In last week's episode, we talked
about whitewashing and Asian erasure
with my friend Kevin Nguyen.
Let's see what you had to say.
David flamingsword expands some of the issues related
to the geopolitics of filmmaking and talks
a little bit about why it might be troubling that China becomes
an exporter of popular culture, namely that a lot of their film
industry is essentially purpose-built to deliver,
you know, the message or the propaganda of the Communist
Party.
And I think that there are two ways
to view this, which is that it is probably
healthy to be skeptical of any state-run media
apparatus of any kind.
But that there's-- that's not really an excuse,
I don't think, to step back the pursuit of diverse casting
in American films.
To the point of "Doctor Strange," though,
and The Ancient One, which a lot of people
brought up in the comments, I think
this is maybe like a good example
of how not to handle things.
A lot of people pointed out that since The Ancient One
is canonically Tibetan, if they were
to cast that character as a Tibetan character,
then the film would be banned in China.
And I think the source of this, as far as I can tell,
were some comments that were made by the screenwriter.
And since then, the screenwriter has actually
walked back his comments.
He has said that he shouldn't have said anything about it
and that he was sort of talking outside of his pay grade.
That doesn't necessarily mean that he's wrong,
but I think that it's important to note that, like, you know,
maybe what he said was said in the heat of some moment.
Either way, it is unfortunate that there is-- that it even
makes sense that a movie could be banned in China because
of a Tibetan character.
Solving that problem is huge and way beyond,
you know, Marvel as a whole's pay grade.
But I will say this, which is that there
is a lot of area in the casting zone between a Tibetan man
and Tilda Swinton and that there are many ways
to, perhaps, rehabilitate that character as Kevin
had suggested in the episode or to make them--
to cast them in a responsible way that is
different from how it was done.
Also, and I haven't seen the movie more than once,
so I might be misremembering this correctly,
but I think Wong, who's the librarian--
I'm pretty sure he is Tibetan.
But he's not a main character, so maybe that one sort of
flew under the radar.
Just saying though, there was a Tibetan character in the movie,
I think.
Cardcaptorsabrina writes what I would describe
as a beautiful chef kiss hand motion mic
drop of a comment and points out something
that a lot of other people talked
about too, which is the fact that to all of these people who
say, well, listen, if you want Asian people in your media,
just go and watch the Asian media.
Go and watch something from China or from Japan,
and there you go and that this misses the point that Asian
Americans are also American.
And that while Europe is largely been associated
with white people, there is, in fact,
a massively diverse population of people and growingly
so in the west, who is not represented
in media made by their home country, which
is wildly disappointing.
And as Cardcaptorsabrina and a bunch of other people
point out, it's not just frustrating.
It makes it feel like you're not even
a participant in your own culture, which
is just heartbreaking.
It's heartbreaking.
Dylan Maloney and Ensenio take issue with Kevin's idea
that Iron Fist should have been played by an Asian character
or should have been Asian in the first place, rather.
And Dylan Maloney's reasoning for this
is that we can agree that it is bad
that canonically Asian characters are being cast
and played by Caucasian actors but that it seems then
hypocritical to say a canonically Caucasian
character should have their race switched to be Asian
and that those two things are incompatible.
But I would say that they are compatible because what
we are talking about is not just whitewashing
and the changing of characters' race from source material
to adaptation.
We're talking about the larger problem of Asian erasure
and even the state of the portrayal of Asian culture
in popular cinema in popular culture.
I asked Kevin to take a look at the comments this week.
And there were a few that he had a response to,
and this was one of them.
So in the interest of not putting words in his mouth,
I'm just going to read what he said,
which is that not every martial artist has to be Asian.
But it's pretty insulting to say that a white guy came
along and became the greatest martial artist ever,
portraying a superhero that represents all
of the cultural aspects of martial arts
and that basically it's Tom Cruise as the last samurai
all over again.
Dylan Maloney goes on to talk about how there is perhaps
a similar problem with Kevin's stance on "Death Note"
and that there seems to be an arbitrariness
in the calls for diversity.
And Kevin responded to this too.
And again, I'm just going to read
what he wrote, which is that maybe a good clarification here
is that we agreed with the main character of "Death Note"
was whitewashed, the rest of the "Death Note" cast is diverse.
And therefore, we take issue with the phrase "whitewashing"
being applied all across the board to all of the roles
and that there are things that are--
things that are positive about the way the show is cast
and things that, you know, maybe could
have been done differently, you know,
and questioning why it was the production
felt the need to cast a white man in the lead role.
I also want to point out-- and this is something that I am
saying, and this is not something that Kevin said--
that Dylan Maloney asks about, sort of,
suggests that calls for diversity make--
are best when they are fair and make sense.
And I just want to point out that I
think that diversity for diversity's sake
does make sense and that we should
be able to cast people of a diverse nature in comparison
to what has been the case up until now
simply because putting different kinds of people in front
of a camera is interesting and neat.
Call me crazy.
Xxxplanation_ and a bunch of other people pointed out that
there are some flaws in the idea that you should cast an Asian
actor to portray a live action version of an anime or manga
character because anime and manga characters are not Asian
and do not have Asian features.
And maybe I'm wrong here, but I think
that it's really disingenuous to insist
that the Western audience, broadly considered,
does not understand characters that are in anime and manga
to be Asian.
Regardless of the fact of whether
or not they have stereotypical features
from any number of Asian countries,
I think that it's fair to say that most people in the West
understand those characters to be of Asian origin.
And so that is a source of--
a source of distress--
I mean, whatever you want to call it--
when those characters are cast and played by Caucasian actors.
I also think that it's fair to say
that as cultural artifacts from Asian cultures,
it is a great time and a great excuse
even to give an Asian actor work and to put them
in something that it makes sense to put them in simply
because of its prominence.
So yeah, that's how I feel about that.
Iamleggings on the subreddit started
a really great conversation talking about statistics.
And one of the things that came up a lot in the common thread
on the subreddit, on Twitter is, as always, statistics.
That, you know-- and there's this statistic that I've seen
around a lot which is that 5% of the American population is--
is of Asian descent.
And 5% of the actors in Hollywood are Asian.
So hey, we did it.
Diversity achieved.
That's how that works, right?
And I think for my money, the answer is no.
And we'll talk about why.
The 5% statistic may indicate that there are, by percentage,
as many Asian actors as there are Asian citizens, citizens
of Asian descent in the United States.
But it does not indicate the quality or screen time
that those roles get.
And so the question is not just whether or not
there literally are actors or literally are
roles for Asian actors.
It is how much time are those actors and characters
on screen?
How impactful are they to the stories
that they are involved in?
How responsible are those characters
for the representation of Asian and Asian-American culture?
So you know, it's not just like, oh, hey,
we got the number of people literally involved
in the process to equal census data.
It's a little bit more than that.
And this is not to mention the point of the episode, which
is that there are roles that could conceivably and very
fairly be going to Asian-American actors that
are getting taken away.
So any hope of increased screen time, increased
responsible portrayal--
it's, you know, it's being swiped.
In the first part of a multi-part comment,
Molasses points out that there is maybe
some misunderstanding with the criticism of "Ghost
in the Shell" and that it is, in fact, not that people
are giving Scarlett Johansson a pass,
but that, according to the creator of "Ghost
in the Shell," the Major does in fact have a Caucasian
resemblance and that gives everybody not a pass
but just they are staying true to the work
and that they then get to cast a bankable, million-dollar,
you know, highly popular actress to play the lead role.
And I think there are a lot of ways to take this.
Like I said before, I think a lot of people,
especially in the West, would understand the major
to be of Asian descent for a lot of reasons regardless
of what the creator has said is the case.
I think, also, like we talked about already,
the providence of the work is a reason
to figure out how to cast an Asian actor.
It's not a defense, at this point,
to say that a popular white actor is going to be bankable
because the movie flopped.
And the head of distribution for Paramount
said that it was largely because of the conversation
surrounding Scarlett Johansson and, you know,
the whitewashing controversy.
But Kevin also had a response to this
which I want to read, sort of, towards this idea of being
critical of "Ghost in the Shell,"
even in light of all of these things.
And he says, "If producers chose the easy route as an excuse
we're going to accept, then we might as well give up
on movies as a medium entirely.
Being critical of "Ghost in the Shell"
is basically the highest form of caring
about it as a piece of art.
Accepting it reluctantly and refusing
to bring any critical eye to it is
a form of not caring at all."
Which I mean, man, if I--
this, like-- that's the Idea Channel.
Khronedog asks whether or not one
of the conclusions of the episode
is really a helpful way of thinking about race, which
is what Kevin stated as emphasizing people's
characteristics, differences, thinking about race,
and having it be something that we get used to talking about
and get comfortable with as opposed to not thinking
about it, as opposed to being colorblind, as
opposed to ignoring it and not thinking about it.
And, you know, Kevin and me, for that matter,
we both sort of think that the better option
is the first one-- to have it be at the forefront and something
that you think about and you talk about.
Khronedog says that this might not be actually the case.
I don't-- they quote Martin Luther King,
which I don't want to--
I don't want to drag Martin Luther King into this.
I don't-- I don't think that this quote supports the point
being made.
But we're just going to leave it at that and talks
about women getting positions in an orchestra as trumpets,
trumpet players, tuba players, and other large lung capacity
items and that the only way that women
were able to get these positions was through a blind audition,
that women up to that point had been thought to not
have the lung capacity or strength to play
those instruments and so were not considered for them.
But in a blind audition, they got it.
And so the idea being that if you
are blind to someone's gender, then you are able to be fair.
And I will say many things about this.
First, that is dope for those ladies.
That's great.
I'm really glad that the system that was put together
got them the positions that they deserved.
What I will say is that it doesn't
sound like the system that was put together to get them
those positions addressed the underlying causes.
It just addressed the effects.
I would wonder whether or not the blind audition really
causes people to interrogate whether or not--
or to interrogate the reasons why they had assumed women
would not be fit for those positions in the first place.
I would be-- I would hope that at the end of it,
all of the people who are in charge
of making these decisions looked at one another and said,
oh, man, we maybe wrong about gender-based position-filling
in all respects.
Get rid of the blind audition thing.
We just know that we should be auditioning
as many people of as many different types as possible
for every position.
The point being that the blind audition process doesn't
address the underlying causes that have maybe encouraged
people to make the decisions the way
that they had up until that point.
You know, like sexism is not just the things on the surface.
It's all of the beliefs and understandings
that cause those things on the surface to happen.
The second thing I will say is that I
think the blindness to someone's race or someone's gender
sort of denies the nature of what it is to be a person.
Like, those ladies who got cast are still ladies.
They still have a gender, and that's really important.
And people will celebrate their getting those positions
as a win because of their gender.
To say that a blindness to these things
is what is necessary in order for us to progress, I think,
is to deny the experience of people, of humans,
and what they are, their heritage, where they come from.
And that I recognize that it is incredibly, incredibly
difficult to be understanding and empathetic
of the vast, vast array of perspectives that
exist in the world and the vast differences that give rise
to those perspectives.
But I think that when you try to reduce people,
even in these minuscule ways, you
know, getting them seemingly minuscule,
getting them a position in the orchestra,
you sort of, when you diminish them to all being alike,
you kind of deny what is true about being human.