Hollywood doesn't really like asians to be their main characters, though we're starting to see some good side characters like Glenn from the walking dead.
Sort of an odd statement considering Jackie Chan just won an honorary Oscar today.
Think of it this way: Ghost in the Shell is an anime adaption. Do you see the anime studios in Japan going out of their way to hire american voice actors whenever a character is american? If they don't, then why should US movie studios?
This notion that for whatever reason an actor can't play someone of a different ethnicity is a very recent sensitivity. Besides her obvious acting talent, they most likely picked Scarlet Johanson in the hopes that she'll bring a larger audience considering how popular she is among their intended audience.
The fact that the movie is largely about "what's on the inside" makes it a really poor target for anger about the actors' heritage.
* It's fine that Hugo Weaving used prosthetic eyelids to look asian, the movie is about reincarnation across different ethnicities
* Emma Stone can play a half-asian half-white character since the character is half-white anyways.
* Ang and the other 3/4 principals can be white in The Last Airbender, since...???
* Mickey Rooney was being funny in Breakfast at Tiffany's, don't take it so seriously
Imagine being an asian-american actor and losing a role for Motoko Kusanagi to a caucasian actor, when the industry already has a long history of preferentially casting caucasian actors in at least the past 20-30 years, and before that basically always hired caucasian actors to play other ethnicities, not always very respectfully.
I get the "what's on the inside" idea - it could be irrelevant. But there are also reasons why it does matter. She's specifically using a generic-looking body to not stand out and the setting is Japan. Americans do stand out from a crowd in Japan. (although in the anime nobody else seemed to use the same model...)
Kusangi has the ghost of a Japanese woman even if the shell she has is a mass manufactured generic. I'd prefer Motoko to be a Japanese woman because that is just more interesting.
It's disgusting and incredibly disrespectful. I don't know how they can continue to make these insane casting choices.
Why bother even pretending its set in Japan if the characters all seem to want to distance themselves from even the appearance of being Japanese?
Because not all americans are white, and if there ever was a chance to see someone who looked like me in a movie being cool, I would hope it's the anime adaptation. GitS is merely the latest in a long line of movies to re-cast asian roles for caucasian actors. Some more: Avatar the last airbender, Aloha, Cloud Atlas was especially cringeworthy since caucasian actors had prosthetic eyelids... imagine if robert downey jr's character's blackface was played non-ironically.
I wouldn't mind if it just happens sometimes, but it happens almost every time... They could easily find american actors who speak perfect english, that's supposed to be one of the advantages of being a country of immigrants no?
I understand the financial motivations of a casting decision, but its somewhat of a catch 22. It's difficult to find minority actors who have lots of experience. It's difficult to get a lot of experience as a minority actor since you end up getting typecasted for a few roles.
This is an interesting study on the subject. (kind of messed up, like the stanford prison experiment on schoolchildren). A teacher designates kids with blue eyes as superior to those with brown eyes in their all caucasian class. Resulting in:
> Those who were deemed "superior" became arrogant, bossy, and otherwise unpleasant to their "inferior" classmates. Their grades on simple tests were better, and they completed mathematical and reading tasks that had seemed outside their ability before. The "inferior" classmates also transformed – into timid and subservient children who scored more poorly on tests, and even during recess isolated themselves, including those who had previously been dominant in the class. These children's academic performance suffered, even with tasks that had been simple before
GitS follows a handful of other movies recently which could have had a more asian cast but did not. Very frustrating to see the same decision made in movies like The Last Airbender, Aloha, Cloud Atlas, Dr Strange, etc.
> worry about racial crap anymore.
Great, maybe when a brown actor can as easily get roles for the main character instead of the taxi driver, we'll be past that. Till then, the game's stacked.
Motoko's heritage as a Japanese is an important part of the story that gives it richer context. This is because many of her dialogues are about ideas that are unique to her Asian culture. The concept of a marriage between the natural and the artificial (instead of man vs machine). The concept all things have sentience. There is even mention of deliberately selecting a member of Section 9 with a similar rationale to the Toyota way. These are not ideas strongly present in European cultures. Kusangi's holistic thinking is one of the most interesting things about the Major.
Can you picture Sarah Connor from Terminator having these dialogues that Motoko has? Evolution theory, philosophic musings?
I cannot. It is not because I think a westerner would have nothing to say. It is that I think they would say something different because they think differently.
Rather than racism, I chalk it up to Hollywood's tendency to spend millions of dollars on people who they consider marketable. For example, I read reviews of "The Man from UNCLE" recently, and noticed Germans talking about the bad German accent of the lead actress, Russians talking about the bad Russian accent of the "Russian" lead. I'll throw in my own complaint of the unnatural Indian accents I have seen from "Indian" characters of Hollywood. Can't they find real Russians or Germans or Indians to play these roles?
The most convincing I've heard is that there are no big shot asian movie stars to draw viewers in, and Hollywood doesn't want to take risks.
The reason is there are no big shot asian movie stars is that asian actors don't land big shot movies.
This might arise from the way roles are cast by race in Hollywood.