la_vie_noire (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
la_vie_noire) wrote2009-10-21 06:30 pm
la_vie_noire) wrote2009-10-21 06:30 pm
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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.
PS
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.'
Re: PS
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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.. *smacks them*