Well, we may have done it. We may have hit peak whitewashing last week. Between Calvin Trillin’s well-intentioned but tone deaf New Yorker poem, Tilda Swinton making her first appearance as The Ancient One in the Doctor Strange trailer, and the first image of Scarlett Johansson as Major Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell (above), this past week seemed to drive home the idea that Asian culture is packaged as “other” and that Asian characters can be turned white on a whim.
Over the last week, there have been several responses from the internet. I’ve rounded up a few of my favorite reactions, but more importantly, I want to look at the larger question: why is Hollywood still whitewashing Asian characters?
Jeff Yang posted this example of other actresses who could have easily stepped into Kusanagi’s shoes:
In contrast, he also posted the reverse of the image, highlighting a history of whitewashed Asian characters:
And Sue Pak shared my own favorite dream casting: Rinko Kikuchi as Kusanagi.
Kotaku rounded up some Japanese GITS fans’ reactions several of whom also mention picturing Kikuchi in the lead role. (Two of my favorite snarkier responses: “Twenty years ago this would’ve been Milla Jovovich” and “Taylor Swift would’ve been better”.) Sam Yoshiba, director of the international business division at Kodansha, the publishing company that released GITS back in 1989, seems fine with the casting decision – but he also says, “…we never imagined it would be a Japanese actress in the first place” which is the place where I ask, “Why not?”
Before you say, “well, obviously Scarlett Johansson was cast because money” I’ll cede that point—Johansson is a bankable actress, having successfully starred in sci-fi films like Her, Under the Skin, and Lucy, and who has a potentially giant fanbase to bring to Ghost in the Shell’s opening weekend. But why was this casting decision made in the first place when it was clear there would be so much controversy? Obviously you can also argue that this is anime, it’s sci-fi, it’s the future, once you’re dealing with cyborgs anyone can be anything, etc. But why is saying all of that easier than just hiring a Japanese actress for a distinctly Japanese role? GITS is a twenty-year-old manga written by Masamune Shirow, a Japanese writer and illustrator, which wrestled with issues unique to Japanese culture in the 1990s. It was adapted into an anime by Mamoru Oshii, featuring Japanese voice actors, and only came to the U.S. on video in the year after its Japanese release.
Besides the fan reactions, there have been a few responses to the casting from within the industry. Several people began recirculating an older interview with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star Chloe Bennett, in which she spoke about how changing her name from “Wang” to “Bennet” made a giant difference to her career. And in direct response to the Ghost in the Shell image, Bennet’s co-star Ming-Na Wen simply posted:
Nothing against Scarlett Johansson. In fact, I'm a big fan. But everything against this Whitewashing of Asian role.😒 https://t.co/VS6r6iish9
— Ming-Na Wen (@MingNa) April 14, 2016
And this is just the latest in a long history of Hollywood’s whitewashing minority characters. In just the past few years we’ve seen Keanu Reeves initially cast as a Japanese character in the since-scuttled live-action Akira; horrible, horrible things done to Avatar: The Last Airbender; Benedict Cumberbatch cast as KHAAAAAN; the Irish-American Rooney Mara cast as Native American Tiger Lily in Pan; Noah and Exodus both continued the tradition of casting white (mainly British) actors as ancient Hebrews and Egyptians, and Gods of Egypt… well, we didn’t even want to talk about Gods of Egypt, which is why I didn’t bother to review it; and maybe weirdly absolutely worst of all, Emma Stone cast as “Allison Ng” in Cameron Crowe’s Aloha, a character who was supposed to be ¼ Hawaiian and ½ Chinese. (Crowe responded to the controversy around the casting by saying that the real-life Allison Ng looked white, and was conflicted about that—which is fine, but for the love of Lloyd Dobler, saying “but it really happened like this!” is the sort of argument that will get you thrown out of a first-year fiction workshop.) And again, it’s not so much that any of the actors caught up in these casting decisions are bad actors—but there are plenty of great Asian and Asian-American actors, too, and if Hollywood gave them more chances, and courted an audience that’s hungry for authentic storytelling, I think the box office results would pay off.
The one place where whitewashing maybe, arguably, possibly worked, was in the Wachowski’s 2012 film Cloud Atlas—but the whole reason the practice worked there was that everyone was cast in multiple roles across racial and gender lines. Given that the point of the David Mitchell’s novel is (if you haven’t read it yet, spoilers ahead): several characters are reincarnated across time and space in order to learn about love and maybe, arguably, possibly save the human race, and that the point of the movie is (again, spoilers!): everything I just said, plus REVOLUTION!, the racial chicanery in that film actually served a purpose. It told its own subtextual story.
I can also see the pitfalls with adapting Doctor Strange—if you cast an elderly Asian man as The Ancient One (as he is portrayed in the original Marvel comics), then you’ve fallen into the trope of Asian culture passed on to the one special white person who understands it, and thus another generation of earnest snowy white middle class undergraduate Tibetan Buddhists is born. Of course, they could have overcome that problem by hiring—gasp!—two Asian leads. But apparently we only change character’s races to give more white actors roles, because then if we look at Netflix’s upcoming Iron Fist, where they could have so effectively swapped a white character for one of Asian descent, Marvel chose not to. Sure, Danny Rand is white in the comics, but Marvel had an opportunity to do something really cool here—how amazing would it have been to cast an Asian-American actor, and update the character so that part of Rand’s superheroic learning arc includes understanding his family’s culture and roots? So many people, of all races, would relate to that. How powerful would that have been, too, as a corrective to the endless, troubling ninja deaths on Daredevil, and the Orientalizing tendencies the writers have shown toward Nobu and Madame Gao? Speaking as a New Yorker, I would have loved a Defenders line-up that represented the diversity of my city.
Of course the bigger concern is who is really at fault here? At what point do actors, writers, directors, and producers have a responsibility to say no to projects that are trampling their source material and whitewashing characters? Should it be on them to walk into a casting director’s office with a list of actors who are right for the part? Is it on the casting directors to make sure notices get to a wider range of talent? Or is it just our responsibility as viewers to stop going to these movies?
When we look back at something like Mickey Rooney’s performance as I.Y. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany‘s, which used a white actor performing a demeaning racial stereotype in a insultingly misguided attempt at comedy, most people will immediately recognize that it is wrong and upsetting on every level. (Jeff Yang actually wrote a piece about the character, saying, “I think it should be mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to fully understand who we are as a culture, how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go.”) Movies like Doctor Strange and Ghost in the Shell presumably aren’t setting out to insult or mock Asian characters, or to demean Asian actors or audience members. But the truth is, the decision to cast a white person has consequences: in terms of representation, it robs viewers (of all races) of the chance to see greater diversity onscreen, privileging/shoring up the white default yet again. It helps to limit opportunities for actors of color across the board, by implicitly enforcing that default, and the idea that white actors are somehow more valuable or more desirable within the industry. It implies that white faces are somehow more relatable, more worthy of “our” interest—without taking notice of the fact that “we” are not a white monolith, and never were. “We” are the entire audience, the geek community, the casual fan, the dad who just wants to take his kid to a fun movie on Saturday afternoon, and “we” can be anyone. To repeatedly state that white characters are the heroes, the Chosen Ones, while every other race is left to be the sidekick or the wise elder passing down knowledge is simply wrong. It has always been wrong. No Hollywood studio would get away with a horrific caricature like Yunioshi these days, it’s true. But quiet and systemic racism, in many ways, is so much worse than overt racism—Mickey Rooney bellowing through buck teeth is easy to dismiss, but people still feel the need to defend and excuse whitewashing, and so it continues.
Leah Schnelbach is frustrated that we’re still having this conversation. Come, join her in frustration on Twitter.
Personal thought on Doctor Strange: a viable way to get between the horns of that particular dilemma (whitewashing the Ancient One vs. perpetuating racist Orientalist stereotypes) would be to make Swinton’s Ancient One half-Chinese, half-British. If s/he was born early enough to have been an adult during the Boxer Rebellion, then we neatly tie the character to both martial arts and magical practices, both of which the Boxers had going in profusion. (More cynically, that character history would also play better in the Chinese media market than the original Tibetan background of the character.) That option doesn’t magically make Swinton half-Chinese, of course, but it makes casting a white actress slightly more justifiable, and gives the Ancient One a much less stereotypical background.
I don’t see why Dr Strange needs to be Orientalist at all. As I said on the other thread, there’s more than enough esoteric and weird stuff in Western magical traditions, even after you scrub for Christianity, for a similar vibe of mystical enlightenment.
On the Danny Rand issue, my understanding is that the friendship between Luke Cage and Danny Rand is strongly influenced by the poor black kid/rich white kid dynamic. Casting Danny as an Asian would change this dynamic. My hope is that the casting was made with conscious intent to explore race relations.
But apparently we only change character’s races to give more white actors roles
This sentence isn’t true. I mean, look at Heimdall in the Thor movies. Changing the race of characters happens more often nowadays than in the past. The problem is that lead roles (and main antagonist roles) usually only goes to white people. The other races can be the sidekicks or the helpers for the truly important white villains (Batman Begins and Iron Man 3, I’m looking at you). I have a lot of problems with Kingsman, but that movie had the balls to have a black guy and an Algerian girl as the villains without using them as stereotypes.
“I don’t see why Dr Strange needs to be Orientalist at all. As I said on the other thread, there’s more than enough esoteric and weird stuff in Western magical traditions, even after you scrub for Christianity, for a similar vibe of mystical enlightenment.”
So your solution to the Orientalism problem is to make the movie even whiter? I’m not sure that’s a route I’d choose.
Masamune Shirow the creator of GitS doesn’t care about the casting and nether do most Japanese citizens.
@5 Given Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch, I’m not sure it can get any whiter. It certainly wouldn’t make the movie any less Asian. Assuming a reasonably urban setting, there’s more than enough diversity that they wouldn’t need to cast still more white characters.
ETA:@6, Which is their perogative, but that doesn’t mean nobody should be upset/annoyed/mildly aggrieved or otherwise put out by that decision.
What, no mention of having Baron Mordo, a white guy in the comics, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor?
@6 of course they don’t; there are plenty of roles for Japanese actors in Japanese cinema. The same cannot be said for minorities in Hollywood.
I’m curious, though… Why would casting a Chinese-american actor as a Japanese character be better? Because “all Asians look alike”?
I have a more important question : why do white people care so much about white-washing ?
Oh, that weird way white people handle racism…..
I mean, I’m french with varied middle-eastern and north-african origins (I was born in Cairo), my skin is dark (and I mean DARK), I have had my fair share of racism, but I always find incredibly funny (and sad) how some people react to said racism, being absurdly afraid of being racist themselves. Because it IS the reason we have that article here, is it not ? The rampant fear of racism… I understand the thought, but when I read this kind of articles, I always picture someone (and a white someone at that) who desperately wants something to be shocked about, and finds purpose in denouncing pretty much anything for any reason…
And, being of the many people that may indeed be shocked by “white-washing”, I find that absurdly stupid.
As I said, I was born in Cairo, I have family there, and nobody – I insist, NOBODY – I know in Cairo even flinched about the casting in Gods of Egypt. You know why ? Because it didn’t matter. What mattered was to have a fun movie.
I mean, it’s an american movie, everytime we talked about it, that’s what transpired. It was an american movie and we expected it to feature american actors and to play with our mythology – in which nobody believes anymore, by the way – in an american way. That was precisely the point. Come on ! It’s cinema, knock yourself out, reinvent it, twist it, have fun with it !
And it’s the same for Ghost in the Shell. Being a movie set in Asia, Siberia or West India wouldn’t change the fact that it’s an american movie (by the way, it also seems that the people writing these articles are americans, or at least, I only see these on american websites. The rest of the world apparently doesn’t care, and believe me, the rest of the world is right). Plus, we live in a world where I am the kind of people that can happen : a egyptian-born, swedish-named (skoeldpadda means turtle), french-speaking freaking cow-boy. I’m not even joking, that’s my job (although nobody in France calls it that way). Based on that, I can’t care less about the etnicity of an actor or if if he/she’s gay or doesn’t eat meat. What I want is a good actor in a good role…. Funny thing is that’s precisely where I have a problem with Scarlet, as I find her absolutely awful.
@10. That’s part of the problem: these aren’t “American actors,” these are a tiny, tiny sub-set of American actors (and another tiny subset of British actors).
I agree with most of the article… but isn’t Keanu Reeves at least part Asian? I’ve read that his grandmother was Chinese.
@10 – skoeldpadda: For one, it’s not just WHITE PEOPLE worrying about withewashing. Can you call Ming-Na Wen white? Just because you and your family and friends don’t care about stuff like Gods of Egypt, it doesn’t mean that nobody that’s not white cares about whitewashing. And second, the problem with whitewashing is that when you underplay the influence and importance of non-white people in the world, a lot of white people in the audience will believe that those who don’t look like them don’t matter as much. And while you born in a place (and your family lives there) where people like you were the norm, the little black or Chinese boy in the middle of a white country will look at all the heroes on TV and the movies and see that no one is like him.
That’s why it matters. It might not matter to YOU, but the world exists beyond you and your immediate circle.
@11 – Cybersnark: That’s right, these are just WHITE American and British actors, and both countries are full of people who aren’t white, but are still American or British.
@skoeldpadda I think you nailed it. I don’t care who you hire, I just want it to make sense. If the source material has a type of character, hire that type of character as best you can (acting skills could sway a vote). I don’t like how many things are changed to accommodate for people’s feelings. New and original material are blank slates and can have any number of diversities, eat your heart out. But I prefer to keep older material closer to the story.
@13
Considering how adapting stuff for movies works, do you not like movie adaptations?
Even if the older material is racist like crazy? It’s a really short hop from Orientalism to Yellow Peril.
I consider it fame-washing. Give the minor roles to well-established names to attract more fan base. Hollywood’s primary value is money, after all.
That’s one of the reasons only a few well-established black actors keep getting most of the roles for black characters.
Personally I think they should cast people who fit the original content creators vision. These are visual mediums and I believe the race or color (as many many of us “white” people are of mixed heritage or even latino) should be in line with the creator’s vision – not modified to suit what should be. Ghost in the Shell should have an Asian actress but then again Nick Fury should be an older white man.
Just my two cents.
@@@@@noblehunter I do like movie adaptations, but I’ll not like how it was adapted. Great acting and writing can cover up a poor actor selection. If the older material has a racist character, then make the character racist. If the material is racist and doesn’t make sense then change it. Like if old man George doesn’t like the neighbor because of how they look, that’s fine, as that’s a character. But if it’s an old Sci Fi material and women or other races can’t pilot or lead for no good reason, change it.
@17 I meant to imply all adaptations make changes to accomodate people’s feelings. Either those of movie decision makers or imagined feelings of potential ticket buyers.
Keeping things close to the original story is good… but many times, lead characters in those story are not white because that’s important to the story, but because the creators were white, and thought they would be writing these things only for people like them (even unconsciously, creators make that decision).
It’s more or less important that Bruce Wayne, heir to an old money family who is amongst the oldest aristocracy in Gotham City be white, because in the 1700s or so when the city started becoming what it would be later, only white people had that kind of money and power.
The other day a friend asked me what would I think if, in thirty years they remake Star Wars, and cast a black person as Han Solo. I wouldn’t give a damn about it, as long as the actor can bring the swagger Harrison Ford brought to the role, because there’s nothing about Han that says he has to be white.
But there’s nothing that says Clark Kent couldn’t be black, or Peter Parker, or even Wonder Woman (who, truth be told, shouldn’t be much like they usually draw her). Tons of characters have origins that have nothing to do with the color of their skin.
I’m of a mind that this is either all ok or none of it is. If we’re going to get up in arms about Scarlet Johansson being cast as Major Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell, then shouldn’t we also be angry about Idris Elba being cast as Roland in The Dark Tower?
@16 I don’t know whether you are aware, but Marvel’s Ultimate universe depicted Nick Fury as a Sam Jackson look alike long before the movies.
Personally I would prefer ScarJo over some of the actors suggested if only because she is proven in SF/action movies and isn’t going to be handicapped by performing in a non-fluent language. I think in Shirow’s overall body of work, there is such a mixture of ethnicities and backgrounds that I don’t care if they are switched for movies (although hearing a very white voice come out of Briareos in some Appleseed videos was very shocking to me the first time I heard it).
That said, I do think whitewashing is a problem in general. My five year old 100% Azn daughter shocked me recently when she told me that she could identify who the hero of a movie was because she was blonde.
No, because there has been an over representation of white people in media for centuries. Here:
http://timemachineyeah.tumblr.com/post/58648290519/this-is-a-jar-full-of-major-characters
Just one comment on the casting in The Last Airbender:
Don’t even pretend that it would have been any better with an Asian cast.
@21 Nope did not know that – my old is showing ;). What I am getting at is that when I first saw the poster I literally was not sure who Samuel Jackson was portraying. His star power is actually the safe bet so probably not the best example.
It’s strange that people get offended when ‘non-white’ characters are played by white actors, but it’s applauded when done in reverse. Either we value being true to the creator’s work, or we don’t. There’s no obligation to make every TV show or film look like a cross-section of American society.
@20, @25: That’s a pretty simplistic view of things. I mean, things change because of the circumstance all the time. The reverse isn’t always the same situation, even when the acts are the same. “Oh, so when I put poison in your drinking water, that’s wrong, but when I put a cup full of water in some poison, nobody cares!” “The doctor cut into me, but when I stick a knife in HIS belly, suddenly that’s attempted murder!” “I don’t see what the big deal is, if a preteen talks about a crush on a teacher it’s cute, but if a teacher talks about his crush on a preteen student, suddenly it’s creepy and people are demanding he’s fired!” “I watch cops through my television, why shouldn’t they be able to watch me through mine?”
Usually, it’s not the act itself that’s wrong, it’s the effects, which can be bad due to a power dynamic issue or an underlying bias. If everything was fair and equal and people of all races and genders were getting great roles written for them, then yeah, people wouldn’t care much if a person of one race played another as long as it was the best actor for the job, or they might think that being true to the original writing was all that mattered… but that’s not the situation.
Even sometimes if the act itself IS wrong, the power dynamics can make it something we can and should worry about more or less. I mean, if a banker stole your life savings and he said, “Well, you stole a pen from my bank one time, so I guess we’re even.” Yeah, stealing a pen might be wrong, but… let’s not lose focus on the real problem by pointing to an irrelevant one.
“There’s no obligation to make every TV show or film look like a cross-section of American society.” Nor is anyone saying it is, but as a broad trend they should reflect society far more than it does. However, I find it strange that the people I tend to see posting about how strange it is that people applaud blacks getting cast in white roles and decry the reverse, tend to be people who seem to shrug with no apparent curiosity at how whites get hired disproportionately in the first place. After all, they’re both cases of uneven treatment, and yet I guess only one is worthy of note.
Here is something to Blow your Minds…Soon we will see our 1st True Protagonist in “Black Panther” and he will have his own solo movie (1st in the MCU of someone of Color/Female)
Those people who are upset/disparaged about “Whitewashing” I would like to see what the opening weekend stats are for “Black Panther” Chadwick Boseman is an Excellent actor (see 42 or Get on Up) and I am eager to see him star as a Superhero (Lets face it, Falcon ISNT a Superhero)
If “Normal America” (NON Geek Fans) can get behind Black Panther (Of course the movie has to have the same quality as the prevoius MCU products) then BP should have a $150M+ weekend.
Personally I was more impressed that “The Wise One” was a woman more than she being a “White” person. I do agree that “Whitewashing” is a problem. Watch Last week tonight w/ John Oliver, they have a bit about this very topic caled, “How is this still a thing” Look it up on youtube.
@26 ghostly1
Your analogies aren’t really applicable here. They’re all different situations where only one context makes sense. I don’t agree that only changing the ethnicities of white characters is acceptable.
In adaptations, being true to the source material is the highest value for me. The people represented on screen should be the people on the page as much as possible, especially where physical features and traits are involved. Changing fundamental traits of a person (especially appearance and sexuality) makes that character no longer who they are.
I’m usually against whitewashing and I completely agree with most of the examples here. Although this is mostly an issue because Hollywood casting is not fair to begin with, and we wouldn’t be talking about that in the first place if castings followed demography. But this time I don’t get it. Ghost In The Shell was a manga and then a series of animés. Despite its popularity, it never got a live action adaptation as is often the case. This is an American adaptation, so it makes sense to make it American; there’s no reason for the characters to be white, but no reason to be Asian either (except that it would be nice to see Asian actors from time to time, but that’s unrelated to this particular movie). Was there the same response to the American version of Ring (for which it seems absolutely everybody was white)? So I have nothing against the casting of Scarlet Johansson in particular, but why set the movie in Japan if everything about it is going to be American? I just saw Ran this evening: this was not Japanese-washing of King Lear, it was a great movie. Adapting a story to one’s culture is an acceptable practice when it’s done well.
Why are we still white-washing characters? Money and statistics. It’s really that simple. Hollywood operates in a country that’s made up of 77% whites and 5% Asians, with only one-third of one percent being Japanese. So the main audience of this movie is going to be white. These white people, who have little understanding of GITS source material don’t care if she’s supposed to be Japanese. “But why was this casting decision made in the first place when it was clear there would be so much controversy?” Is the statistically white American movie-goer really upset by this? Of course not. The media might cry foul, and the SJW will certainly rage, but again that is a very small contingent of the american populace. And I agree with @10 that very few people outside of America care at all.
It just makes to much sense financially to make a movie with a bankable star. Especially when the source material isn’t that popular among the mainstream population to begin with.
I personally love GITS and would have preferred to see Rinko Kikuchi but I’m not going to protest. I’m just glad they are making this film and hope they don’t screw up the character motivations, and story. It will hopefully get more people interested in the source material, and the wonderful world of manga/anime at large.
To be fair, white characters get ‘blackwashed’, ‘asianwashed’ and even ‘womanwashed’ all the time. Off the top of my head, There’s the alternate Earth where all the DC Superheroes are black (I’m not using ‘African American because no way is that world’s Superman come from Africa, he’s still Kryptonian), in the latest (or was it 2nd to last? I stopped keeping track, these constant reboots used to be Marvel’s thing) reboot of DC Wally West is black (and in the TV series too), and so is Spider-man (and now Indian and Gwen Stacy too, so he’s been washed all ways!), Ms. Marvel and Green Lantern became Muslim (and black too), it’s often forgotten that Psylocke went from being Britsh to Asian in-universe, and while Martian Manhunter has always been a martian, his originally white human alias of ‘John Jones’ has been played by black guys in the last two TV incarnations of him, though to be fair it was white in the aborted Justice League pilot from the 90’s. Oh, and let’s not forget Heimdall, the whitest white guy in white magic-Norse Asgard, being played by Edris Elba. There are probably more examples I missed (I’d bring up the Catwoman movie, but as that doesn’t exist and never did, it cannot be used as an example in anything).
And if you’re going to say ‘this is to expand representation so that non-white groups will have characters they can relate to! It’s progressive!’, you are implying the existence of a double standard where it’s a good thing if originally white characters being played by non-whites is good and whites playing non-white characters is bad. And the implication that someone will relate more to a character just because they have the same skill color or ethnicity is at it’s core built on the most fundamentally racist idea of all, the very root of the concept of racism itself. If race isn’t going to be a consideration for whether an actor gets the role of a character who in other media is not of that race, then it all comes down to factors like acting ability and marketability.
P.S. I’m Filipino, which means I am essentially a bastard of originally Malay stocked mixed in with Spanish, Portuegese, Chinese, Japanese, American and whoever else came to port within the last 400 years and left their DNA the way sailors do. We’re Asian be geography but don’t look it, Spanish by culture but don’t look it, Chinese by impending conquest and economic domination but don’t look it, and American by movies, TV and other mass media but don’t look it (we probably fool you on the phones a lot though). So whatever bias I might have, you have more chance to pick it out by rolling dice.
Max Landis covered this pretty well on his YouTube channel the other day. This is an unfortunate side effect of the way movie funding works. When you get larger budgets, the funders will only give money if proven actors are in it. Unfortunately, the A-list is ridiculously small right now compared to what it was in the 80s and 90s. Furthermore, the market for films that are not super-high budget is disappearing, which makes it harder for people to get on the A-list.
There are currently no A-list Asian actors. The days of Jackie Chan and Jet Li on the A-list are over. The closest any female Asian has gotten to the A-list is Lucy Liu. But even her box office “draw” (a mysterious term that credits you with the average dollar return on your movies) was never enough to carry a movie by herself.
This is a problem. We need to do something about this. But the only place we are going to be able to do this is on television. Because television is where all of the medium-budget production work has gone, and so it is where someone can get enough exposure to make it on to the A-list.
There is also a problem here with simply calling this an “Asian” role. The unfortunate truth is that if someone of Chinese descent – like Ming-Na Wen – was cast in this role, the backlash from Japan would be so extreme as to make the movie unviable. If you follow the conversations out of Japan, they are much happier with this role going to a white actress.
And why are there no Asians on the A-List? Because most of the roles that would land someone there go to white people.
Sure, part of the problem is that studios are obsessed with risk management but some of their attempts to mitigate risks are racist or are intended to mitigate the effect racism has on sales. So they deserve to catch flack for them.
How come hardly anyone’s reported on the ethnically-appropriate casting of Bobbie Draper of The Expanse? I thought Tor.com, for sure, would be all over it, but it’s been a week and not a peep.
http://www.danielabraham.com/2016/04/14/meet-bobbie-draper/
I don’t think Dany Rand HAS to be white, but it makes more sense if he is. He is basically the one percenter who has been through so much crap … Hang on. He’s basically Season One Arrow’s version of Olly, isn’t he? I bet they even do flashbacks.
It’s even worse in Bollywood… nobody but Indians to be seen. Even in Macbeth! Are there no actors of Scottish origin they could have casted?
I do agree that the current state of affairs in Hollywood is pretty sad when there’s not one Asian actress that they’ll let carry a movie.
With that said, though I loved Rinko in Pacific Rim and look forward to seeing Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, I don’t think she’d have been right as the Major at all.
I understand the way some movies are made or adpated to different cultures, how they change the ethnicity of the cast to adapt.
One example of this being done in Japan was their adaptation of the Agatha Christie story “murder on the orient express”. The original story featured a mainly white cast of Western europeans, most movie adaptations did so as well. The Japanese version made the story happen in a train in Japan with a mainly Japanese cast.
It’s probably inevitable that when manga adaptations happen in the future, that the Americans are going to make them fit more along their ethnicity lines when the cast is supposed to be 100% Japanese. In Japanese stories that are set in other places, like the Resident Evil series, the American moviemakers actually kind of followed what the original authors intended (like keeping Ada Wong a Chinese American and so on).
Blame capitalism.
They cast Johansson because they thought the increase in ticket sales from having a Big Name in the lead role would outweigh the loss of sales from people irritated by their whitewashing the role.
Actually this (posted @19) is the key point here. Is it necessary for a character to “work”, that he/she has a certain cultural background? If so, than in most cases it is best to use an actor that shares this background. But I am not sure if this is actually the case here. The famous examples of “black” Heimdalls and “white” Egyptian gods is more or less beside the point as gods are not humans anyway. A pretty idiotic example of changing a characters “race” is the Dark Tower, where a significant part of the plot (Roland’s interactions with Detta Walker) makes little sense if he is not “white”. That beeing said, all these issues are overstated. Adaptions are rarely completely “true” to the original and whether they are good or not does not depend on it. All the outrage is, from my point of view, a waste of time.
Well, let’s be honest, the original casting for Khan was not much better in this respect. But it doesn’t get brought up because the “all brown people are the same” trope (and in USA, Hispanic is seen as a separate race) doesn’t seem to be as condemned as whitewashing as far as US media go.
This is not, however, always the case with the world at large: back in the day, there were quite a few angry posts by Arab viewers of Lost because of Naveen Andrews playing an Iraqi, in spite of not looking like an Arab person at all. Now, I loved Andrews as Sayid, but, even to someone like me who is white and lives in a country with a majority white population, Andrews looks very obviously South Asian. (One could try to do the show’s work for them and explain it by, say, his mother being from Pakistan. But it was rather ridiculous when the other characters kept referring to him as “that Arab guy” after just taking a look at him.)
Still my favourite depiction of the argument against this practice is the two bowls of chocolate-covered raisins:
http://timemachineyeah.tumblr.com/post/58648290519/this-is-a-jar-full-of-major-characters
If they wanted an Asian Danny Rand they should have just made a Shang Chi show. Maybe they will, or maybe he’ll show up, that would be cool.
Also, I’m white but I use a Japanese manga character as my alias. Is that yellow-washing? Or would it classify as cultural appropriation? I’m so confused these days.
To preface my comment, I am not an anime nerd but have seen Ghost in the Shell and loved it. I am not an SJW – I don’t think this is a political issue that needs public outcry. This is a HOLLYWOOD movie aimed at western audiences and it needs to be relatable and entertaining. I think Scarjo will do just fine. In my opinion, she looks more like Kusanagi in the above photos more than the Asian actresses, and I fail to see how casting a white girl is any worse than casting a Chinese or Korean. That is just insulting, like white people can’t tell the difference anyway? Do we even know Kusanagi is actually Japanese beyond her name? There is nothing about how she is drawn that is inarguably Asian. I care more about the movie being good. If it sucks it won’t matter who got cast.
I like Tilda swinton’s look in the Dr. Strange trailer. And as an actress, she has a proven track record of playing odd, esoteric and mystical characters. When she was cast I was excited to see her performance. The thought never crossed my mind that it was offensive for her to play that role. My advice for those who thought that was offensive, STOP LOOKING FOR REASONS TO BE OFFENDED. Guess what? You’ll ALWAYS find one, no what other people do to try and appease you.
I know people are flipping out because Major Kusanagi is not Asian. Well first of all, Asian people are not all the same, they do not all come from the same culture or have all the same attributes. If you wanted to be accurate and stop the idea that Asia is a monolithic culture and that all Asian people are the same. It’s not remotely true. So just getting any Asian actress may “solve” the white-washing, but it doesn’t fix a number of other issues.
Second of all, Major Kusanagi has not had a biological body in a very, very long time. If I remember correctly, Kusanagi has been in a cybernetic body almost her entire life. It’s not immediately obvious in the earlier Ghost in the Shell series and movie, but in Ghost in the Shell 2 it becomes glaringly obvious as her cybernetic body resembles a child and she clearly is not a child.
Third, one of the major themes of Ghost in the Shell (and it’s a huge one that goes through out all the series and movies) is that Kusanagi is questioning what makes someone human and what makes them alive and if they can be alive and true with a cybernetic body. The fact that her Cybernetic body resembles a white woman when she was born Asian could ADD to that plot by having that conflict between who she thinks she is and how she views herself. But I doubt they will. Because Hollywood is not that deep.
I see what you’re saying and I agree (although I think Elodie Yung is a better choice).
In terms of long established characters, like Danny Rand, I have to respectively disagree. In this particular instance, it is important that he is white because it effects his character and origin story. And origin stories are important. If we really wanted to make Iron Fist Asian, we could’ve used another comic character or created a new character.
A poster mentioned that certain characters could be any color and I’d have to say again, I don’t agree. Superman, Wonder Woman if they were black or Asian it changes their world view and it does effect their characters and choices. Just changing their color isn’t reflective of the culture either. Skin color goes hand in hand with culture and world view.
As to GITS, it should’ve been someone Asian. As to why it’s not, well you guessed it. It brings in money.
America has a small subsection of it’s culture that is even into manga and anime, so my guess is that the studios are 1.taking a chance and 2. they want a decent return on their money.
It’s messed up because it doesn’t portray it accurately enough the world view and the culture Motoko lives in and experiences. Then again, she’s also a cyborg.
To me, this isn’t nearly as messed up as the travesty that was The Last Airbender or Gods of Egypt.
@17 Hispanic Superman in Gods & Monsters is a better Superman in every way. But changing that detail did change the stories you can tell about him because it did (and really should) change his point of view. It wouldn’t really be honest to keep absolutely everything the same and just do a palette swap without considering the story consequences of that decision. Kind of like how Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes’s differences make both of their stories as Blue Beetle more interesting to read.
I think it just boils down to money. Who will make the most money in this role “world wide”. The asian actors in the U.S. don’t hold as much weight (popularity) as Scarlet Jo. She is popular in japan as well, she is not Chinese (it would b much worse if they picked a Chinese actress to play a Japanese role). And she an sort look like the character. She likes these kind of roles.
As far as Scarjo and Tilda Swinton’s casting goes, the author clearly points out the reason and then proceeds to simply dismiss it: money. It has nothing to do with race or “whitewashing” or anything else, it comes down to ROI. The producers are making a big investment in these films, and they want to see bankable names in the lead roles to help reassure them that their money is well spent and will be returned to them, with a substantial profit. That’s why big budget movies are made: to make a profit (and yes, that means that films like Avatar and Gods of Egypt are far less defensible than Dr. Strange and GITS). I really doubt that the choice to cast Swinton or ScarJo had anything to do with their race, and everything to do with their ability to put butts in seats.
Another thing that factors into the decision to make the Ancient One less Asian (remember, he is Tibetan in the comics) is the current state of international releasing. China is now a major consumer of American movies, and films are definitely being made with that in mind. In that sense, following the comics and making the Ancient One Tibetan would likely have caused serious problems with a Chinese release, given the continuing political problems between China and Tibet. I don’t know for a fact that this was an issue, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.
From deep inside fandom, as most of us are, it’s often easy to forget that these films aren’t made for us. They’re made to appeal to the general public, to as wide a swathe of people as possible. If all the fans of Dr. Strange worldwide, for example, were to see this upcoming movie, it would be a flop of Biblical proportions. These films have to pull in viewers who have never heard of the property before and can be pulled in by a trailer or an ad or an interview on a late night talk show. That’s why they cast bankable stars. Are there excellent Asian actors and actresses in Hollywood? Of course there are. A number are rightfully listed in the piece above, such as Ming-Na Wen. But how many of them have the star power of ScarJo or Swinton? None.
The author also scuttles her own argument when she advocates for an Asian Danny Rand, another example of race-bending and a nod to the Asian stereotype of all Asians being martial arts experts. You can advocate for diversity in superhero movies, or you can argue for faithfulness to the source material, but you can’t have it both ways. Either argue that Danny Rand should be white because that’s how he’s been portrayed in the comics for 40+ years, or argue that superhero movies are their own thing and should be able to make casting choices different from the source material, but don’t argue both at the same time. At that point, you’re simply making a racially-based argument that white people have no place in today’s movies, not for diversity and inclusion. At that point, the moral high road that SJWs are so desperate to take has been completely obliterated.
As much as many of us would like to believe otherwise, Hollywood is a business. They’re not in it to make art, and they’re not in it to fulfill our desires for faithfully adapted comic books. They’re in it for the money, first, last, and always. If you look at it from that perspective, all these decisions make perfect sense.
@32 – Walker: And even when Jackie Chan and Jet Li were A-listers, they were only A-listers for martial arts movies. There were (and still aren’t) any Asian Hollywood A-listers that get hired for roles other than martil artists if they’re young to middle aged, and wise mystic masters if they’re old. Ethnicity for non-caucasians (or caucasian looking/with caucasian sounding names) sadly limits the kind of roles actors are offered. Like (though this is slowly changing), Hispanics get casted as thughs or wetbacks; or Indians as call-center operators. Black people have had this happen to them, although today it’s much more common to see them casted in other roles. (British TV is a bit better at this, and you’ll see actors with Indian origins playing just about any sort of role.)
Reminds me of something I saw posted by an Asian actor… it went something like, from age 3-8: random Asian kid in school crowd scene thrown in for diversity, 8-16: music or math prodigy, 16-40: martial artist, 40-60: businessman and stenr father who disapproves of his children’s choices, 60-onward: wise kung-fu or mystical master.
@36 – Church: I prefer to keep Danny Rand white because of the dynamics between rich white boy and poor black guy work better with him as white and Cage as black. But there are examples of Asian American businessmen who became quite rich, and Danny could still be Asian and part of the one percent.
@42 – Annara: The original casting for Khan isn’t brought up much because it was made in the 60s, and no one expects 60s TV to pay attention to that. And yes, Hispanic or Latino is not an ethnicity, we’re not all brown (matter of fact, I’m quite pale and have green eyes), and I like it that Hollywood is slowly begining to understand this… I even saw a redhaired, white Latino on a TV show recently!
Speaking of that… isn’t Arab a cultural denomination, for people who speak Arab as a mother tongue, and not an ethnicity?
@43 – cecrow: I posted that same link in comment 22. :) It’s such a simple explanation, yet some people still refuse to let it into their heads.
I don’t understand the intense need to make Iron Fist Asian. Do we need more non-white superheroes, of course, but why go about changing established characters’ race to achieve it? Why not create good character who are Asian American (besides the fact that there are some)? There are so many dynamics that are played up in Danny Rand being white in the comics that would be lost by simply changing his race because the Internet wanted it. It seems like the people who complain have never read the comics and just don’t get it. As a counter argument, I’ll pose the question… why? Because Iron Fist is a martial artist, so… naturally… an Asian should play a martial artist. Think about that for a moment… We all want more diversity in Marvel films… Buuuuuuut only if they play into stereotypes? That doesn’t make sense in terms of what a change like that is trying to achieve. Why stop there?… Why not make a stink over Tony Stark not being Asian? Why not make a stink over Ultron not being voiced by a woman? Why not make a stink over the Rocket not being a Possum? No, we want to make a stink over a white actor being cast to play a white part because…martial arts! Seriously… you know what happens when you make a stink over something? It comes out sounding like a fart.
It’s ridiculous. When the movie characters aren’t true to the source material with regard to race, it’s a huge cause for concern. For example, casting Will Smith as James West in Wild, Wild West must have seemed like a sure thing–popular star, action-comedy genre, good source material–and it was an absolute disaster because James West wasn’t true to the source material.
In the case of Doctor Strange, this is just a horrible decision by Marvel/Disney, not because Tilda Swinton isn’t a good actress (she’s fantastic), but because it totally marginalizes Asians in general and the Asian market in particular. If they had cast a Chinese actor in the role (say, for the sake of argument Chow-Yun Fat, Tony Leung, or Donnie Yen), they would really engage the Chinese market with an actor known to them. Of course, I’m sure the Chinese government was part of the calculus–Fat and Leung are “banned” by the Communist Chinese government, which would affect distribution of the movie in China. But the point is that there *are* good, recognizable Asian actors who would enhance the movie both from a racial and financial perspective.
Watching the Ancient One being played by a white actress is like watching Charlie Chan being played by a white actor.
Right… Wild Wild West was bad because they made Jim West black…
I watched the animation and I don’t even think Hollywood can even make Japanese animation into movies or series, they just don’t have an open mind. They take other country movies and twist it around. What’s the point?
This situation is similar to the awesome book The Girl With All The Gifts. The whole cast is so off.
@52: “As much as many of us would like to believe otherwise, Hollywood is a business. They’re not in it to make art, and they’re not in it to fulfill our desires for faithfully adapted comic books. They’re in it for the money, first, last, and always. If you look at it from that perspective, all these decisions make perfect sense.”
As does the outcry against it. If you want to change the situation, the best thing to do is to not just refuse to support it, but to raise as big a stink as you can about it and why it’s wrong and harmful so other people won’t support it, so people will think twice before making these decisions. If it’s all down to cost, then make it cost MORE to do it the wrong way.
Otherwise, the situation will just persist because it’s going to continue to be more profitable to make white characters and give roles to white actors.
Responding to people who are complaining about it with “it’s just that way because it makes more money” doesn’t seem to have any purpose besides trying to make yourself look smarter, and not helping the situation, or actively trying to discourage the effort to change things, and thus REALLY not helping the situation.
@54: “I don’t understand the intense need to make Iron Fist Asian. Do we need more non-white superheroes, of course, but why go about changing established characters’ race to achieve it? Why not create good character who are Asian American (besides the fact that there are some)?”
Do you have any idea of how hard it is to make a bankable comic book character? Maybe a couple in a decade ever get any kind of mainstream recognizeability. If it was as simple as that, EVERYONE would be doing it (and we’d be in the same problem because chances are more whites would be doing it and getting more attention for it). If you put a complete moratorium on new white characters in comics (something nobody is proposing, nor would probably ever be done)… chances are, in twenty years time, we would still be doing more reboots of white Marvel characters than we would have movies about these new minority characters.
“Because Iron Fist is a martial artist, so… naturally… an Asian should play a martial artist. Think about that for a moment… We all want more diversity in Marvel films… Buuuuuuut only if they play into stereotypes?”
I think you’re possibly missing that Iron Fist is something of a special case. It’s not so much about it being “martial arts”, it’s that it’s a specifically pernicious trope, that is “white guy goes to learn ancient secret skills from another culture and becomes best ever at it!” It’s a trope that appears again and again (Doctor Strange also uses it), and Iron Fist, unfortunately, his canon origin sort of requires being another one of that, as long as he’s white. You could make him black, but I doubt anybody’s really expecting that to happen when Luke Cage is there. Or you could try another race, visibly Latino maybe. Didn’t happen, though. But yes, making him Asian does trod on other stereotypes, but the reason an Asian Danny Rand is suggested is because going with that stereotype is viewed by some as a lesser evil. But it wasn’t a universal belief even among people who believe the Iron Fist story, as is, is problematic.
Again, like so many other things, this wouldn’t be such a big deal if there were plenty of other non-stereotyped roles for Asians out there. For some people, even seeing themselves in a (non-negative) stereotype is better than complete invisibility.
I have to agree that the intent was purely about maximizing the perceived star power of the individual actors but I think Hollywood errs often in that regard. There are plenty of quality Asian actors available to fill the role well. At the same time Samuel L Jackson totally made the Nick Fury role his despite the character being white in the comics.
I was wondering where this outrage was when Tom Cruise was cast in Edge of Tomorrow which was a Japanese novel called All you need is Kill about an 18 year old Japanese kid. Tom Cruise doesnt seem to fit the role here but when I complained people didnt seem to care that this was a great chance for a young Asian actor but went to an old untalented white one instead.
@59 – Charles: As mentioned in previous comments, the Nick Fury version Jackson plays was already black, with his appearance actually based on the actor, several years before casting him in the role was even an idea.
Does anyone in this thread actually watch Japanese anime? It’s filled with incredibly white European looking people. Japanese anime has a rich history of white-washing throughout all of it’s work. Seriously does anyone posting actually follow Japanese Anime at all? The 127 million Asian’s in Japan won’t be bothered at all by this casting choice.
American film certainly has a poor history on race but boiling it down to ‘only Asians can play Asians’ seems an extremely poor direction to push for.
@60: Straight up adaptations that set the story in different places and change all the names (as well as plot elements) are different animals than one where you keep everything BUT the races. A “Ghost in the Shell” movie set in LA with a character named Molly Kennedy played by ScarJo or something would be a totally different thing than one than one set in Japan where somehow a lot of the major roles are whites (which, by the way, is another issue… ScarJo is the lead, but of the 7 cast members listed on the Wikipedia entry 4 of them are white actors. In a movie set in Japan. Really? Even if you need star power for your lead, do you really need more than HALF the cast to be whites, rather than at least taking the situation you “can’t help” and using it as a way to introduce audiences to more non-white actors?). Some people still have problems with the complete adaptations as well, as cultural appropriation… I personally don’t (although, I’d certainly still like them to try and cast more diverse especially when they’re adapting something from another culture).
@63: “Does anyone in this thread actually watch Japanese anime? It’s filled with incredibly white European looking people. Japanese anime has a rich history of white-washing throughout all of it’s work.”
As I understand it, that’s your own bias at play. Japanese viewers see Japanese characters as Japanese. Cartoon depictions simplify and features that look Asian are often removed in the simplification, but that doesn’t mean they’re drawing them AS white characters… it’s that white people (myself included) are used to seeing themselves as the “default” so they expect that in a rendering of other races, the differences from the white default should still be emphasized, whereas distinctive “white features”… well, what are they? Are white people even aware of any? Whatever they are, if they get removed, then it doesn’t mean the character’s “non-white.”
But in anime, European characters are actually often drawn in a subtly but distinctly different way. See https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/30/guest-post-why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/ (worth checking for the point about Marge Simpson, if nothing else)
Whitewashing fictional characters is nothing compared to whitewashing real characters. Like that movie, 21. Real life story about math students who tried to cheat at Las Vegas. Most students were Asian Americans. In the movie adaptation? Most students were white, especially the main roles.
Or Angelina Jolie playing the role of a woman who, IRL, was Afro-Cuban.
Or Ben Affleck playing the role of a Hispanic American intelligence agent who helped American hostages get away from Iran.
I wonder if in the future the movie about Barack Obama will have a white actor playing the role, since that would be more “bankable”.
I agree with what several people have said here -ScarJo being cast in GITS is about money. It is a fringe franchise in a fringe genre, and I think the hope is having a bankable star will make the project seem less cultish and like something someone who isn’t into anime will go see. And the character, while having a japanese name, doesn’t look japanese.
I don’t know what is up with Tilda swinton in Dr. Strange, other than maybe they wanted to get away from the asian thing to get away from the tibet thing so the movie could play to the 2 billion potential movie goers in china.
I’m not particularly happy about Elba being cast as Roland in the Dark Tower adaptation because it changes an aspect of Roland’s world(there are, it appears, literally no black people, as some who meet Odetta are very surprised to learn they exist), as well as the relationship with Odetta/Detta. It will be difficult for her character to call Roland a honky. In the end, though, I won’t care that much if the story is adapted well.
@30 @45 You both seem to be buying into Hollywood’s argument that the majority of the audience is white, therefore a movie has to have white leads if it’s to be ‘relatable’ and ‘bankable’. I’m not convinced that’s true – if a movie is good I’ll watch and enjoy it regardless of what race the leads are.
And if it *is* true, then that’s mostly because Hollywood has self-perpetuated itself into a situation where they only consider a small handful of actors “box office draws” and that group is almost exclusively white. Hollywood seem to have forgotten that putting relative unknowns into major Hollywood films is how you *create* box office draws.
Actually that’s not entirely true. Who was Chris Hemsworth before Thor? Hugh Jackman before X-Men? Clearly Hollywood *are* willing to take a punt on unknown actors – but only the white ones. :/ Thus perpetuating the problem and keeping some pretty awesome unknown actors who we’d probably love from our screens.