. Japan was setting a standard. This is a country that went from poised to conquer to the Pacific to forcibly disarmed. They poured their resources into their economy. And as a country that was unable to defend themselves, but was a world leader in tech, it created a relationship to tech that is unique.
Ghost In The Shell plays off all of these themes. It is inherently a Japanese story, not a universal one.
This casting is not only the erasure of Asian faces but a removal of the story from its core themes. You can "Westernize" the story if you want, but at that point it is no longer Ghost In The Shell because the story is simply not Western. Understand that media from Asia holds a dear place in the hearts of many Asians in the west, simply because western media doesn't show us. Ghost In The Shell, while just one film, is a pillar in Asian media. It's not simply a scifi thriller. Not to me, not to many others. Respect the work for what it is and don't bastardize it into what you want it to be.
I find it doubtful that the filmmakers considered the story through this lens, but more than anything what this casting does is telegraph to me that this probably isn't gonna be a good movie? Like they flubbed this part this badly already, how am I supposed to expect them to handle the actual meaty, cerebral bits of the story with any sort of care or understanding? The IMDb page has the Laughing Man listed, but are they actually going to incorporate the salient themes of Stand Alone Complex or are they just using the name as a shortcut, because it's recognizable, etc?
My expectations at this point are that it's gonna be a generic scifi action movie dressed up in GitS trappings and I haven't really seen anything to suggest otherwise
Here.
And the video I posted above is really definitively best watched, because it shows footage and music from the film to emphasise its points.
To boil it down, it's that the story unfolds in an undeniably Japanese way. They have long, lingering shots to mimic the manga artform, they show consecutive world building shots to emphasise what kind of place this Future Japan looks like. "Aspect-toAspect" transitions are used to abandon time in favor of exploring the space and world around them. It's to create a tangible atmosphere.
The themes of city and the people who occupy it are a mirror to the themes of Ghosts and their Shells, and wondering about the relationship between them. The city is based off of Japan, and also Hong Kong; these stories reflect the conflict they felt after being under rule by a foreign nation. He speaks about how Hong Kong was long under British rule, and in that way embodies the identity problems a cyborg would have; how do they shape identity when you were made by someone who came before? Are you who you are by free will, when you know you are also a manufactured machine? The same questions we have of religion and existence itself... cyborgs would feel the same- but in a more definitive; they only exist as they are now by the actions of others.
Every shot in this movie is meticulously placed and for a reason. The shots of the decrepit and overgrown city, it is one of the best themes in cyberpunk: it shows the mix of technology and culture can mirror the mix of technology and mankind. We make the spaces we live, but they also shape ourselves. The dynamic of ourselves and the spaces we occupy, are one and the same...
Really, just watch it.
The tweets and subsequent argument about the inherent Japaneseness would argue that the movie ought not be made at all. Questions of representation don't even apply. Or rather, if made it should be set in Japan and played by Japanese actors and be presented in Japanese.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
While I totally 100% get the anger about all this and sort of agree that it's a symptom of a larger racial divide in Hollywood...
If the movie turns out to be good, and ScarJo turns out to be a good Motoko Kusanagi I'm going to have a hard time staying outraged.
The tweets and subsequent argument about the inherent Japaneseness would argue that the movie ought not be made at all. Questions of representation don't even apply. Or rather, if made it should be set in Japan and played by Japanese actors and be presented in Japanese.
I find that argument facile at best, disingenuous at worst, though; it suggests that you should either get it all right or you shouldn't even try.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
While I totally 100% get the anger about all this and sort of agree that it's a symptom of a larger racial divide in Hollywood...
If the movie turns out to be good, and ScarJo turns out to be a good Motoko Kusanagi I'm going to have a hard time staying outraged.
That's the thing though. I don't hate ScarJo. I love her, actually. She's great. I even, dare I say, want this movie to be good! Because I want more Hollywood adaptations of these things! But they also announced an American version of Death Note? White guys. American Evangelion? White guys. American Akira? White guys. It's a little old. Especially like as been stated and restated, the stories were made through the lens of a specific culture. Removing that social lense, the impact can be lessened or worse, they end up outright misunderstanding the point of the movie...
If you watched Akira, or DBZ, or GitS, etc and thought those guys were all white dudes... I am at a loss. I knew at a young age I was watching foreign cartoons. People for their arms chopped off, blown up and cut in half. Giant robots were metaphors for war crimes and guerrilla warfare. At a certain point you have to be forcing the ignorance. I knew Pokemon and Digimon were foreign when they ate those riceballs and said they were "donuts".
Eh, whatever. I don't think I am gonna convince you if you can't see the point I am making. Trying to look at art in a vacuum without realizing the context and themes of the film, it sounds ignorant. People are just tired of bland Hollywood movies.
Unrelated, but I am stoked they are bringing back Mirror's Edge. Not just because it's a great game, but it also has a cool, female, Asian lead. It should say something that the first game I will buy in months is that one.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
While I totally 100% get the anger about all this and sort of agree that it's a symptom of a larger racial divide in Hollywood...
If the movie turns out to be good, and ScarJo turns out to be a good Motoko Kusanagi I'm going to have a hard time staying outraged.
That's the thing though. I don't hate ScarJo. I love her, actually. She's great. I even, dare I say, want this movie to be good! Because I want more Hollywood adaptations of these things! But they also announced an American version of Death Note? White guys. American Evangelion? White guys. American Akira? White guys. It's a little old. Especially like as been stated and restated, the stories were made through the lens of a specific culture. Removing that social lense, the impact can be lessened or worse, they end up outright misunderstanding the point of the movie...
If you watched Akira, or DBZ, or GitS, etc and thought those guys were all white dudes... I am at a loss. I knew at a young age I was watching foreign cartoons. People for their arms chopped off, blown up and cut in half. Giant robots were metaphors for war crimes and guerrilla warfare. At a certain point you have to be forcing the ignorance. I knew Pokemon and Digimon were foreign when they ate those riceballs and said they were "donuts".
Eh, whatever. I don't think I am gonna convince you if you can't see the point I am making. Trying to look at art in a vacuum without realizing the context and themes of the film, it sounds ignorant. People are just tired of bland Hollywood movies.
Unrelated, but I am stoked they are bringing back Mirror's Edge. Not just because it's a great game, but it also has a cool, female, Asian lead. It should say something that the first game I will buy in months is that one.
I don't think Ghost in the Shell was so much about cultural identity as personal identity. Does Motoko bring up her specific racial heritage up in the same sort of context she brings her thoughts about whether or not she's even still human?
I find it hard to argue for the importance of East Asian representation in entertainment on a forum that's banned anime discussion
So I'll stick with the prevailing Asian notion of you do you own thing, we'll do ours. Make another Star Wars out of Hidden Fortress or Lion King out of Kimba the White Lion or The Departed out of Infernal Affairs; appropriating while masking the source seems to do well. Just directly copying seems like a waste of everyone's time.
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
The tweets and subsequent argument about the inherent Japaneseness would argue that the movie ought not be made at all. Questions of representation don't even apply. Or rather, if made it should be set in Japan and played by Japanese actors and be presented in Japanese.
I find that argument facile at best, disingenuous at worst, though; it suggests that you should either get it all right or you shouldn't even try.
That isn't remotely the implication. I am saying that it has nothing to do with portraying the characters by Asian-american actors.
No, but I mean more how the story was told than the inherent plot itself. The style is very specifically evoking Japanese art, and also representing a cultural shift to a more technological nation from once being occupied by an outside company. The Ghosts and the Shells are meant to be a metaphor, and it's one of the essential themes to understanding why they frame things they way they do.
For a specific example, they have to include the intro title for the movie. It is an extended "birthing" sequence where Makoto is being uploaded into the Ghost, and then being placed in the Shell, and then manufactured, and then finally activated. She wakes up in a room that is pitck black. She opens the blinds, and it casts her in a silhouette against the city. She is born again, after being a human, but she has no emotional connection to her room. It is an empty room with no lights, and only a bed.
This is important in two ways:
-It establishes that Makoto isn't fully human right away, and the disconnect from body and mind being so real, she questions if she has a soul or emotions. The whole theme of the movie is, are you still a person when someone made you?
-Every time they show a show of a character, usually with little dialogue, it's always backdropped by the city. These people's identity are defined by the world they live in. We don't know if Hong Kong somehow assimilated Tokyo, or vice-versa. We just see two things; the people, juxtaposed against the city.
The two situations mirror one another; the city has a conflicted identity, torn between old and new, status quo and progress. So instead of staying the same, out of necessity they change, sometimes for the worse. As Makoto struggles to find her real self and her soul, the city is also struggling with similar problems.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
While I totally 100% get the anger about all this and sort of agree that it's a symptom of a larger racial divide in Hollywood...
If the movie turns out to be good, and ScarJo turns out to be a good Motoko Kusanagi I'm going to have a hard time staying outraged.
That's the thing though. I don't hate ScarJo. I love her, actually. She's great. I even, dare I say, want this movie to be good! Because I want more Hollywood adaptations of these things! But they also announced an American version of Death Note? White guys. American Evangelion? White guys. American Akira? White guys. It's a little old. Especially like as been stated and restated, the stories were made through the lens of a specific culture. Removing that social lense, the impact can be lessened or worse, they end up outright misunderstanding the point of the movie...
If you watched Akira, or DBZ, or GitS, etc and thought those guys were all white dudes... I am at a loss. I knew at a young age I was watching foreign cartoons. People for their arms chopped off, blown up and cut in half. Giant robots were metaphors for war crimes and guerrilla warfare. At a certain point you have to be forcing the ignorance. I knew Pokemon and Digimon were foreign when they ate those riceballs and said they were "donuts".
Eh, whatever. I don't think I am gonna convince you if you can't see the point I am making. Trying to look at art in a vacuum without realizing the context and themes of the film, it sounds ignorant. People are just tired of bland Hollywood movies.
Unrelated, but I am stoked they are bringing back Mirror's Edge. Not just because it's a great game, but it also has a cool, female, Asian lead. It should say something that the first game I will buy in months is that one.
To whit.
Portraying Kaneda, Tetsuo, Light et al with Asian American actors does nothing to preserve the cultural lense through which any of those stories are told. It may tell it through a different cultural lense than is typical for Hollywood, it may be a good idea for reasons of diversity of representation but the original cultural context it is not.
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... The bad guy :?
You mean in animation, or in real-life? Or in real-life adaptations of animated properties?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Most of the gundam's in that actually weren't that bad, most of them were just based on whatever thing the country of origin is most known for, and were fairly innocuous, if dumb. Zeus, a bull, a fish/mermaid, in a super dumb but not really offensive example, a windmill.
Then you get to Mexico, "Tequila Gundam", a mech in a Sombrero, and a spiked bandity appearance. Plus Kenya, with the "Zebra Gundam", which was a Zulu warrior. I don't remember the pilot from this one.
The american pilot was definitely kind of the normal stereotype, eager to butt into fights and expecting people to be grateful, etc.
The problem is, when you drop the cultural context then yes, stories can be translated across many forms of media and retain some of the themes. But when you excise the character's race and only the race, while keeping the setting in future Japan, have them retain a Japanese name, and the story is specifically about Japanese values and the rise of technology, you destroy and detract from the original work. Like, the Sailor Scouts uniforms are based directly on school girl outfits in Japanese schools. Taken out of context, and they are just goofy outfits they put on for ??? Context matters, and when these stories are written by Japanese people and viewed through the cultural lense of the Japanese, you have to wonder why they needed to change the main character and leave the rest intact. It's why whitewashing is so fundamentally stupid, as it shows a lack of respect and a disregard for the source material in favor of selling more tickets and DVDs.
Basically, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a friggin' duck.
Sailor Moon can easily be taken out of Japan and plopped down into ANY other country, with nothing really lost. The uniforms are just their private school uniforms that every country has.
Which bit?
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
I don't think source material needs to be respected or regarded, so that doesn't really wash for me.
But anyway, do we know that the only thing they have changed about GITS is that the Major is played by ScarJo? Or more specifically, do we know what has been changed? Like is the Major an American woman named Makoto Kitsuragi? Or a Japanese woman robot that looks like ScarJo? Or is it set in a non-specified city and lots of things are changed but the fundamental cyberpunk conflicts of authority and identity are maintained?
Would it be better if they changed everything and it was in a super-high tech New York? If they kept it set in Japan and cast a Japanese actress ought the characters speak Japanese?
Oldboy's remake lost all of the meaning, the original was an allegory for the Greek tradegy but they fiddled with it until was a generic action film with Josh Brolin.
Dragon Ball: Evolution took a marital arts master named Goku, based on a Japanese character who was in turn based off a Chinese folk legend, and made him played by a white dude named Justin, had him go to American high school instead of fighting in martial arts tournaments and missed the point of Dragon Ball altogether.
Avatar The Last Airbender is entirely based on the conflict between Asian nations and then they took the tribe based on the friggin' Eskimos and made them white (a move so blindly hamfisted I nearly vomitted on sight), but y'know, Eskimos get plenty of representation in American films... Oh wait, no they don't, not at all.
In Pan, the recently Peter Pan prequel, they recast Tiger Lily. One of the only explicitly not-white people in the story, as written in the original as a Native American, she suddenly is a white girl with crazy rainbow hair and eccentric eye make-up. The whole point of Tiger Lily's character is to show that the island is multi-cultural, but they managed to squash that one. Native Americans in particular feel the whitewashing is fucked up, as not only were they nearly geneocided by white men, but now even the bit parts for them in movies are handed to white folks.
GitS is specifically a Japanese story, the setting is basically Neo Tokyo if you have actually seen the film. In fact it is such a Japanese story they couldn't fiddle with the setting or the character names because they are important... But apparently portraying the character as actually Japanese would be silly.
The context for these characters isn't confusing. You can translate a work to another culture and still do it justice. But if they feel the key to telling the story the right way is to make everything and everyone white, it is missing the point of that character already. It's a fair criticism.
Dumb and kind of missing the point of the Mikasa character. Is that movie actually coming out anywhere other than Japan though?
Also semi related, the IMDB page picture for the actress playing Mikasa doesn't even show her front and center, it's a picture of a guy with her in the background.
e: I think it's the male lead from the AotT movie.
Yes, lots of adaptions miss the point, or make it worse, that doesn't demonstrate anything about the connection to the race of the characters or make the point that there is some connection between race and a movie being good or not that isn't going to be a pretty radical principle to maintain.
I have seen Ghost in the Shell and none of it strikes me as indelibly Japanese, and the important parts in particular seem entirely less so. That said, I am hardly a huge fan so I am open to correction if you could point some such things out?
Air bender is the best example of it, the entire story and setting is based around there being very distinct visual and cultural differences between the differing nations. When a water tribe person walked into the earth kingdom, everyone could tell who they were and you could see their reactions being colored by it. It was a key part of Aang's quest to learn about each culture/bending, and bring peace to the land.
When you whitewash all the characters you lose that, and it just becomes a story about some protaganist punching the antagonist.
A white actor is a giant fan of a specific piece of work and uses all of her connections to get together a team to make a movie adaptation of it. She then casts herself as the lead because she loves the character. Except she's the wrong race.
I'm trying to decide how much backlash she would face in such a case.
Well, the tweets posted the last page surmise why it is 'indeliby Japanese'
But also watch this
Goku does not die in dragonball. But most importantly he does not look like the explicitly Chinese and Japanese characters that are in dragonball. I mean it's fine if he is Asian but it's not actually supported by the manga.
Whitewashed casting is basically the casting equivalent of "Studio refuses to screen movie for critics."
*in addition to the post apocalyptic themes which run through it which is also pretty explicitly Japanese. The world of GITS closely resembles the real world post WWII Japan after they finally regained autonomy (minus the occupation iirc). It's like, the most Japanese story.
Tweets? I can't find any tweets anywhere?
I can't watch videos at the moment. In the interests of conversation would you please summarise what you see as salient?
All of it. Any criticism could easily be quantified by, "If she was a real fan, she would want to portray it in the most accurate way, with the best actress available."
How much they should actually get would very much depend on the property in question.
Yup. Just like all the backlash Lin-Manuel Miranda is getting for his Hamilton musical.
Here.
And the video I posted above is really definitively best watched, because it shows footage and music from the film to emphasise its points.
To boil it down, it's that the story unfolds in an undeniably Japanese way. They have long, lingering shots to mimic the manga artform, they show consecutive world building shots to emphasise what kind of place this Future Japan looks like. "Aspect-toAspect" transitions are used to abandon time in favor of exploring the space and world around them. It's to create a tangible atmosphere.
The themes of city and the people who occupy it are a mirror to the themes of Ghosts and their Shells, and wondering about the relationship between them. The city is based off of Japan, and also Hong Kong; these stories reflect the conflict they felt after being under rule by a foreign nation. He speaks about how Hong Kong was long under British rule, and in that way embodies the identity problems a cyborg would have; how do they shape identity when you were made by someone who came before? Are you who you are by free will, when you know you are also a manufactured machine? The same questions we have of religion and existence itself... cyborgs would feel the same- but in a more definitive; they only exist as they are now by the actions of others.
Every shot in this movie is meticulously placed and for a reason. The shots of the decrepit and overgrown city, it is one of the best themes in cyberpunk: it shows the mix of technology and culture can mirror the mix of technology and mankind. We make the spaces we live, but they also shape ourselves. The dynamic of ourselves and the spaces we occupy, are one and the same...
Really, just watch it.
While it wouldn't be phrased so indelicately, this is not an uncommon attitude in my experience among those concerned with social justice when it comes to the question of whether it is problematic for, say, Japanese characters to be played by Chinese actors. The general idea seems to be that because the West has largely overcome national differences and don't bat an eye when a German actor plays an Australian, for example, Asia should do the same.
I don't mean to disqualify the opinions of all other participants here, but I'm East Asian, and I'm looking at some of the ongoing discussion and scratching my head at what you're all even going on about. I'm unsure if we're all missing the point of why it's an issue for East Asian-Americans, or if we're all agreed on that already and just interested in discussing more intellectually abstract semantics, because overall, I feel like this thread is completely missing what my other Asian friends are (and have been, over the years) saying and thinking about this
I don't think it matters what you, as an East Asian-American thinks about it. In that I don't believe racial identity gives you special access to truth or moral imperative. I don't think that a moral principle of diversity in representation has been adequately defined as anything except an aesthetic preference and thus don't view it as normative - at least, insofar as it has been presented.
Most of my activities have simply been responding to the Simpsons/Stickmam/White is generic argument, which I would stress in no way relates to my position or vice versa - I want to point out that it is a bad argument.
*raises hand*
.................
yeah ok i'm going back to watching ghost in the shell 2nd gig
You don't think, for example, it matters what black people think about how black people are portrayed in the media? Black people might not be any closer to platonic truth than anybody else, but it would seem that it matters greatly what they think about it, if not just out of moral imperative then for the fabric of society....
The very idea that one has to make an argument that the mass media portrayal of a particular demographic has real-world impact on how people of those demographic are treated in society and how those people view themselves, and thus is subject to moral evaluation as a precedent to possibly immoral behaviour or inequitable outcomes stuns me.
whose opinion does matter in this scenario, if you don't mind me asking
Sailor Moon gave girls a strong female lead, in the form of an awkward middle school kid like anyone. Even at eleven years old I knew the show wasn't about life in America. That they wore outfits to school and hung out at temples, it was different than my experience growing up. They even heavily censored the show in the West, to get rid of the gay relationship between two of the scouts.
So no, a show like that is very obviously Japanese, and I think it would require some serious retooling if they made them all white American females. The result probably wouldn't do justice to the show, much like the coming Power Ranger film won't capture why we loved the shows as a kid.
The tweets and subsequent argument about the inherent Japaneseness would argue that the movie ought not be made at all. Questions of representation don't even apply. Or rather, if made it should be set in Japan and played by Japanese actors and be presented in Japanese.
If the movie turns out to be good, and ScarJo turns out to be a good Motoko Kusanagi I'm going to have a hard time staying outraged.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
That's the thing though. I don't hate ScarJo. I love her, actually. She's great. I even, dare I say, want this movie to be good! Because I want more Hollywood adaptations of these things! But they also announced an American version of Death Note? White guys. American Evangelion? White guys. American Akira? White guys. It's a little old. Especially like as been stated and restated, the stories were made through the lens of a specific culture. Removing that social lense, the impact can be lessened or worse, they end up outright misunderstanding the point of the movie...
If you watched Akira, or DBZ, or GitS, etc and thought those guys were all white dudes... I am at a loss. I knew at a young age I was watching foreign cartoons. People for their arms chopped off, blown up and cut in half. Giant robots were metaphors for war crimes and guerrilla warfare. At a certain point you have to be forcing the ignorance. I knew Pokemon and Digimon were foreign when they ate those riceballs and said they were "donuts".
Eh, whatever. I don't think I am gonna convince you if you can't see the point I am making. Trying to look at art in a vacuum without realizing the context and themes of the film, it sounds ignorant. People are just tired of bland Hollywood movies.
Unrelated, but I am stoked they are bringing back Mirror's Edge. Not just because it's a great game, but it also has a cool, female, Asian lead. It should say something that the first game I will buy in months is that one.
I don't think Ghost in the Shell was so much about cultural identity as personal identity. Does Motoko bring up her specific racial heritage up in the same sort of context she brings her thoughts about whether or not she's even still human?
So I'll stick with the prevailing Asian notion of you do you own thing, we'll do ours. Make another Star Wars out of Hidden Fortress or Lion King out of Kimba the White Lion or The Departed out of Infernal Affairs; appropriating while masking the source seems to do well. Just directly copying seems like a waste of everyone's time.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
For a specific example, they have to include the intro title for the movie. It is an extended "birthing" sequence where Makoto is being uploaded into the Ghost, and then being placed in the Shell, and then manufactured, and then finally activated. She wakes up in a room that is pitck black. She opens the blinds, and it casts her in a silhouette against the city. She is born again, after being a human, but she has no emotional connection to her room. It is an empty room with no lights, and only a bed.
This is important in two ways:
-It establishes that Makoto isn't fully human right away, and the disconnect from body and mind being so real, she questions if she has a soul or emotions. The whole theme of the movie is, are you still a person when someone made you?
-Every time they show a show of a character, usually with little dialogue, it's always backdropped by the city. These people's identity are defined by the world they live in. We don't know if Hong Kong somehow assimilated Tokyo, or vice-versa. We just see two things; the people, juxtaposed against the city.
The two situations mirror one another; the city has a conflicted identity, torn between old and new, status quo and progress. So instead of staying the same, out of necessity they change, sometimes for the worse. As Makoto struggles to find her real self and her soul, the city is also struggling with similar problems.
To whit.
Portraying Kaneda, Tetsuo, Light et al with Asian American actors does nothing to preserve the cultural lense through which any of those stories are told. It may tell it through a different cultural lense than is typical for Hollywood, it may be a good idea for reasons of diversity of representation but the original cultural context it is not.