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NEWS: Live-Action Death Note Film's Producer Responds to Whitewashing Controversy

Jeez, I guess we have entered a age, where you can't take a story from another country, and make your own version of it, even if you pay the creator of the story a licensing fee. You're just a racist if you want to do that.

iceblast wrote:

Jeez, I guess we have entered a age, where you can't take a story from another country, and make your own version of it, even if you pay the creator of the story a licensing fee. You're just a racist if you want to do that.

No, no. You are only a racist if you are white (and probably male) and do that. Again, I think of classic literature, as a Brit it would be like me saying that only we can perform Shakespeare, which is nonsense.

While I do think Hollywood does need to up its game on giving parts to different people (mostly from the point of view that far too many movies are the same old drivel, showing a different culture we are less familiar with would be more interesting), the reasons for the casting choice at least make sense. I do wonder though since Light is suppose to be evil, whether there is a race reason behind this casting dynamic anyway. I could imagine a different set of people crying racism (those not familiar with the source material), if you cast an Asian-American in the lead role.

TFW low key racism and entitlement culture is so rampant nowadays that people need characters to be of their own race in order to identify with them.
I get it though, I can't identify with anime characters because I'm a three dimensional being. spoiler[Where are my 3D, male, white Hispanic, South American anime characters?!]

You are only a racist if you are white (and probably male) and do that.

Of course people are going to say that she is lying because how could it be that hard... well the actors themselves have to be available and interested, and I don't think the pool of Japanese actors with lead role experience is especially large.

if our version of Death Note was set in Japan and [featured] characters that were Japanese-named or of Japanese ancestry

make it more appealing to the US or to the English-language market.

one of our three leads is African-American

No one criticized it then. Maybe they should've or maybe they could've, [and] I just didn't know about it.

There was the time Iwasaki Taku sampled Islamic sounds in the Noragami 2 OST

There's the trope of Chinese Girls that is present in Japanese media.

There's the fascination with Nazi like outfits.

There's plenty of racially insensitive characters in shows, used for comedy.

etc etc

I'd provide more examples but I need to get to work. Woops!

Quote:

You are only a racist if you are white (and probably male) and do that.

Pretty sure the fact that white males have historically oppressed neglected and pillaged from all other races in the US and the Western world has absolutely nothing to do with that, just a coincidence, a bad stereotype, poor white people, they've never done anything wrong.

I mean, Disney was able to find Auli'i Cravalho for Moana, she's a new face and fit the bill perfectly, and I'm pretty sure the pool of Polinesian actors is comparable if not even smaller to that of Asian-American actors, so forgive me if I find that statement extremely hard to buy

FackuIkari wrote:

I'm still waiting for someone to tell why this """"""controversy"""""" affects the pacing, plot, story, characters, writing and directing that makes this adaptation, that you have not watched, bad in any way, shape or form. Don't you think we should be worried more about that and how is gonna represent Death Note instead of the f******g casting for an adaptation that has an entirely different setting? Does it really matter?

It absolutely matters. Imagine not being white, and being told "No matter how talented you are, how good your chemistry is with the rest of the cast, or how well you fit the role, mainstream audiences will dismiss you on sight simply for looking different." Or "You're just not attractive enough to be a lead, audiences are only attracted to white men." Or being told that even if you're Asian-American, and have spent your entire life speaking mostly English and living in the States, that people will assume you aren't capable of pulling the role off, because they assume you only speak Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc.

Cultural appropriation is also ABSOLUTELY a thing. If you're taking parts of someone's culture and using it without understanding how it's important, or what it means to that culture, it's disrespectful as all hell.

I find it a bit unbelievable to me they couldn't find a single Asian American actor that didn't speak "perfect English."

I like how pretty much nobody cares if the movie is good or bad, that's funny. If it turns out to be a really good supernatural thriller, who cares? seriously

FackuIkari wrote:

I like how pretty much nobody cares if the movie is good or bad, that's funny. If it turns out to be a really good supernatural thriller, who cares? seriously

How many people have to say that they care about how good the movie is for you to think "somebody" cares about its quality? Because quite a few people have said that in this thread alone. But, you know what? It could be good or bad regardless of who's cast. Just so happens that a lot of whitewashed movies that justified racist casting before their film's debut happen to be really bad. Remember how many times Shymalan & co claimed they got "the best actors" for the part of Aang, Katara and Sokka? Did anyone actually still believe that after the movie came out? Sometimes I think producers get all defensive towards whitewashing critics before a movie comes out in order to drum up "controversy" and get free publicity like this article. Then when the movie's terrible, they're all like "well, all those critics who said it was racist made sure no one even gave it a chance! It's *their* fault our movie bombed!!!" That was Ghost in the Shell's strategy, in any case.

I like how pretty much nobody cares if the movie is good or bad, that's funny. If it turns out to be a really good supernatural thriller, who cares? seriously