Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures have released the first image from science-fiction flick Ghost in the Shell. So who was casted as the main character? Scarlett Johansson, big surprise right? But what’s wrong with that? Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese media franchise originally published as a manga series. So shouldn’t someone JAPANESE play the role of a JAPANESE character in a JAPANESE series? That would make the most sense, but it seems Hollywood isn’t a fan of making sense.
After the negative reactions towards Johansson’s role in the film, producers attempted to calm the controversy down with an old technique Hollywood uses to fix a lot of problems: CGI.
According to multiple sources close to the project, Paramount and DreamWorks tested visual effects that would have altered Scarlett Johansson in post-production to “shift her ethnicity”, meaning they want to use CGI to make the Caucasian actress look more Asian in the movie set to come out on March 31, 2017. So… instead of wasting their time editing how Johansson looks, why not just hire Asian actors?
This isn’t the first time America’s warm embrace of Japanese pop culture failed to result in an embrace of Asian and Asian-American actors when those storylines go to Hollywood.
There was 21, a film based on the true story about Asian-American students and their teacher applying card counting to win in gambling. There was also The Last Airbender, based off the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which casted white actors to portray the Asian characters on the TV series, while on the other hand the stars playing the antagonists were mainly Middle Eastern and/or Indian. And most recently, Aloha, with Emma Stone playing the character of Allison Ng – stated to have a father of half Chinese and Native Hawaiian descent.
There are SO many other examples to be named of Hollywood whitewashing Asian/Asian-American characters, and that shouldn’t be the case. The fact of the matter is Hollywood doesn’t seem to be fixing the problem at the root, rather they resort to editing what they can to make it work. Asians/Asian-Americans need to have more opportunities in this industry instead of having those opportunities snatched and given to white Americans who don’t even fit the roles correctly.
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