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I think that while it is OK to put white people in these movies, it isn't OK to shift the setting or avoid hiring any Asians. I have no exact proportion, but there should be a majority Asian cast in a film which has it roots in Asia.
edited 17th Jan '12 4:07:39 AM by Loid
"Dr. Strangeloid, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cleanlink" - thespacephantom
House Lewis: Sanity is Relative
Same as in any other industry the best actors for the role should be used. Whether that means keeping or lifting the race should be a secondary concern. The problem being of course the metrics by which 'best' is decided, and the box office will mean big names lime Cruise get the nod.
More opportunities need to be provided to help other races get such big stars, but I can't ever approve of positive discrimination under any circumstances. Racism is not a valid counter to racism.
My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.
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@CDA
But isn't it a tad suspicious that all the actors cast are white? I mean, there have to be plenty of good Asian actors who would take the role.
"Dr. Strangeloid, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cleanlink" - thespacephantom
House Lewis: Sanity is Relative
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Only of your rationale for hiring them extends beyond racial concerns. If they're netter actors, mpre appropriate for the setting or whatever, then yes.if the reason is 'too many white boys in da house' alone then no, you shouldn't.
♦
Well, more appropriate for the setting is the case here.
"Dr. Strangeloid, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cleanlink" - thespacephantom
Decemberist
I don't particularly like this practice.
"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."
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@Loid:
Why isn't it OK to shift the setting, though?
I like The Eye. I also liked the remake, in which the protagonist is American and she goes to Mexico for some non-mainstream (magical) healing, when in the original a Japanese protagonist went to China for the same reason.
When I was watching the remake, what bugged me was that it was remade at all, when the original was a perfectly good film; but then, I suppose someone made some easy money and kept some people in the film industry in business while doing so, so I guess it's not a problem. When I accept that there's gonna be a remake, I don't know why I should worry about the setting being moved to something that's more relatable to the target audience.
edited 17th Jan '12 4:48:55 AM by BestOf
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The Mod with the Migraine
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@Best Of, Blue Ninja
Yeah, that is true. My point was wrong. The setting being changed can work.
@Blue Ninja specifically
I would argue that, but, unless it's an obvious case, I don't think you can tell the motives behind a setting change.
edited 17th Jan '12 5:07:39 AM by Loid
"Dr. Strangeloid, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cleanlink" - thespacephantom
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
The motive for changing the setting is to make it more "relatable" (code for "sellable") to your target audience.
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someone
So, "racebending" is like Race Lift, specifically with actors?
edited 17th Jan '12 5:26:48 AM by ThatHuman
something
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It's the same thing.
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Nemesis
There's a long history of taking a movie from one culture and transplanting it into another culture. I don't think this is automatically a bad thing, and I don't think that one needs to make any reference to the original cultural origins in this case. Heck, theater has been doing it with Shakespeare since forever.
The Last Airbender wasn't this. This was making a live-action version of an animated show and turning all the good guys white.
My issue with Akira is that it's keeping the very Japanese name. It's the incomplete transplant that's the problem.
A brighter future for a darker age.
Like many issues involving discrimination, "racebending" is a vicious circle.
"I want to make money with this movie, therefore I will cast lead actors who I know will bring in the audience, or look like previous actors who brought in audiences."
Since historically white actors have been the stars of movies that made a lot of money, dating back to the days when there was open racial discrimination in casting, the folks casting new movies tend to cast white actors whenever there are not other factors involved, because that's safe, and they feel comfortable with it.
Since white actors tend to get the plum roles by default, this means that nonwhite actors tend not to get the roles that would make them "bankable" stars—only a handful break through, usually because a director took a chance on them or because a particular good role simply required an actor of color.
Thus, when a good role comes up that in the original source material calls for a specific ethnicity, and the casting people decide to "whitewash" the role so that a more "bankable" white star can be put in, it means that it's a lost opportunity for actors of that ethnicity to break into the ranks of stardom.
The casting folks will swear up and down this isn't due to racism, but well....
Gotta trope, dood!
I think Movie Bob made a decent point about Akira getting whitewashed- If you're going to change the races of the actors anyway, you should do so in a way that makes sense. Since, at it's heart, Akira is a story about "of inner-city children victimized by The System that drives many of them into criminality-as-survivalism via the "family" of gang life (Kaneda) or drags them deeper into the belly of the beast (Tetsuo and the other "special" children)", it would probably be better served being "brown-washed"—featuring black and Latino actors and actresses, rather than white folks.
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From my perspective, this was a lose-lose situation for the people behind the Akira film.
If they chose to use Asian actors/actresses (or whatever other relevant ethnic minority), they could have gotten accused of stereotyping that race as criminal. If they chose to use white actors/actresses, they could have gotten accused of discriminating against ethnic actors/actresses.
So they picked the latter. Whether it was wise...we'll have to wait and see. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
I may be beating a dead horse, but I have no problem with changing the setting. Respectfully made remakes in different settings can actually be of quality — for example "The Departed" is a decent adaptation of "Infernal Affairs." The professor citing "The Magnificent Seven" is missing the point entirely, since IT'S A FUCKING WESTERN.
Whitewashing, of course is an entirely different matter, and it permeates Hollywood to the core. The most offensive act is probably recasting an Asian protagonist (or two or three) with a Caucasian actor. I'm not sure which narrative is more offensive, btw:
1) Mighty Whitey heroes who become the salvation of Asian cultures (bonus points for a gratuitous Asian female love interest who didn't appear in the original, btw)
2) When the race issue is completely ignored, and we should just accept that a white actor is playing an Asian character or character of ambiguous origin — basically to screw Asian actors out of potential roles.
It's a toss-up, I guess.
On the plus side, the overall quality of whitewashed remakes is pretty terrible. If you were Asian would you want to play leading role in "The Last Air-bender," "Dragonball Evolution," or "Akira"? I may be jumping the gun on the last one, but it definitely looks suspect to me.
edited 17th Jan '12 10:42:36 AM by ForlornDreamer
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Actually, regarding The Magnificent Seven, the Wild West wasn't all that monochrome. There were a not-insignificant number of black cowboys from the nineteenth century onwards, as well as enough from other ethnic minorities that the universally pallid casts from the golden age of Westerns weren't as historically-accurate as one might expect. And that's before you get into the whole business with white actors playing Native Americans.
Sure, an all-Japanese cast a la Seven Samurai might have been kind of out-of-place still, but the point is that the genre was a lot more racially flexible than it's often given credit for.
What's precedent ever done for us?
There's another problem I noticed that most people who aren't Asian don't know of, or completely understand.
If this was whitewashing BLACK culture/casting/whatever, everybody would be up in arms. But since Asian(-American)s are largely the race who people like to dump the less-glamorous jobs on because they know we won't complain, everyone goes, "I don't care about race as long as there are good actors!" Those people are often well-meaning white people who, though not intending to sound racist, end up being totally unhelpful because they sound too afraid to just take a side.
Racism has no Third Option to take. You can't just waffle around in the middle and hope things turn out for the best—you either help us take a stand, or you get out of the fucking way. Every time someone says "BUT AS LONG AS THEY'RE GOOD ACTORS, WHO CARES?" they sound just as insensitive as someone who's actively racist. If you don't want to admit that Asians are being passively discriminated against, then that is unspoken racism whether you like it or not.
I believe I posted the AKIRA film thread in the movie forum. And as much as I love Nicolas Cage and Leonardo Di Caprio for fueling my teenage fantasies and being good actors, the fact remains that they're only being cast because they can make money. I will never get behind any AKIRA remake with those two as the stars, and it's laughable that they're trying to keep the name "Akira" with two white guys as the protagonists. If you're going to whitewash something, at least don't mislead people into thinking they're seeing something else.
I've also heard rumors about an adaptation of The 47 Ronin, with KEANU FUCKING REEVES as an additional character who never showed up in the original story
. There are forty-seven main characters, yet they want to shoehorn ANOTHER PERSON into the cast? I will never take that as anything but monetary reasons. And don't go on about how Keanu's part-Asian—he's part Hawaiian and looks nearly all Caucasian, which is nowhere NEAR Japanese.
I hope that AKIRA and The 47 Ronin are never made as they're being planned now, but I predict that they'll bomb just like The Last Airbender.
edited 17th Jan '12 11:48:11 AM by Sharysa
Bear in mind that the professor's commentary was specifically in regards to whitewashing discrimination against Asian-American actors, hence why his citing "The Magnificent Seven" was a poor example. The Magnificent Seven still fell prey to other racial whitewashing, but that makes it relatively typical of the era. It's also a relatively poor adaptation of the original IMO, but that's another issue entirely.
I understand this motive, but I would appreciate it if Hollywood showed some more balls and incentive in hiring other races for major roles. But I suppose a couple of extra million is more important than helping non-white Americans feel more integrated into the mainstream.
You are a blowfish.
^ I'm not sure if that's even actually true... not their perception but the actual profits they may realise by using non-famous non-white actors. If skill is what matters, then I should expect that there are plenty of highly talented actors as good as or better than famous actors (perhaps not for every ethnic group, but certainly I should think there are plenty of "pan" asian actors you could use). Considering that you have to pay zillions of dollars to famous actors, in the hope of a zillions+ payoff, you're actually taking a much larger risk.
edited 17th Jan '12 12:44:10 PM by breadloaf
House Lewis: Sanity is Relative
How ironic that pothole to Double Standard is. You're essentially accusing me of being racist because I refuse to accept that it's a choice between racism against the prevalent race and racism against everyone else. "Reverse Racism" - i.e. positive discrimination - is just racism. FACT.
It's also a False Dichotomy, when what we really should be doing is working to change the underlying cultural causes that make one race the default over all others.
Discriminating in favour of minorities is a short term solution at best and a cackhanded, hypocritical racist one at that.
My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.
One Winged Egret
I'm Asian-American, I don't really care. Well, I guess I'm not an actor so it doesn't affect my job opportunities...
Keeping the name Akira is just silly though.
This is from an opinion article that I figure will strike near and dear to most troper's hearts, seeing as how most of us love anime to some degree.
http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/13/is-hollywood-whitewashing-asian-roles/?hpt=hp_c2
Two upcoming feature films based on Japanese material are already stirring controversy after rumors that white American actors will be cast as characters originally written as Japanese.
Tom Cruise is rumored to be in talks to play the lead role in the Warner Bros. adaptation of Japanese novel “All You Need is Kill,” replacing a Japanese main character. Warner Bros., which is owned by the same parent company as CNN, is also in the pre-production stages of making a live-action version of “Akira,” a graphic novel that was made into a landmark 1988 animated feature film in Japan. All of the actors rumored to be in consideration for the upcoming film’s main characters are white Americans, although casting calls invited actors of “any race” to audition.
That’s troubling to both the series’ devoted fans and advocates of diversity in casting.
Kent A. Ono, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the practice of casting white actors to play Asians and Asian-American characters has a long history in Hollywood. Until recent decades, this mostly took the form of white actors playing stereotypical representations of Asian characters, such as Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of I.Y. Yunioshi in 1961's “Breakfast at Tiffany’s," Rita Moreno as Tuptim and Yul Brynner as King Mongkut in the 1956 film "The King and I," and Katharine Hepburn as Jade Tan in 1944's "Dragon Seed."
In recent years, Ono said, Asian characters have been replaced with white American versions played by big-name Hollywood stars. It happened with films like the 1960 western, "The Magnificent Seven," which starred Brynner, Steve Mc Queen and Charles Bronson, and was based on the influential 1954 Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa, "Seven Samurai." As Japanese manga and anime have grown more popular, it has happened in films like "Dragonball: Evolution" and "Speed Racer."
“Animation and anime are these interesting contexts, because casting directors, producers and directors can say, ‘Well, the anime character is fictional and not a real live body … and to cast them as another race is OK,’” Ono said.
The result is fewer opportunities for Asian and Asian-American actors who want a shot at a powerful role.
“Not only do Asian-American actors find this a displacement of their ability to work as laborers, as performers in these sort of roles – they also find this an affront to their identity, to their work to overcome racism and be seen as legitimate actors,” Ono said.
Racebending.com, an international grassroots organization founded in 2009, protests what it sees as the “whitewashing” of film roles and pushes for the fair representation of minorities in media. Spokesman Michael Le said that the increasing popularity of manga and anime titles means that movie producers are keen to cash in, but many don't see value in keeping the original Asian characters that made them popular.
“I remember 10 years ago, I could walk into [the comics aisle of] a Barnes and Noble and it would be all western comics, all DC and Marvel. Now I walk in and the Asian section is bigger than the western comics section,” Le said. “Asian culture is enormously popular and acceptable, but the people are not. The people are inconveniently the wrong race, and so whitewashing is a result.”
Le and other fans want the studios to avoid the debacle associated with the 2010 live-action film “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” The M. Night Shamalyan production tanked with critics and fans after being dogged by controversy surrounding its casting. The "Avatar" animated television series, on which the movie was based, takes place in a fantasy world populated by four Asian- and Inuit-based cultures. But the actors for each of the lead roles were white, except one - the villain, played by “Slumdog Millionaire” star Dev Patel. Racebending.com was formed to protest the production’s decision to “racebend” the characters – wordplay that alludes to the element “benders” from the "Avatar" series.
The Warner Bros.' planned live-action adaptation of “Akira” has fans watching closely. According to articles in The Hollywood Reporter and sci-fi blog i09.com, Garret Hedlund was being tapped to play the lead role of Shotaro Kaneda, with Kristen Stewart, Helena Bonham Carter and Ken Watanabe in talks to play other main roles. Except for Watanabe, who is Japanese, all are white.
An unnamed studio insider told the Hollywood Reporter for a January 5 story that preproduction had stopped due to issues related to script, budget and casting. Warner Bros. spokeswoman Jessica Zacholl said the studio had no comment regarding the holdup in production for “Akira” or any rumored casting decisions.
The original Japanese anime version of "Akira," made in 1988, is considered a pinnacle of Japanese animated film. The story revolves around a catastrophic explosion that destroys the city of Tokyo - an explosion which is first implied to be nuclear in origin, a reminder of fears about atomic destruction in Japan since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Fans of the manga and original movie question whether the nuances of a plot so deeply intertwined with Japanese history can survive a setting change to Manhattan.
Jerry Beck is an animation historian and co-founder of Streamline Pictures, which brought the first screenings of the 1988 production to America. He said studios are underestimating their target market’s attachment to and understanding of Japanese connections to "Akira."
“It’s not just the story of what goes on there, but the story of culture,” Beck said. “I wish them luck, but it sort of cheapens the material. In a way it’s a universal story, but it’s also a very Asian or Japanese story.”
Joe Peacock, a writer and web designer who owns the worlds’ largest private collection of animation cels from the original “Akira” film, said shift anime characters into white characters “is annoying to the point of disrespect.” In disrespecting the source material, he said, the studios are alienating the fan base which could make the movie a success – including Peacock, whose devotion to the movie includes an award-winning "Akira" tattoo that covers his left arm.
“When your billboards are saying bad things about the project, you’ve done something wrong – and that’s all fans really are, is billboards or megaphones for the project,” Peacock said.
Fans are watching what happens with “All You Need is Kill,” too. The original novel focuses on the "Groundhog Day"-like travails of Keiji Kijira, a Japanese soldier in an international army fighting a war against aliens. The character dies, but always awakens to find it's the day before his death. He relives that day until he has amassed the skills and experience to prevent his own death.
In the movie version to be produced by Warner Bros., the character has a new identity – American Billy Cage – and the movie has a new title: “We Mortals Are.” Three of the four actors rumored to be under consideration for the role are white, with Tom Cruise as the speculative front-runner. Also rumored to be in talks were Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling and Keanu Reeves.
Zacholl said Warner Bros. had no comment about the castings and would not confirm or deny rumors of any decisions related to them.
But in a November 2010 interview with Comingsoon.net, director Doug Liman said the lead actors would be “totally American” instead of Japanese.
But a Racebending.com’s statement on the film points out that even in an American film, a “totally American” cast shouldn't necessarily be entirely white.
“Certainly changes will be made to the story in adaptations, such as setting a story in the United States instead of Japan," Racebending.com states. "What disappoints us is that when these adaptations are reset to America, they do not reflect the diversity of the United States. Many people are of Asian descent but are also ‘totally American.’”
So, what are people's thoughts on "racebending"?
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