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NEWS: Live-Action Ghost in the Shell Film Posts 1st Photo of Scarlett Johansson as the Major

A movie of this expense would naturally aim at making a story more palatable for a global audience and the sci-fi/philosophical elements are universal to all.

If one wants to understand why Hollywood's casting of Scarlett Johansson as Motoko Kusanagi and their Westernizing of Ghost in the Shell is a detrimental, regressive concept, look no further than Asian comic writer Jon Tsuei.

I never see people blaming the Japanese. After all they're the ones that have sold the rights to Hollywood. The reality is that the Japanese simply do not have the infrastructure to make films that cost hundreds of milions of dollars, don't have the capacity to market them to a world wide audience. They're simply out of their league. So the conundrum is either make low quality live action films based on anime that are relatively unknown even in Japan let alone the rest of the world, or appeal to Hollywood to make the big splash.

So when it comes to anime adaptations of anime properties I will give much more trust to Hollywood than the Japanese film industry.

jdnation wrote:

A movie of this expense would naturally aim at making a story more palatable for a global audience and the sci-fi/philosophical elements are universal to all.

So making the main cast white and setting it in the US makes it more globally palatable? oO

And as for the main cast being "white"... Here's what we have announced so far:

1 American (Danish/Ashkenazi Jewish decent)
1 French (who is a brand-new character to boot)
1 Danish
3 Japanese
1 Singaporean
1 London-born, but grew up in Turkey and Yemen (appearance and name appears to be Middle Eastern in origin)
1 black Australian
1 Zimbabwean

So, 30% are white, and only 10% is American... And 30% are Japanese.

Real people are real people and what they are named is no ones business but their own. (And people with one Japanese parent would still be ethnically Japanese, no matter what they look like). Major Kusanagi is a fictional person and her name is given to her to reflect her role in the story. It makes absolutely no sense to change her ethnicity and the setting without also changing her name, and if the Major in this film adaption really is supposed to be only part-Japanese, then they should still have gotten an actress that fits the role.

To my knowledge, Scarlett isn't even slightly Asian, so why exactly do you think it would be more ok for her to play an biracial character with a Japanese name than just a Japanese character with a Japanese name?

At the end of the day, all this talk about how she could totally be in a different body or how history could have gone down in this universe, are really just overcomplicated excuses for white casting, when simply casting an Asian actor would be much simpler.

As for how I feel about minorities taking western names? Not great honestly, but I doubt it is for the reasons you wanted to hear. See, when minorities give their children western names, it is usually because they feel they have to in order to assimilate into another culture and avoid discrimination.

When westerners give their children names that they have no cultural ties to it tends to be because they think it sounds exotic or cool and because they can. I'm no more thrilled about a situation that makes minorities feel like they can't embrace their heritage than I am of majorities using other cultures as decoration. The context in this situation changes drastically when we go from talking about majorities to minorities

And all of this is kind of secondary to the fact that they should have kept the casting non-white because there are far too few movies with PoC casts right now.

Whatever reasoning they can come up with for why it makes sense to whitewash this movie doesn't change the fact that they still shouldn't have done it for that reason alone.

If the story really is supposed to be universal, then keeping the cast Japanese makes just as much sense as whitewashing it, unless they just think white people are just more "universal". There was never a reason to do this in the first place.

So making the main cast white and setting it in the US makes it more globally palatable? oO

In short, this has been a giant exercise in false equivalence.

It's strange to me to read so many people saying how 'japanese-centric' GITS is.. which I've never remotely considered one of my all-time favorite series as being. I've considered it to have a western feel if anything. I've gone through the series a few times too..

This would only make sense if they were keeping the setting precisely intact. Liberties can be taken and make sense if a new context is provided.

I would be perfectly happy with maintaining the ethnicity. But if there are perfectly valid reasons to compromise that and it is cleverly compensated for then I am fine with that too. As I and others here have posted, there are practical reasons why adaptations of originally foreign content for local markets uses local casts.

If you really wanted to be super-authentic then it you might as well argue that the language the film should be shot in should also be Japanese and subtitled for no reason other than to maintain its cultural heritage. But I never see anybody who argues for the all-Japanese cast also argue to make the film entirely in Japanese too. Or does language not count any more? Especially given that there is precedent where forcibly irradicating a people's language is also seen as imperialistic? And this can be as bad an accusation as white-washing the cast?

But nobody argues for a maintenance of a complete Japanese language film by a Hollywood production. Why? Because it's more convenient to have it in the dominant language of the culture you're making it for, which speaks English. Likewise, if one is going to drop the language, and even avoid culturally specific idioms or habits or phrases foreign to the audience, then for the same reasons they replace the cast to accommodate for the same audience.

As audiences and the cultural landscape changes we see more leeway. Now it's not unheard of to see more films with a more ethnically diverse cast and even a mix of languages to add authenticity to predominantly English films, or even made-up ones. Heck, if Mel Gibson could make the Passion of the Christ is Aramaic and Koine Greek and Latin, and have it be a smashing success, then there's room for such chances given the right subject matter and the right people. But by and large that was the exception and not the rule.

But it's not simpler! Just because you want to casually dismiss the fact that audiences gravitate more easily to things they know and understand which are more conveniently served to them, and the fact that films of this sort are expensive and therefore more risky and thus a studio will want to make something as broadly appealing as possible, means they are going to take the easy way out and try and strike the best balance.

Not to mention that there is a lack of talent of Asian actors/actresses available. This doesn't mean they do not exist entirely, but in the real world there are conflicts of interest, maybe the available and good Asian actors/actresses weren't interested. Maybe they would rather do something they think is better for their career than work on a geek action film that for all we know might not have a great script. Maybe the film needs to be shot during such and such time of year and there's nobody available due to scheduling conflicts. The idea that Hollywood is simply out to screw Asians just-because they are Asian is dumb-foundingly stupid.

Being one of those minority people with a Western name I can assure you this is certainly not always the case.

And who gets to decide why this is a good or bad thing?

You? Some random committee of cultural appropriation marxists?

I would say that this is a pretty narrow prejudiced view. You argue for two contradictory things - You want Western Film Industries to have more diversity in their roles and have more Western Audiences get used to that diversity - yet at the same time you blatantly condemn and look down on any open-ness on the part of cultures to get along with and even adopt the cultures of others, even if done for reasons you personally find un-kosher. Why not just go the extra mile and say that Hollywood should only make movies about American people and American culture and that the Japanese film industry must only make films about Japan and Japanese culture and neither side should ever try to make anything that involves diverse casts or storylines outside of their cultural heritage and expertise?

Does anime or manga that sets it characters or story in the West or western fantasy themes be because of heritage-envy? Or shame of their own heritage? I hope you can see that this is simply nonsense.

And why do you think that is? Actually we've come a long way to seeing more diverse casting in various projects happening quite naturally before all this racially-sensitive-brouhaha. Given enough time we will eventually see precisely what you want as more globally people begin to connect with each other and more easily share and digest each other's media.

'Shouldn't'? Clearly they can and are doing so.

Many see why it makes sense for them to do so and don't have a problem with it. That 'reason alone' simply isn't good enough to compensate for a production of such expense for the market into which it is currently being localized for, in a language that the people of that market speak.

For the same reason there is no problem if Japan were to adapt Western material and set it in Tokyo with an all-Japanese cast. Whether that end product on either side is better for it is another story altogether. The facts are that their reasoning is justifiable and not due to some knee-jerk prejudice against the Japanese.

Given the predominance of Hollywood films, recognized first and foremost for their quality, and that Western culture and American/English media and products and clothing and food and finance and celebrities have far more exposure and adoption and recognition in other world markets - YES - the all-white cast and English language film is FAR MORE UNIVERSAL than the Japanese equivalent. All this is why if you're putting money on the line to make a very expensive heavy FX-driven film, you will want to make it as widely accessible as you can, especially with your primary market in mind.

No, it is economics 101 and dealing with reality without devolving every decision down to "because racism."

What? You aren't making any sense. I just said that it makes no sense to keep the Japanese name of the character while removing all Japanese context, and the you just say the exact same thing. They haven't given any new context and that is exactly the problem (or one of them anyway). They just give us this western woman in a western setting and then act as if it is totally logical for her to have a Japanese name.

No, you tried to give an explanation, and I didn't buy it.

You are doing that false equivalence thing again. Shooting a movie in the local language is very different from removing every aspect of the original culture.

Which would make them cowards. Trust me, I get not wanting to take risks, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be criticized for that decision.

So let me get this straight. Your latest excuse is that it would just be too hard for the poor studio to hire one of the myriad of talented Asian actresses looking for a job, so instead they went with Scarlett Johansson, one of the most famous, sought-after, busiest and expensive actresses in Hollywood?

Are you even hearing yourself? Never mind how hard it would be to get Johansson compared to most other actresses, the suggestion that there is a lack of Asian talent with the time to work on a big-budget production is not only ridiculous (Asian and other PoC actors generally have a much harder time getting jobs statistically), but kind of a textbook example of casual racism.

See, pretty much no one complaining about this thinks that Hollywood is actively out to "screw over" anyone. Racism in the industry takes the form of a whole lot of assumptions. Assuming that no one will be interested in a story about Japanese people, that no one will pay to see Japanese actors because they are less famous, that western stories are just more relatable and so on.

Preeeeetty sure that anyone with a working moral compass thinks it is bad when people have to leave behind parts of their culture to be treated with respect.

I'm very tempted to just drop this right now on account of you using the term "marxist" unironically.

Again, false equivalence in order to construct a strawman. A Western studio can certainly make a remake of a Eastern story, and in their own language, but please stop acting as if that is the same thing as stripping away pretty much everything that grounded that story in its original culture to begin with.

Or barring that, the least you could do is stop pretending that doing so is respecting the original culture. Taking a white actress and putting her in a Western setting while pretending that she represents Japanese people just because they kept the name is not "getting along" or "adopting" another culture.

Again, reaching really far there.

So why are you bitching at people just for wanting to help that process along?

So again, why should we not criticize them for caring more about making slightly more money than adapting the material faithfully or showing basic respect to the culture it came from?

Again, context. It matters.

Oh boy, more casual racism.

Yes, Western culture is more widespread and more recognizable than most (because of imperialism).

No, that does not make Western culture more universal or relatable to anyone who isn't a westerner. It just means that people are more used to seeing them because the West keeps feeding it to them.

This is one of those assumptions that make up most racism I spoke of earlier. You are so convinced that white people are the norm just because other white people keep telling you we are.

You seem to be under the impression that you can completely separate those two concepts. You are mistaken.

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I'm very tempted to just drop this right now on account of you using the term "marxist" unironically.

Why?

In this thread, I expect some of you to write up an essay answering the question:

Why white people should not be allowed to cosplay anime characters?

Who said anything about money being an issue where hiring an actress is concerned? The issue is that the scale of the budget is such that they need to make a significant profit, and when you're putting enough money in then you need something there to guarantee the best return, this means further investments and money spent on the right cast and advertising. A celebrity like Scarlet Johansson who already has pull with the right audiences thanks to her Marvel gigs, and is a known quantity is far more feasible than a lesser known Asian star.

It's strange to me to read so many people saying how 'japanese-centric' GITS is.. which I've never remotely considered one of my all-time favorite series as being. I've considered it to have a western feel if anything. I've gone through the series a few times too..