(no subject)

[la_vie_noire]

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.

Comments

[delfinnium]

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.

[willow]

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.

PS

[willow]

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.'

[dhobikikutti]

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.

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

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.

[outou.livejournal.com]

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.