Ghost in the Shell Casting Shows We Need More Than White Feminism

[Tsun Tzu]

Carly. Stahp. Pls.

Anywho!

Already posted my feelings about this in the original article announcing her getting the role.

I'm not fond of the decision and will likely spend viewing time completely knocked out of immersion just because I'll constantly be seeing her as...well, ScarJo.

She isn't The Major. She's ScarJo.

It's the same deal with, say George Clooney (Hey, look, George Clooney's an astronaut) or Samuel Jackson (Sam Jackson's a Jedi, nifty) in a role. If an actor is so big and saturated throughout media, then I just see the actor and not the character, to the detriment of the film/immersion. Granted, sometimes, I can get past it, if the performance is amazing, but it's a big damned hurdle.

I'm going to have to echo the sentiment from some posters...I'd have preferred Rinko, if she was even interested in the role to begin with anyway. If not? Eh. ScarJo certainly isn't bad. *shrug*

The movie, however, is likely to be quite awful, what with the assembled 'talent' and all.

We're probably looking at another Aeon Flux. Joy of joys.

If you're still salty about ScarJo playing the Major, then I suggest you go hang out with the dudes who are still angry over Idris Elba playing a Norse God.

I was never "angry" over that, but I feel much the same way about that particular instance that I do about this one.

If a character is X race or Y gender, then I'm of the mind that they should be represented as such, in the interest of reflecting said character as best as possible. This goes for any race/gender/whatever. I don't care about that nonsense.

With that said, Idris did a fine job. I actually quite liked him in the role, as he does the somber guardian schtick very well...but it still irks me just on the "it's not as close of a representation as possible" level.

 

[Erttheking]

For example, in the Hunger Games book, Katniss was described as having olive skin. The casting for her character flat out called for "should be Caucasian, between ages 15 and 20, who could portray someone ?underfed but strong,? and ?naturally pretty underneath her tomboyishness."

as someone from a family with a lot of white people with olive skin, I fail to see your point exactly. unaware a lot of people in the united states are descended from european immigrants?

Simple really.

The person that they got to play Katniss in the movie wasn't olive skinned. They decided that was too dark and wanted someone with lighter skin.

Frankly it's kind of sad considering that olive skin can hardly be noticed and Hollywood declared that Hunger Games need "white" white people.

Hollywood is frankly just pathetic.

Doesn't help that on the Fitzpatrick scale, olive skinned falls under "Moderately brown."

so the best actor they found to play the character was not the right kind of white person? is that what you are implying?

No, because really olive skinned isn't white. I checked and it turns out that people with olive skin tend to live in Latin America. In other words, they're Latino. They got a white actor to play a Latino character, or at least someone with the same shade of skin as a Latino character.

http://www.google.com/books?id=fewKcicENJYC&pg=PA234&dq=olive+skin+mediterranean&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GUHYU5_mA4aOyAT7rYEo&ved=0CCEQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=olive%20skin%20mediterranean&f=false

EDIT: Could also be Mediterranean.

and a lot of those who live in the mediterranean area can be considered white. such as southern france in the pyrenees, where my mother's side of the family comes from, or towards the italian border. olive skinned white people. also a lot of white people mixed with native american which comes out to olive skin in the appalachian mountains general area. I come from both.

That's interesting. It doesn't change the fact that the actor hired to play Katniss is clearly none of these things. Caucasian and olive skinned were very different things. It would've been one thing if it had been an open audition and they just decided that that the one that they got was the best for the roll, but actors with olive skin didn't even get to try.

Frankly it feels like they did something on par with putting up INNA.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

I've heard this complaint many times that modern or "3rd wave" feminism is mostly wealthy white women who do not care about the problems of black or Asian women. I remember black feminists have repeatedly taken issue with lena dunham only to be shot down by white feminists. to me it speaks to why humanism is a better idea as it removes the concept of gender or race and just presses us to be decent people to other people we meet.

As for the issue itself, SJ as kusinagi? I can see why people would be mad about it, I also don't see the difference between taking her and making her white vs taking human torch and making him black. honestly most of the time it's just being done to stir up hype and use outrage to promote a film for free rather than for any ideological reasons.

in the end i think it's an issue with perseption right as oposed to how people really feel. you get one of these marketers or "by the numbers" film makers and decisions like this are basically ticking a box on a checklist. I picture some giant jackass in a board room with slicked back hair and a cigar going "what do the kids like these days? that japanimation stuff right? they also like that chick from the marvel movies. brilliant!" this decision is someone saying "hey i'm not the reason this movie sucks i put scarlet johansen in it she makes money so the movie SHOULD have made money and i can't be held accountable if it doesn't" the americanization seems to be more so so old white producers can wrap their head around the concept. i hate using terms like that but the voting members of either the emmys or the acadamy awards, one of those awards shows, the median age is 88 and they are all white men. i'm not into diversity quotas but that is some bullshit.

I for one DO think it's a poor choice. but i also agree most live action adaptations of anime tend to suck and moreso than just being bad they are unnecisary, no way are they going to cram into one movie everything you love about a character from a 50+ episode series. you like it? great go watch the anime again, or make more episodes of it, but i mean how long did it take AMERICAN movies to understand what makes AMERICAN comic book characters so great? you really think the king of all egomaniacs hollywood is going to understand something from another culture?

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Here's another question:

Other than character names, what is there about GitS and it's setting that is actually uniquely Japanese?

Because I'm seeing a lot of people bark about how GitS is such a Japanese show and it could only Japanese and I'm thinking to myself: "Have you people ever read William Gibson or Phillip K. Dick?"

A lot of the social, economic and military politics involved in both seasons of Stand Alone Complex are as I understand them rather rooted in parallels to the same of real life Japan at the time of creation. These may have changed in the decade or so since the show was made obviously. And it becomes a plot point when the Major has to operate outside of her own country where she has basically no authority. The sci-fi stuff is lifted right from the classics though.


Personally, I'm disappointed but I'll be far more disappointed if the choose to use Mamoru Isshi's movie as their base template because while it is itself one of the classics, after watching SaC I think it's boring and takes some of the cheeky fun out of Motoko's character. Plus I loved the Tachikomas


You know what though, if I was going to adapt an Anime, I'd be doing Gunsmith Cats!

A gun toting bounty hunter chick, her grenade mad buddy, a Shelby Cobra GT-500 and a gun shop. And all based in the Windy City, this would have been piss-easy and have none of the complaints. And for fun and profit; ScarJo could play Natasha Rednov

 

[Scars Unseen]

A much greater travesty is the dub for the anime Steins;Gate, where they completely erased all traces of Japanese otaku culture from the show, which was half of what the show was actually about.

I don't... Oh wait, I've never seen the dub of steins;gate - the tv channel that was showing it here was showing a subbed version, not dubbed.
Sounds messed up. Especially considering some of the main plot points...

It's pretty bad. They replaced all of the otaku references with generic western geek humor. I get that they were trying to make the show more accessible to western audiences, but it just doesn't work very well.

Spoiler

 

[Erttheking]

What does being Scottish have to do with his skin color? They're a minority but black Scots DO exist.

http://files.gamebanana.com/img/ico/sprays/untitled-1_22.png

can you maybe stop trying to inform people about the demograhics of my nation based on knowledge you've gleened playing computer games ?

please.

i'll promise to not claim Bravehart is historically accurate if we can maybe do a tit for tat pinky swear

in the 2001 census the numbers of black Scots is given as 0.12%

that's a tenth of one percent -.-

which in nation of only 5 million is not so much "a minority" as a statistically recorded anomaly.

...or a big family on holiday...walking around...goin'..."there are no black people here "

Putting the demonman was a joke. Chill man.

I did check the official statistics for black men and I saw that they were low. They still exist though. So frankly if the only problem with with James Bond is that he's Scottish, and I don't see why him being black is a problem.

And no it's a minority. That's still tens of thousands of people.

Also can you please cut it out with the emoticons and sarcasm?

 

[Erttheking]

Also can you please cut it out with the emoticons and sarcasm?

not really.

Ok. So is that it for our conversation? Because I feel like it would be pretty unproductive if it just ended there.

Ah, there we go. Non-resisdants. Got a citation for that?

 

[Erttheking]

Also can you please cut it out with the emoticons and sarcasm?

not really.

Ok. So is that it for our conversation? Because I feel like nothing really came out of that.

Scotlands a big small place and like i said before i never saw a black person until i reached adulthood.

i don't like my life experience being denied -.-

but.

im always smiling...and i ain't gonna stop for anyone.

so i was answering your request honestly.

That's it? Your life experience? No offense man, but it doesn't matter how small Scotland is, unless you personally saw every last person of the 5 million that lived there, that isn't what I would call hard evidence to the majority of the black people living there being permanent non-residance. I need something a bit harder than that. I wouldn't just put up my personal experience for the race ratio in my town, I'd get hard evidence for it. Heck, Massachusetts is around the same size as Scotland, if a bit bigger. I've lived here all my life and I wouldn't assume myself to be knowledgeable enough on the status of the population without hard data.

Non my intention, my apologies.

 

[Souther Thorn]

This, it's a non issue and definitely not a feminist issue. It's a western American take on a Japanese property so it's not an issue if a white, extremely popular ScarJo is cast as the lead. If there is a big huge outcry from Japan or the nip community then we get to ponder if we're awful for "whitewashing".

All depends if it's an American adaption of another countries property which Ghost in the Shell is or if it's an American movie set in a place that is distinctly ethnic like Exodus, Last Airbender ect ect. I half bet that this American Adaption of Ghost in the Shell will be set in a big USA city.

Almost makes me think if people would be mad if there was an American Ace Attorney movie, have a think.

Dude....did you just make reference to 'The nip community'?? I'm....this might not be what I'd consider a race or feminist issue with ScarJo, but 'Nip' is kinda a blatantly racist term.

 

[Souther Thorn]

Because anime girls overwhelmingly look like white women by design.

Sorry, but somebody had to say it.

Where the white women with blue hair at?

(seriously, how come girls rarely dye their hair a bright shade of blue? pinks, reds, purplishes, yellows, all over the place. but a nice Sailor Mercury shade of blue? argh!)

Come up to Seattle, we've got em all over the place in a racial rainbow of multicolored hair goodness.

 

[Erttheking]

Also can you please cut it out with the emoticons and sarcasm?

not really.

Ok. So is that it for our conversation? Because I feel like nothing really came out of that.

Scotlands a big small place and like i said before i never saw a black person until i reached adulthood.

i don't like my life experience being denied -.-

but.

im always smiling...and i ain't gonna stop for anyone.

so i was answering your request honestly.

That's it? Your life experience? No offense man, but it doesn't matter how small Scotland is, unless you personally saw every last person of the 5 million that lived there, that isn't what I would call hard evidence to the majority of the black people living there being permanent non-residance. I need something a bit harder than that. I wouldn't just put up my personal experience for the race ratio in my town, I'd get hard evidence for it. Heck, Massachusetts is around the same size as Scotland, if a bit bigger. I've lived here all my life and I wouldn't assume myself to be knowledgeable enough on the status of the population without hard data.

Non my intention, my apologies.

maybe you should pause ask yourself why you think there should be a noticeable native black population here.

anyway

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/Equality/Equalities/DataGrid/Ethnicity/EthPopMig

black ? (as opposed to African) 7k.

I didn't. I looked up some statstics that lead me to beleive so. I didn't say there "should" be.

Ok fair enough.

 

[jhoroz]

I mean considering the themes of the orignal work that the Major's body is nothing more than a tool or a comsetic choice that she likes to change from time to time, there's nothing to stop Hollywood from hiring both ScarJo AND Kikuchi. As someone else said, there are episodes where the Major has missions in foreign countries (e.g. Germany and the UK) so it would make sense for her to have a Caucasian body. Granted, having to convince some suit to have your protaganist in a blockbuster movie played by two different actresses would be twice as difficult than trying to convince them for her to be played by an Asian woman.

Also, while Kikuchi does resemble the Major more than ScarJo, I wasn't impressed at all with her performance in Pacific Rim. ScarJo's portrayal of Black Widow in the Winter Soldier shows lot more potential for her as the Major (e.g. cunning, ruthless, resourceful, witty etc.) Granted, I'm comparing this more with the Major from SaC rather than the movie adaptation, but since SaC is closer to the actual manga, I'd rather they went with that portrayal.

 

[Erttheking]

Ok fair enough.

im sorry erttheking. maybe i came across as too abrasive in that little exchange.

but if you could see my face hopefully you'd see it was all meant in jocularity and good humour.

hence the comment at the very start about Bravehearts historical accuracy and pinky swears.

Scots humorous is abrasive...even aggressive...and sometimes i forget others aren't used that.

Heh, it's cool.

To be honest I let myself get a little too worked up on forums.

Plus Poe's Law and all that.

 

[Grumman]

And that he's the nicest famous person since Dave Grohl/Mother Teresa (I couldn't decide which, I'm not suggesting they're the same person).

Mother Teresa was a monster who fetishised the suffering of the innocent. Please stop using her as a positive example.

 

[Bat Vader]

I think it would be cool if the movie was just about an American team set in the Ghost In The Shell Universe and that at the end of the film they team up with Section 9 who is all played by Japanese actors with Rinko Kikuchi as the major.

 

[Super Cyborg]

While there are most likely somewhat racist/sexist/bigot intents at times with Hollywood, I want to offer a different point that could be a bigger problem overall, and that is just the need to use big named people in a movie in order for it to sell.

These days it seems that when a big blockbuster comes out, whenever a preview is shown, there seems to be an emphasis on who the actors are. When seeing previews for Lucy, it really seemed to home in on the idea of "Hey, this is the person who played Black Widow in the Avengers. You all loved that, so you will love this movie." The problem can extend then extend to movies with minority leads as well. If you are going to have an action movie with a person of a color other than white, they will most likely choose from an even smaller pool of well known people. Heck, look at something like Dolphin Tale, which could've had any actor, but chose Morgan Freeman for some reason.

People seem to like to go to movies with actors they know and like, and with Hollywood knowing that, instead of trying to find people to fit the role, they take a famous person, have them in it, and use their name to sell the movie. This makes a select number of people always appearing, while others only take small side roles, or only star in lesser known movies. Thus we get Johanneson playing the character, because she can get people in, unlike if you got any other person, because that wouldn't sell tickets. This also probably shows they aren't confident in their project, so need big names to really sell.

In the end, something needs to happen where the idea of only well known people staring in the big movies has to go away. This has to go with people not caring about acting choices, as well as previews selling the actual product, not the people selling the movie because they are famous.

 

[madwarper]

Snips

It's probably been pointed out several times in this thread, but it's worthwhile to just repeat; The title is Ghost in the Shell. Motoko is the "Ghost", and her completely prosthetic body is "the Shell". Her Ghost could be in ANY Shell, and she'd STILL be Motoko. Hell, Batou kept suggesting that she "upgrade" to a male prosthetic. So, is there an easily explainable, canonical reason for why an actress such as Johansson is playing Motoko? Yes.

As for movies like Avatar and Dragonball having white casts... That was the least of their problems. How about we aim for movies that aren't shit, before we worry about casting ethnically appropriate characters? Last thing I want to see is a minority actor kill their career by being attached to a flaming pile of shit.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

Maybe my memories of GitS is awry, but isn't Motoko Kusanagi a robot, not a person. If that's the case, can't she be any race/ethnicity/etc that her "creator" wants?

No she's not a ROBOT.
Kusanagi is orignially a japanese female human person that got a full prosthetic body replacement, which still holds her real brain. That makes her a cyborg, which is a totally different thing.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

The one thing Hollywood shouldn't get their hands on is anime or anime movies..STAY AWAY PLEASE. It's the last bastion of enjoyment of mine that you haven't ruined yet.

I really hope this movie doesn't see the light of day...americanize it is one thing (and it's insulting to the series itself) but adding a white actress in it as well? That is going way too far. Stop please!

 

[Rellik San]

Here's another question:

Other than character names, what is there about GitS and it's setting that is actually uniquely Japanese?

It's set in Japan and all the main characters are Japanese special law enforcement agents. Most of the main cast is Japanese, as in they have Japanese personas.

Personally I don't like the idea that something can only be "uniquely Japanese" if it's set in old Kyoto with everyone wearing kimono and/or being samurai. GitS does have some focus outside of Japan, but it is still set there with most of the characters being Japanese. The story details and setting would have to be reworked to a significant degree in order to localize it.

It's a story about people who have undergone extensive cybernetic enhancement and are permanently connected to the internet, how they cope with this, how such expensive augmetics is possible (government loaned bodies), and the sense of self that can be lost we no longer resemble ourselves... ...That happens to be set in Japan. We've seen this story a thousand times from western Sci-Fi authors many decades before Shirow was on the scene, it's a basic Cyberpunk story told with great visual flair, but your kidding yourself if you think because it's set in Japan that makes it uniquely Japanese.

I'm also not saying we have to see Okinawa Samurai fighting against the Shogun for it to be uniquely Japanese, but elements of Japanese culture, their sense of self, their office politics, their social standards... these things are not present in either the original texts of the 1995 Movie. They are present in Stand Alone Complex, but mostly as window dressing to the cases.

So with that in mind, I ask you again, other than names and it happening to be set in Japan, what would actually need to be significantly reworked for this adaptation?