Racebending.com

Image: Danny Wylde wearing yellowface to depict the character Glenn Rhee in “The Walking Dead XXX”

What happens when a prominent adult film producer creates a homage to one of the few television shows with an Asian American character—and decides to depict that character in blatant yellowface? Guest blogger N’jaila Rhee takes on the subject of yellowface in the adult film industry.

There were no Asian Americans in decision-making roles in The Walking Dead XXX production. The people in power decided to go with yellowface and are continuing to defend it. Interestingly enough, actor Danny Wylde writes in his apology that the role of Glenn was the last to be cast. Not being familiar with the show, he wasn’t aware that he would be playing an Asian- American. After seeing himself in make up, he raised questions about racism. The reaction he received was mostly laughter.

Read the full article at Racebending.com

Almost forgot to post this, because blah.  It’s a promo image of Tom Cruise from All You Need is Kill artfully cropped by Angry Asian Man.

A while back, WB picked up the All You Need is Kill script, which is based off a Japanese novel.  In the novel, the main character is named Keiji Kiriya.   In the script, his name was whitewashed to “Billy Cage.” 

That was the first red flag for us, because:  Juan Rico.  That name sound familiar?  It was the name of the main character in Starship Troopers, another book starring an Asian protagonist adapted to film—except in the film he was renamed “Johnny” and cast with a white actor.

When the director of All You Need is Kill, Doug Liman, was asked if the main character of the film would still be Japanese, he said no, “No, it’s totally American.”  Because apparently having a Japanese lead would make the character not American, or something, like “Japanese Americans” aren’t totally American…or was he trying to say something else by straight out saying “Nope, not even entertaining the possibility of considering you, actors of Japanese descent, for this main character once named Keiji”?

And apparently “totally American” means white American.   Not “American” as in the diverse cast in the book (which included Asian characters, Native American characters, and a Japanese-Brazilian-American badass general character, and uh, also white characters—so white actors would still have an opportunity to be featured had the film stuck to the book…)

Nah, totally American apparently just means “white,” because somehow a 16 year old Japanese character is being played by 50 year old white American Tom Cruise.  Based on IMDB, all the other leading actors are white, including Bill Paxton.   (The film also stars Emily Blunt, Charlotte O’Reilly, and Jonas Armstrong, none of whom are American, *cough* paging the director trying to make the film “totally American.”)

(FYI I had the exact same expression as Tom on my face the entire time I was typing this.  Ugh.)

mohandasgandhi:

No, no, Huffintgon Post, that’s not a question.

The two directors of the film don’t quite seem to get it:

For their part, the Wachowksis understand the criticism, but hope people will actually see the film first to better understand the significance of the decision.

“That’s good that people are casting a critical eye. We need to cast critical eyes toward these things. What are the motivations behind directors and casting? I totally support it,” Andy Wachowski told HuffPost Entertainment. “But our intention is the antithesis of that idea. The intention is to talk about things that are beyond race. The character of this film is humanity, so if you look at our past work and consider what our intention might be, we ask that those people give us a chance and at least see the movie before they start casting judgement.

Echoed Lana Wachowski: “Their suggestion is that our tribes have to always remain separate. That the things that makes us different are essential elements to our representation and our identity. Why we were attracted to the book is that the book has a bigger perspective. The book suggests that there is a humanity that is beyond our tribe, our ethnic features. A humanity that is beyond our gender. A humanity that unites all of us and transcends our tribal differences. As long as we continue to build these intractable and insurmountable walls between us to make these distinctions, we will continue to have intellectual apparatus that allows us to make wars and that allows to dominate, exploit and destroy others. Because we don’t think of them like we think about our own kind, our own tribe.”

The way to “look past race,” which is another way to describe “colorblindness,” or the ineffective neo-liberal approach to racism, is to utilize traditionally racist depictions of East Asians and incorporate yellowface into a film to accomplish the goal of showing our inner humanity for one another? I’m not quite sure they thought this through entirely.