By now, everyone has heard about the casting controversy concerning the live action remake of the Japanese manga series "Ghost in the Shell," with Caucasian actress Scarlett Johansson cast as — Major Motoko Kusanagi. Like many others before me, I don’t have a problem with Johansson as an actress. What I have a problem with, is the utter disregard of capable Asian actresses and whitewashing of Japanese media again.
It’s been done before already – "The Last Airbender" (which, ironically enough, is an American series with an Asian-influenced world) and the failed "Dragon Ball" live action movie being the main offenders. Even the Star Wars franchise borrows a lot of material from Asian culture and lore, but bends it to fit an intergalactic setting.
My friends and I held our breath when we heard that there would be a live action "Mulan" remake from Disney, when there’s already a perfectly good adaptation that more closely follows the original story released in China. With the Internet, it is not that difficult to find a subtitled version, or buy a copy of it online. Even if the excuse is to make it more “kid-friendly,” why not offer the animated version instead? It’s a perfectly good movie and, to be honest, it was one of the only exposures I had to Asians in major roles until I was old enough to watch and explore anime as a medium of entertainment.
As if to add insult to injury, this week there were some rumors concerning a live action "Pokémon" movie from Hollywood and I almost lost my mind. All right, I get it, Hollywood and the American movie industry loves its money and there’s no better opportunity to cash in on a beloved Japanese franchise than right after the enormous (perhaps even surprising) success of Pokémon Go. It’s sort of the same thing that happened with "The Last Airbender." While, admittedly, there’s no way they could mess any movie up more than they did with "The Last Airbender" in terms of casting (in which there were no Caucasian people anywhere), I know that they won’t even give Asian actors a second glance after doing some first-time research into either the anime or the game series. But even if they did, Hollywood even managed to whitewash a movie based on loosely real life events. You know the movie "21," about MIT students counting cards? The majority of the cast was supposed to be Asian too. Where are the Asians in this movie? In the background.
I’m sure some people are sick and tired of people crying over the fact that minorities don’t get representation — but it is a problem and, in a country that claims to be a melting pot, it really shouldn’t be. Just this past year, several minority characters were killed off their respective shows, including Asian actress Arden Cho from "Teen Wolf," and the Oscars was heavily criticized for being “too white.” Perhaps some of us hadn’t seen it before, but it is true. I get that back in the day, in the hay day of movie-making of the 20th Century, it was hard to find actors of color (though this was mostly because of rampant racism). I would even be able to say that some “remakes” of horror movies like "The Grudge" and "The Ring" which are supposed to be watered down versions of the source material can be whitewashed because of the changed content and the timeframe in which it was made. But nowadays, I’m just not buying into the whole, “we can’t find a better actor so we’ll go with what we know on the white A-list” excuse. "Steven Universe" is able to cast an almost entirely POC voice acting cast without problems. Yes it’s a cartoon, but it’s far more progressive than the content that Hollywood tumbles out of its live action departments.
As a whole, American animation has been much better with handling modern issues like race, representation, and sexuality. "Big Hero 6" has an almost all-minority group of protagonists, while "Zootopi"a tackles police brutality. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about it since it seems that either Hollywood doesn’t care, or the target audience they reach out to is completely ambivalent about the color of the character’s skin unless it’s a person of color portraying an originally white character. Remember Rue from "The Hunger Games?" Heimdall from "Thor"? Watson from "Elementary?" We can keep criticizing Hollywood and hoping for change, but we’ll have to be consistent about it. We have to tell them what we want to see even though other outlets are able to give us the representation we want and deserve. Until the people in power leave their positions, it’ll be almost impossible to change their outlook on who is and is not “worthy” of some role.
