I can imagine that the filmmakers initially sought funding with Asian actors potentially in the cast. They would list a lot of names for each character as part of the pitch to investors. And then, at each rejection, they had to use fewer Asian actors and more known Caucasian actors, until they had to bite the bullet and set the lead as white. I can totally believe that they tried their best to stay true, and yet reluctantly had to concede.
I don’t know if they’re in any position to ever admit to that, though, so we may never know the truth. So right now they have to justify their cast using vague bullshit, circling round the truth with wishy-washy transparent lies.
I can absolutely see this being the case. That doesn’t make it any better. Its not directly comparable but with Jackie Robinson day having just past recently in baseball I keep thinking about how arguments used to be made that no one wanted to see baseball with black players. That the negro leagues existed and that it was just a business decision to not integrate. Of course back then there were many more people who were ok with being blatant racists too, so it’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s maybe a good yardstick to see how far we have actually come. As a society we have learned to hide our racism better, but it’s still the same stuff.
Also, as to the general bankability of Scarlett Johansson, every movie where she was the star vehicle and not a supporting player had been a flop. If it was all about the money they should have picked someone who has actually proven they can bring people to theaters.
As for the argument that maybe these white actors were just the best actors for the job, that argument hinges on a misunderstanding of how the casting process works. Scarlett Johansson hasn’t actually auditioned for a role since before the first Avengers movie was made.
Would it be enough to cast an Asian actress, or would they still be accused of being racist for casting a Chinese-American and not a Japanese-American actress?
Again for the benefit of the casual viewer, it’d be really sweet if you actually said what any of those “stylistic cues” are rather than just preened some more.
On Elba (potentially) as Bond, I think that a lot of confusion comes from a difference between English and American culture. In every culture in the world, there is some subculture which is privileged, and some subculture which is unprivileged. And it is an inherent part of Bond’s character that he comes from the privileged subculture. But which subculture is the privileged one varies from culture to culture. In the US, the division is largely racial: A white person is more privileged than a black person. But in the UK, race is much less relevant: A person of any race can be from any social class. A descendant of African nobility will be regarded as much more privileged than a descendant of Welsh commoners. So there isn’t actually any real disconnect in James Bond being black, but a disconnect will nonetheless be perceived by American audiences.
I was watching *the Kingsmen *a while ago, and I started griping a bit how the only two non-white characters in the movie were villains. My wife, a bigger anglophile than I am, pointed to the movie’s working-class protagonist, played by the very white Taron Egerton, and said: “You don’t get it. To the British, *he’s *black.”
Doubt it, mainly to do with Hollywood accounting. As mentioned earlier, to make a certain amount of money, requires a certain amount of money invested and that requires a name, no more , no less. Regardless of a movie flopping or going over the top, its prime purpose was successful, the IRS has no idea how much and where money went.
I’d also question whether the studio concidered a white actress, culturally neutral for global film release, casting a gaijin with big tits, instead of a chinese actress in a japanese role, or vice versa in a chinese role.
Then again, why was this an American movie to be made, it would seem that with Space Battleship Yamato and Capt Harlock, already been made into a live action movies, why did a Japanese studio not pick this one up.
I know little about Japanese anime and care less. And if the casting of Scarlett Johansson were just an isolated incident, I wouldn’t care much about that either.
But this still happens regularly. Look at Jeff Ma and the Chinese-American students from MIT who cleaned up in Vegas after discovering a formula for winning at blackjack. Great story that should have made a great movie. But when Hollywood made “21,” the cast was almost all white!
When Asian actors can’t even get hired for explicitly Asian roles, something is wrong.
:rolleyes: I already mentioned them. Try reading my last reply to you again, only s-l-o-w-e-r this time. In case you need some help, that would be post #70…
I’m really baffled by your hostility to MrDibble’s point, which seems both obvious and non-controversial. What part of it exactly are you objecting to?
It is less that I am hostile to his point than I am to his curious inability to actually explain his point in his own words. If I wanted the results of a google search on the topic, I would simply have run a google search on the topic.
I’m not much of an anime fan and I didn’t even click on any of MrDibble’s links, but I don’t find his point difficult to understand. I am having trouble understanding what your objection to it is and why you seem so angry about it.
If you want someone to give you a specific example of a trait that may seem “white” to Western viewers but not to Japanese viewers then an obvious one is skin color. We’ve had threads before where people asked why anime characters have “white” complexions. But actual Japanese people tend to have fairly light skin, a pale complexion has been considered attractive in Japan for hundreds if not thousands of years, and traditional Japanese art often depicts Japanese people as having very light, even literally white (paper-white) skin.
