![]() ![]() Our faces read as foreign.ĭavid: Yeah, I think it usually happens in cases like this not out of malice, but out of minimization. No one wants to be considered racist, but there’s an implicit bias to not think of Asian Americans as Americans at all. Of course, whitewashing doesn’t continue to happen just because of money, although that’s a huge part of it. Even smaller films that feature lesser known actors are still more attractive if a white face is in it because it’s ‘foreign’ to them, but also as Yang puts it, it’s “easier to sell a random white dude in Asia than random Asian dude.” International markets and especially Asian ones, have been used to a diet of white stars as stars of American imports. Secondly, I’m going to cite writer Jeff Yang here about his thoughts on film marketing. It’s Asian Americans who need better representation in their own country. One, being a native in an Asian country puts you in the majority, and therefore, representation of Asians is everywhere in those films. ![]() There was a story last year about how the Chinese didn’t mind that Matt Damon’s character was the white savior in “The Great Wall.” Well, of course not. Hanh: Right, and the point you had of being American doesn’t equate with being white is a the crux of all of this because when we’re talking about representation, it’s very specifically about representation in America. But the laziness of this adaptation, particularly in such a charged cultural climate, struck me in a different way. “The Departed,” for example, leans so hard into its Boston setting that it becomes a completely new thing altogether. Neither does the implication that whiteness is synonymous with the American experience.įor me, that was what made this more egregious than a lot of remakes of Asian films. In which case, genre stylings notwithstanding, whiteness - and a lack of Japaneseness - become some of the only notable ways that this film differentiates itself from the previous iterations of this property. Sure, Light is a lot dumber in this version, and there’s something intrinsically American about how he can’t help but tell his crush about his magic book that kills people (intrinsic to the rules of American high school movies, at least), but the vanilla treatment suggests that race/culture/identity isn’t important to this story. There were definitely attempts to change the story for its new setting, and Light’s relationship with the (increasingly sociopathic) Mia character is an interesting way to shrink a mammoth mythology down to a feature-length installment, but the original “Death Note” is so culture-specific, and it seemed like Wingard and his team decided to ignore that altogether rather than grapple with what it meant, and how it might be altered. Setting the story in Seattle and not having anyone Asian American play the role of Light Yagami, now Light Turner, removed that context.ĭavid: Agreed. For example, “Akira” is about post-war Japan, even though it’s set in “Neo Tokyo.” In particular with “Death Note,” the concept of a death god is very common in Japanese lore, and therefore comes with a set of expectations or rules. This story, like many taken from the most popular anime or manga, has cultural significance to Japan. Hanh: This version of “Death Note” was frustrating, for many of the reasons you mentioned in your review, and the whitewashing just added that extra layer of insult. Hanh, am I off-base about this one, or did it bug you, too? Why go through all the trouble of setting “Death Note” in America if you’re not going to set it in the real one? It’s the most glaring symptom of a film that utterly fails to investigate its premise and wastes a handful of goofy performances and a gluttonous degree of hyper-violence in the service of a total dead end. ![]() The only reason to take such a uniquely Japanese story and transplant it to Seattle is to explore how its thorny moral questions might inspire different answers in an American context, so for this retread to all but reduce America to its whiteness indicates an absence of context more than anything else. ![]() In this case, it pointed toward an inability or unwillingness to meaningfully engage with the source material. Whitewashing is never a purely aesthetic act it’s always an indication of a deeper rot. Oscar Voters Go International For Best Live Action Short PicksĢ2 Great Erotic Thrillers, from Adrian Lyne to Brian De Palma The Best Limited Series of the 21st Century, Ranked Below, IndieWire critics David Ehrlich and Hanh Nguyen dig into the issue.ĭavid: In my less-than-enthusiastic review of the film, I wrote the following:ĭavid Fincher: 'Mindhunter' Cost Too Much to Come Back to Netflix ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |