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helens78's post brought a lot of things for me, many of them make me tired. I want to make an entry about English, about the arrogance from native speakers to expect everybody to talk perfect English, even from non-native speakers. Also, Makoto was telling me about this very insidious believe around here that "knowing English gives you freedom" which is... ahahahahahaha, you know. I'm going to make a post about all this soon, but not today.

---

I'm going to talk about something else. Again, about Asian peoples erasure in anime and manga fandom. I had a conversation with classmates today that made me rage so much.

I'm not going to say something new, this was very much discussed already.

When I had that discussion in my fandom about putting white actors to play Asian characters, some person was very insistent that "it wasn't their fault if they couldn't think in any Asian actor to play Asian characters."

It's kinda funny, I already talked how is a commodity to consume something and erase the same people that create it, but there is something more that speaks volumes about racial power relationships around these places.

Right now anime and manga are extremely trendy in the Western World. We see lots of white and non-white people consuming and making themselves fans of "Asian culture," specially "Japanese culture" (between quotation marks because we know it's not the real culture they are "fans" of, it's the culture as seen by western lens). But of course, as things are being sold around here, the "cool culture" is Asian, the cool people aren't Asian people. The "cool people" have to be white people. Even in non-white countries like mine. So of course we have white people playing the part of Asian characters. White people are more desirable after all. And white people have to appropriate another culture, they have to make it theirs by being there instead of Asian people.

Japan is cool but only if you have Asian women fetishized and Asian men erased and replaced with white men, you know everybody loves white men.

Some years ago I was talking about Death Note's live action movie with a classmate, when I asked her what she thought about it she told me "ew, do you want one of those Jap to play Light?" (and it's not that I particularly care about the character, but she obviously did). Because, you know, Light Yagami is not Japanese, in her mind he probably is a white kid in an "Asian culture", thus very cool.

And today again my classmates were talking about how anime characters were "western" because Japanese people wanted to have "big eyes".

That's why I have a big problem with people who see no problem in fantasizing about Hugh Jackman as Kurogane, for example. These people are not only very naive and ignorant about racial issues, these people are playing a big part in not only erasing people from a particular culture, but erasing them and replacing the culture with what they picture said culture. And the way they picture it is for western consumption.

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Yes. Yes yes yes!

It's why I get so annoyed (and upset) when I'm in a fandom inspired RPG and my fellow RPers create characters with Japanese names, hell one of the rules is that the names MUST be REAL Japanese names, and then...

.. go and use Dean Wincester as a character-icon.

And they see no problem with that. At all. Because they just don't know any asian actors who can be used as icons instead!

Which is why I want to just claw my face everytime I see people discuss who would be GREAT for an anime character, and they use Jude Fucking Law as a perfect actor to portray a main character in the anime Naruto.

Pfffft, Dean Winchester? Ahahaha, yeah, because you know anime characters, manga-based characters or whatever are all white. They can be white!

Jude Law in Naruto. Right. Robert Pattinson would make a PERFECT Sasuke, right?

(*dies a horrible death because OH GOD I WANT TO DIE WITH THAT IMAGE IN MY HEAD*)

You're totally kidding! The more PERFECT Sasuke would be like, Jesse McCartney!!! Or Jackson Rathbone, he of the "Put my hair up and get a tan" fame.

(bastard)

I've had a conversation once with my friend who plays one of the jounin, and she said she ALWAYS imagined her character as AT LEAST Mixed blood.

Because Japanese/Asians COULDN"T have light coloured eyes, and couldn't POSSIBLY have facial structure like that!!!

... because whites have facial structures like anime, of course.

(nevermind that Asians have CLOSER facial structures to Anime than whites do, and that EVERYTIME I mention a rather pretty Asian actress, my friends tell me "Meh, she looks like a CHILD. We like ANGULAR face-shaped women!" )

I've had a conversation once with my friend who plays one of the jounin, and she said she ALWAYS imagined her character as AT LEAST Mixed blood.

Because Japanese/Asians COULDN"T have light coloured eyes, and couldn't POSSIBLY have facial structure like that!!!

That was my classmates said today, I told them "who the hell has a face like that, you idiots? They aren't supposed to be realistic, you know."

Aaaaaaarg, because "a facial structure like that" is always white. I know that with mixed-race she didn't mean, I don't know, Black-Asian, or Indian-Asian, or something. Because anime characters have light colored eyes and those are white!!

(and yes, they of course have, hell, I have seen a lot of western characters in manga-anime having very distinctive facial features, bigger noses, bigger chins, droppy eyes, etc., etc. They like angular-faced women but they are drooling over female anime characters? Uhm, something isn't right.)

Of COURSE.

Because mixed race NEVER means anything but white-and-whatever-other-colour. Certainly she didn't mean Korean-Chinese, or Chinese-Japanese, or Vietnamese-Japanese...

Noooo she meant white-japanese of course. Because it was utterly inconceivable that there might be a FANTASY world without white people, or a post-apocalypse world without white people.

(while it's perfectly normal to have post-apocalyptic and fantasy worlds entirely populated by white-as-the-driven-snow people. but introduce a person of colour? Noooo waaaaaaaay. They hAVE to have been mixed with WHITE PEOPLE, because there's no other way coloured people might show up! Ever!)

Because it was utterly inconceivable that there might be a FANTASY world without white people, or a post-apocalypse world without white people.

But what do you mean? IT'S FANTASY! THOSE AREN'T WHITE OR ASIAN! THEY ARE FANTASY PEOPLE. Who look white of course, but we know people, as in without any marker, look white.

(Do you mean people of color would want to be in a world without white people?)

oh RIGHT. FANTASY. Because of COURSE fantasy people are ALL WHITE.

(Well, I meant that how can it be inconceivable that a Japanese writer/artist might draw a futuristic world/fantasy world that is ONLY Japanese people? Why not? just like how can myths and legends of say, Chinese or Japanese or Indonesian culture NOT include white people? Especially in the creation myths? Why the hell not? People want explanations or stories for why THEY are here. They don't know or care about the damn white people. Or they want a future world. WHy do they have to care about the white people, who populate their fantasies with white people, and don't give half a shit about the non-whites?)

*is expressing badly*

Y'know my first thought of someone putting Hugh Jackman in for someone Japanese is them being an old school Marvel X-men fan and having a momentary brain blip of thinking of Logan and how he fit or did not fit into Japanese culture and life at stages of his history.

But then my second thought is - but do those white fans really think about how a white and western man didn't fit in? Or did they think Logan's isolation had more to do with xenophobia on the parts of the Japanese and parallell that with how Logan's treated in the West for being a mutant.

And I realize wow, they make whiteness not fitting into other cultures the fault of the people of those other cultures - as if (not unlike how they treat First Nations Peoples) the 'exotic' culture's people are meant to die off and leave this ready made set for white people to inhabit and part take of because they'd do it better anyhow.

Yeah, but I don't think they thought that much. You see, the character in question is the typical rude-though one. So of course, I can see the Wolverine's relation, but they just probably thought "OMG PRETTY WHITE MAN!!! WHO PLAYS RUDE GUYS!! TOTALLY IS!!"

But again, I'm not a big X-men fan, I didn't know that about Logan. Hm, pretty interesting. It would be funny because the character in question? Symbolizes and represents Japan and all things Japanese in his canon.

Ahh Logan/Wolverine's big thing for quite a while was being a western Ronin and it was played up that Charles was his Shogun and the Academy equaled his clan. It was tied in some with spaghetti westerns and samurai all transposed to the east coast...

Let me sum up up this way. Jackman is pretty and all. But My Logan will always be Clint Eastwood. Preferably from the days of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.

That said, a character that's all about Japanese exceptionalism is not best represented by Jackman or Eastwood or Leo di Fricking Caprio.

Well, that's very interesting. That would explain some things...

That said, a character that's all about Japanese exceptionalism is not best represented by Jackman or Eastwood or Leo di Fricking Caprio.

Ahahaha, why, do you think so? Damn it.

For a while I've struggled with how manga and anime have no problem having Japanese characters in seemingly western settings. Entire nations filled with Japanese people, in what is obviously a faux Germany or faux France etc.

But I've realize that they're just doing what white people do to their culture. So why the fuck not pick and choose. Make it so that EVERYONE picks and chooses the 'dressing' they want with the characters they want and be straight up in saying 'This is a fantasy reality. Why would they be white people in a fantasy reality. It's not Europe. Did we call it Europe? No. We called it Uro.'

Ahaha, yeah, well, you know how power dynamics are important, there is no history of Japanese people, I don't know, colonizing Germany or any white-dominated nation (now, Korea and China? Yeah, very different).

And seriously, poor white people, they are SO under-represented in fantasy that hurts. I remember someone telling me about a secret in fandom_secrets saying how they "loved [insert a group of blond blue-eyed character here] because they were so rare! They aren't Japanese like the rest!!!". I just...

*group of blond manga/anime characters

And seriously, poor white people, they are SO under-represented in fantasy that hurts. I remember someone telling me about a secret in fandom_secrets saying how they "loved [insert a group of blond blue-eyed character here] because they were so rare! They aren't Japanese like the rest!!!".

*blink*

*blink*

*runs a quicks memory over B and N's selection of scifi and fantasy*

*runs a quick memory of what the interior of comic shop looks like*

shakes my damn head.

Exactly.

Your cookie icon is a thing of beauty.

Actually, in quite a lot of faux-European anime/manga, they LOOK Japanese (well they look anime), but usually are not meant to be.

There's that whole 'unmarked state', where if the whole series and protagonists are set in Europe or Europe inspired countries, they look 'normal', ie like most anime manga. But the foreigners are the ones who are marked. Like in Full Metal Alchemist, most people come from Faux-Europe/Germany whatever, and therefore are normal. But people from Xing, the Chinese-inspired country, have chinese inspired clothing (but even amongst them there's variation), they have narrower eyes, etc, compared to the 'white' protagonists.

Anime in general tends to treat the setting pretty well, and there's usually a reason for an all-Japanese cast if it's set in a non-Japanese setting, such as a school setting and so on.

And it does make me think, when I see Japanese characters in a european setting - why the hell not? It's not like Asians never WERE in Europe, but a lot of mainstream Euro-centric fantasy acts like there's never been any POC/COC in their lands ever.

Unless they were slaves.

And it does make me think, when I see Japanese characters in a european setting - why the hell not? It's not like Asians never WERE in Europe, but a lot of mainstream Euro-centric fantasy acts like there's never been any POC/COC in their lands ever.

And yeah, and we have to talk a lot about power difference, and how any powerful Asian Nation today were colonized by Europeans/Whites/USA. I don't think it would make sense to say that "JAPAN IS APPROPRIATING WHITE CULTURE!!" because... who the hell if not other whites have been dominating and colonizing other white cultures for a long time by now.

Yeah power difference. It drives me mad trying to talk about power differentials and people go, "But Japanese are racist! Women are sexist too! EVERYONE IS RACIST/SEXIST LOLZORSAUCE, SO THERE'S NO POINT."

.. *smacks them*

A word of yes to your post, and when you have the energy or time, I would love to read your rant about the non-English biases too: I know I walk the double-edged sword of claiming English as a native language, and yet rejecting that we must follow British/US assumptions for the use of that languages.

The anime thing also reminds me of how African people are erased from Africanist cultural appropriation. Witness The Lion King and Tarzan - two movies set wholly in the continent without a single non-white person.

What are you talking about? There are primates in both those movies! Wise mothers! Wise babboon Merlins!

Ahem.

Uh huh.

*sour face*

I will! I know a lot of people have to talk perfect English to be taken seriously by white/ non-disabled/literate/whoever privileged people who speaks english as a native language. I think that has a lot to do more with surviving than anything else.

Oh yes! Tarzan is pretty funny because you know that they had to make a contrast between civilization and wilderness! How the hell do you expect to show black people as civilization!

A lot of the language & accent thing, I think, is a consequence of American isolationism. La mayoria de estadounidenses nunca han intentado aprender otra idioma, y por eso no tienen la experiencia de talking like a foreigner. I think a lot of Anglo US-ians just don't understand that learning to speak a language doesn't make you stop sounding foreign; I think in the monolingual American mind it should be "cat", "dog", "okay, now I sound perfectly Yankee". Another reason why I wish that if we're determined to be this big imperial power we'd at least stop being so damn anti-intellectual.

I would like to hear your thoughts on the language thing whenever you make your post. I know I haven't talked much in your lj but I have been enjoying reading your analysis lately.

My two cents on the "but Asian people look so Western!" nonsense is that I think Western styles of drawing have a very specific idiom for making people look Foreign, which is our problem, not anime's. But I feel like if a character's face doesn't scream I AIN'T FROM AROUND HERE people tend to assume that means Anglo just because the only images of Asian people they're used to seeing are so aggressively Orientalized? I could be completely wrong; it is just a guess.

Ah, yes, I have noticed that. A lot of people also think English is the definitive language everybody has to learn, which is pretty funny for people who have never had the experience of speaking a second language.

Thank you! :)

Yes, exactly, and as we were discussing here, white people tend to assume that "the unmarked" has to be white because whiteness is normalized, so unless they are draw with a specific and stereotypical feature, the characters are white.

It's strange that "Japanese culture" in particular receives this kind of attention, as opposed to other "Asian cultures." There's obviously a connection between the Allied occupation and the subsequent mass import of American culture into Japan, but the American side here is more opaque--there didn't seem to be much consideration of Japan's pop culture in the U.S. until the past two decades. Roland Kelts, who spoke at my school last year (and who, for the record, is Japanese American), wrote a book on the subject entitled Japanamerica, but I unfortunately haven't read it (since I didn't have the money to purchase the book while he was here).

Another problem with the whole Hugh Jackman thing is that the poster didn't bother to look up a list of famous Asian actors--meaning, she didn't even consider the idea that there could be a talented, handsome actor in the film business who wasn't white.

I was just putting the anime and manga example, Japan has gotten lots of attention due to its media, but there is the whole kung-fu, kanji (Chinese or Japanese), Buddhism, Confucianism appropriation and lot of things I'm totally missing going on in the western world.

*appropriation/exotization.

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