As for my use of retarded: nearly all words used to describe stupid people -- idiot, moron, cretin, and even dummy -- were once clinically significant descriptions of people with mental disabilities. In the census records from late 19th century America, there's a column where the census taker is required to indicate whether or not the citizen is an "idiot." So if you've ever called someone a moron, you've called them a retard. Name-calling isn't nice under any circumstances, but I don't find that globally inoffensive language is either useful or possible. Having said that, though, since you mentioned that it bothers you I'll certainly avoid the term when I comment on your LJ.
I think that most anime fans orientalize their favorite series and characters because most of them are either really stupid or very young. Fetishizing anything "foreign" is a common mistake in popular culture. It doesn't just happen with brown people, either; I'm sure that Austen fans are just as infatuated with the outdated depictions of English culture as they are the sterilized romances. Lots of Harry Potter fans like the English-boarding-school elements of the novels just as much as the magic. There are whole sections of the population who call themselves Anglophiles, and reduce British history and culture to a series of images which they repetitiously invoke for their personal amusement. Which is not to say that it's all right, of course -- it's just something unpleasant that happens that's difficult to measure. At what point does a person who's legitimately interested in another culture become a -phile who's fetishizing it? If we just take that as a definition, then I'm afraid I'm probably guilty myself. I went to the trouble to learn to read Japanese, but I hope I'm still capable of recognizing that the people who speak the language natively are real, fallible, ordinary people.
But for me, that's a separate issue from this clearly defined problem. There are very few "white" characters in anime (at least the anime that I've seen), and it's just plain insulting to cast white actors in Asian roles. Also, Japanese artists do not, as far as I can tell, make their characters look like white people. Most Japanese anime and manga artists develop a highly-stylized depiction of human anatomy which is no more "white" than it is realistic. If anime fans are watching their favorite shows and thinking they're seeing white characters, then I really do feel sorry for them. I also question their intelligence.
Which is itself a completely separate issue from something like 21, in which characters that described actual living, human Asian people were swapped out with white actors in what could be absolutely nothing but an act of commercial racism. That hearkens back to an era of Charlie Chan movies, blackface, and institutionalized bigotry. If we haven't come any farther than that as a culture, even as a culture of consumers, then I'm even more worried for our future than I already was.
no subject
I think that most anime fans orientalize their favorite series and characters because most of them are either really stupid or very young. Fetishizing anything "foreign" is a common mistake in popular culture. It doesn't just happen with brown people, either; I'm sure that Austen fans are just as infatuated with the outdated depictions of English culture as they are the sterilized romances. Lots of Harry Potter fans like the English-boarding-school elements of the novels just as much as the magic. There are whole sections of the population who call themselves Anglophiles, and reduce British history and culture to a series of images which they repetitiously invoke for their personal amusement. Which is not to say that it's all right, of course -- it's just something unpleasant that happens that's difficult to measure. At what point does a person who's legitimately interested in another culture become a -phile who's fetishizing it? If we just take that as a definition, then I'm afraid I'm probably guilty myself. I went to the trouble to learn to read Japanese, but I hope I'm still capable of recognizing that the people who speak the language natively are real, fallible, ordinary people.
But for me, that's a separate issue from this clearly defined problem. There are very few "white" characters in anime (at least the anime that I've seen), and it's just plain insulting to cast white actors in Asian roles. Also, Japanese artists do not, as far as I can tell, make their characters look like white people. Most Japanese anime and manga artists develop a highly-stylized depiction of human anatomy which is no more "white" than it is realistic. If anime fans are watching their favorite shows and thinking they're seeing white characters, then I really do feel sorry for them. I also question their intelligence.
Which is itself a completely separate issue from something like 21, in which characters that described actual living, human Asian people were swapped out with white actors in what could be absolutely nothing but an act of commercial racism. That hearkens back to an era of Charlie Chan movies, blackface, and institutionalized bigotry. If we haven't come any farther than that as a culture, even as a culture of consumers, then I'm even more worried for our future than I already was.