On Mamoru Oshii's Defense of "Ghost in the Shell" Hollywood Casting: Can Art Really Be
A few days ago, I came across an article in the Guardian on whitewashing in Western media. The article quoted the Japanese mangaka Mamoru Oshii's defense of the casting of American actress Scarlett Johansson in the Hollywood adaptation of Oshii's work Ghost in the Shell by Rupert Sanders. After having written a response comment that ended up being longer than the article itself, I wanted to explore Oshii's defense in more depth on this blog.
According to the article, Oshii argued that the reality of "actors of different backgrounds from the characters they are portraying is part and parcel of the film-making world." The mangaka was quoted saying:
"In the movies, John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, and Omar Sharif, an Arab, can play Doctor Zhivago, a Slav. It’s all just cinematic conventions. If that’s not allowed, then Darth Vader probably shouldn’t speak English, either. I believe having Scarlett play Motoko was the best possible casting for this movie. I can only sense a political motive from the people opposing it, and I believe artistic expression must be free from politics."
The issue with this statement is that Oshii ignores the fact that in practice, artistic expression is never free from politics. The decision to cast a white American actress whose blonde-haired blue-eyed traits are known worldwide for reinforcing the conventional female beauty standard in mainstream media is a political choice. It perpetuates the Eurocentric myth that Western beauty should be the norm, and it thus profits on the marketability of Johansson's looks.
Oshii also discards the fact that historically, in the particular context of Hollywood, ethnic minorities – and Asian American actors specifically– have been denied artistic opportunities and recognition simply on the basis of their physical appearance. The Ghost in the Shell casting symbolizes how this reality is still strongly felt today. There are many talented Japanese American actresses in Hollywood nowadays who would have been suitable for the role of Major Kusanagi– Rinko Kikuchi immediately comes to mind.
To counter argue with the fact that Japanese viewers are comfortable with the choice of Johansson ignores that we are talking about a movie produced in the context of Hollywood's discriminatory castings, of which Japanese viewers may not necessarily be as familiar with as an American audience.
To argue that Japanese actors often play Western roles is a false equivalence, as it discards the underlining power relations in these different types of casting. It ignores the reality of Yellowface instances in Western cinema, and their profound impact on encouraging racial stereotypes on Asians and Asian Americans.
Screenshot of 2017 Hollywood adaptation filmed in Hong Kong with Johansson
If anything, Hollywood is reinforcing Yellowface occurrences with this movie: the mere fact that the crew considered, even if they finally rejected the idea, to use a special software to make a background actor's face look "more Asian" can only be described as a pathetic, lazy, and insulting attempt to Yellowface their cast.
I am not trying to imply that casting an Asian American actress would necessarily make the final product more "authentic" to the original Asian creation. Instead I want to argue that correcting Hollywood's past mistakes involves creating artworks that engage Asian American and other ethnic minority audiences through identification.
The process of identification is not absolutely necessary for audiences to engage with fictional characters. After all, what would fiction and human imagination serve if we could not empathize with characters different from ourselves? Yet identification is highly important for minorities to be seen beyond the usual negative stereotypes that are attributed to their social/cultural/ethnic groups. In this way, minorities can be recognized as members of their society whose voices deserve to be heard when they see someone who looks, behaves, or faces the same social issues as them on the big screen. And Ghost in the Shell was the perfect opportunity for this.
Indeed, if you start analyzing Oshii's original piece, you can observe how the story is deeply anchored in the cultural, social and political reality of Hong Kong's cityscapes and urban East Asia. Whether Oshii acknowledges this or not (or simply prefers to ignore this reality and its implications, in order to cash on Johansson's marketability), his story needs to be initially understood by exploring the context of modern East Asia.
Screenshot of 1995 anime adaptation
There is nothing wrong with seeing how the Asian reflections in the manga can be applied to a Western context. But according to the trailer, Hollywood clearly is neither trying to offer a Western, nor a serious universal viewpoint on the story, and seems instead to have all the characteristics of a standard Hollywood blockbuster. The typical Western stereotypes on modern East Asia– a foreign world portrayed as alienating, robotic, both backwards and futuristic– are kept, such as with the Hong Kong urban aesthetic and the protagonist' Japanese name. At the same time, the adaptation seems to privilege the usual Hollywood sci-fi tropes –namely, numerous action scenes and gratuitous female nudity (which are, granted, rife in the original work) – over Oshii's philosophical enquiries on humanity and its relationship to technology.
Yes, good stories are universal, and have the power to be appreciated by any ethnicity or culture. But stories nonetheless are developed within specific political and cultural contexts. If you take away the contextual elements that are essential to understanding these stories, by enforcing your own stereotypical perspective of the "Other" for the sole aim of marketability, you are clearly distorting the original piece.
How to correct such blatant instances of whitewashing and Yellowface in the Western media? Barring access to certain ethnicities for specific roles through legal frameworks would be a dangerous and counterproductive solution. Censorship would promote the narrow cultural viewpoints that should precisely be avoided. Art has always consisted of dialogues between different artists and cultures, and succumbing to censorship would cut off creativity. While art is created in specific political contexts, it should not seek to reinforce unjust and unfair power relations. In this sense I agree with Oshii that artistic expression should be free from politics.
Progressive change must therefore happen at the level of the involved cultural institutions. But if Hollywood refuses to pay attention to the concerns of minorities in their castings, how can we achieve this change?
This is where the audience comes in. Refusing to financially support the concerned movies by avoiding it in theatres. Speaking out online and on social media about why such casting decisions are wrong and unacceptable. Petitioning against the production and diffusion of movies that perpetuate whitewashing castings.
I hope this article can serve as a further – if only minuscule –step to contribute to this much needed change for minority representation in mainstream culture.
Image References:
http://opus.fm/posts/why-is-scarlett-johansson-ghost-in-the-shell-casting-problematic
http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/trailers/796027-new-international-ghost-in-the-shell-trailer#/slide/4
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113568/mediaviewer/rm888223744