Forum - View topicHow Do The Japanese Feel About Hollywood's Version Of "Ghost In The Shell?"
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Snomaster1
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In May,Hollywood's version of "Ghost in the Shell" finally hit the Land of the Rising Sun. So,what's their opinion of it? How do the Japanese themselves feel about this? To be honest,it's pretty mixed. One thing was for sure. They seemed to have had no problem with Scarlett Johannson playing Major Motoko Kusanagi. What they seemed to like was that Ms. Johannson was a real actress playing the role. In an article about this online,a Japanese guy said that if a Japanese studio were doing this movie,then they would have gotten a Japanese pop idol to do this instead of a famous actress. So they appreciated that,at least. Mamoru Oshii,the guy who did the original anime film also had no problem with the idea of Ms. Johannson in the role.
If Mamoru Oshii and those Japanese who did see this movie and was okay with the casting of Scarlett Johannson as Major Kusanagi,can we please put the charges of "whitewashing" to bed? The controversy was unnecessary and very much unneeded. Now,I don't know if the creator of "Ghost in the Shell,"Shirow Masamune saw this or what he thought of this. I hope someday we find out. It would be interesting to hear what he thought of it. If the Japanese had any problems with the film at all,it wasn't with the casting. It was what they felt was a superficial understanding of the story. Now,I haven't seen the movie itself to know for sure. I've only seen a few episodes of the anime TV series and read very little of the manga,so I'm not much of a fan of the series. What I do know is that the show is fascinating. It gives us a glimpse into a fascinating world that could be possible. Perhaps,out of curiosity,I might see this one day. Who knows? It's not the type of movie I'd normally see,but it might be interesting to see,nonetheless. Then,I might tell you what I thought about this. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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Eh, sorry, the topic of "white-washing" can't be waved away so quickly. You are going to be hearing more and more about it as time goes on and not just in the context of American adaptations of Japanese source material. You're going to hear about it any time a white actor plays a character whose source material origins are non-white (or, if it is an original work, is supposed to be a non-white character according to the script). The days where Mickey Rooney could slap in some big buck teeth, wear round spectacles and speak in an atrocious "Japanese" accent (as he did in Breakfast in Tiffany's) are long gone.
As for the specific reaction of Japanese viewers to the American Ghost in the Shell, I have no idea, myself. In addition to the fact that Scar Jo is a "real" actress as opposed to an idol, maybe Japanese dudes appreciated the fact that she is HOT! 
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Vaisaga
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Here's a good video to answer your question.
So overall pretty positive, especially ScarJo's Major. |
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Unicorn_Blade
 Posts: 1153 Location: UK |
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A lot of my Japanese friends are not into anime/manga, so they did not care.
Those who are, did not care much either, because they said they did not consider GITS to be about Japan (not sure if it makes sense like this...). It's a made up story with fictional characters, and not a historical film about real people- so to a lot of people it did not make a difference who played the main role. The same thing happened a few years back with the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, where most of the main cast were Chinese or Malaysian. For Western audiences, the film was about Japan and its culture, but when I asked my Japanese friends if they felt upset that most of the roles went to Chinese stars and not Japanese actresses, they said they did not really consider it a film about Japan, with the film being made by an American director based on an American novel, and with the cast it felt even more removed. The Japanese title was changed to Sayuri, they did not keep the original. So they enjoyed the film as a love story or whatever, but not treated it as something that actually talks that much about their country- weird as it may sound. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Just finally noticed this thread. Thanks for the link! It was quite interesting but not unexpected, and I agree with the guy's assessment that it could be a gateway into the franchise for non-anime fans. |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5504 Location: Mexico |
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No. That's not how it works. Privileged Japanese in Japan obviously don't understand the racial issue of underrepresented minorities in American films, and they don't get to say whether white-washing is a problem or not. It probably sounds like soapboxing at this point, but this interview with four Japanese-American actresses should give you a good insight about why this is persisting problem and why what actual Japanese people think is not relevant to the discussion
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ghost-shell-4-japanese-actresses-dissect-movie-whitewashing-twist-990956 |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13224 |
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I find it funny that they go on about being told to act more "oriental" and yet they criticize GitS for not having Japanese people be shameful and not openly affectionate.
I also find it unfortunate how they say it felt wrong to have white people call each other by Japanese names. Because if the inside doesn't match the outside, it just plain wrong amirite?! No denying that plenty of people have been denied jobs due to their race, but what they don't acknowledge is that sometimes, yeah, it's a lack of qualification and not race. I don't know who any of these actresses are, but it could be that they're just not as good as ScarJo. Between a great actress who is a different race and a subpar actress who fits racially, isn't it a given that the first option would be taken? If people really only care about race, then these actresses have no right to speak. I mean, they aren't Japanese, they're Japanese-American. Motoko is Japanese so had they cast a Japanese-American actress that would also be racially insensitive! So yeah, it only matters what people in Japan think, not these filthy mudbloods! Obviously I'm not being serious but when having your race be represented is the only thing you care about we all start having problems. In the film the Major's race is of little relevance. It taking place in Japan also has little relevance. It's just a settling. That's what Unicorn_Balde's friends meant when they said it wasn't "about Japan." Plus, even if they shifted the story to America and made everyone white then people would complain about that too. Looking at you, Death Note. |
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鏡
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There's a significant difference between orientalist ideas about Japanese culture and...actual Japanese culture. That's part of what makes the concept of "orientalism" useful in the first place - to delineate between stereotypical, outsider-generated caricatures of a culture and how it is actually experienced by its constituents.
Disregarding a direct comparison of the acting talent of those particular actresses and scarjo, since we're not in a position to make such a comparison, instances where it's an actual matter of a difference in qualification aren't worth comment because those are times when the system is working as intended. I think there's a much subtler problem though wherein "qualification" actually gets equated with looking a certain way - say, looking like scarjo - and so instances where the system is "working as intended" become instances of racial bias. Disentangling race from star power involves diversifying representation in lead roles of Hollywood films, something this casting works directly against. Watching these conversations about Death Note and this over the past couple months, it seems to me that how one responds to claims about whitewashing is often dictated less by anything to do with a given situation and more by one's prior political commitments, so I'm kind of sick of them. Either you think whitewashing is bad or an illusory ploy by marxist tumblrites to destroy our perfect meritocratic culture, and which side you fall on seems based less on anything to do with a given case and more on your extant political views, which I think is why these conversations drive themselves endlessly into the ground. I think whitewashing is an interesting concept though as a demonstration of how racist logic creates a feedback loop: when employers have extant racial preferences, employees, including excellent employees, will reflect those preferences. Against accusations of racial preference, the employer can then point to their excellent employees and say: "As you can see, their race is incidental: as a matter of fact, they're simply excellent at their job". In turn, if you have a bunch of employers with the same preference, you quickly come to associate excellence and employability with the preferred race. When enough people do this, you get a culture wherein certain races are associated with certain competencies: for *purely hypothetical example*, a culture wherein whites are seen as predisposed to excellent method acting and directing, and Asians as excellent fu manchu lookalikes. As a result, opportunities for the non-preferred race to acquire similar competencies are diminished, and the culture begins to reify itself, which in turn validates it and galvanizes it against criticism, and so on ad infinitum. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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^
While I understand where all of this is coming from, I find that this whole business with GitS and DN and whitewashing comes down one simple thing: is there anything about the story and characters which intrinsically requires the characters to specifically be Japanese? Aside from her real name, is there anything about The Major which specifically necessitates her being Japanese? No. She could be from any country with advanced tech and the story wouldn't change. For DN, is there anything about the scheme that would interfere with it being a purely American-based story? No. It's about like saying that the only reasonable way to interpret Romeo and Juliet is to have the cast members be Italian or to limit Hamlet to Danes only. Now, if we were talking about a story that's very deeply-rooted in Eastern culture and concepts then that would be a different story. You couldn't make a Ranma ½ or Inuyasha or Bleach in live-action without keeping it very Japanese (or Japanese/Chinese in the case of Ranma), for instance. |
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鏡
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I don't think complaints about whitewashing are complaints about the integrity of the source material - they're complaints about representation. So I don't think whether the use of a white actor over an Asian one damages or improves the adaptation is really relevant to the legitimacy of the complaints.
Arguments about whitewashing as a betrayal of the in-universe race of a character are obviously kind of absurd unless it's an explicitly racial story (or you're for some reason a stickler for racial adaptive integrity), and interpreting complaints about whitewashing as complaints about mistreatment of the source material understandably leads to reactions like these:
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CCTakato
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Vaisaga
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The point is that's not relevant to the narrative at all. spoiler[She could have been a Japanese woman in a Japanese looking body, or a white woman in a Japanese body, or a European in an African body. The events of the movie would still transpire in exactly the same way.] Besides, you don't think spoiler[the evil corporation's image of the 'perfect' body as white] isn't deliberately saying something? |
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CrowLia
Posts: 5504 Location: Mexico |
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Hardly. The twist feels more like a last-minute tacked on afterthought that the producers came up with hoping it would cool down the whitewashing complaints. Of course it was poorly thought out and therefore backfired. And even if it were as you say, it would be quite hypocritical since obviously spoiler[the |
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CCTakato
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13224 |
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Or they needed a talented actress with a big name to help sell the movie and the only actress who fit that bill just so happened to be white. If there's a Japanese actress who's on the same level as ScarJo, I've certainly never heard of her, which means average Joe movie goer won't know her either. General movie audiences aren't going to see a film headlined by an actress whose name they likely can't pronounce. It's unfortunate, but that's the business. I'm not going to harsh on the staff who were stuck in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation and did the best they could under the constraints of the system.
No one said she doesn't have a race. It's that her race doesn't matter. Other than her appearance and her name, what is one aspect of Major's character that is exclusively Japanese? Nothing comes to mind for me. Sometimes race is merely a descriptive feature like hair or eye colour. It's a part of a character but doesn't influence the narrative at all. Say you have a black character whose arc is overcoming the racism of others. His race is the direct cause of conflict and so integral to the narrative. You couldn't turn that character white because if you did that conflict would disappear. The Major is a cyborg cop dealing with future crime. Her being white, Asian, male, or attack helicopter wouldn't change that basic premise. |
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