I'm not sure about Japan, but in China, pretty much every beauty advertisement has a woman who lightens her skin to look more white, or there is a white woman on them. The Chinese fashion scene is also huge and if you ask why so much of it takes from Western designs and why they're not wearing more of their own culture, you will probably get the answer it's old-fashioned.
So, when you say Asian markets, I'm pretty sure there'd be demand for it just from China alone.
As for the topic. I love Ghost in the Shell, it's great. I don't particularly get why people are pissed about Hollywood being a business. Don't like it? Don't support it. Shrug and go watch the old thing for old times' sake. I think the Last Airbender is a great show with a shitty live action movie, but here's the funny thing. While I can vividly remember a lot of these great moments for the cartoon, I've already forgotten exactly what kind of movie it was I walked out of because... It was just a shitty movie. Who cares?
The more attention you give to something you hate, the more publicity you're giving it. How many people do you think bought the Twilight series just to see how horrible it was or they could be edgelords and burn it on video? Congrats, guess where that money went and guess with what message.
And I don't even know if this Ghost in the Shell movie will be bad. If it is, well, the major is still going to be pretty hot and you can crack jokes about it for a week or so and then get on with your life.
Ohwait. Trying to be reasonable.
Haha.
Ha.
I make the stupidest of mistakes.
I recall reading an article by a guy who lived in China as a teacher, and apparently being whitey makes you extremely popular and something of a status symbol where people want to be seen with a white person and will sometimes go so far as to keep buying them drinks and deferring to their judgement, even in things whitey has no experience in.
I'm not sure how true all of that is, but it marks the only time I've heard of one race and culture going out of their way to treat another extra nicely just because of their race. It's like bizzaro world racism, discriminating against them to show how much they love your pigment.
As for el casting thing, Hollywood's always casted white actors in movies set in locations with an entirely different ethnic make up. If the entirety of my knowledge of the Middle East came from movies, I'd assume a huge percentage of the people there were white with British accents. Hell, just look at Biblical films; Jesus, to my recollection, has never been cast as the Palestinian Jew the real Jesus almost certainly was. People, both sadly and hilariously, can't seem to accept that their savior was a guy who doesn't look just like Obi-Wan Kenobi because of course Jesus was a handsome Aryan type and not some guy who would probably fit the profile of the CIA's Al Qaeda shitlist these days.
So, yeah. Casting a white woman as a traditionally Japanese character is exactly the same as when Japan made a live action Attack on Titan movie where the entire cast was Japanese, and instead of being filled with Germans living in an 1800s style collection of cities and villages, it took place in a setting with modern apartment buildings and Hanje had a fucking Soviet made RPG-7.
Disregarding the fact that movie was horrible and I imagine Ghost in the Shell is going to be yet another big budget film that misses the mark worse than Ray Charles trying to become Banksy, the simple fact remains that audiences respond to people who look like them, and it's a lot easier to cast high profile actors from your country than head hunting globally. Hell, off the top of my head, Ben Kingsly was cast as fucking Ghandi and a Maori, and I know he's been cast as all sorts of non-white roles, yet people are less inclined to be outraged and instead drown him in academy awards. So an American made Ghost in the Shell movie has a white actress playing a non-white character. This is pretty much normal for Hollywood.
It's not right or wrong, and it's only been recently that I've really noticed people being critical of the whole whitewashing thing in Hollywood. I do think Hollywood should get its shit together and actually start looking for talent for roles that call for a certain race, but it should never be about filling a diversity quota. Yes, most film studios are owned and operated by white people in a predominantly white country, so of course they're going to have a bias. It happens literally anywhere in the world, and I can guarantee that in "Bollywood" (ugh, hate that term), they cast the shit out of their movies with Indian actors even in movies that take place in non-Indian settings, and China's the same way.
It is what it is, and progress is slow. If you don't like a movie's casting, don't go see it. Studios respond best when their multimillion dollar project isn't breaking even and then they go and try to find out why they flopped.
It's just important to keep objectivity in mind and not hate something just because the characters are white and "should be" diverse. I remember the stink when they cast Iron Fist as that Loras Tyrell guy and a bunch of people were freaking out that he should be Asian because his character is.
Only... Iron Fist is a white character, always has been. Misplaced outrage. That said, if they did cast Iron Fist as an Asian actor, that would be fine, too. Vast majority of character roles don't really require a specific race, and while you're always going to get bigots screaming about the casting (Remember the stink about there being a black Stormtrooper for The Force Awakens?), ultimately it doesn't matter most of the time. It should be somebody picked for their acting ability and understanding of that character, not their ethnicity unless the role specifically calls for it.
So, should Ghost in the Shell have cast a Japanese actress and an all Japanese cast? Maybe? I can see why people are annoyed by it, but this is hardly the first time this has happened. Who knows? Maybe Scarlett Johansen kills it as the protaganist and she just happened to be the best at the audition. Only thing is, sad to say, in a mostly white country, having accurate racial casting might alienate the general audience and not fill seats. People like what's familiar, and seeing advertisements for this niche Japanese movie probably would have a lot of people who don't know what GitS is raise an eyebrow at it and be like, "the fuck is this?"
We're a wonderfully (horribly) biased species. It's how we've always rolled, and always will. Even the most enlightened individual is likely to have irrational prejudices that they try to work past, say nothing of society as a whole.
