Diversity and Representation in Media

On the contrary, we've been baffled by it too for the past month.

it's not exactly a new phenomenon, either.

Yup, we've all done our share of haranguing that particular production.

I think the simplest answer for your question is "because China intends to focus this film primarily on US audiences, and they think that the best way to do that is by incorporating a Mighty Whitey." Say what you will about China, they certainly seem to have our number.

The most infuriating part of this particular situation is (in a fashion similar to the Ghost in the Shell thing) when Asian-Americans understandably flipped their shit, this time everybody got to smugly go "oh, but look, it's being made by Asian people, so you don't get to complain."

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

Part of me still suspects Damon is a Decoy Protagonist who's only front and center in all the American/European promos and posters of the film.

Yep, me too...but in order to judge that I would to have to watch the movie and I won't. I refuse to get manipulated this way.

You could do as I do and send a guinea pig. I have friends who are enthusiastic moviegoers and watch pretty much anything (with Matt Damon possibly being "anything" in this case). And they are really good at dissecting horrible films.

edited 27th Aug '16 6:54:00 AM by hollygoolightly

Nah, that is pretty much the same as reading reviews and building an opinion of them. Good way to avoid terrible movies, but also a bad way to judge for oneself.

I do know their taste well, which helps. Can't say the same about most reviewers.

In this particular case it doesn't matter, anyway, since I don't want to see Matt Damon build the Great Wall with dragons, no matter if he's Marco Polo, a Decoy Protagonist, or even both.

Oops

edited 27th Aug '16 9:32:54 AM by nervmeister

Think you're in the wrong thread.

1. Cartoons So White? Disney’s ‘Moana’ points the way forward for actor diversity in animated films

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/08/25/cartoonssowhite-disneys-moana-points-the-way-forward-for-actor-diversity-in-animated-films/?tid=sm_tw

I assume that 1 was supposed to be a hashtag.

I think we discussed this a while back, and I'm not sure if I really agree with the idea that voice actors are obligated to match the ethnicities of their characters. That kind of thinking is well-intentioned, but harmful and dangerous given the flexible nature of the voice acting industry. Famous voice actors like Dante Basco, Clancy Brown, Steve Blum, Robin Atkin Downes, Rami Malek, Keith David, Kimberly Brooks, Cree Summer, Phil Lamarr, Dennis Akayama, and the vast majority of anime dub voice actors have all spent a lot of time voicing characters from all sorts of ethnicities not their own.

Plus there's things like unionization, localization, and other red tape making it so you have no choice but to use certain voice actors (who are usually white) who are not necessarily the race of your characters. By that logic, since voice actors must match the the characters you get stuck in a Morton's Fork of racism. If you have white voice actors playing minority characters, it's whitewashing. The alternative is to make your whole onscreen cast white to avoid that problem, but that's got its own obvious set of problems.

Onscreen depictions of animated characters usually take precedence over the people voice acting them when it comes to representation. It's not quite comparable to Aloha. Personally I'd say the criticisms of the latter choice are more valid than the former, but I usually see the former get way more vocal criticism on Tumblr than the latter, since many of them seem to be convinced that increased diversity that isn't 100% perfect by their own metrics is worse than no diversity at all, yet they complain about how the status quo needs to change anyway.

It would definitely be good if we had more prominent nonwhite voice actors in the business for stunt castings, since high profile animated films usually use live-action actors rather than professional voice actors, and if voice casts for animated works had more nonwhite members overall, regardless of the ethnicities of the characters they play (which is what some of the people in that link are arguing for). But that point sounds more like a demographics issue caused by barriers to entry and glass ceilings for nonwhite voice actors.

Cast matching for the most triple-A productions, or voluntarily hiring voice actors who better fit their of their characters, sounds like a decent short-term method of giving people from underrepresented minorities a foothold into the voice acting industry, but we should not start broadly mandating that character and voice ethnicities be the same across all animated works.

edited 27th Aug '16 11:05:40 AM by AlleyOop

That's sort of a "duh" thing personally. Getting more diversity in voice acting should happen, but casting based on race is at best a stupid solution and at worst actually sort of racist.

Also you guys are blowing the Matt Damon thing waaaay out of proportion. It isn't China trying to appeal to America, it's China trying to appeal to China with big glamorous high paid Hollywood action stars. Is it right? Probably not, but I wouldn't exactly call it entirely racist either.

Yeah, the term "racist" is something I avoid nowadays thanks to it being thrown around by just about anyone with a chip on his/her shoulder. Now maybe I would say the film (or the filmmakers) has something of a western bias given the extensive promotion of Matty D (over here, at least), but that hardly serves as grounds to claim that this is another step in Hollywood's "insidious, well-disguised plot" to fuck over Americans of Asian descent.

I stick to the opinion that you aren't able to hear ethnicity in a voice, what you are able to hear is a mixture of local accents and upbringing...and naturally the best voice actors are able to change both at will.

I just see it as another example of Germans Love David Hasselhoff.

In the world of voice-acting it's very common for actors to voice characters not their ethnicties, and this isn't just "white people voice asians/black characters". It's all around. Kevin Michael Richardson voiced The Joker in The Batman and the Joker is white (both in his current "blank white face" and flashbacks show him as clearly caucasian).

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Speaking of DC cartoons, I find it odd how despite being the first version of the character to be voiced by a black man, the JLU version of the Martian Manhunter never assumed such a form unlike other versions.

Zhang Yimou has directly stated that the film is a Hollywood blockbuster. I mean, you don't make an English-language film starring a white American guy written by Hollywood screenwriters if your primary targeted audience is China.

But frankly, I don't understand why people have so much trouble understanding that we're simply sick of the Mighty Whitey trope. There are so many missing-the-point excuses - "oh but it's being made by China, oh but it's still about Chinese culture, oh but it's fantasy." Is it about a white guy who goes to brown-person-land to save all the lowly PoCs and sort out their own problems for them? Yes? Well then.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

Yes, and China loves Hollywood Blockbusters. That's the fundamental crux of the whole thing. This is a clear attempt to in many ways replicate and emulate the success of Hollywood blockbusters by associating them with the people behind them, partially to garner American appeal, but more importantly to garner domestic (Chinese) audiences.

That is exactly what you do because that's what's been happening for this entire decade. Pacific Rim 2 will exist because of China. Hell half of Transformers 4 was set in China to appeal to Chinese audiences. They aren't pandering to us, we're pandering to them.

That's why this isn't the usual case. This isn't a bone thrown towards America, it's a bone to China.

Do we actually know if that's going to be the plot?

The Great Wall could turn out to be a Sukiyaki Western Django situation. That was a Japanese movie set in old-timey Japan (albeit an insane Anachronism Stew version), but with all the dialogue in English and a role played by white American Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino featured very prominently in SWD's American trailer, but in the actual movie, he really only plays a small, supporting role.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

Aaaaand we are back at the usual "we need to wait and see". Honestly, no need to waste all our energy just yet, there is still time to be offended.

It's not impossible that this is a bit of a Bait-and-Switch but as I said before, if that actually is the case it still says a lot about what executives think sells movies.

I agree with you here, but I do think films like Kubo (which, don't get me wrong, is a very beautiful, well-made film, totally go see it folks) can be criticized for casting actors that match the ethnicity of the characters they play for most of the side roles, while the leads are all voiced by white actors. In situations like that it sort of feels like a double standard.