Perceptions

I've been having a fairly lively, and fairly civil, debate with the readers and writers of the website Racebending over the last few days.  The website, which was formed initially in protest of what they viewed as the "whitewashing" of the cast of the Last Airbender movie, has gone on to function as a somewhat big time watchdog of Hollywood, with it's tendency to cast white actors in non-white roles (Prince Of Persia, etc).  Their latest target?  The American remake/adaptation of Akira, the Japanese Manga turned classic Anime Film, which is courting white actors for it's lead roles.

You may not initially find that to be odd, when I say that they moved the remake from a futuristic Neo-Tokyo to a futuristic Neo-Manhattan (doesn't quite have the same ring to it, I must say), except that the same report said that they were looking for caucasian actors to fill the lead roles of TETSUO and KANEDA.  Now - I don't actually think the lead characters are going to be named Tetsuo and Kenada, as they were in the original comic.  I think this was reported in error (in the last draft I saw, Tetsuo was called Travis).  But my question to the angry mob was simply this;  Why can't white people be named Tetsuo and Kaneda?  Especially in a cyberpunk future, which has, since the inception of the genre, been a mixture of Eastern and Western cultures?

The responses to this question were mostly negative, unsurprisingly, and varied from well-reasoned to blatantly wrong-headed.  Some responses were cultural ("Only someone with a Japanese father could have a Japanese name"), some idealist and thoughtful ("Sure, white people could play them.  But why can't we see Asians in those roles?"), and some just flat-out angry (In essence, "You don't know what you're talking about, white boy").  For the most part, I was seen as having an agenda of some nefarious nature, when, as I hope my friends would already realize, my only agenda is to logic.

I do think that Asian Americans are underrepresented in American cinema, and that is tragic.  But I can't bring myself to approve of the argument that in the remake of a Japanese work of art, the characters should remain Japanese.  That would be like me protesting against Zhang Yimou's recent remake of the Coen Bros Blood Simple, in which he cast Chinese actors in roles originally portrayed by white American actors.  I agree that whitewashing happens, and I understand why it's frustrating, but the logic breaks down at a certain point:  You're saying that you want to see yourself represented onscreen - Isn't that exactly what white America is doing, as well?  There just happen to be a higher percentage of us in this country.  In the same way that you don't see a large number of white actors starring in Japanese films.

Maybe it makes me a terrible person (in conjunction with everything else about me), but I just love logic more than I hate injustice, I guess.  Or, to put it a different way, I see irrationality as the greatest injustice. Racebending makes the argument that Katniss Everdeen, who is described in the novel The Hunger Games as being "Olive skinned and dark haired", should not be portrayed in the film by blond-haired actress Jennifer Lawrence.  Fair enough, and, to some degree, I concur.  As I've said many times in the past, adaptation is adaptation, and actors are actors, so I would have, for example, no problem with an adaptation of Hamlet that takes place in a sci-fi future with an all black cast.  That being said;  race is not just incidental in The Hunger Games, but pointed, so it is shitty that they've gone out of the way to "white her up" a bit.  But. . .  In a separate article, Racebending praises the producers of the show Pretty Little Liars for changing a character who was white in the book, to filipino in the TV version.

So, what is essentially being said, is that it's cool to stray from the source material if the characters are being changed FROM white, but if it's changed TO white, it's unacceptable?  That's a logical fallacy.  If you want to make the argument "There isn't a large enough percentage of people of color in Hollywood films", then that's fine, and I would completely agree with you.  But to say "You can't change the characters from Japanese to white Americans, because it wasn't that way in the source material", while completely disregarding the source material in another instance, I'm going to call out as horseshit.

Again, I think their hearts are in the right place, but the logic is flawed, as is often the case with any passionate issue.  Honestly, I think that instead of trying to insert Asian characters into Hollywood garbage directed by assclowns like M Night Shyamalan, they should be trying to foster and nurture independent talent.  Wayne Wang directed Chan Is Missing back in 1982 for pennies, and managed to increase visibility for the community, as well as making a really fun film.

I want to see the Asian American version of Sweet Sweetback's Baaadasssss Song.  Start sticking it to the man, man.