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[ReplacementPelican]

I could see his point. no one mistakes white people for Japanese people. But a lot of Asians (not just Japanese) get fed up with white people thinking they all look the same (and not being able to tell the difference). By casting another Asian heritage it is just acknowledging that other people see no differences between them and think they're all the same (they as in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc).

I take this point but surely only applies to Asians living outside of Asia, yes? I mean, I doubt this is an everyday annoyance to people inside their respective countries. Like, I doubt Japanese people getting mistaken for Koreans is an occurrence in Japan.

 

[Skellig Gra]

It's funny when people assume not casting a big star would have prevented the movie from bombing while criticizing the decision of casting a big movie star in the first place, like, you realize the irony?

Giving that the Wonder Woman movie is also being predicted as another bomb I'm starting to believe there is a real problem of sexism not just in Hollywood itself but in movie audiences, what female lead in a new IP has been successful? I'm struggling to come up with a name.

Hunger Games/Jennifer Lawrence comes to mind. People will see a movie if it is good regardless off who is in it. Hell you could argue Episode 7 and Rogue One had female leads and were obviously massively successful.

The problem lies in either poorly made films (GiTS) or casting the wrong person (Wonder Woman)

 

[Salty Rice]

They are not wrong.

People cry about whitewashing while demanding a "asian" actress what is really generalising.

 

[Llyranor]

That's true. So I don't know why people keep going back to Japan or wherever for their opinion on this subject which is mostly an American issue.

It's to invalidate Asian-Americans' voices.

 

[Ratrat]

No one in Japan knows the Speed Racer anime or whatever it was called there. The Speed Racer was seen as American movie (they didn't even bother with replacing the name with the original Japanese one).

The same way how no one would think that Saber Rider is somwhow based on an anime.

Lol. You have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[4Tran]

They are not wrong.

People cry about whitewashing while demanding a "asian" actress what is really generalising.

That's untrue. The main goal is to combat how invisible Asian actors are in Hollywood. It just so happens that Japanese audiences don't give a damn about that issue. On the flip side, Chinese audiences are generally more accepting of Japanese and Korean (and Taiwanese and Hong Kong) actors playing Chinese characters, and vice versa.

The main takeaway should be that we shouldn't take the attitude of Japanese audiences as a guideline for what Hollywood should do in terms of representation.

It's to invalidate Asian-Americans' voices.

It should be noted that people in Japan (and Korea and China) don't really care about Asian Americans either, so that should give us a hint as to how much we should take their opinions on this kind of issue.

 

[Desmond]

No one in Japan knows the Speed Racer anime or whatever it was called there. The Speed Racer was seen as American movie (they didn't even bother with replacing the name with the original Japanese one).

The same way how no one would think that Saber Rider is somwhow based on an anime.

Well, the Ghost in the Shell movie is called Ghost in the Shell in Japan this time though? While that title has always been seen in the logo for the anime, it's not the series name in Japan.

 

[Seductivpancakes]

That's true. So I don't know why people keep going back to Japan or wherever for their opinion on this subject which is mostly an American issue.

People will say or do anything to defend their favorite movie/franchise/star.

 

[Rembrandt]

I hate how people are actually getting upset over "cyber social justice warrior", when you kneejerk react that way/get your jimmies rustled, don't you think you're letting the trolls win? As soon as I saw SJW I knew exactly what was to follow, can't we stop being so predictable?

"You don't understand. The people getting trolled are the problem!"

 

[Chmpocalypse]

"cyber sjw"

You're so fucking transparent.

 

[Trokil]

The main takeaway should be that we shouldn't take the attitude of Japanese audiences as a guideline for what Hollywood should do in terms of representation.

I like where this is going.

 

[BocoDragon]

OP you dolt:

OF COURSE Japanese people would rather they were portrayed by a white person than another kind of Asian.

That's their own brand of racism showing.

You're a complete fool for thinking it's like some objective repudiation of the western conversation about race portrayal.

 

[Puck Beaverton]

People out here forgetting Lucy was a success.

 

[xKilltheMx]

People out here forgetting Lucy was a success.

People out here forgetting that there's no proven link between "star actors/actresses" and box office gain.

 

[MagnaderAlpha]

Oh was that whats her face from Crouching Tiger?

Yeah there's an asian hierarchy. It'd be like getting a Mexican to play Abe Lincoln or something.

I'd imagine it would be more like getting hung up at Jennifer Lopez (Puerto Rican-American) for playing Selena (Mexican American).

No Korean girls reactions yet?

Korean girls: "Fuck what the Japanese think! They refuse to apologize to us for past crimes against our people and don't believe they did anything wrong in the first place. They could get bent!"

People out here forgetting Lucy was a success.

Given reviews and word of mouth, it seems like most people I know that went to see it did so NOT because of Scarlet and more because of how "batshit crazy" the concept/story was.

 

[Ratrat]

OP you dolt:

OF COURSE Japanese people would rather they were portrayed by a white person than another kind of Asian.

That's their own brand of racism showing.

You're a complete fool for thinking it's like some objective repudiation of the western conversation about race portrayal.

A white person isnt passed off as or mistaken for any Asian ethnicity.

If they cast an Asian American actress they should make the character Asian American.
Ishihara Satomi's AWFUL Engrish in Shin Godzilla is basically what Asians get from Hollywood on the regular.

Also, pretty much any Asian ethnicity will be annoyed if you assume or label them wrong. Not sure what your on about.

 

[NandoGip]

Sorry random japanese dude, I still think its lame when white people portray characters that were different ethnicities in the source material

 

[OceanBlue]

I take this point but surely only applies to Asians living outside of Asia, yes? I mean, I doubt this is an everyday annoyance to people inside their respective countries. Like, I doubt Japanese people getting mistaken for Koreans is an occurrence in Japan.

This doesn't even apply uniformly to all Asians in the US. Some I know can sympathize with people who can't tell the difference between Asians and some would just want to see any representation at all.

 

[Trokil]

Sorry random japanese dude, I still think its lame when white people portray characters that were different ethnicities in the source material

I know the source material and the Majors ethnicity is never really revealed. Motoko Kusanagi is not her real name, that is kind of the point. It is only clear, that the person uses a female cyborg model.

 

[Cyframe]

Since the movie only debuted in Japan this past weekend, reactions have been slim in trickling in, but some preliminary reactions:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/japanese-fans-react-ghost-shell-992255

Most fascinating part:



The Japanese apparently have a much, much, much more different take on identity politics than Asian Americans or any cyber Social Justice Warrior can ever dream of

Omg. Stop it.

First, I actually watched a video of a person who lives in Japan and they asked native Japanese what they thought about the film. Some said, they love a white woman like Scarlett. But others expressed that it would have been nice to have an Asian American in the role. And others, also thought it was abhorrent if the rumor that Japanese Americans couldn't try out for the role was.

So, even in Japan, you have a difference of opinions. And the experiences of those who are Japanese vs Asian Americans should be viewed as difference perspectives, not an excuse to belittle Asian Americans.

Japanese Americans, fall under the Asian American umbrella. And people, including Asian Americans, wanted a Japanese person for the role. It wasn't any asian will do.

(And, I had to struggle through this, who uses SJW in a serious context, especially to undercut Japanese Americans who deal with a totally difference experience than those living in Japan, it makes zero sense).

 

[Boss Doggie]

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/...speedracer.htm

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/...speedracer.htm

Japan WB 7/5/08 $995,007 27.8% $3,576,060 8/3/08

And btw Speed Racer has made less than Ghost already did and it was more expensive.

No I mean towards the audience.

 

[mckmas8808]

Thank God that one Japanese person said that this isn't an issue so that I can say, with confidence, that this isn't an issue. Fucking 'cyber Social Justice Warrior', am I right, OP? LMAO!!!

Spoiler

Please let everyone understand this is sarcasm

Its an interesting take though, funny how he immediately dislikes the idea of people of another Asian heritage playing the character tbh.

Which is literally the definition of identity politics lol. OP must have been joking.

 

[Ratrat]

Omg. Stop it.

First, I actually watched a video of a person who lives in Japan and they asked native Japanese what they thought about the film. Some said, they love a white woman like Scarlett. But others expressed that it would have been nice to have an Asian American in the role. And others, also thought it was abhorrent if the rumor that Japanese Americans couldn't try out for the role was.

So, even in Japan, you have a difference of opinions. And the experiences of those who are Japanese vs Asian Americans should be viewed as difference perspectives, not an excuse to belittle Asian Americans.

Japanese Americans, fall under the Asian American umbrella. And people, including Asian Americans, wanted a Japanese person for the role. It wasn't any asian will do.

(And, I had to struggle through this, who uses SJW in a serious context, especially to undercut Japanese Americans who deal with a totally difference experience than those living in Japan, it makes zero sense).

Good post.
People here are laughing at the op for having just one example to represent audience reaction but then go on with the typical generalizations as if differing opinions didn't exist.

 

[jack_package_200]

You know what I hate about this movie (apart from the fact its shit)? Its the fact we have to keep talking about it.

Because it contributes to a systemic problem in Hollywood and thus its controversial, we end up having to keep discussing the film again and again.

Its a bland nothing of a film that does not deserve any discussion.

 

[Ridley327]

As I said before, no one batted an eyelid when Pierce Brosnan played bond. Could an Asian actress could have played the role without controversy?

For Bond, the ethnicity of the character has always been somewhat fluid, as his Scottish heritage was retconned as a result of Fleming coming around on Connery's casting. Since then, he's been portrayed by all of two Brits, and I don't believe anyone since has had any Scottish in them.

 

[Sunster]

That's untrue. The main goal is to combat how invisible Asian actors are in Hollywood. It just so happens that Japanese audiences don't give a damn about that issue. On the flip side, Chinese audiences are generally more accepting of Japanese and Korean (and Taiwanese and Hong Kong) actors playing Chinese characters, and vice versa.

The main takeaway should be that we shouldn't take the attitude of Japanese audiences as a guideline for what Hollywood should do in terms of representation.


It should be noted that people in Japan (and Korea and China) don't really care about Asian Americans either, so that should give us a hint as to how much we should take their opinions on this kind of issue.

No. We should make even more threads about Japanese people reacting to American media. It's super insightful. We should start making Japanese people react threads for every single movie produced imo...

 

[The Artisan]

wasn't there a thread last week about Japanese people worshiping white people?

so...

 

[N7.Angel]

The Major should have been Japanese, I'm sure they're enough Japanese-American actress to do it, I mean look at Netflix Death Note... why the fuck a White and a Black dude are the leads ? I think Asian-American should be pissed about it.

 

[Sunster]

The Major should have been Japanese, I'm sure they're enough Japanese-American actress to do it, I mean look at Netflix Death Note... why the fuck a White and a Black dude are the leads ? I think Asian-American should be pissed about it.

Japanese in Japan said it's kool. You're opinion is invalid.

Spoiler

///s

 

[jack_package_200]

The Major should have been Japanese, I'm sure they're enough Japanese-American actress to do it, I mean look at Netflix Death Note... why the fuck a White and a Black dude are the leads ? I think Asian-American should be pissed about it.

Maybe there is a reason behind both castings?

 

[Seductivpancakes]

wasn't there a thread last week about Japanese people worshiping white people?

so...

Those were opinions from Japanese actresses working in America. There was one line about worshiping white people and the OP and everyone who didn't read, ran with it. The rest of their conversation was ripping the movie a new one.

 

[N7.Angel]

Maybe there is a reason behind both castings?

Appealing to the West ?

 

[Rembrandt]

Maybe there is a reason behind both castings?

Those actors are more popular than any Japanese actor in America?

 

[jack_package_200]

Appealing to the West ?

Or that there might be a racial component to the film?

Can we at least wait for the movie to come out before throwing it under the bus?

 

[Mesousa]

Those actors are more popular than any Japanese actor in America?

Still going to flop like every other Anime western adaption.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

I can't tell if people who post Japanese reactions to whitewashing even understand what the hell is going on, because it doesn't seem like they do. At all.

 

[Inferno313]

Or that there might be a racial component to the film?

Can we at least wait for the movie to come out before throwing it under the bus?

What? Movie came out and bombed already.

 

[jack_package_200]

What? Movie came out and bombed already.

We were discussing the Death Note adaptation, not the Ghost in the Shell remake

 

[Principate]

What? Movie came out and bombed already.

Read the comment chain they're talking about Death Note.

 

[stupei]

It's funny when people assume not casting a big star would have prevented the movie from bombing while criticizing the decision of casting a big movie star in the first place, like, you realize the irony?

Giving that the Wonder Woman movie is also being predicted as another bomb I'm starting to believe there is a real problem of sexism not just in Hollywood itself but in movie audiences, what female lead in a new IP has been successful? I'm struggling to come up with a name.

Unless you only mean action films, Pitch Perfect is a primarily all female franchise and makes a ton of money. Lucy did great. Hunger Games.

The reason you can't think of many is because the films seldom exist and they certainly don't get a lot of backing from the studio to position them for success when they do. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that allows the executives to feel comfortable in their complacency, so that they don't have to take risks enough to feel responsible when something goes wrong. It's not that their movie or decisions were bad; it's that film goers don't like women in their movies!

Hunger Games/Jennifer Lawrence comes to mind. People will see a movie if it is good regardless off who is in it. Hell you could argue Episode 7 and Rogue One had female leads and were obviously massively successful.

The problem lies in either poorly made films (GiTS) or casting the wrong person (Wonder Woman)

The argument I often see people try to make against Daisy Ridley and how that doesn't "count" is because it's Star Wars and it always would have made a lot of money because it's a major franchise.

Cut to the next time a major franchise goes with the standard white male lead and somehow they always had to because it's a major franchise and it needs to make a lot of money, which apparently isn't guaranteed.

Funny how that works out.

 

[And_Gignac]

Sometimes I feel like even liberal Americans have this "police of the world" role internalized. They also want to police other cultures regarding how they should experience their oppression.

I mean, the outrage didn't came from Japan. That's a fact, it was Americans who considered the movie a problem.

 

[Dongs Macabre]

They are not wrong.

People cry about whitewashing while demanding a "asian" actress what is really generalising.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/10/randall-park-fresh-off-the-boat-on-playing-a-taiwanese-american.html

Ideally, we could have Japanese actors play Japanese characters, but we aren't at that point yet. Right now any Asian or Asian-American actor playing an Asian character, even one from a different country of origin, is an improvement.

 

[mckmas8808]

Sometimes I feel like even liberal Americans have this "police of the world" role internalized. They also want to police other cultures regarding how they should experience their oppression.

I mean, the outrage didn't came from Japan. That's a fact, it was Americans who considered the movie a problem.

In this case, they are calling out Japan's identity politics. You have an issue with that?

 

[OceanBlue]

Sometimes I feel like even liberal Americans have this "police of the world" role internalized. They also want to police other cultures regarding how they should experience their oppression.

I mean, the outrage didn't came from Japan. That's a fact, it was Americans who considered the movie a problem.

No one is saying that the Japanese should feel oppressed or angry because the main character isn't cast as an Asian. People are saying that the Japanese experience is not the Asian-American experience, so a Japanese person not finding issue with the casting doesn't have anything to do with how Asian-Americans will or should feel about it.

 

[conpfreak]

I find the comments about having a non-Japanese Asian being worse pretty fascinating. This dynamic has been touched upon with other races, like in the Black community with black British actors taking roles featuring Black American actors, and also some rumblings about some of the bigger roles in Black Panther being playing by Black American actors. Since BP is a western IP that's centered around an fictional isolationist African country, some would say Africans from the continent needs to fill all of the roles. But there are culture nuances that favor this situation versus a white person filling a role meant for a person of color.

Also, I have no clue why these studios think just because they have a big name white actor when westernizing an IP, it guarantees an audience. In 2017, you will likely turn off more people from the film/TV show than you gain.

 

[Trokil]

No one is saying that the Japanese should feel oppressed or angry because the main character isn't cast as an Asian. People are saying that the Japanese experience is not the Asian-American experience, so a Japanese person not finding issue with the casting doesn't have anything to do with how Asian-Americans will or should feel about it.

But people here explain also, if they would cast an Amercian-Asian actress for the part and the Japanese people would not like that, well that is not that much of a problem, because it is not about them or how they feel or what they think, because they are pretty much racists anyway.

Some even mentioned in another topic, if Mulan would be a Chinese actress that would not help the American-Asian community.

 

[Inferno313]

We were discussing the Death Note adaptation, not the Ghost in the Shell remake

Read the comment chain they're talking about Death Note.

Whoops! Sorry. My bad.

 

[mantidor]

Lucy with ScarJo herself
Hunger games with J law
Twilight

Both Lucy and Twilight are abysmal by any metric. The hunger games isn't that good either, even when it's watchable. Specially twilight, which if I'm not mistaken is the most profitable one.

Quality isn't always the defining factor. Maybe GiTS was doomed to fail regardless of anything.

 

[.JayZii]

The everyday Japanese person doesn't understand or care about Asian representation in Hollywood because in their own country they are immersed in media that is almost 100 percent Japanese. They don't have a visibility or representation problem in their country. They like seeing different, "exotic" people in Hollywood movies. As a result, they don't identify with Asian Americans who want more representation in American media.

I could see his point. no one mistakes white people for Japanese people. But a lot of Asians (not just Japanese) get fed up with white people thinking they all look the same (and not being able to tell the difference). By casting another Asian heritage it is just acknowledging that other people see no differences between them and think they're all the same (they as in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc).

That's because "white" and "asian" are equally broad categorizations, and both categories include people from all sorts of backgrounds lumped into one. Comparing "white" to Japanese is comparing something very general to something specific. People seem to forget that "white" includes a huge variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds and physical appearances.

I understand not wanting to feed into the "you all look the same" Asian stereotype, but surely some representation, which opens the door for other Asian and Asian-American actors in the future, is better than no representation at all, right? Only being cast in token asian roles seems worse than casting the "wrong" type of asian to me. Being super vigilant about specific racial background seems like getting mad that a French-American played a Polish character. If they can pull off the character and act well, does it really matter?

A lot of Asian people also have a sort of pride about being able to tell each other apart, but have a hard time doing it without obvious context clues (like the person in question speaking their native language or being in a K-pop group). The reality is that there is a lot of diversity within each Asian country and overlapping traits between them, so it all comes back to stereotypes anyway. For example, if a Japanese person says "they don't look Japanese", what they're really saying is that that person doesn't exemplify stereotypical physical traits that Japanese people value.

 

[RM8]

Japan is so awful with this "everything but other Asians" mentality, lol.