Ghost in the Shell: White Wash Complex

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Ghost in the Shell: White Wash Complex

Sir Kodiak: May 14, 2007

FilthyImp posted:

Old Anime had very similar character designs and used Hair/Eye color as a shorthand to quickly distinguish the cast.

It sort of caught on.

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't this make anime effectively post-racial? Like, if the form dictates that visible characteristics are purely for visual readability, or to represent the character's personality or whatever, then what do we mean when we say that Major is ethnically Japanese in the anime? Given that race is a social construct built around appearance.

# ? Apr 6, 2017 00:50

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# ? May 22, 2024 06:51

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Sir Kodiak posted:

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't this make anime effectively post-racial? Like, if the form dictates that visible characteristics are purely for visual readability, or to represent the character's personality or whatever, then what do we mean when we say that Major is ethnically Japanese in the anime? Given that race is a social construct built around appearance.

well her name is motoko kusanagi

white people in manga/anime are canonically blonde haired, blue eyed and huge-nosed. really the only perceptibly white thing about the major is eye color, and maybe skin color but japanese people irl are pretty light skinned so

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Apr 6, 2017

# ? Apr 6, 2017 00:55

Tenzarin: Jul 24, 2007; .; Taco Defender

Mithaldu posted:

That setpiece isn't an action scene imo. It's too deliberate, too tactical. It feels more like watching a play of chess. Move, consideration, move, consideration, move, consideration, ...

Half the fights they didn't show any people fighting either, you only see people flying or falling over. ACTION FALLING.

# ? Apr 6, 2017 01:01

Milkfred E. Moore: Aug 27, 2006; 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

Sir Kodiak posted:

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't this make anime effectively post-racial? Like, if the form dictates that visible characteristics are purely for visual readability, or to represent the character's personality or whatever, then what do we mean when we say that Major is ethnically Japanese in the anime? Given that race is a social construct built around appearance.

Well, see, that's the thing.

Anime characters are often designed in a way that is - and I can't believe I actually had to go read about anime to get a handle on this - stateless. It's called mukokuseki. Basically, it is that physical features, colors and other elements of art style of the character are designed to not represent any kind of ethnicity.

This isn't what it always means, however, but it's a starting point to consider.

Gohmak, for example, points out that Major must be Asian because her skin isn't ethereally pale (????) and she's not blonde (??????) despite the fact there's nothing about her that points to Asian ethnicity beyond a name, in a world where bodies can be mass-produced and she can hop between them as easily as swapping clothes. As pointed out, Major's facial structure is identical to the blonde-haired pale-skinned Puppet Master. So, wouldn't it be more obvious to most viewers that she is a dark haired, slightly tanned Caucasian?

It gets more confusing when you look at GITS: SAC which absolutely draws certain characters as more obviously Asian (Saito, Gouda, for example) and some as more obviously Caucasoid (Batou) and some who have features that humans can't have naturally (Motoko, Kuze) and a heap who fall into a more nebulous zone (Togusa, Ishikawa). And then, when you look at the casting and compare it to the character art, it's basically spot on.

Some of these characters even say their their bodies are just tools to affect a certain response in others, too, which means perhaps the nebulous ethnicity of some of them is intentional!

So, when you're doing a live action adaptation, what do you aim for? Do you go for someone who matches the physical features as depicted, or do you choose an actress based simply on the character's name?

icantfindaname posted:

so im not sure if you've noticed this but american and more broadly western views of japan are insanely racist. when you inject into that environment a self-loathing japanese-american talking poo poo on their ethnic homeland and thus legitimating the gut feelings of white liberals that the japanese are diseased and pathological subhumans the whole situation just becomes an apocalyptic singularity of racism

i've seen like 3 separate japanese-american writers put out articles that do exactly this in the last 18 months or so

My extended family are Chinese-Malay so, yeah, I've got a bit of experience with the astoundingly bizarre views that can float around SEA, particularly when comparing immigrants to people who still identify as being from their home country first.

It his, however, very easy to render down views you don't like into "whitesplaining" as some have said in this thread. Much easier than actually engaging. But it seems weird to me to say that Japanese-Americans have more validity to their arguments about what constitutes an unacceptable portrayal than the Japanese, particularly when those Japanese-Americans are basically castigating their own homeland and identity because it isn't marketable enough. That's messed up.

Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Apr 6, 2017

# ? Apr 6, 2017 01:37

gohmak: Feb 12, 2004; cookies need love

Milky Moor posted:

Well, see, that's the thing.

Anime characters are often designed in a way that is - and I can't believe I actually had to go read about anime to get a handle on this - stateless. It's called mukokuseki. Basically, it is that physical features, colors and other elements of art style of the character are designed to not represent any kind of ethnicity.

This isn't what it always means, however, but it's a starting point to consider.

Gohmak, for example, points out that Major must be Asian because her skin isn't ethereally pale (????) and she's not blonde (??????) despite the fact there's nothing about her that points to Asian ethnicity beyond a name, in a world where bodies can be mass-produced and she can hop between them as easily as swapping clothes. As pointed out, Major's facial structure is identical to the blonde-haired pale-skinned Puppet Master. So, wouldn't it be more obvious to most viewers that she is a dark haired, slightly tanned Caucasian?

It gets more confusing when you look at GITS: SAC which absolutely draws certain characters as more obviously Asian (Saito, Gouda, for example) and some as more obviously Caucasoid (Batou) and some who have features that humans can't have naturally (Motoko, Kuze) and a heap who fall into a more nebulous zone (Togusa, Ishikawa).

Some of these characters even say their their bodies are just tools to affect a certain response in others, too, which means perhaps the nebulous ethnicity of some of them is intentional!

So, when you're doing a live action adaptation, what do you aim for? Do you go for someone who matches the physical features as depicted, or do you choose an actress based simply on the character's name?

My extended family are Chinese-Malay so, yeah, I've got a bit of experience with the astoundingly bizarre views that can float around SEA, particularly when comparing immigrants to people who still identify as being from their home country first.

It his, however, very easy to render down views you don't like into "whitesplaining" as some have said in this thread. Much easier than actually engaging. But it seems weird to me to say that Japanese-Americans have more validity to their arguments about what constitutes an unacceptable portrayal than the Japanese, particularly when those Japanese-Americans are basically castigating their own homeland and identity because it isn't marketable enough. That's messed up.

In the montage scene Motoko is looking around the city and notices herself sitting at a dinner, modeling clothes in a shop window, basically blending into Japanese society. Mukokuseki does not mean "not Japanese"

gohmak fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Apr 6, 2017

# ? Apr 6, 2017 01:58

Milkfred E. Moore: Aug 27, 2006; 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

gohmak posted:

In the montage scene Motoko is looking around the city and notices herself sitting at a dinner, modeling clothes in a shop window, basically blending into Japanese society. Mukokuseki does not mean "not Japanese".

Well, it's funny that I didn't say 'not Japanese' then, isn't it?

# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:02

gohmak: Feb 12, 2004; cookies need love

Mukokuseki just means a character is depicted in a style not expressantly representative of a specific ethnicity. The clip I posted earlier of Hikaru No Go is about a japanese boy playing a korean boy in a korean Go Salon in Japan. The japanese characters are depicted in mukokuseki with exagerated eye shapes, colors and hair. So is the Korea boy he is playing. The adults Koreans in the scene are not styled in mukokuseki. They are contrasted with Japanese characters as having small squinting eyes.

# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:08

Alan_Shore: Dec 2, 2004

Snak posted:

It's not about having "a bunch of scenes". RoboCop is about Murphy becoming RoboCop becoming ~~Major~~RoboMurphy. GitS2017 is barely about anything.

You can even compare parallel scenes between RoboCop and GitS2017, but in RoboCop they are forming part of the films core narrative and emotional arc, and in GitS2017, they mostly feel like plot exposition. I don't think they mesh as well with the "hunting the bad guy" plot.

(spoilers for both movies, I guess?)

In both movies, encounters with the guy they are supposed to be hunting Clarence Boddicker and Kuze, lead to memory glitches, which cause them to start remembering their past lives. Technitions attempt to address these glitches. Then they visit their previous homes. While catching the Boddicker/Kuze, they learn that their creator is also a bad guy, and the take care of that poo poo in the end, claiming their new hybrid identity as their own.

So what makes it effective in RoboCop and ineffective in Project 2017? There's a big obvious difference: In RoboCop, we see Murphy and get some insight into his character as a human before he's turned into a weapon. This is hugely important. When Kuze is yelling "What did they take from me?!" the audience answer is "I don't know". We never see the characters that Kuze and Major were before, so it's impossible for us to really connect with that loss. it doesn't matter that it puts us in the same boat as them thematically. The fact that our ignorance of the previous characters mirrors there's doesn't make it interesting. When RoboCop reaches the end of his journey and embraces being RoboCop informed by Murphy, we the audience can recognize that. When Major asserts her identity at the end of the film, it's a moment for the character, but not for the audience. She's essentially saying "yep, I'm the character that I was established to be in the film". It's a perfectly fine character arc, but it has no impact for us, because we don't see her past and we don't see much of who she is now. Most of the time that should be used to develop who she is now was spend watching her investigate her past, which we didn't know anything about and she ultimately (sorta) dismisses.

It's easy to see what they were going for, but I feel like they failed to find a way to get us emotionally involved. And there were lots of opportunities. Build real emotional involvement with Mom Kusanagi or Dr. Oulet or both. They're just kind there. Build hatred for something and explore it for insight into Major's character. Show us her behavior in straightforward situations to give us insight into what she's like.

Look at the differences between the action scenes in RoboCop and GitS2017. RoboCop's early action scenes establish him as a problem solver. He grabs people through walls or shoots their dicks off. He's a creative being. This demonstraits that he's not robot following mindless protocols. He's exactly what they wanted in both movies: A killing machine with the ability to innovate like a person. The action scenes in GitS are all over the place. They're not bad, but they don't tell us a whole lot about the character except that she's a risk taker? In the first scene she jumps off a building and hovers outside a window (???) and the burst through and does some Matrix-type poo poo from Kickass. Then in the next scene she pretends to be a victim so she can trick people for some reason? really it's to trick the audience into thinking she might be in trouble. So that they can reveal that of course she's not in trouble, she's a badass. Which we already knew. It's not like this charade was to get information or buy time or anything, really. She could have started kicking rear end right away. There's no good plot reason for it, it's just to "gotcha" us with "oh no, maybe Major is weak". Then she beats the poo poo out of a garbage man for fun. because it was in the original movie. Then she gets captured by Hanka without a fight because??? Then she fights a spider tank, because it was in the original movie. These action scenes did not help build a coherent sense of her character for me.

That's like, action movies 101. It's rote. 101, man. The Terminator is characterized by his action scenes. Marion Cobretti is characterized by his action scenes. And in the original Ghost in the Shell, the Major is characterized by her action scenes. Because she's a different character and lifting the scenes that they lifted into this new narrative with this new character doesn't work as well.

Just wanted to say this is a really good post and sums up a lot of problems in the movie. I also forgot she just got captured by Hanka without putting up a fight. What the hell was that about? Lucky for her the Doc changed her mind or she'd be dead.

Thread title really should be Ghost in the Shell: Watch Robocop Instead

# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:08

SuperMechagodzilla: Jun 9, 2007; NEWT REBORN

gohmak posted:

In the montage scene Motoko is looking around the city and notices herself sitting at a dinner, modeling clothes in a shop window, basically blending into Japanese society.

Neither of the Ghost In The Shell films is set in Japan.

# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:08

Milkfred E. Moore: Aug 27, 2006; 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

gohmak posted:

Mukokuseki just means a character is depicted in a style not expressantly representative of a specific ethnicity. The clip I posted earlier of Hikaru No Go is about a japanese boy playing a korean boy in a korean Go Salon in Japan. The japanese characters are depicted in mukokuseki with exagerated eye shapes, colors and hair. So is the Korea boy he is playing. The adults Koreans in the scene are not styled in mukokuseki. They are contrasted with Japanese characters as having small squinting eyes.

"Characters aren't styled to look like a specific ethnicity, except when they are"

????????

# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:18

SuperMechagodzilla: Jun 9, 2007; NEWT REBORN

Ghost In The Shell 1995's unnamed setting is based on Hong Kong.

Motoko Kusansgi was, all along, a Japanese woman in a Chinese body.

# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:26

cosmically_cosmic: Dec 26, 2015

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Neither of the Ghost In The Shell films is set in Japan.

I believe the first one is un-named but the second one is explicitly Japan isn't it? They fight the Yakuza's.

# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:27

Midjack: Dec 24, 2007

cosmically_cosmic posted:

I believe the first one is un-named but the second one is explicitly Japan isn't it? They fight the Yakuza's.

All the GitS media are in Japan though you can make a pretty decent argument that it's really Hong Kong in the first two movies. The primary city is never named by a character in either of the first two movies but is called Niihama or New Port City/Newport City in writing that appears in background and on computer displays. It's blatantly Hong Kong with the serial numbers filed off though they didn't even bother to replace some of the Chinese writing with Japanese characters. SAC and Arise explicitly name it and make it much less distinctively Hong Kong.

# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:38

gohmak: Feb 12, 2004; cookies need love