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The Erasure of Authenticity

23/5/2016

 
ALICE KENNEDY
Volume 9, Issue 12
Not for the first time, Hollywood has bought the rights to a story that has its roots in another film culture. Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks have agreed to produce and finance a live action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, a  project which has been in the pipeline since 2008. It is only now in 2016 that feathers have been ruffled. The action which aroused the ire of many was the choice to cast Scarlett Johansson, a white American woman, in the role of Major Motoko Kusanagi, a Japanese cyborg.
Picture
Scarlett Johansson was the obvious choise to fill the role of Major Motoko Kusangi, a Japanese cyborg Source: Elen Nivrae
Ghost in the Shell (GITS) is a manga and anime with a large canon of work dating from the 90s. The plot revolves around a Japanese cyberpunk future where most people are partly or wholly cyborgs, and follows the investigations of Unit 9 into Japanese crime and corruption. The series explores what it means to be human in a cybernetic world, and Japan’s relationship with a quasi-dystopian digital revolution.

In the past, Hollywood has successfully (and unsuccessfully) remade many foreign films without incident or outcry. Many of these have come from Asia. Infernal Affairs gave us The Departed, The Ring spawned its American namesake and classic westerns such as The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars are, in fact, based on Japanese tales. Although many are successful, remakes often do not live up to their parent film’s reputation. Frequently, this can be attributed to poor production, or lackluster acting; Nicholas Cage’s performance in Bangkok Dangerous being a notable example. In other cases, I submit that the issue is rooted in the retold story’s dislocation from its original cultural context, and the resultant loss of nuance or authenticity when the film is translated to Western cinema screens.

The fundamental difference between these adaptations and that of GITS, is that Hollywood has not sought to divorce itself from GITS’ cultural context. In order to effect an authentic translation of GITS to the silver screen, vestiges of Japan remain. Perhaps this is because fans of the franchise are highly conscious of the uniquely Japanese context of GITS, and to exclude it entirely would strip away a key aspect of the film’s appeal. Despite this nod to authenticity, Scarlett Johansson, a white woman, has been cast as the lead character.

The result is a disjunctive combination of context and casting, which indicates that Western cinema is co-opting, rather than reimagining, a foreign story.  Hollywood is attempting to preserve the authenticity of GITs by retaining its cultural context, but is incapable of truly doing so by making a casting decision that acknowledges that this is a Japanese story. Its seemingly respectful nod to Japanese culture is belied by the choice to erase the Japanese identity of the lead character.

In Japan, this move has generated more bemusement than sympathetic outrage. Furthermore, the publisher of GITS, Kodansha, has endorsed the casting of Scarlett Johansson, stating it never envisaged that a Japanese actress would be cast in the role of the Major.

However, the transposition of GITS into the realm of Western cinema means that the relevant perspective is no longer that of the GITS creators, or Japanese people alone. It is impossible to divorce the casting choice from its impact on Asian actors.  After all, why cast a white person in a role that seems suited to an Asian actor? The answer feeds into the discourse of the long-term marginalization of non-white actors in Western film, a discourse notably absent from the Japanese experience.


Put simply: in Hollywood, white-centric films are the norm.  Underpinning this fact is the notion that a successful story requires the insertion of a white main character in order that the film resonate with its (white) audience. As a consequence, Asian actors have historically been relegated to the periphery of a production, or feature as stock characters. They materialize as the ascetic martial arts expert, the comedic caperer or the exotic love interest.  The consequence of this action is the displacement of non-white actors by white-centric casting choices, ultimately allowing Hollywood to justify its choice to cast white leads and maintain the status quo.

Hollywood claims that the failure to cast an Asian lead is an economic decision: a necessary consequence of limiting its lead roles to billable actors. However, billable actors are generally white because of the wide range of acting opportunities available to them, while non-white actors are sidelined. And Hollywood, fearful of losing money, will not risk casting a lesser-known, non-white actor in a big-budget production. The fundamental problem is that this situation is not organic - it is a direct consequence of systemic racism.


Therefore, Hollywood’s erasure of the Asian identity of the Major in GITS by casting Scarlett Johansson is more than a question of authenticity, or economic expedience. This casting choice reinforces the message that Asian actors do not belong in mainstream Hollywood roles. Furthermore, it reinforces a pattern of racial marginalization that traps Asian actors in subsidiary roles by failing to challenge the status quo and foster new talent.

Dishearteningly, this is a formula whose success overrules the injustice it perpetrates. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, there is no new chapter being written. Like many films before it, Ghost in the Shell continues the practice of erasing non-white identities from film. Meanwhile, Asian actors will continue to sit on the cinematic sidelines, wondering what it will take for them to be given a chance to shine.

Alice Kennedy is a second-year JD student

The rest of this week's *bumper* issue:
  • Practitioners and Students Rally Against Further Cuts to Legal Aid Funding
  • The Mask
  • Stress Less: Embrace Mediocrity
  • Where Can Legal Training Take You? Interview with Nicholas Reece
  • Jessup: This is a Joke, Right?
  • Response to ‘Jessup: This is a Joke, Right?’ 
  • When You Can’t Cedar Wood for the Trees
  • I’m With Crazy
  • Sushi is Just a Rice Salad Rolled in Seaweed & Other Obvious Things
  • Blame Glynn Davis
  • EOX Ticket Price: ‘Can’t I Just Dance?’
  • The Clerkship Diaries: I’m Not Mad, I’m Just Disappointed
  • Equity Uncle on De Minimis’ Unprofessionalism
Bob
24/5/2016 03:56:14 pm

I don't know how often you actually watch anime, but I can tell you the characters in them more often than not certainly don't look Japanese.

It seems odd to complain about Hollywood and western cinema in general being "white centric". 'The West' has always been overwhelmingly and for most of its history exclusively white, and continues to be overwhelmingly so, although I do understand this continues to upset certain people.

As such it's entirely appropriate for its cultural output to remain mostly 'white'. Nobody complains abou Bollywood being overwhelmingly Indian, or about the lack of white actors in Nigerian cinema.

Not BOB
24/5/2016 08:51:16 pm

BOB - "I don't know how often you actually watch anime, but I can tell you the characters in them more often than not certainly don't look Japanese." While I get your point, and undertstand that to Western audiences, anime/manga characters do not look Japanese, to Japanese people they absolutely Japanese in appearance. This is pretty evident when actual Western characters are shown - they often have exagerated noises and eyes and mouths, which denote their "otherness" from the Japanese characters. Chinese characters have particular traits, and let's please not get into the depiction of African-American, Mexican/Brazilian or African characters, which often have very obviously stereotyped features that much of the Western world would consider, frankly, racist. To Japanese audiences and readers, the characters we see as white, they understand absolutely to be Japanese (ignoring, of course, the bizarre hair and stylistic designs that exist in anime and manga).

"In Japan, this move has generated more bemusement than sympathetic outrage. Furthermore, the publisher of GITS, Kodansha, has endorsed the casting of Scarlett Johansson, stating it never envisaged that a Japanese actress would be cast in the role of the Major." <-- This, to me, is the most troubling aspect of the debate about ScarJo's acceptance of the role - it isn't an issue in Japan, and Japanese people, who the Western World (TM) has decided is having their identities erased, have no problem with her casting. They do not care that she is white, because the character is a future sci fi cyborg, which the creator never intended to be necessarily Japanese. There are plenty of cases of actors being miscast in terrible racial choices - Chinese actors being used as Japanese characters (because white people cannot tell the difference) or the terrible casting choice of ‎Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone, or even other cases of white actors being cast as POC (like Emma Stone in Aloha, the entire casts of recent Egyptian movies etc). This though... This is, to me, a case of "White People" (TM) wanting to tell Asians how they should feel about a character casting choice - it's ignoring their actual opinions in order to speak from a White Western POV, essentially telling them that their voices on the matter are inconsequential and less important than western criticisms of Hollywood. While I think, absolutely, the intentions and premise of this article are good, I think it somewhat misses the point - particularly in that it ignores the actual views and opinions of the people it defends from erasure.

Bob
25/5/2016 09:24:10 am

'There are plenty of cases of actors being miscast in terrible racial choices - Chinese actors being used as Japanese characters'

This is actually a somewhat curious thing to say. You're defining 'Japanese' around some notion of ethnic purity.

Why couldn't someone of Chinese heritage play a Japanese character? For that matter, why couldn't a white person play a Japanese character?

Can white people, or people of Chinese heritage, not be Japanese? Would this be the same thing as if I said a black man cannot portray an Englishman because black people cant be English?

C.
24/5/2016 08:53:15 pm

Personally I think to protect the community we should have detention order system for anime fans à la Fardon v A-G. However, I accept that I don't understand anime's many genres well enough to criticise Scarlett role as a lead actress.

Anon
25/5/2016 08:02:27 am

Wow.

Alice Kennedy
24/5/2016 10:05:31 pm

I would disagree that I ignored the views of Japanese people, in fact, I specifically acknowledged that they are not, on the whole, too concerned with who is cast.

In addition, I think I spent a fair bit of time acknowledging and exploring the issue surrounding race which underlies this casting choice and affects Asian actors as a result of GITS' transition to Hollywood.

The reason I spent time doing so was not because I think the views of Japanese people are irrelevant, or should be ignored. It is simply the fact they do not possess the only relevant viewpoint in this debate.

Still Not BOB
25/5/2016 12:05:42 am

"Therefore, Hollywood’s erasure of the Asian identity of the Major in GITS by casting Scarlett Johansson is more than a question of authenticity, or economic expedience. This casting choice reinforces the message that Asian actors do not belong in mainstream Hollywood roles. " <-- I suppose this is what I'm referring to. The identity of the Major is not necessarily Asian, as stated by the creator himself. Casting ScarJo isn't an erasure of an Asian character - it's casting a popular action actor for a role as a racially ambiguous cyborg in order to try and make it more widely accesptable to audiences outside GITS fans - and Japanese fans, who one would think should be most offended by this choice if it was erasure, are not bothered by it. There are many examples of racially insentive and offensive casting that DOES erase Asian characters and prevent Asian actors from getting the same exposure offered to white Hollywood stars - Hollywood is overtly White and Western and does need to expand it's diversity. But I don't think this case, in particular, is the one to plant a flag on and say it goes too far - while you certainly acknowledge the lack of concern from Japanese people, I can't help but feel you're asserting that your own view point (that this is inappropriate racial erasure) is more important or relevent, which I strongly disagree with, and I feel is a significant flaw in your position that Asian identities and experiences are being erased through casting non-Asian actors - surely it's vital and paramount to listen to the people apparently affeced by the injustice? I suppose I feel this isn't a good example of what is absolutely a terrible Hollywood phenomenon - the situation would not be better if a tokenistic Asian actor was placed in the role, and could in fact have been even more offensive if that actor has been Chinese, for example, as was the case of Memoirs of a Geisha.

Alice Kennedy
25/5/2016 10:21:45 am

I don't think I'm asserting my own viewpoint at the cost of Japanese people.

In terms of groups affected, the issue extends to Asian actors in Hollywood, in the way I mentioned in my previous comment (and most of the article), i.e. marginalisation of Asian roles, which results in erasure. That this is an issue is not particularly controversial - feel free to have a Google. It would be odd to write an article and suggest that because Japanese people have not perceived an issue surrounding race, that one does not exist in the Hollywood context.

If you think that this casting choice isn't a good example of whitewashing here, then I suppose we would have to agree to differ.

Alice Kennedy
25/5/2016 10:31:20 am

I think you might also be missing the point of my article to an extent. The crux of it is less that the cyborg Motoko should be Asian, and more that the choice not to cast an Asian actor in the role speaks to a pattern of racism that has dominated Hollywood for a long time.

Not BOB Again
25/5/2016 09:15:16 pm

"If you think that this casting choice isn't a good example of whitewashing here, then I suppose we would have to agree to differ. " <--
I suppose that is indeed our difference of opinion. The argument is not that Major should have been played by an Asian actress - the argument should be that she could have been played by potentially anyone and they chose a white actress. There is, of course, an argument that this was a calculated decision to take advantage of ScarJo's success as action character Black Widow and to make the movie more appealing to western audiences - not merely because of her white-ness, but because of her recognition. Obviously this is problematic because other POC actresses do not get the same opportunities to become visible, well known actors in Western markets, but that's a broader issue that not only isn't limited to GITS, but to every single Hollywood movie - the default character is assumed to be white unless stated otherwise, leading to tokenism and peripheral roles, as you described. This is the main thinking that needs to be changed - it isn't enough to simply ensure that racially specific characters are played by people of that race (although they should be, excluding obvious exceptions like fantasy/sci-fi creations). Choosing GITS to decry a lack of main Asian actors is, I guess I feel, simplistic and problematic - consider the many Middle Eastern movies (Prince of Persia, practically all of Hollywood's Bible epics, the recent and terrible Gods of Egypt), or Emma Stone as a native of Hawaii - these attempts to cast characters in POC roles are as offensive and obvious as white-washing POC characters. Japan has the forth biggest film industry in the world - while it grosses significantly less than the US, it would be capable of a live-action GITS if it wanted and thought the market existed for an all-Japanese cast. Middle Eastern cinema, which is dominated by Egypt, makes less overall than what single Hollywood blockbusters cost. Increased exposure of Middle Eastern actors could make a real difference to a struggling industry, as well as stop the offensive casting of Christian Bale as Moses. That tangent aside, my point is - there is, absolutely is a problem with the treatment and casting of POC by Hollywood. But ScarJo as Major isn't as controversial or indicative of a problem as set out - if representation was better where it does matter (eg whitewashing or casting white people in POC-face), and if 'lead character' was no longer equated with white for Western audiences, we would all be in agreement with Japanese perceptions of the casting - it doesn't matter that a white woman was cast for a character with no particular, obvious race. The issue isn't that a white woman was cast for this particular role - the issue is that it's almost always a white woman cast, and nods to diversity are often poorly executed and infrequent.

Alice Kennedy
26/5/2016 10:35:51 am

I think that if you take some time to direct yourself to the debate, GITS is considered an example of whitewashing, particularly by Asian American actors, and it does raise questions about race and Hollywood. I find it odd that you would say it is 'simplistic' and 'problematic' to construe GITS' casting as a race issue, when that is exactly what Asian American Actors (and others) have done.

I have provided some links in order that you can have a read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/movies/asian-american-actors-are-fighting-for-visibility-they-will-not-be-ignored.html

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/15/scarlett-johanssons-role-in-ghost-in-the-shell-ignites-twitter-storm

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/doc-strange-whitewashing-shell-884385

https://www.good.is/articles/scarlett-johansson-ghost-in-the-shell-whitewashing#kRp61X6PfmoVcLcb.97


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