06.25.10
Posted in Racism tagged race fail, The last Airbender at 11:17 pm by kyrias
I saw a promotional poster for The Last Airbender a while ago with Nora and made some comment about it. Nora came back with something like it wasn’t a big deal because of something regarding how no one complains about how Japanese anime is drawn.
I had some sort of weak reply about how the chillens are sad that Asian actors won’t be chosen for a movie based off of a Asian-themed cartoon series, but I didn’t have all my links at hand to quote, so I’m re-opening the discussion now. I was tempted to just make it a link-dump because I’m really tired of explaining why institutionalized racism is a bad thing to people — but I couldn’t very well ignore the comment about Japanese anime and so on.
Btw - -I think the Japanese really don’t have as much self-hate going on as Westerners would like to think. Really.
Why I’m personally boycotting this movie:
- The original casting race-fail where they asked for “Caucasian or other” for characters who were obviously either Asian or Inuit
- The utter lack of response to the race-fail backlash.
- They killed a lot of the Asian influences of the original show, such as turning the Chinese script into gibberish.
I don’t really watch movies anyways, so I refuse on principle to have this abomination’s movie to be on the short list of movies I’ve paid to watch.
So, about that Japanese anime issue…
According to Matt Thorn — no matter how the characters in the anime or manga are drawn or portrayed, unless they’re “marked” as other, then they’re automatically assumed to be Japanese. The art form, which it is, not withstanding, it’s not about self-hatred or a desire to portray all people as Caucasian.
Also, I find it hysterical to insist that all characters in Japanese drawn anime and manga with light colored hair and eyes are automatically assumed to be Caucasian. As one of the commentators said, in an art form where wacky is the rule and nothing except perhaps clothing is recognizable as being of a particular bent, to insist that all light = Caucasian is just plain weird. This is the world of cat-eared girls and tailed men with fangs, after all.
Personally, I’ve always seen Japanese drawn anime and manga as talking about Japanese people, regardless of hair color or eye color unless indicated otherwise — so I’m really tempted to say it’s Western privilege talking when Caucasians automatically see themselves in anime characters.
As Ampersand says, the stereotypical circle with eyes in it, and a curve for a mouth is seen as Western by Westerners and it must needs have exaggeratedly slanted eyes and dark hair for it to be seen as Asian. I note that in China, that same simple drawing is seen as being Chinese, without the need for the slanted lines for eyes.
Permalink
04.16.10
Posted in I.T, Racism tagged apple at 10:11 am by kyrias
Or is it just a response to racism? I’m not sure.
I was watching an interview of 田朔宁, the guy who the Chinese government hired to set up the Internet in China when Clinton was to visit years ago.
He was talking about how he used to idolize Steve Jobs for his visionary work within the computer industry, especially as pertaining to how he perceived Jobs’ goal with regards his products: not mass market commercialization, but actually creating cutting edge technology to further digitalization.
Then he mentioned how, when he managed to score a meeting with Jobs, he was completely and utterly disillusioned. Supposedly, according to Jobs, he has never been to China and has no interest in ever visiting China. Furthermore, the “Chinese can’t write big software”.
I’ve never been particularly enamored of Apple products — partially because I have a pretty solid mental block with regarding learning new software when it is unnecessary and partially because Macs really don’t run enough of the programs that I would want to use.
That sentence, however, pretty much solidifies my intent to boycott Apple’s products. Pity, since I thought that the Ipad looked pretty interesting. I guess I’ll just have to wait until the Chinks come up with something comparable.
We’ll see about them not being able to write big software, shall we?
I don’t think its improbable, especially since the Chinese are really getting hard at work developing alternative to American tech: operating systems, the 3G network, etc. I couldn’t really understand why they needed their own version before, but now I guess I have some idea.
At first I almost found my indignation funny, thinking that it was just nationalistic pride stepping in. Then I thought about it, and I really feel that it’s a pretty racist thing to say, especially without any qualifiers. I’m not even sure that you can fix that sentence with any qualifier, actually. To generalize across that many people and to say that the Chinese as a whole are incapable of anything is just a bad statement to make.
Sorry Jobs, you might be visionary and your products might be all sleek and pretty and all — but so far as I can tell, you’re a racist asshole and I’m not supporting anything of yours with my money.
Permalink
12.30.09
Posted in Racism tagged Avatar fail at 7:24 pm by kyrias
The rest of the house is out for a movie. I almost regret not tagging along — but there’s life when you’re broke and life when you’re not broke. The thing is, people who know me well understand that movies just really aren’t my medium. I tend to fall asleep, get bored and want to wiki the ending, or fidget for the whole two hours waiting for the torment to be over. If I were not broke, I’d be willing to spend the 8 dollars for something I don’t really enjoy for the sake of hanging out with people. As it is, even though a friend offered to pay for the dinner afterwards, I didn’t feel like it was a good use of money. Particularly since we bought that laptop to replace Caesura’s melted one earlier this month. Also, I don’t like non-reciprocal relationships and in those cases I don’t really enjoy someone else paying for my dinner. Hrm, perhaps less so now that I no longer eat like I have a portal to another dimension in my stomach, but still.
I really wasn’t interested in Sherlock Holmes, but I’d heard that Avatar was out and so I briefly toyed with the idea of going to see Avatar whilst they went to see Sherlock Holmes and we’d still be able to go out together afterwards. Couple of things happened to shoot that idea down: I realized that this Avatar movie wasn’t of the airbending sort and then I remembered that I was considering boycotting Avatar: The last Airbender (ATLA) when it came out anyways.
To a certain extent, I don’t usually get worked up enough to boycott media, but I think that I might have to make an exception for ATLA. Yeah, I’m remembering the huge racefail involving Wrede and how even that didn’t really strike me as BOYCOTT TIEMS but ATLA is really another whole new level of special.
Let’s see:
First off. For those, like me, who haven’t watched the series, this is essentially a movie based off of a anime series that has a world and culture heavily influenced by East - Asian culture, which has characters who are clearly dark-skinned in the series — and they’re being played by really, really pale white people in the movie.
Pics or it didn’t happen, right?
Katara pics from here and here respectively.
Sokka pics from here and here.
Zuko pics from here .
Aang pic from here.
I admit, I messed up, there’s no anime pic of Aang in the collage. So sue me and go Google it. Anyways.
Then there’s the casting call. Vejiicakes does a pretty great summary, so I’m just going to link to that post and just comment: “Caucasian or any other ethnicity?!”
Because when you’re casting characters from an East Asian- based world who appear brown, you want Caucasians.
Oh and that little bit about wearing kimonos if you’re Korean? I have to say, this film is worth boycotting just because the sheer amount of stupidity in this movie. Must not support a film that pays these idiots.
I’m just so tired of people getting it wrong.
Mulan was wrong. All those portrayals of Asian girls as submissive, quiet, and sekretly hot in bed in mass media are wrong. That my boyfriend actually gets asked on occassion if he has an Asian fetish/ gets off on having a submissive girlfriend/ if he gets really hot sex because his girl is zomg azn and therefore well-versed in teh geisha artz is very wrong. That kids are feeling marginalized because of the casting choices for this movie is wrong, wrong, wrong. That I find it hard to come up with Asian-American actors/actresses is pretty wrong. That Asian Americans are more likely to be assumed to have come from elsewhere is kind of wrong. That people honestly see no problem with having all four main characters be non-East-Asian and who think that people who complain are just whiners who want affirmative action is damned wrong. The entire situation is just fucking wrong in far too many ways.
It’s more than just about Avatar. It’s about feeling marginalized even in a country you consider home. It’s about worrying about the kind of culture and mindset that you might be raising children in, one where they’re probably always going to be considered other and treated as such. It’s about never being sure just when reality is going to kick you in the teeth just when you least expect it. It’s about the whole “taking jobs/husbands/wives/resources/whathaveyou away from the white people” concept. It’s about getting slapped with accusations of desiring affirmative action in its ugliest form when you just want a little bit of representation, or even barring that, a bit of respect, please. It’s about realizing that in a country where race is fucking important, that you’re pretty low on the overall totem pole when it comes to consideration. It’s about realizing that maybe we’ve blended and bent our shapes to fit in a little too well when people don’t realize that hey, we have problems too. It’s about how it really hurts that somehow we’ve lost the right the complain about things because we weren’t/aren’t quite as wronged as the other, browner people.
I’m broke, but even if I weren’t, I can think of better ways to spend my money than to support such stupidity. Even indirectly.
Permalink
