People are
far from surprised, just disappointed that it still happens in 2016. I'll just throw these out here as well before taking my leave:
Warning: I'm about to rant about something I feel passionately about as both a lover of literature and history. Don't read this if your feelings are easily hurt, because I'm not holding back the punches. Also, when I say the word "you" throughout this, it's a general you, as in "everyone who is reading this." Not as in you, the user, specifically. I know you, you're a smart guy, and I love you in a completely not homo way. Which is why I know you'll be strong enough to read through this and not need me to pamper you like a child. You're a great person.
Okay, no. This is emotionally stirring, but ultimately one of the stupidest things uttered about the evolution of stories, and the things it calls for are so bafflingly and insanely backward as to be genuinely racist.
Yes, this won't be the Ghost in the Shell that debuted in the 90's to the tune of Japanese feelings on tech summed up in anime. In the same way that anime is no longer a simple
love letter/knock off of Disney, French & German character designs. Is every Japanese fantasy anime with obviously western influences "ruining" or "japaneseifying" fantasy as a whole? Maybe. Is that a bad thing? I don't know. Was it a bad thing when the Japanese stole their entire fucking written language and several cultural motifs from the Chinese? Was it a bad thing when the Japanese adopted western science, western philosophy, western military technology, and western ideas of government?
We grow as a species when we take ideas from each other and try expressing them or changing them in our own ways. Do you think the Japanese would be nearly so rich a culture if it weren't for their own cultural divides and strifes within their own country and with opposing nations in the same geographical area? Do you think they would be anywhere near as incredible as they are were it not for their obvious influences from (and later, toward) the Koreans? The Chinese? Southern Asia? Hell, the West throughout the 1800's?
It's not "Hollywood whitewashing" because some fan of Ghost in the Shell wants to write it and star it with a white actress. In the same way that it's not "Anime Japanesewashing" when they decide to make an ostensibly western story or set a story in an ostensibly western genre. Hell, without Japan taking Western influences and stories,
these two classic anime stories would not exist.
Trigun was a WESTERN for fucks sake. There is no genre on Earth more American than Westerns. If Japan wanted to make a live action version of a spaghetti western that starred DeForest Kelley or Clint Eastwood, but decided to star it with an all asian cast, would
anyone who complains about whitewashing complain about it?
Fuck no.
They would
relish in it like the racist hypocrites that they are.
If anything, even if this movie bombs and is a complete and horrible disaster, it will expose more people to the mere fact that this franchise exists, and they can then look it up and watch it for themselves, thus potentially causing more people to become fans of an incredible story, and learning more about Japanese culture as a result of the exposure. If the story turns out to be a fantastically well written and composed story, it
will potentially create a renaissance period for western and Japanese stories to thrive in the cyberpunk genre. If the story performs well in American markets, it might even inspire another, well funded anime adaptation created by Japanese studios to tell yet another ostensibly Japanese story, because now, they think it
might actually sell thanks to their American counterparts taking interest in it.
It would be a terrible tragedy if western markets took this story and then denied the Japanese the right to ever create it again.
That would be intellectual theft and the silencing of an entire culture. That's what we (as in a society) used to do to blacks: We would take black roles and put white people in them with black face paint, because we
literally denied blacks the right to even be in those roles. But this isn't that. It's
a fucking guy who wants to make a fucking movie based on a Japanese story, who is taking it in his own creative direction. The fact that he didn't star the actress you wanted does not make it racist. The fact that you're angry because Scarlet doesn't reflect the race you want in the role makes
you the fucking racist. Nobody is forcing you to watch this against your will. Nobody is preventing the Japanese from making another Ghost in the Shell (or story exactly like Ghost in the Shell set in the same genre as the case of copyright might be). Nobody is violating Japanese culture--it's in no way suppressed by this film starring a fucking white person.
Now get off your high horse. If you really care about oppressed cultures, go help women in the middle east who get raped and killed for daring to
read a book, leave alone write one. Save your anger for things that actually matter, not this. If this is the biggest cultural offense you can find, than that should speak volumes to how far we have progressed from our once incredibly racist culture.
As for the movie itself? I think it's probably going to be a very piddling, mediocre affair. Kinda happens when you have one culture adopt another culture's ideas and stories and then attempt to mimic them: You get a lot of failures before one of the sparks finally lights the fire of creativity in a way that satisfied everyone.
Also, if you got through this entire post, and it upset you, I apologize. I don't really want to hurt your feelings, but I do want to stop what is essentially false accusations of racism floating about because of the good ole "it's different now it sucks" mentality. There is so,
so much fucking worse things going on right now in terms of racism. Allowing this to cloud our vision when shit like dozens of black Americans being brutally murdered in ghettos every day is fucking insane.
It is literally fucking insane. I cannot comprehend it.
