Ghost in the Shell: White Wash Complex

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Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

Mierenneuker posted:

Why would they cast an Asian American instead of an Asian, after all the movie takes place in pseudo-Hong Kong. That's westernwashing!

Edit: I do acknowledge that whitewashing is a problem, but I think that Ghost In The Shell is not the greatest example of it and you are actually sabotaging your own argument if you are going to bring it up as such in the future. It's almost as bad as Cloud Atlas in that regard.

GITS and Cloud Atlas are about as good examples of Hollywood's whitewashing and tone deafness when it comes to race as examples can get.

And I'm tired of whitewashing being brushed off because examples aren't good enough. Like, was 21 good enough of an example? I've seen enough white liberals decide even that didn't qualify their weird and specific goalposts of proving whitewashing is a problem that exists.

I keep coming back to the question, "What more proof do you want?" I really feel like whitewashing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt here, but people are just throwing in new ways to criticize the critics because they're so mad they won't just sit back and enjoy the ~~commercial diarrhea~~ movie at face value.

Edit: Also, your first question is fecetious, but I'll make a point of saying that ScarJo is neither Asian or Asian American. She's a white woman.

You're deflecting the controversy away from the movie's decisions itself. Like, who's feet are you trying to hold to the fire here?

Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Apr 21, 2017

# ¿ Apr 21, 2017 22:58

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 04:30

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

Alan_Shore posted:

Absolutely! If this isn't white washing, what is? What would be?

Ghost in the Shell is whitewashing.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2017 23:39

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

Cloud Atlas was another movie where the people who evangelized it kept shouting "BUT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND" in defense of its yellowface, pointing to the film's supposed internal consistency ("but it had whiteface too!") and new age horseshit about the transience of identity or whatever, arguing as if the movie could only be properly judged in a total vacuum or something like that.

People who criticized the movie "got it" but still pointed out how tone deaf it was to have the guy who metaphorically wore yellowface in 21 to literally wear it. And that the gimmick use of yellowface was a loving selling point of the film.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2017 04:25

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

K. Waste posted:

The Departed and The Ring are both whitewashing. It has nothing to do with how close they are trying to be to the source material. This is a misconception which has been promulgated by fan/meme culture, which has little-to-nothing to do with socioeconomic justice and ideological critique.

Whitewashing is just a symptom of white supremacy. It describes any and all scenarios in which there is an adaptation of a work originating from a culture outside white Western hegemony. But it also includes any scenario in which there could be reasonable motivation for casting P.O.C./non-white American performers, but it doesn't happen. Ex: The Forest.

This is why I reject the "beyond a reasonable doubt" demands of proof that a movie is whitewashing.

As far as I'm concerned, films like 21 or Airbender or GITS are just the extreme moments. I mentioned before that nominally "original" works can also be whitewashing. Or shows even "faithfully" casting Iron Fist with a white actor without any course correction is whitewashing.

But try explaining that to internet people obsessed with "canon".

# ¿ Apr 23, 2017 01:39

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

Mithaldu posted:

Yeah, uh, white savior is absolutely a thing and some loving bullshit.

But he claimed Iron Fist is white-washing.

Fine. I'll entertain this, even though I suspect you're not inquiring in good faith. Keep in mind that there's way more thoughtful things written in the dreaded "thinkpieces" that internet people are too edgy to read, but I'll try to articulate anyway.

quote:

White-washing is casting someone who is white into a role that could be expected to not be.

Iron Fist came along in the 70s when martial arts and Bruce Lee were kind of big. It's another nominally original work that's just a whitewashed copy, decades before the TV show premiered.

quote:

The very core of Iron Fist is "yo the protag is an absolutely irredeemably american hipster trust fund fucknut who stumbles his way into some poo poo he can't handle and fucks up literally everything by having zero understanding of anything, least of all the culture".

That's how some people keep justifying it as others start questioning the merits of this rationale. It doesn't have to be. The choices the creators made aren't above criticism. Iron Fist isn't real.

quote:

I mean, you could cast an asian into that role and it wouldn't make the show any *more* stupid than it already is, but where do you get "it was expected to be an asian" from? Not just ~reasonably~, but like: At all.

Long before any casting calls were issued, there were calls to cast an Asian actor. Perhaps it would have involved a lot of rewriting. (That assumes the people making it care, which is highly disputed.) Having Iron Fist be asian would have resolved a lot of long-standing issues with the character and introduce new "so what" themes that could have elevated the material. Heck, the asian guy who auditioned for the titular role but ended up being cast as a villain seemed to be a more seasoned martial artist.

I'd argue that whitewashing is also symptomatic of people not caring to make their product good. Yes, there are "whitewashed" things that are technically decent or occasionally good. But don't be surprised if something's bad if the people making it are just cashing their checks.

Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Apr 23, 2017

# ¿ Apr 23, 2017 17:42

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

Mithaldu posted:

If the wikipedia synopsis of the story of the original comic is to be believed it's not white-washing, it's 100% pure white savior bullshit. It falls in line with the greater theme of "unfairness against POC", however "white savior" is a very distinct and different thing from "white-washing".

Then again, i see this going the same way as calling "computers owned by other people" by the name of "cloud computing", which overrode the original meaning with something entirely different.

Be aware though that, until "white savior" has been completely subsumed into "white-washing", you'll have people be confused by what you're talking about, even if you have good intentions and it might serve your interests better to make that distinction.

Although, alternatively, if you disagree with me that even the original Iron Fist comic is not "white savior", but "white-washing"; yet consider the two concepts to be separate things, i'd like to hear how your reasoning for that works.

And if you truly believe that the concepts are literally the same thing, then we'll just have to disagree.

They are not mutually exclusive things. People wanted more martial arts and mystic stuff in the 70s. They decided to make it a white guy.

Indicting Hollywood is easier when you use less words, not more. Unfortunately, we live in a climate where calling something racist racist shuts down the brains of people you're trying to get into. Unfortunately, getting all tvtropes.txt also shuts down people. That's why I downplay calling white savior stuff white savior stuff.

Intentional racism fueled by malice or cynicism, though not the only way racism manifests, is still a type of racism that white people understand. That's why I always try to emphasize the intentions of creators, and the sausage making process of the entertainment industry, rather than go all Film Studies 101. Especially when it's mass marketed commercial cinema.

Getting back to GITS, getting a white person to play the lead role is an intentional decision made in a climate where Hollywood knew its casting choice will be scrutinized. The film itself exercises gymnastics to justify this decision.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 00:24

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

I don't think it's a matter of of controversy catching studios off guard. It's often the case that they anticipate controversy in advance, but whitewashing is still the path of least resistance because it takes less effort to weather a controversy than to groom a leading actor or actress who isn't white.

As for the question of whether controversy can cause a movie to flop, as someone who's been following this much longer than everyone else... I say it's complicated.

Films like these need fans to evangelize their movie on social media. It's harder for people to root for the movie and make the case that whitewashing doesn't matter. (Because it loving does.)

But Doctor Strange wasn't a flop. Even with that whole thing with Tilda and Margaret Cho. "Offended asian tumbrites" are still a comedic punchline; just look at that Kimmy Schmidt episode. And racist fanboys are already pushing back against "china pandering", which isn't exactly a call to cast Asian Americans instead, but rather a demand to not have any asians at all.

# ¿ May 24, 2017 18:33

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

People are now comparing misogynist backlash against the Ghostbusters movie to the backlash against the whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell.

Okay.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2017 19:27

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

Comparing the critics of GITS with the alt right backlash to Ghostbusters is useful if you want to delegitimize the critics of the former.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2017 04:29

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 04:30

Echo Chamber: Oct 16, 2008; best username/post combo

RedSpider posted:

More white people got pissed than Asians did about a white lead in this.

I see this talking point in every whitewashing controversy and I call bullshit.

Do I exist? Do Asian American actors on Twitter complaining about Hollywood exist? From my experience it's white liberals who keep shutting down every conversation about discrimination in Hollywood if it remotely challenges Thing That They Want To Like.

Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Aug 7, 2017

# ¿ Aug 7, 2017 21:51

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

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