As an artist I'm not bound, nor is it my duty to respect any person, group, or culture. You should see what I'm going to do to the Freemasons in my story... and at the hands of a convent of nuns no less! I'm doing my due diligence researching the history of the French Revolution, but after that, the personalities, cultures, and specific groups become my playthings, to do with as I wish. I'm looking for the hooks in that history, using real events, and reimagining the story behind them... and doing it without adding vampires or zombies!
Yes, I agree largely. I think the facts should be gotten straight, to the extent they pertain to the story and are necessary. You don't have to respect individuals. If you are painting an entire culture in a stereotypical, disrespectful way it bothers me for the same reason that any inaccuracy does.
Yes, yes you are. I recently got active on another writing site with subforums set aside explicitly for racial and LGBT issues, and this is the first I'm hearing that definition as something that people actually use (as opposed to a definition that the "anti-PC" crowd think most of the "PC" crowd use when most of us really don't). That would depend on a) how far the author researched all of the different points, b) how are other non-white and/or non-straight characters portrayed by the same (work, author, genre community...), and c) how much we were supposed to focus on "fantasy creation inspired by the Mayans" versus how much we're supposed to focus on "fantasy creation inspired by the Mayans" Well then I'm pretty sure we're pretty much done here, because I'm pretty sure that's pretty much what everybody else has already been saying
@Simpson17866 except for determining the extent to which a fantasy work has to consider any of this. I'm not sure how to make the distinction you made above.
My opinion, as a queer white person? 1. No problem 2. No problem 3. Iffy, but could be done respectfully. My recommendation would be to also have a good lesbian character and/or make it very clear that her being an unhinged nut is completely separate from her orientation. (For example, if you used her being a lesbian in the "the villain has a soft side" way, that would be fine in my opinion.) Incidentally, an example of morally ambiguous lesbians whose orientation is separate from their moral status can be seen in Vampire Diaries, and I like those characters. 4. Sounds good. 5. Sounds iffy. I'm not a big fan of 'everyone in this society is evil' in the first place (one of the big reasons I decided not to be Christian is how often that trope appears in the Bible). But if you had a good character who believed in those rites being used for good, or else had more positively portrayed rites borrowed from other mesoamerican people, I think it would be fine. Especially, make sure the protagonists aren't modeled after white conqueror cultures. 6. No problem 7. Iffy, make sure the protagonists aren't modeled after white conqueror cultures. 8. I can't really imagine noble savages being done well. Don't do that. This is fun! Give me more!
I know this is an old thread that seemed to have shot off into various directions. I don't remember seeing it before, so I'll just respond to the OP. There is always the Author's Note that you can include at the end of any book, to explain why you made the cultural choices you did, how you may have used mythology from one culture and fused it into something else for story reasons. An Author's Note should let you off the hook, if you think you might have offended a living culture, or twisted beliefs more than some folks might be comfortable with. Make it clear that the book doesn't represent the reality of their culture. Your other option, of course, is to change all the names of the creatures to something unique to you. That way nobody can technically be offended, because you haven't misrepresented anything. You've just formed your own ideas from snippets of other ideas. Again, you can use the Author's Note device to explain this, or simply leave it unexplained. Where you can get into bother is claiming to represent a particular culture, then doing it badly.
@Ettina thanks for playing along, and for sharing your perspective. I'll post a more in depth reply when I'm not on my phone
If you only knew what I was writing lol... Mesage me if you want I could talk about this subject for hours, my book combines myths and Legends from across the world.
The people who bark about cultural appropriation the loudest are Social Justice Warriors who are not from the culture in question, who complain all the time about everything. If there was a consensus of people from that culture that took offence, then I would start to listen. But the views of a bunch of whiny, triggered, fainting pampered adult babies are worthless.
That's simply not true. It's impossible for a white writer to dislodge black people from the niche of black stories written by black people. If the reader cares about the author function then they are perfectly capable of finding out the race of the writer. A black person telling a story about ...slavery (for example) carries significantly different connotations to a white person writing it. So these stories are not in direct competition.
Hear, hear! As an example of this point, you may recall accusations of whitewashing when Scarlett Johansson as Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell. Someone decided to ask Japanese people about it. 90% of this stuff is kicked off by people who don't have a horse in the race or flat out arguing out of ignorance.
First off, I actually didnt & don't care that they casted Scarlett for Major. I was more wigged out about the killer geisha spider robot assassins in the trailer than that character cast as Caucasian; something about those things didn't sit right, but I'm not sure quite why. . . I also don't think that Ghost in the Shell has to be a Japanese story, and only applicable to Japan's relation to technology & philosophies. The nuance will be different, but the story can still be applied to other cultures. That being said, I think the heart of the whitewashing problem is representation. For instance, 2016 Oscars with the African American boycott, my mother was watching and said proudly, "Oh, look, Asians boycotted too. Good for them." To which my dad jokingly retorted, "No sweetie, they just never get invited." Which sadly has a grain of truth—if you think African Americans are under represented in films, you should see the percentage numbers for Asians—it's only in the double digits if it includes Middle Easterns, and Ben Kingsley counts for the total number of Asian Oscar nominations, so~ yay? Interviewing Japanese people living in Japan doesn't count, because it's Asian Americans who are demanding representation from Hollywood. Japan has all their own films and television series and actors and icons—they turn on their TVs and of course they can see & find themselves. So they don't feel robbed when Hollywood casts white actors for originally Japanese/Asian roles. In US, Asian Americans have a tougher time. If I want to see people that look like my mom or my mom's family, I have to watch foreign films. And while I love those films & series, I won't lie and say I don't get ridiculously excited when they cast Asian actors. I'm astounded if in addition they eve cast the correct ethnicity—Koreans playing Koreans, Taiwanese playing Taiwanese, Japanese playing Japanese. Memoirs of a Geisha & 47 Ronin both messed up their Japanese culture and stories—but while Memoirs had Chinese actresses, I was shocked that basically Keanu Reeves was the only nonJapanese actor playing a (half) Japanese character (and that was a great Hollywood movie, if you forget that it butchered the Chuushingura and those were historical people whose grave sites are still points of pilgrimage & worship). Speed Racer cast a Japanese family with a Japanese father, a Korean son, and a Taiwanese sister. Despite this, when I actually went to see it in theatres the seats were predominantly taken by Asians. And—based on the long indifferent silence broken only by a sudden loud gasp in perfect chorus as Bi was first shown on screen, bloody & beaten—we had all only come to see the Asian superstar side characters (and that no one was expecting to see South Korean sex icon Bi as an injured punching bag). So while again I didn't actually think it mattered from a story standpoint that Major was cast Caucasian, I do know exactly what it means if they had cast an Asian leading lady to their Asian American audience. A little off topic for the appropriation OP, but my two cents.
I don't think it's off-topic at all. It clarifies, to me, some ideas about appropriation vs appreciation... if the culture being portrayed is treated respectfully (eg. casting actors of the appropriate ethnic background) it's much more likely to be a case of appreciation rather than appropriation. And I think it's a really valuable point that it's people who feel like a minority (ie Asians in North American rather than Asians in Asia) who are more likely to object to poor depictions of their culture.
I never read the comic—I watched the film (and random OVAs I think?) quite some time ago I think I was ten when I first saw the first movie~ Were the geisha spider robot assasins as weird looking in the manga? I think it's the face that wigs me It neither looks Japanese (traditionally or modern aesthetic) nor quite geisha. It could be something else (like the uncanny) but I think it might be that Edit: the more I look at it, the more it creeps me out. You couldn't PAY me to have a meal with that, and I think I'm supposed to pay for its company—if it were cute or beautiful, like a real woman, the appeal would be there (like in Ex Machina) but that thing just wigs me out hard
*sigh* I admit, I haven't watched the movie yet, however, having read the cast list I'm going to hedge my bets that it's based on the first season of Stand Alone Complex (the clue was the presence of the Laughing Man in the cast list). Rescuing politicians from some robot geishas is the first episode. Frankly, I never cared much for the Oscars because, if you want to know why, listen to the comments about La La Land here, it's my feeling. In any case, when people whine about needing more actors in a certain branch, I can't help but think of someone who wants to be on top of a mountain without having to climb it. No different to those who point out how few women are in STEM fields, which is less surprising when you read how many graduate in a STEM field in the first place. If you want more Asian/African-American actors/actresses, then we need to get more of them through drama school, open auditions, what have you.
Are you suggesting that there were no drama-school graduates of Asian descent interested in going to an open audition for the role that was filled by Scarlet Johansson?
In the case of Scarlet Johansson's role as Major the character is depicted with a white complection so Scarlet basically looks like here. Japanese creators have a notable western tint and they usually like big western actors playing their roles. Also, the film has French, English, Danish, Australian Aboriginal, American, Chinese, Malaysian and Japanese actors. It's a multicultural cast in a multicultral setting. Does it really need a Japanese actress for the main character? They're not whitewashing. Heck, the English actor they've got is black.
The problem with the whitewashing issue is that it is more obviously not to do with choice. It's not that there aren't plenty of black, latino and asian actors. It's that they aren't given the same opportunities. They're more likely to not be major characters. Therefore not only is there a racial sideline in imagining, but it also keans it's harder for them to get the same success without big paying roles. Black people than the others have this problem fortunately for them.
I am saying those who make the loudest noise are ignorant about the business end and how to achieve results. The fact of the matter is that the big places are actually afraid of diverting from things they have seen as successful in the past. This is why the same actors come up time and time again and why the frame rate is still minimal for the human eye to see smooth movement. Scarlett had just been playing Black Widow, a gun-toting badass of a woman in Avengers. It's safe to say that the creators of GitS was riding the wave of this. Given that only a small portion of her brain is organic, the Major could be purple skinned for all her aesthetics mean to me. As long as the same things are successful, investors are going to stick with the same checkboxes. Heck, they have to flop dramatically before they change. That said, we live in an age where you can build a platform to something much more cheaply, considering that big budget films can easily spend five times the amount they do making the movie on marketing. If the problem is opportunities, then the easiest answer is to vote with your cash and invest in films that are providing this to your satisfaction than complaining at what, at the end of the day, are a bunch of execs in an ivory tower.
No geopolitical demographic has a monopoly over ideas present in individual cultures that are only vaguely defined by human-constructed political boundaries. Go ahead and freely build upon the vast sum of ideas from all of human history. Forcing adherence to the established traditional interpretation of a cultural idea creates stagnation. Culture naturally evolves over time, and there's nothing wrong with that. If taking ideas from a culture is appropriation, then people who immigrate to the United States and adopt its standards are appropriating American culture. The only instance in which I could see it as more-or-less unacceptable is when one tries to explicitly say their work is representative of everyone in a cultural demographic.
I totally agree with this - and I think most people who argue for more accurate casting agree with it, too. I'm not sure who these ignorant loud-noise makers you refer to are, or what they're saying... are you hearing people claim that white actors are cast because... what, because the studio executives just flat-out hate people of colour? I've never heard anyone argue that. Instead, I've heard people say basically what you're saying - the status quo is powerful, there's a lot of money involved and studios want to go with a proven winner, etc. But a powerful status quo is not good for those who've been traditionally excluded. Right? I'm not sure how you're fitting this understanding of the studio system in with your assertion that "If you want more Asian/African-American actors/actresses, then we need to get more of them through drama school, open auditions, what have you," and that "when people whine about needing more actors in a certain branch, I can't help but think of someone who wants to be on top of a mountain without having to climb it." From my perspective, actors of colour are more than happy to climb the mountain. But for them to put all that work in, get close to the top and then be told, oh, sorry, we're going to stick with the same checkboxes, so you can't come the rest of the way up? I think that's the real issue. (Side note: I don't really care all that much about individual actors trying to get jobs in Hollywood. I mean, I care a bit, but they're not my main priority. Same way I don't care all that much about helping authors of colour, as long as characters of colour are being well-written by somebody. My main concern is audiences, generations of kids growing up with movies that whitewash the world and books that suggest the only way to be a hero is to be white (and, generally, male, or the token female with token female concerns).)
