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parallelodad posted:That's the thing, you look at these characters and see "white people" but that's not necessarily the case, the intent, or the way the original audience saw it. In the case of Cowboy Bebop, I don't actually see them as white. I don't remember if it's explicitly stated in the show, but I've always seen it as a very multicultural and integrated world. With the possible exception of Faye I've always seen the cast as some variety of multiracial. My dream casting for a Cowboy Bebop movie would be as racially diverse as a Fast and Furious. But you could still cast Spike or Jet or whoever as a white guy and not be white-washing a Japanese character.
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Apr 3, 2017 16:37
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Jet ain't white.
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Apr 3, 2017 16:39
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DoctorWhat posted:Jet ain't white. Sure. He's Ganymedian.
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Apr 3, 2017 16:42
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FilthyImp posted:I just saw Citizen Kane 2 months ago (on a VHS no less) and the drat thing was captivating as all hell. I don't see how anyone could watch it and not be enraptured by it, even if you put aside all the technical and historic value of the work. There's a Citizen Kane 2? And you saw it months ago?
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Apr 3, 2017 16:46
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In plenty of futuristic sci-fi and literature it's assumed that everyone is multi-racial, but you won't see that in any Hollywood movie because that would mean not casting as many/any white people in the biggest roles. Marvel, despite all the hemming and hawing about being more diverse now, made a huge push with that in the 2099 comics in the 90s. Most people in the setting were bi-racial, heavy handed dialogues about how people can't even imagine something as weird as the construct of race existing. It was pretty goofy stuff overall, they were 90s comics at heart, but I think even if they came out today there'd be fan anger way beyond people getting upset about Miles Morales or the female version of Thor.
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Apr 3, 2017 16:46
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FilthyImp posted:Power Rangers is an adaptation of SuperSentai. Saban never sought a direct translation of the source material. Some of the seasons are more or less direct translations, like Time ranger and Time Force, Gekiranger and Jungle Fury, Dekaranger and SPD, or Samurai and whatever it was adapted from I forget, but some are so completely different as to not be in any way the same product, like season 2 or RPM or In Space or Lost Galaxy. But you're right, it's never been about appropriation, it's been about buying the rights to the costumed footage and building a show piecemeal around it, and had always been a good example of diverse casting even back in an age when people weren't pushing for it. It's only had a few major missteps in it's 23 years and well over 100 main characters of retconning a white dude as native one time, casting a white dude as Hispanic one time, and a white dude as Japanese one time.
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Apr 3, 2017 16:49
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FilthyImp posted:
that's missing the broader point. The point is, first - is it ethical for a Western media to take footage from a Japanese show and appropriate it for an American show with very little acknowledgement? Is that not a fundamentally racist, imperialist project? Second, "diversity of cast" is all well and good, but it's an obsession with quantity over quality. well, we should have both, but progressives have gotten distracted by focusing on one over the other. while we push for more diverse casts, we should be intensely mindful of the CONTENT. The way things are going, even if Hollywood goes through a change, and offers more films with diverse casts, the content of those films will not be significantly more progressive, and the characters are still likely to be problematic and stereotyped. SMG wants to go even further and suggest that the entire Hollywood system is inherently racist, which is true, but not particularly helpful. still, there's a valuable point buried in there. that when progressives get obsessed with numerical value over ethics, they're playing by the rules of the people they oppose. like them, reducing people to only numbers, and getting into the weeds on percentages and quotas. And again, not that that doesn't matter, but by focusing only on that we're conceding something to Hollywood we shouldn't ever be conceding.
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Apr 3, 2017 17:41
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Guy Mann posted:What the gently caress is this movie. This movie is seriously about a troubled genius 11 year old boy dying but leaving his mother detailed plans on a tape recorder and journal about how to assassinate the cop next door who is abusing his step-daughter. That old trope.
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Apr 3, 2017 17:44
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Spatula City posted:is it ethical for a Western media to take footage from a Japanese show and appropriate it for an American show with very little acknowledgement? Is that not a fundamentally racist, imperialist project? Also, are Space Ghost and Sealab 2021 an ageist gently caress you to 60's Hanna-Barbera?
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Apr 3, 2017 17:52
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Spatula City posted:that's missing the broader point. The point is, first - is it ethical for a Western media to take footage from a Japanese show and appropriate it for an American show with very little acknowledgement? Is that not a fundamentally racist, imperialist project? Yes, it's far more than Saban simply buying footage from Toei. Since close to the beginning it has been a collaborative work between both companies, helping each other with design, commissioning new footage, helping promote specific toys either company wants to sell, trading stunt directors and so forth. Super sentai isn't just made into Power Rangers either, they make other versions as well like one adaptation specifically for the Korean market. It's a franchise made with licensing to other countries in mind. This ain't cultural appropriation, it's a cultural exchange.
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Apr 3, 2017 17:54
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FilthyImp posted:It's kind of true, because the language barrier will mask bad VA work. Pretty much. I only know English and a smattering of Spanish so if I watch anything that isn't in English it doesn't sound like anything in particular. The acting could be just everyone speaking in monotone but I've got no clue so it's easy to say "they're acting their heart out and putting everything they got into Naruto" (an actual argument from the Adult Swim forums way back when)
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Apr 3, 2017 18:11
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FilthyImp posted:Power Rangers is an adaptation of SuperSentai. Saban never sought a direct translation of the source material. Horseshit! Mere translation of the original was already accomplished via subtitles and dubbing (with white voice actors!) back in 1995. Ghost in the Shell 2017 is an adaptation. If diversity is the point, half the cast of Ghost In The Shell 2017 is nonwhite, and it was coproduced by two Chinese companies. Power Rangers has, what, two minority characters? The antiwhitewashing meme is based entirely on blinkered nostalgia and unexamined notions of ethnic purity.
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Apr 3, 2017 18:20
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parallelodad posted:Yes, it's far more than Saban simply buying footage from Toei. Since close to the beginning it has been a collaborative work between both companies, helping each other with design, commissioning new footage, helping promote specific toys either company wants to sell, trading stunt directors and so forth. It is not culture that is being exchanged, but capital. The way Saban/Toei co-produce and sell international adaptations of their work is the same as most multinational conglomerates, including the ones that produced and marketed GitS/Dragonball/Death Note. Again, the problem is that fan and meme culture has convoluted ideological critique. 'Cultural appropriation' is a term which describes individuals/groups from one culture adopting and capitalizing upon the practices, dress, and or rituals of another culture without collaboration with individuals/groups from that culture. Fans have inaccurately co-opted the term (and other social justice/critical terminology) in order to express their unilateral displeasure towards the banality with which commercial rights to literature and visual media are bought and sold, thus undermining their perceived 'depth' or 'essence' or 'cultural authenticity.' The point is that the figures who are supposedly appropriating culture and the figures who are supposedly allowing their culture to be appropriated (which, necessarily, isn't appropriation) are actually fundamentally aligned in global systemic and ideological terms. This is not the meme that "Japanese people don't care about whitewashing." It is a straight-forward acknowledgment that the relationships within this global-ideological network are formed around fetishism for commodities, and not the interpersonal networking which is vital to fighting for socioeconomic justice. Even further, we should not delude ourselves that because, while technically Power Rangers is more diverse than Super Sentai, this is thus emblematic of the kind of progressive arrangement that corporations should pursue out of sheer ethical interest. The diversity of Power Rangers is an ideological construct, organized around the premise of this 'melting pot,' literal 'rainbow coalition' team rescuing the U.S. (the world) from the Other. So this multicultural team is framed as heroic precisely because it defends the exclusionary ideological principles of a white supremacist, settler colonial nation. Another example: M. Night Shyamalan is one of the most successful Asian-American directors of all time, but fans and their liberal allies who didn't investigate thoroughly got mad because the heroes of the movie were cast with white North American child actors. The whitewashing meme was deployed despite there being no pretext that anyone criticizing the film was doing so in good faith, or actually had any similar criticisms of the ethno-national politics of the original show, which, also, was created by and cast predominately with white North Americans. Instead, what we got was the reverberation of ideological fantasy - fans and liberal allies claimed Aang was as 'Asian role,' even though Aang's race is fictional, and the only significant difference in terms of casting was that the guy who wrote and directed the film was actually POC. K. Waste fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 18:32
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I wonder what the discussion about 'whitewashing' is like outside the West. Does Japan give a poo poo about GiTS17?
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Apr 3, 2017 18:32
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Horseshit! Mere translation of the original was already accomplished via subtitles and dubbing (with white voice actors!) back in 1995. Ghost in the Shell 2017 is an adaptation. Power Rangers main cast is one Scottish Australian man, one British woman who is half Indian (mother from Uganda), one African American man, one Chinese Canadian man, and one Mexican American woman. Got news for you, K Waste, all cultural exchanges are capital exchanges and always have been. John Wick of Dogs fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 18:34
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I get what you're saying here, but describing someone as " Scottish/Australian " in context of race is pretty silly. He's white.
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Apr 3, 2017 18:36
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well why not posted:I get what you're saying here, but describing someone as " Scottish/Australian " in context of race is pretty silly. He's white. Yeah he's the one white dude, I was just being specific.
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Apr 3, 2017 18:39
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well why not posted:I wonder what the discussion about 'whitewashing' is like outside the West. Does Japan give a poo poo about GiTS17? It doesn't matter because the subject of critique is ideology, not the superficial content of what the U.S. and Japan respectively deem appropriate.
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Apr 3, 2017 18:39
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well why not posted:I wonder what the discussion about 'whitewashing' is like outside the West. Does Japan give a poo poo about GiTS17?
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Apr 3, 2017 18:45
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The argument that always convinced me for subtitles over dubs is that it's way closer to the original intended vision. Changing an entire voice cast and the language they're speaking in is a way bigger change in terms of what you're watching than putting effort in to read text at the bottom of the screen.
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Apr 3, 2017 18:55
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Speaking of Ghost in the Shell and subtitles, for some reason the English subtitle track on the blu-ray release of the 1995 movie is *HORRIBLE* like super lovely bootleg "Engrish" bad. What happened with that? DVD releases of it are fine.
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Apr 3, 2017 19:01
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Reading subs takes no effort and doesn't distract from the rest of the scene once you're used it. If you watch enough movies with subs it becomes pretty much subconcious. I'm fairly certain like 90% of the films I watch have subs but most of the time I can't remember which because I'm so used subs that I don't even notice that I'm reading them unless they're really badly done. Also Japan wasn't a colony, it was a colonizer and a very brutal one at that rivaling even Belgium and Spain. So I'm not quite sure if ripping the fight scenes from a Japanese kid's show and filming some new scenes with American actors is any more imperialist than making a Tintin film in English.
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Apr 3, 2017 19:06
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If you're like me and stayed up way past your bedtime to watch TV and had to turn on closed captioning because the volume was at 1 then reading subtitles is just second nature.
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Apr 3, 2017 19:09
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Neo Rasa posted:Speaking of Ghost in the Shell and subtitles, for some reason the English subtitle track on the blu-ray release of the 1995 movie is *HORRIBLE* like super lovely bootleg "Engrish" bad. What happened with that? DVD releases of it are fine. What release are you talking about? A quick Google tells me the "25th Anniversary" blu-ray seems fine; if you imported a Blu-Ray from Japan, then yeah, I've heard that the English sub tracks on Japanese BDs can be extremely iffy.
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Apr 3, 2017 19:13
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Schwarzwald posted:The problem I have with this issue is that all roles are "roles that could have been played by an actor of non-european decent." The movement doesn't seem to be pushing for more minority roles in big budget films so much as it seems to be pushing for minority roles in very specific films. I think this is a little disingenous. The type of people who complain about whitewashing (like I have, in the past) tend to complain about the phenomena in a macrosense as well as a specific one. The fact is that Hollywood movies refuse to cast non-caucasian stars in their movies, despite the other fact that movies starring minorities make more money. The biggest franchise we have is F&F. Movies with predominantly black casts are genuinely dependable vehicles for profits, with a domestic US audience disproportionately minority hungry to see roles reflecting their own lives and appearance. The constant insistance by people in the business that casting whites is the safe option, proven by a thousand quotes and stories over the years, is not one built on reason or profitability, but ignorance and fear.
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Apr 3, 2017 19:52
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Whether power rangers is whitewashed or not is a more complicated question than it first appears. Super sentai is part of a larger genre that does not exist for the most part on American tv, tokusatsu. Super sentai itself has always been for kids, but tokusatsu had plenty of entires that are adults only even airing only now, including direct spin offs like Akibaranger. These other entries include boobs and/or blood while still being about a guy in a suit killing rubber suits, like Garo or Kamen Rider Amazons. The reasons why tokusatsu isn't a genre in the west and super sentai isn't just dubbed or subbed seem to be somewhat of a cultural thing, and it's not just about what is acceptable as special effects. There's a lot of in suit acting in the shows and a lot of things influence from kabuki or noh theater. And this suit acting isn't just for drama or fighting, super sentai and other tokusatsu often have a lot of funny sequences acting in the heroic suits (that I can't post examples of right now) that do not get adapted. As well as a lot of direct references to Japanese culture. Season 3 of power rangers I wondered why he monsters were so weird all of a sudden when I watched it as a kid, it turns out the theme of the monsters were modern re imaginings of Yokai. So the thing is the American show takes footage that comes from another cultures specific traditions, removes a lot of that cultures influence from it, and pretends it's theirs. There's some other hands there. For instance America isn't the only one guilty of this, even Korea did not dub the more specifically Japanese culture themed seasons about ninja and samurai. And... I had other points but I lost them because I started writing this post two hours ago and then had a bunch of interruptions. I think it's good kids get exposure to tokusatsu in some form, and to a live action superhero team with a diverse cast, which sentai would not even be, it's entirely Japan-centric, and sentai shows often have things people would find inappropriate like references to suicide anyway. Tangential point: One of the frustrating things about the new movie isn't the tonal whiplash. There's been kamen rider shows just a decade ago that aired as family shows that had references to child abuse and on screen attempted suicide and mass murder on them while having sillier moments, so in a way it's the part closest to the original series. In one series, all the monsters are dreamed up by two abused children locked in an attic. They get dark. I just think they could've done something better with the superhero parts of it. The way all the things that were the most Japanese influences have been removed, as if it was some kind of shame, not good enough to be included, kind of bothers me. I feel like the superhero parts should have been included in a better way. I had more points here but lost them too.
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Apr 3, 2017 20:10
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Shageletic posted:I think this is a little disingenous. The type of people who complain about whitewashing (like I have, in the past) tend to complain about the phenomena in a macrosense as well as a specific one. The fact is that Hollywood movies refuse to cast non-caucasian stars in their movies, despite the other fact that movies starring minorities make more money. The success of Get Out, which starred not just a black male actor but an unknown black male actor, is such an astonishingly good success story. It's not like audiences were lining up to go see The Latest Alison Williams Movie. Wow, good for Daniel Kaluuya. In looking him up just to make sure there wasn't some big movie he was in I hadn't seen, looks like he's in Black Panther!
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Apr 3, 2017 20:14
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I'd argue about the point of "pretending it's theirs". Like, any person over the age of ten can tell the footage is coming from Japan. They do very little to hide this. The only reason they started using so much American original footage in seasons 2 and 3 was because they were afraid kids would stop watching if the characters had new suits. And once they made the jump to switching every season it was absolutely clear to any observer how Japanese most suit footage was. I don't think the show was ever pretending it invented all that stuff.
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Apr 3, 2017 20:20
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Edit: Well we moved past that. Though on the topic of whitewashing in film, when I went to go see Deadpool in a theatre they played a trailer for Gods of Egypt. And these two dudes in front of me commented on it as, 'That racist movie'. And these dudes seemed fairly typical dudes, mid 20-something, a bit bro-y, the typical market for those types of big budget hollywood films. That should be really troubling to studios that the young male audience, generally the one that Roger Corman guaranteed to be the money makers (trying to find a quote on that but having the hardest time finding it), has finally discovered that this isn't a world of white people. And year after year they hold onto this increasingly antiquated notion that stars sell films. Yet Scarlett failed to sell GitS, McConaughey failed to sell Gold, Brad Pitt failed to sell Allied. And I can say that, for the most part, Ryan Reynolds didn't sell a single goddamn film, and that includes Deadpool. And Amy Adams nor Jeremy Renner sold Arrival. And so, taking an audience that is increasingly aware of the world, and the most likely to recognize the original anime, and cut a notable chunk of that audience by making a racially motivated decision just seems so backwards.
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Apr 3, 2017 20:27
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parallelodad posted:Power Rangers main cast is one Scottish Australian man, one British woman who is half Indian (mother from Uganda), one African American man, one Chinese Canadian man, and one Mexican American woman. Aight, so now you have four minorities. If actually want to unironically do the "Job Creators!" thing, you can note the hundreds of Vietnamese names in the credits for Kong: Skull Island. And to be absolutely clear: my point here is certainly not to praise Warner Bros., or even Huahua Culture Communication and Investment Co., Ltd.. It's to demonstrate that there is absolutely nothing antiracist or egalitarian in your logic. You are not being anti-corporate, let alone anticapitalist.
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Apr 3, 2017 20:36
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I'm not anti corporate. Why would you assume I'm attempting to be?
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Apr 3, 2017 20:39
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parallelodad posted:I'm not anti corporate.
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Apr 3, 2017 20:59
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An author named Gerard Brittle is suing WB about their Conjuring franchise stating that when he made a deal with the Warrens back in the 70s to write a book about their exploits they gave him exclusive rights to their story. Warner Brothers is saying it totally doesn't count because their movies are based on real events. Brittle has countered by stating that the Warrens are huge loving liars about everything they've ever done.
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Apr 3, 2017 21:02
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parallelodad posted:I'm not anti corporate. Because there is no such thing as a progressive corporation, and I presume that you do not intend to be a fraud.
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Apr 3, 2017 21:06
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We Are Gerard Brittle
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Apr 3, 2017 21:08
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Diversity in casting is good regardless if the entity doing the casting is progressive or not. It's good for the bottom line and it's good for people to have representation in media.
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Apr 3, 2017 21:09
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parallelodad posted:Diversity in casting is good regardless if the entity doing the casting is progressive or not. It's good for the bottom line and it's good for people to have representation in media. The problem is that "diversity is good," while true, is not an adequate enough stance against the intersecting forces of injustice. If the Power Rangers are a hodgepodge of different social groups that come together in solidarity, there is still the issue of what the Rangers stand for. Same with the Avengers and Justice League. Same with the Toretto clan.
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Apr 3, 2017 22:06
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Electromax posted:Also, are Space Ghost and Sealab 2021 an ageist gently caress you to 60's Hanna-Barbera? Fine by me, the 60's cartoons were pretty bad. Don't forget birdman
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Apr 3, 2017 22:33
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Spatula City posted:that's missing the broader point. The point is, first - is it ethical for a Western media to take footage from a Japanese show and appropriate it for an American show with very little acknowledgement? Is that not a fundamentally racist, imperialist project? 
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Apr 3, 2017 22:37
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K. Waste posted:The problem is that "diversity is good," while true, is not an adequate enough stance against the intersecting forces of injustice. If the Power Rangers are a hodgepodge of different social groups that come together in solidarity, there is still the issue of what the Rangers stand for. Same with the Avengers and Justice League. Same with the Toretto clan. Sorry the place you're taking this discussion seems bizarre and out of place to me
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