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Ghost in the Shell's ending spurs new accusations of even worse whitewashing
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I don't think it's so much that but the fact that he straight up said they don't look Asian unless they have small eyes.
And then double's down on it instead of taking it as a growth moment.
May I ask why you find this offensive? I personally find the eyes to be one of the most attractive traits of the Japanese.
jack_package_200
Banned
Maybe we can wait and see before throwing Death Note under the racist bus?
I am sure there is some sort of intent behind casting Light as a white male and L (who was originally white) as a black male. There is also the fact that it makes reasonable sense that a privileged spoiled asshole with a god complex who uses every ounce of his privilege to evade detection would be played by a white male in an American adaptation.
Are you fucking kidding me
I am sure there is some sort of intent behind casting Light as a white male and L (who was originally white) as a black male. There is also the fact that it makes reasonable sense that a privileged spoiled asshole with a god complex who uses every ounce of his privilege to evade detection would be played by a white male in an American adaptation.
Are you fucking kidding me
milkham
Member
oh boy
Gotta distinguish between the three threads somehow. We've got a review thread that is about whitewashing, an OT that is about whitewashing, and this thread sourcing articles where they get the characters names wrong talking about whitewashing.
One of the key ingredients to insidious racism: lack of self awareness.
And just to clarify, I never said they don't look Asian unless they have small eyes, I simply said the bigger the eyes, the more western an anime character looks to me. There are a lot of presumptions that go along with anything I say.
I don't really want to go back into this discussion, but maybe the fact that, that is pretty much a racist stereotype?
I've already mentioned in a previous post that it's the epicanthic fold that gives most East and South East Asians their distinctive eyes, but that it doesn't necessarily make them smaller. It's only stereotyped as smaller because that's how it's portrayed. All. The. Time.
If you can't accept that point, then everything is lost on you.
Because it's natural to make that go both ways, so that the smaller the eyes, the more Asian they look to you.
I know myself better than some randoms on an Internet forum.
None probably came into mind because you default the entire anime character aesthetic with white. It is not maliciousness that causes it but ignorance, so please don't take it as offensive that people are concerned with how you are viewing the characters, they simply want to help you learn.
In most anime, if the characters have Japanese names, speak Japanese, have Japanese behavior, live in japan, attend Japanese school, etc. they are Japanese. The show will explicitly tell you if someone is not Japanese.
BTW, anime eyes do not look anything like any humans eyes, so it is pretty poor argument to start from the point of saying that they resemble white eyes.
Man this seems so familiar where have I seen thi-
Oh yeah, there seems to be some kind of correlation between fetishism, lack of self-awareness and diet racism, especially around GITS. Who could've guessed?
Oh yeah, there seems to be some kind of correlation between fetishism, lack of self-awareness and diet racism, especially around GITS. Who could've guessed?
I agree with this. It was a good example to give for me, but I think I should've put a stronger caveat that we don't know for sure what the deal is with Death Note.
No, I see what you're saying and you're right. Those folds give the eyes a unique shape that westerners do not have. It doesn't make it smaller, just a different shape. But those same features are not apparent to me in a lot of anime characters. That's why when the eyes are just round and big, it looks more western to me.
Nobody here has to know you to know that what you're saying is racist. And you just defended it by fetishizing a racial stereotype. I don't know what you think about yourself, but assuming you're being upfront about your views here then it means that if you think you aren't being racist then you're not as self aware as you'd like to believe.
Stop. Oh, god stop. I didn't think you could make this worse but somehow you defied all expectations in the worst way possible.
How was I fetishising it? By saying I find the eyes of Japanese to be one of their attractive traits? What's wrong with admiring a certain ethnic trait?
Some of you are just so hyper sensitive and want to assume the worst out of everything. I'm not your enemy.
Can you just stop posting? You've been nothing but really aggressive and are adding nothing to this discussion.
And those other two threads have pretty much slowed to a crawl without this discussion. Where did all those people who just wanted to talk about the movie go? I wonder....
1. Not all Japanese people have such a trait so does that mean they are somehow less Japanese?
2. You need a good dose of self-awareness. And Jesus.
Mmmmmmmmmm, I'm not the one who's been spouting terrible shit then refusing to back it up.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Jesus christ of all the fucking things they've could've come up with.....they chose that....
JESUS CHRIST!!
Apparently not
Of course it doesn't mean that. I'm simply saying the trait is one I find to be attractive. Nothing more, nothing less.
I had a longer reply typed out, but I'm a bit confused with what we're spoiling and not spoiling in this thread so I'll keep it short.
This is people wanting to be annoyed because they wanted to be annoyed. The film makes perfect fucking sense, and it definitely doesn't make the whitewashing 'worse'. It was a simple way to illustrate a complicated theme, and I can't see any other similar juxtaposition that would have created any less manufactured controversy.
If you're complaining because this wasn't the frame-by-frame, word-for-word, remake you wanted it to be then be honest and complain about that instead. I'm not seeing any valid criticism of the changes as they apply to the film that they are in.
This is people wanting to be annoyed because they wanted to be annoyed. The film makes perfect fucking sense, and it definitely doesn't make the whitewashing 'worse'. It was a simple way to illustrate a complicated theme, and I can't see any other similar juxtaposition that would have created any less manufactured controversy.
If you're complaining because this wasn't the frame-by-frame, word-for-word, remake you wanted it to be then be honest and complain about that instead. I'm not seeing any valid criticism of the changes as they apply to the film that they are in.
There I fixed it for you. You were mostly correct about the nature of this discussion except for the part where you were completely off.
jack_package_200
Banned
We all know there is nothing more western than garfield...
and it got more western each time
OG Garfield is awful
It's not malice we're assuming, it's ignorance. And a deep reluctance to even recognize how problematic your views are. In either case it's still very harmful.
We all know there is nothing more western than garfield...
and it got more western each time
Hey it's like how Arnold changed!
I have to respectfully disagree with you.
1. The controversy isn't manufactured. There'll be people who complain regardless, but they could've gotten away with it if they film played out with Major being Mira Killian. I think the controversy would've eventually died out when most people just accepted their adaptation. Unfortunately, they just made it worse with the tone deaf way they steamed ahead with the idea they had despite being aware of the controversy. It was like a slap in the face of people protesting against whitewashing and I think it cemented the whitewashing issue as the legacy of this film will always have.
2. Nobody is complaining that it's not an exact remake, in fact, I don't know anybody who expected that. People would've been happy if they did their own take on it. Except they copied everything stylistically from its predecessors, and then replaced all the important characters with white people. The incidental characters could still be diverse. Just not the main ones.
WickedLaharl
Member
You are right Kong isn't good it's great.
MrCookiepants
Member
Isn't Major supposed to be Dr. Ouelet's baby? It makes sense that she'd try to create perfection in her own image. Was that character even in the source material? lol
I don't see how this makes the whitewashing any worse. It kinda reignites the controversy by acknowledging it, which is dumb of the creators.
I don't see how this makes the whitewashing any worse. It kinda reignites the controversy by acknowledging it, which is dumb of the creators.
You've obviously never experienced the pipe strip
In so much as her current form was Dr Ouelet's creation, yes. But otherwise, no, not at all, LOL.
Emulated Hype
Member
Regardless of our opinions on the degree of the whitewashing, it's really tone-deaf to ignore the criticism from your fans about a fringe subject and then push the topic center-stage in the final product.
Maybe they were hoping the potential controversy would draw more ticket sales?
Maybe they were hoping the potential controversy would draw more ticket sales?
Nah, I feel that they just thought maybe tackling it head-on would be better. And I have to admit it is an interesting subject to tackle but this is the wrong film to address it since they misappropriated the character in the first place. Too meta for its own good.
Mind you when I watched it I wasn't terribly offended. I felt more like "Well, this is awkward and even the characters/actors look awkward/uncomfortable too". It makes an otherwise okay movie a bit cringe-worthy.
Do you just want to argue that this version of the film shouldn't have been made at all?
It's valid point of view, but not what the thread is about. It specifically discusses the plot of the film that was made recently with Scar-Jo cast in the lead role, and not some imaginary fully Japanese live action production that we all might have liked to have seen instead.
Thank you for replying with a bit more explanation than Haly, though I think in the end you're both coming at it from the same angle. You're not talking about the film that was made. You're talking about ancillary stuff, about expectations and discussions that were formed before anyone had ever seen the film. You're talking about lack of casting diversity in the movie industry in general which I agree is something to be criticised, but has nothing to do with a critical appraisal of an individual movie.
It's a sci-fi movie and the twist allowed the writers address race-mismatch as a possible outcome if external appearance is a mere fabrication. In sticking so tightly to the source material in other places it didn't really allow itself to go deeper with it, but nevertheless it's an interesting sci-fi concept. Off the top of my head can't think of many mainstream sci-fi films that have touched on this in a similar way. Most body-swap movies are heavily on the fantastical end of the spectrum, and light-comedy gender or age swaps are more commonly the focus. I guess Avatar kinda did this too, but in such an oblique way that it didn't certainly occur to me at the time with all the other crap going on in that movie. Wasn't Ryan Reynolds alter-ego played by James Hong in RIPD? That's as about as relevant an example as I can think of.
After watching GitS my friends and I, only one of whom had seen the original movie, were discussing theoretically the concept of putting brains into bodies that were race/gender mis-matched with their own internal self-image and how that might feel when interacting with the outside world. At the end of the day, that was a more interesting thought exercise than I thought I was going to get out of the movie.
P.S. - I'm not saying I would give a glowing review of the film overall. It was okay, but I'm in no hurry to see it again. I doubt I'll bother adding this version to my DVD collection alongside the original GitS movie.
Don't be too harsh. Someone probably put him in a Rage Room.
No, not just. But that is one of my arguments yes.
Okay? And I've been actually discussing this movie and how it's more insulting to Asian Americans than simply just transplanting the entire story to Neo York or whatever.
I would've been more okay with "GITS: except everyone is white" than whatever this is. It fails to invoke the concepts that made the original special, and also fails to bring anything to the property on its own merits. It's a cheap cash grab, the shovelware of film adaptations, and it looks like it's not even good at grabbing cash.
Why does this film exist at all? It's effectively worthless, whether as art or as business.
It feels like you've come in here to diss the naysayers by talking points that people aren't really finding issue with though.
I think it'll make a good sum out of the international box office. But they didn't really need Scarlett to do that.
I thought it was to make the whole thing even more controversial because not only did they
strip her and others of their identity, but their heritage, as well. I also took it as a jab at Hollywood's own portrayal of the "perfect" person throughout the years (white, incredibly attractive and a perfect physical specimen), but maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
Vincent Grayson
Member
My thoughts during the film (jokingly, I suppose)
were that maybe Hanka Robotics just really liked American celebrities, so they were dumping the brains into robot versions of their favorite American celebrities, like Michael Pitt and ScarJo.
The Strokes
Banned
I mean, there could be more poignant examples of outrageous whitewashing that are far, far, FAR more disturbing than the adaptation of a japanese animated film.
If you want to talk whitewashing, it's cool, but Ghost in the Shell is not a film that should constitute being the focal point of said conversation, at least this shit movie acknowledges in a very bizarre way, unlike others that just don't give a fuck.
Also, you can argue than without a big name attached to this obscure property the adaptation would have never been greenlit. Counterpoint it's that the movie sucks, not that the original was anything close to a masterpiece as well.
My favorite Animorphs book.We all know there is nothing more western than garfield...
and it got more western each time
Space Medafighter X
Member
In the manga, doesn't a "western" female show up? I remember her looking completely different than everyone else.
Also in the the anime, don't american soilders show up and call section 9 "japs"?
Also in the the anime, don't american soilders show up and call section 9 "japs"?
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