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Gyges posted:Anonymous sources claimed that at some point Paramount/Dream Works had someone check to see if they could CGI the white actors to look more East Asian, but didn't move past the see what it would look like stage. Paramount/Dream Works denies that they did this, claiming The white-washing is more subtle. Major being ScarJo is fine, she is a really close match to Major's cyborg body, and only an issue because she can't actually act Major. A better solution would've been to have a voice actor dub over her. Where it comes in is things like changing her name (and likely personal background), details of the location, background cast that end up making the movie play somewhere that is distinctly not japan.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:42
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Calling it now, it's going to turn out that she was created as an AI that thought it was human.
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Mar 16, 2017 19:01
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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Mar 16, 2017 19:06
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Mithaldu posted:The white-washing is more subtle. Major being ScarJo is fine, she is a really close match to Major's cyborg body, and only an issue because she can't actually act Major. A better solution would've been to have a voice actor dub over her. See, that's not what white-washing is. White-washing is very overt, and not subtle at all - it is a symptom of white supremacy. MonsieurChoc necessarily gives away its reductiveness as a meme, inadvertently criticizing the filmmakers for not giving "roles that would normally go to" POC actors to POC actors, rather than engaging in historical criticism, recognizing that there is indeed no normalization of who can and can't play certain roles; that white-washing is merely the acting out of colonial Europeans, a tacit expression of their political and economic dominance. To stress as often as has to be stressed many, many times: The point of saying that racism is a mask of class struggle is not the equivalent of believing representation doesn't matter, that it's not inherently grotesque when ethno-national identity is mimicked or made monstrous, or any of the other boogie-man nonsense. It is straightforwardly a critique of ideology, that white-washing not only occurs but is conceptualized because the cultural context in question is a white supremacist, colonial empire. There is no 'normal' with regards to how 'Asian stories' are told or who 'Asian characters' are portrayed in the U.S. because of political, economic, and cultural movements which have enfranchised possessive investment and assimilation into 'whiteness,' and hostilely policed 'Asianness.' The vote of confidence is merely that GitS '17 looks good aesthetically, and will specifically have no choice except to confront the 'grave' that the filmmakers have made not only of the '95 film, but of the entire fantasy of how these big budget fantasy movies are supposed to stand in for 'the new normal.' The white-washing meme stops being about how it's so good to be white in America that you'll be the first people to successfully develop an adaptation of a Japanese cartoon, to the more abstract and invisible formulation that 'Asian actors don't get Asian roles.'
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Mar 16, 2017 19:37
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K. Waste posted:There is no 'normal' with regards to how 'Asian stories' are told or who 'Asian characters' are portrayed in the U.S. because of political, economic, and cultural movements which have enfranchised possessive investment and assimilation into 'whiteness,' and hostilely policed 'Asianness.' Could you give an example of this? Because I'm having difficulty parsing it if only for an inability to kind of conceptualize it concretely.
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Mar 16, 2017 19:54
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Corrosion posted:Could you give an example of this? Because I'm having difficulty parsing it if only for an inability to kind of conceptualize it concretely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_land_laws http://www.deanza.edu/faculty/lewisjulie/Asian%20American%20Exclusion.pdf
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Mar 16, 2017 20:01
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K. Waste posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act That's not quite what I meant. Look, I'm stupid in regard to this. I need you to take one of these things and explain it to me given the context of Ghost in the Shell. So, background for me is that my mom is Filipino. In the 1980s, someone called my mother and asked her what language she spoke to her son/my stepbrother. She said, "My language", and was told to stop that and "only speak to him in English." So in terms of whitewashing or policing, when I say I'm having a hard time piecing this together it's to say that even with this narrative... I don't know where this all fits in in regard to what you're saying, but I want to. So, look, some of these things are things I'm aware of in some superficial way, but I'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment to explain to me as if I'm completely ignorant of what these might mean in regard to this. If you could like take the time to frame one of those in the context of this discussion in terms of how I should understand it, that'd be great. Because the great irony here is I've followed both you and SMG talking about this, and there are times when I have to admit that whatever viewpoint you're speaking from is foreign to me (but I don't want it to be).
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Mar 16, 2017 20:09
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Maybe it's because english is my second language, maybe it's because i'm simple-minded, but frankly, your literary style is too complex for me to even try and grok it in its entirety. But I do disagree with your opening sentence. White-washing is the replacement of non-white roles with white actors.
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Mar 16, 2017 20:11
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Corrosion posted:I need you to take one of these things and explain it to me given the context of Ghost in the Shell. So, background for me is that my mom is Filipino. In the 1980s, someone called my mother and asked her what language she spoke to her son/my stepbrother. She said, "My language", and was told to stop that and "only speak to him in English." So in terms of whitewashing or policing, when I say I'm having a hard time piecing this together it's to say that even with this narrative... I don't know where this all fits in in regard to what you're saying, but I want to. If you will take for example the link to "Yellow Peril," nativist hostility towards Asian immigrants and refugees was a mainstream and popular political platform. The first law ever implemented to prevent a specific ethnic group from entering the United States targeted the Chinese in 1882 and was not repealed until 1943. This trend in and of itself was rooted in a much larger framework of the colonial West, which depended on the portrayal of 'the East' or 'the Orient' as uncivilized, dirty hordes in order to validate imperialism, particularly the expansion of access to commodities. What I'm getting at with regards to GitS is that, when we are talking about "white-washing," what we are talking about is the fact that despite Asian-Americans being technically the fastest growing, most economically successful racial group in the United States, this has not translated to integration. The new American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell is exactly as white-washed as all of the dubbed American releases of the animated films/OVAs, because white-washing is just a symptom of the exclusionary ideology which pervades the explicit absence of Asian-Americans/Asian actors in all possible fantasy scenarios, not simply ones which are coded with 'Asian-ness' or happen to be live-action.
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Mar 16, 2017 23:58
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That makes a lot of sense, thank you.
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Mar 17, 2017 00:18
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If they changed the location to Neo-New York or something I'd accept the white actors. But having the setting still be explicitly asian but still have a big famous white woman take the role seems a bit weird.
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Mar 17, 2017 09:11
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Corrosion posted:Because the great irony re is I've followed both you and SMG talking about this, and there are times when I have to admit that whatever viewpoint you're speaking from is foreign to me (but I don't want it to be). To put things as straightforwardly as possible: people ITT are pursuing a free-market solution to the racism problem. Pure supply and demand: "we demand that racism end now, so the biggest corporations must supply an end to racism for us." Take this guy, for example: Echo Chamber posted:[Whitewashing is] a deal-breaker for more and more people to who would otherwise still pay to see a movie. The goal of spreading the whitewashing meme is to convince the biggest Hollywood studios that casting Asian women in lead roles as superheroes will be profitable. The fantasy is that this is some badass progressive ultimatum - "do as I say or you'll lose everything!" In actuality, of course, it's just pleading for the corporations to be nice - "please, please stop. I'll give you money!" Echo Chamber says it outright: the goal is to 'make a deal' with Disney, Fox, and whoever. But, for some reason, Echo believes that he has the bargaining power in this situation. Because Twitter. The brutal fact is there are probably hundreds of live-action anime adaptations with all-Japanese casts, but nobody gives a poo poo about Casshern or Shinobi: Heart Under The Blade or whatever. These 'don't count' because they aren't in English, aren't American, have lower budgets, etc. Complaints ITT are premised on the inherent superiority of Hollywood product - its 'visibility', which means popularity/profitability. The idea that it's about jobs for Asian actors is bullshit. It's really about getting an Asian actor a role in the 'the best films', where 'the best films' are effectively defined as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Other films are inferior. Ghost In The Shell 1995 is already-inherently inferior to this remake, because it's Japanese and will have been less profitable. Did you notice how nobody was celebrating Great Wall? That one 'doesn't count' because it's Chinese - and there's a weird overlap between the 'whitewashing' meme and the 'pandering to China' meme. We want pandering, but only if it's 'natural' pandering: pandering to us (American liberal Disney fans). Like, I understand. The goal is the symbolic display of having a specifically Asian-American Superman* to make Asian-American children feel self-esteem, and so-on. Make no mistake; symbolic victories are good - but they're still only that. There is no antiracism here, because antiracism would involve destroying these corporations. Not relying on their charity. *no martial arts because that's a stereotype. And it's probably not a good idea to make him good at math or science. And no magic either, really. And he should smirk ever-so-slightly when he does his signature move.... SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 12:44
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cosmically_cosmic posted:If they changed the location to Neo-New York or something I'd accept the white actors. But having the setting still be explicitly asian but still have a big famous white woman take the role seems a bit weird. But, my friend, this is exactly the problem. There are tons of Asians/Asian-Americans in New York!
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Mar 17, 2017 14:16
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K. Waste posted:But, my friend, this is exactly the problem. There are tons of Asians/Asian-Americans in New York! This goes back to the point that Ghost In the Shell 1995 is not a progressive film. The protagonist ends up a libertarian(?) hacker and singularity-worshipper whose goal is ultimately to eliminate all other cultures by assimilating them into - replacing them with - a uniformly 'American' identity: "No clue about age, sex or background. We think that he or she is American."
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Mar 17, 2017 14:45
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Did you notice how nobody was celebrating Great Wall? That one 'doesn't count' because it's Chinese - and there's a weird overlap between the 'whitewashing' meme and the 'pandering to China' meme. We want pandering, but only if it's 'natural' pandering: pandering to us (American liberal Disney fans). Please define "celebrate" here. Great Wall got lots of guff for whitewashing, and also got less press because it's not Ghost in the Shell (a more widely known IP) and received less marketing support.
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Mar 17, 2017 14:48
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dont even fink about it posted:Please define "celebrate" here. Great Wall got lots of guff for whitewashing, and also got less press because it's not Ghost in the Shell (a more widely known IP) and received less marketing support. There is no whitewashing in the movie. You would know this if you had seen it. If the point is actually to support films that give roles to Asian actors, then Great Wall is a blockbuster with one of the biggest Chinese casts in the history of the world. Chinese director, made in China.... Again, my point is the the bizarre quibbling over how certain films 'don't count'. You say it yourself: Great Wall doesn't count because it's "not a widely-known IP", and has "less marketing support". It's not a real film, arbitrarily. In other words: you do not want to support Asian actors or Asian cinema, making them successful. You want the inherently-superior movies that you already support, that are already dominant - Hollywood blockbusters about superheros - to become marginally more Asian.
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Mar 17, 2017 15:22
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:There is no whitewashing in the movie. You would know this if you had seen it. If the point is actually to support films that give roles to Asian actors, then Great Wall is a blockbuster with one of the biggest Chinese casts in the history of the world. Chinese director, made in China.... For the record I'm not taking a side and generally want to see this new GitS movie, I'm just pointing out that Great Wall was accused of whitewashing, but the clamor was less loud because Great Wall did not have the same visibility.
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Mar 17, 2017 15:32
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I lot of people were calling The Great Wall whitewashing. Did you not notice the whole #ThankYouMattDamon thing? Or every Asian comedian taking shots at it? People's point is that it happens all the loving time. These two movies are now just another two examples.
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Mar 17, 2017 15:43
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Lol stop engaging with them as if they're earnest, they're just using you guys as writing prompts, from which to bash out some hilarious insanity.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:15
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Echo Chamber posted:I lot of people were calling The Great Wall whitewashing. Did you not notice the whole #ThankYouMattDamon thing? Or every Asian comedian taking shots at it? Matt Damon plays a foolish German dude sneaking into China to steal their superior technology. This is not whitewashing. Whitewashing is if he arrived in China and the emperor was played by a white guy. You are using the term incorrectly because you are having difficulty articulating what the actual issue is. Even if you were not, the greater point is your tactic of spreading memes. "Didn't you see all the memes? There was a hashtag, and some quotes from authentic Asian comedians..." You are not engaged in any sort of ideological critique. What you are doing is not progressive.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:16
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Mithaldu posted:Lol stop engaging with them as if they're earnest, they're just using you guys as writing prompts, from which to bash out some hilarious insanity. ... Says the guy who five posts up admits to not really having the English language skills to follow the discussion? What? Not everything outside your comprehension has no purpose, my man. cosmically_cosmic posted:If they changed the location to Neo-New York or something I'd accept the white actors. But having the setting still be explicitly asian but still have a big famous white woman take the role seems a bit weird. The original film was pretty explicitly set in a colonial city; a Singapore or Hong Kong. Geographically in Asia, but founded and built by European empires in support of European trade, and still largely accomplishing that task though via globalism rather than colonialism by the time of the intermediate cyberfuture. I don't know if the live-action has explicitly labeled its setting yet but it cribs enough visual iconography that I think it ends up occupying that transitory space as well.
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Mar 17, 2017 17:44
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HookedOnChthonics posted:... Says the guy who five posts up admits to not really having the English language skills to follow the discussion? At least have SMG's decency to focus on the batshit funny writing. 
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Mar 17, 2017 17:53
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Mithaldu posted:Maybe it's because english is my second language, maybe it's because i'm simple-minded, but frankly, your literary style is too complex for me to even try and grok it in its entirety.  e: I'm not insulting you, I'm just saying that I don't understand dismissing things you explicitly don't care to read as bad-faith or ludicrous. Just move on. HookedOnChthonics fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 17:58
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Looks like I'm not the only one who has good reason to be humble about their reading comprehension. Also 1995 gits is in Japanese Japan and full of Japanese: http://ghostintheshell.wikia.com/wiki/New_Port_City Mithaldu fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 18:06
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Do you think if a Japanese production company made a remake of like, Iron Man, or something, and cast an Asian actor as Tony Stark, that there would be Japanese nerds complaining about Asian-washing?
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Mar 17, 2017 18:17
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Matt Damon does look like a Chinese person.
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Mar 17, 2017 19:04
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Mithaldu posted:Looks like I'm not the only one who has good reason to be humble about their reading comprehension. New Port City is a fictional future metropolis which functions as a border-zone between Japan and the globalised East, modeled upon Hong Kong. If you are more concerned with canon than with literacy, then you might as well be genuine about all of the imaginary as presented in GitS canon: That there have been two more World Wars, including a nuclear war which fundamentally altered the geography of Japan and 'caused the collapse of other nations and, thus, mass migration; that Japan has gone through a second 'post-war miracle' and is now an international super-power, whereas civil wars have fractured the U.S. into three competing nations; etc. More directly, however, you can just watch GitS and pay attention to the significant Chinese population (of both working-poor and "luxury" class varieties) of New Port City, the clandestine goings-on of its paramilitary forces (Sections 6 and 9), and infer that New Port City is politically evocative in ways which are not reductive to the authentic lived experience of Japanese Japan. Japan in GitS isn't even Japan - you have to deal with it.
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Mar 17, 2017 19:35
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UmOk posted:Do you think if a Japanese production company made a remake of like, Iron Man, or something, and cast an Asian actor as Tony Stark, that there would be Japanese nerds complaining about Asian-washing? There's a Spider Man manga and live-action show in the '70s. The manga and the TV show set it in Japan , not NYC, and didn't use "Peter Parker", which means they didn't bother to keep anything of original outside of the iconography and premise. They even gave him a car and a giant robot, so they did even better handling than the 2017 GITS filmmakers. Seriously, if they couldn't do a faithful adaptation, then they should gave pulled a "Seven Samurai"/"Magnificent Seven" or "King Lear"/"Ran" style adaptation and changed everything save the premise for American audiences instead of half-assing it and pussy-footing around the Japanese setting.
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Mar 17, 2017 19:38
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Young Freud posted:They even gave him a car and a giant robot, so they did even better handling than the 2017 GITS filmmakers. We can't rule out that the Major has a car and a giant robot.
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Mar 17, 2017 19:43
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I'm happy you found another hook to write against, but sad you're so much of an idiot that you forget the post contrasts against the recommendation of setting it in New York, AND the claim it was set in a colony.
Mithaldu fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 19:44
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Young Freud posted:There's a Spider Man manga and live-action show in the '70s. The manga and the TV show set it in Japan , not NYC, and didn't use "Peter Parker", which means they didn't bother to keep anything of original outside of the iconography and premise. They even gave him a car and a giant robot, so they did even better handling than the 2017 GITS filmmakers. I've been having similar thoughts. If you're gonna whitewash something, it seems less controversial to go all the way and make a "story based on" where it's set in America, starring mostly white actors with American names instead of a halfway changed story where it's a white person playing a Japanese character in a Japanese setting. Akira has been in development for live action since 2002 and it seems like a tough nut to crack. Casting white actors seems to be the assumption. Do they set it in Japan or do they adapt it to a US setting? If it's in America, do they rename most of the characters to be American? Do they have a mostly white cast with American names white keeping the titular character? That seems awkward, and brings attention to its own racial recasting. If they go all the way with recasting everyone and adapting the setting like Magnificent Seven, then you lose out on the name recognition of Akira. It's damned if you do and damned if you don't. By contrast, Edge of Tomorrow was an American setting with white characters based on a Japanese manga called All You Need is Kill, but they had the benefit of working with a manga that didn't have any name recognition in America. By contrast in a different way, Godzilla gets adapted into an American setting with white actors, but they get to keep the Godzilla name and it seems to work out fine for them.
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Mar 17, 2017 19:59
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Steve Yun posted:By contrast, Edge of Tomorrow was an American setting with white characters based on a Japanese manga called All You Need is Kill, but they had the benefit of working with a manga that didn't have any name recognition in America. Mithaldu fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 20:04
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Mithaldu posted:Looks like I'm not the only one who has good reason to be humble about their reading comprehension. You're both half-right, Ghost in the Shell has always intended to be set in a time of transition. While the English subtitles and dub call the 1995's city New Port City, I don't think it's actually given a name in the Japanese version (IIRC it might not even be mentioned in the English subtitles, only in the dub). They explicitly based the entire location off of Hong Kong because Oshii wanted a grounded location that already represents what's going on in the backstory of the film. You see this happen again in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, the film is literally just called Innocence in Japan because it's not even meant to be thematically or plot connected to any previous locations/etc. in the comics and prior movie nor was it meant to be a sequel. And unlike in the 1995 film Oshii was much less interested in the location, and you see this reflected in it being in the most generic setting of the franchise at that time, because he was much more interested in travelling around to get inspiration for the character designs and stuff. Stand Alone Complex and the Arise/whatever prequel movies are all explicitly set in "New Port City" again but they ditch the English name completely and just call it Niihama. There actually is a Niihama city in Japan not too far from where the GitS one is located, but it's actually an old mountanous mining city with a population of probably like 100,000 people. So you could say the location is important because it's an automatic reflection of Japan's rising as a huge super power again in light of the franchise's world events. Though the real life prefecture Niihama is in doesn't exist in Ghost in the Shell, instead they call it Niihama, Niihama. The upcoming film is the only one set in Tokyo (as of like last fall, I don't know if that's changed because I haven't really been following it since) which seemed like I guess they wanted to film a bit there or something. THAT said, you're 100% correct that the casting vs. the location of the film is stupid. I wouldn't at all mind at all if Ghost in the Shell got the Departed or Magnificent Seven treatment. It's stupid to take a bunch of iconic moments and shots from the past two movies and slap them together in a different place, in a different combination and while I was never expecting this movie to be fantastic, it's even more cynical than normal to me. Though I shouldn't be surprised since this was the same movie production where it leaked that they were doing "digital yellow face" tests on Scarlett Johansson's eyes. The live action soon to be released movie is the only Ghost in the Shell product set in Tokyo. That alone tells me not a lot of care is going into the movie compared to the previous two (even though I honestly didn't like Innocence all that much). You'd think having it set in Tokyo would be done so they could do a lot some cool location shooting, but... IMDB posted:
hosed up. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 20:18
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Mithaldu posted:I'm happy you found another hook to write against, but sad you're so much of an idiot that you forget the post contrasts against the recommendation of setting it in New York, AND the claim it was set in a colony. Hooked's error was not that he simply didn't realize the canon of New Port City. The crucial line is: "I don't know if the live-action has explicitly labeled its setting yet but it cribs enough visual iconography that I think it ends up occupying that transitory space as well." He is talking about aesthetics and their thematic implications, not about the literal historiography of a fictional place. Whether or not New Port was 'originally' colonized by Europeans or was always an 'indigenous' city is irrelevant, and not addressed in the film he's referring to. Indeed, all the canon does is clarify that GitS's fictional Japan is a post-war superpower, which only further erodes the geopolitical delineation between Japan and the 'former' superpowers with whom they are ostensibly in opposition. But this is just convoluting what is very directly and rather simply presented in the film, which Hooked describes accurately: a heterodox port city in southeast Asia booming with trade, but with high income inequality, and a significant population of Chinese immigrants, modeled unmistakably after Hong Kong, which does have a significant colonial history, and which would not be inconsistent with anything as presented in the symbolic order of the film.
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Mar 17, 2017 20:18
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Mithaldu posted:Not a manga, something called a Light Novel. And changing the character nationalities was the least of the butchering they did to it, to the point that none of the intentions behind the story survived at all. There was a comic but it's an adaptation of the book, too.
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Mar 17, 2017 20:20
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How easy is it to shoot in a place like Tokyo? I don't know jack about modern Japanese live action and Tokusatsu, but I imagine it might be complicated. Which is not to say that you could have found another Japanese location to shoot in. Just wondering if it's like a Vancouver situation or something else.
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Mar 17, 2017 20:24
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Mithaldu posted:Not a manga, something called a Light Novel. And changing the character nationalities was the least of the butchering they did to it, to the point that none of the intentions behind the story survived at all. Ahh, forgot about the book. But story butchering aside, the film was generally well reviewed and avoided racial controversy. Maybe a little lackluster on ticket sales but I don't think that had anything to do with the fidelity to the original story. Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 20:24
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ufarn posted:How easy is it to shoot in a place like Tokyo? I don't know jack about modern Japanese live action and Tokusatsu, but I imagine it might be complicated. I think it's the same as NYC where tons of stuff is filmed throughout 24/7 but most of it is just for five seconds of someone walking down a block or whatever. In Japan there's an arena in, uh Saitama? That tons of stuff is filmed at though. I think like every single sentai/henshin whatever show ever has had climatic battles filmed there a billion times too. That reminds me, I have a friend, the building she lives was used as a location by Netflix, both Daredevil and Jessica Jones broke into the same apartment in the same building as two unrelated locations. 
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 20:34
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Matt Damon plays a foolish German dude sneaking into China to steal their superior technology. This is not whitewashing. Whitewashing is if he arrived in China and the emperor was played by a white guy. You are using the term incorrectly because you are having difficulty articulating what the actual issue is. They are confusing whitewashing and white savior complex. But the latter doesn't apply to The Great Wall either: - Matt Damon is so impressed by the Chinese and their noble fight against the alien hordes that he rejects his original intentions and chooses to fight alongside them even at the potential cost of his own life. - The other white characters do decide to steal gunpowder and run off with it. They betray each other and one of them gets blown up by the gunpowder when attacked by other thieves. It is not a very subtle case of karma. - Ultimately it is the combined effort of Matt Damon and the female lead actress that brings down the big bad evil. They needed each other to accomplish this goal. If you are going to use a single word to accuse The Great Wall it is "propaganda".
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Mar 17, 2017 20:47
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Sounds a lot like The Last Samurai but in its final released form that movie is white savior as gently caress and at times totally insufferable. It's frustrating because with some very minor differences, it would be a great movie.
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Mar 17, 2017 20:51
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