Hollywood's Whitewashing on AKIRA

AKIRA is a Japanese manga created in 1982 by Katsuhiro Omoto. It tells the story of Shotaro Kaneda's fight against his own friend, Tetsuo Shima, who wants to release Akira, a boy who helds a dangerous psychic ability. Later in 1988, a fully-animated movie were made. Although the movie follows the story within by the manga, the plot was shortened. Currently, AKIRA has become one of the most influental manga and movie, and its influence is not restricted within Japan only.

Warner Bros. has acquired the right to create a live-action remake of this legendary manga in 2002. It has create quite a fuss within Japanese popular culture fandom in western countries recently, due to the concern of its Caucasian-filled possible cast list.

There are several reports and rumors that mentioned names of actors and actresses that were offered roles for this remake, such as: Robert Pattinson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Garett Hedlund, Helena Bonham Carter, Kristen Stewart, Zac Efron, Mila Kunis, Keira Knightley, and many more. Ken Watanabe is the only Asian actor that were offered a part.

Moreover, the movie description posted in Acting Audition's website shows that the setting and several aspect of the story were completely changed.

"Kaneda is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother, Tetsuo, is abducted by government agents led by The Colonel. 

Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join with Ky Reed and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City thirty years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous but after finding his brother again, is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers. 

Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy, Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo's mind. Kaneda clashes with The Colonel's troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races in to save his brother beore Akira once again destroys Manhattan island, as he did thirty years ago."

A lot people may haven't forget by James Wong's Dragonball Evolution and M. Night Shyalaman's The Last Airbender, in a bad way. I remember I was so excited when I knew that a live action movie of these two epic series were made, and I can't wait to see it. but after I watched it in a theater, I have to control the urge of asking my money back from the theater. Both movies have plots that strayed from the original ones, and the main cast were filled by Caucasian actors even though both original series depicts Asian society (plus Alaskan Native and South-America for The Last Airbender). These changes was probably an attempt from the producers to be more original, or to make the United States viewer to be more familiar with the movie. But it serves no purposes and only greatly disappoint fans of both original series because it does not depicts the real story of both series accurately. These epic series were remade into catastrophes, and AKIRA may be next in line.

George Takei, who is widely known as Hikaru Sulu from Star Trek, voiced his concern on Hollywood's whitewashing on AKIRA in an interview.

"The manga and anime phenomenon is mostly white in this country. It originated in Japan, and, of course, it has a huge Asian fan following. But it's the multi-ethnic Americans who are fans of Akira and manga. The idea of buying the rights to do that and in fact change it seems rather pointless. If they're going to do that, why don't they do something original, because what they do is offend Asians, number 1; number 2, they offend the fans."

Takei also argued that the lack of Asian-American's progress within the entertainment industry is one of the factors.

"Can you name one bankable Asian-American star? No. There isn't. You have Denzel Washington, Samuel Jackson. A whole host of them. One can't name a single Asian-American whose name you can take to the bank and get a project financed. We are making headways. I'm not a pessimist. We have made tremendous headways from the time I started in this business in 1957. Asian faces are part of the ensemble in many TV shows playing not roles that are specifically Asian, but playing doctors and detectives. Advances have been made, but we have still not caught up with the African-American achievements."

Recently, it was announced that Warner Bros. has stopped this movie's production due to budget, casting and script trouble. A lot of AKIRA's fans hoped that this project has eventually meets its final end. But it is possible that Warner Bros. are just temporarily stopping the production, since it is not the first time that this project has been shut down and then brought back to life.

Even when this project gets through, let's just hope that it wouldn't turn out like this video below.

Source

AKIRA (manga) - Wikipedia

AKIRA (film) - Wikipedia

George Takei Petitions Against Hollywood's Alleged "Whitewashing" of 'AKIRA' - ComicsAlliance

Casting now underway for Leo DiCaprio produced 'Akira' starring Kristen Stewart - Acting Auditions

Saw: Not a Mere Blood-Spilling Movies

'Saw' is a popular horror franchise which is notorious for its gory scenes. The initially emerged as a short movie directed by James Wan . In 2004, the movie was re-made as a full-length movie, and currently there are 6 sequels which all released subsequently every October. Although the movies did not received rave reviews from critics, it actually gain monetary success at the box office.

Although this franchise is well known for its stomach churning scenes, is gore the only thing that the movie viewers, as in the ones who could actually stomach the disturbing scenes that can be found throughout the movie, really seek from these movies?

I was initially exposed to this franchise when a friend of mine challenged me to watch Saw III, and that was when I was still in the 8th grade. There are no official restrictions applied for minors to watch R-rated movies on movie theaters in Indonesia, which explains why a middle schooler like me at that time was able to watch it. 

After I watched the movie, I was quite disturbed by it. But at the same time, I was really fascinated by it. The extremely gory scenes were edited out, which probably lessen the overall impact of the movie on me. I managed to see the whole scene on the DVD later though, and my opinion is still the same with the first one: it was awesome, in its own way.

The gore scenes, although it really is disturbing, never fail to fascinate me. The special effect team that were employed did a really great job on creating those scenes as realistic as possible. The actors and actresses seems as if they were really in pain, which increase the realistic impact.

Saw's plot revolves around Jigsaw, a covert serial killer who is being represented by a puppet doll in front of his victims. All his victims were caught for a reason. Rather than killing them instantly, he used psychological and physical torture to push the victims beyond their limit. Throughout the movies, the mastermind behind the puppet doll along with his motive for his crime, and his legacy which carried by his apprentices will be revealed slowly in an unpredictable way. There is always a nagging feeling on wanting to know whether this menacing legacy would eventually meets its ends or not, which keeps me interested with Saw movies.

The psychological aspect shown on these movies is what fascinates me the most. From these movies, I was able to see humans in a situation where they were pushed beyond their limit, mentally and physically. Such situation cannot be easily seen in our daily lives. The victims were trapped in a horrifying death device that would eventually kill them, either instantly or in the most excruciating way after certain amount of time passed if the condition(s) that were required to unbound themselves from the devices were not met. Some were determined to survive that they would do literally anything to escape death, even if they have to deceive others. 

'Saw' is not completely a gore fest, although it is one aspect that appeal the watchers the most. Other aspects from these movies more worthy to watch, although you need to have strong mentality to be able to not skip any scenes from the movies.

Saw (franchise) on Wikipedia

Cin(T)a: Pluralism within Indonesian Society

"Cina, an 18 year-old college freshmen, was ready to conquer the world with a strong faith, yet naive, since it had never been tested by failure.

Annisa, is a 24 year-old college senior whose education was held back because of her career in the movie industry. Her fame and beauty left her so lonely that she drew a sad face on her finger as her companion. Until one day, another finger came and she was no longer lonely.

God (Tuhan), is the most unpredictable character. Everybody tries to describe Him. Everybody thought they knew Him. Every art tried to figure Him. But nothing is really like Him...or Her

Cina and Annisa love God
and God loves them both
But Cina and Annisa cannot love each other
because they call God by different names" 

Cin(T)a is an Indonesian indie movie directed by Sammaria Simajuntak. It was released for public viewing in 2009. With our movie industry that is being heavily saturated with cheap porn/horror movies, this movie is definitely a gem.

Technically, there are some flaws within this movie. There are a few confusing scenes and how the story flows in a rather unclear fashion. But what I really like from this movie is because it specifically brought up a topic that no other movie director has done: pluralism within Indonesian society.

Indonesia, located in Southeast Asia, is an archipelago country populated with more than 200 million people.Within those 200 million, 80% of held Islam as their religious belief. The rest of the population is either Christian, Catholic, Buddha, Hindu or Confucianism.

Religion is always a big part in our life. We studied it during 12-year compulsory education, and we also have to state our religion in our identification card. It was stated in our philosophical foundation, Pancasila, to hold belief in one and only God.

Other than religion, we are grouped into ethnical group too. There are foreign descent citizens, which mostly consist of Chinese descent people, and local born citizen. Local born citizen are divided into smaller ethnic group, such as Javanese, Bataknese, Ambonese, etc.

At most of the time, there are no conflicts or whatsoever within our society. We all live within the harmony, right next to others who belongs to different ethnic or religious group. But still, some people thought that it was necessary to bring up those differences and creates conflict based on it.

Both religious and ethnic war is something that we are familiar with, since it happens quite frequently. In 2000, several churches were bombed during Christmas eve. In 1999, a war between Moslems and Christians occurred in Ambon, and currently there is a conflict between ethnic groups in Ambon. These cases were the ones that are well known, but there were minor conflicts between groups too.

This movie shows how we live within all these religious and ethnic differences. There is consistent conflict between groups. These differences affects individuals that belong to those certain groups. It is not unusual that those differences created a rift that was large enough to separate individuals from another, especially between couples. The love that was being shared between them was not strong enough to support their relationship, and forced them to separate.

As we living our lives, we became completely used with the conflicts. As the result, we don't really make any effort to do something. We despise it, criticize it, yet we did nothing to bring changes to our society. It was commonly viewed as a endless cycle; as long as differences exist, then conflict will exist alongside with it.

This brought me to a question that always puzzled me: is it possible for us to cast aside our differences, and live in peace with others?

I would like to believe that we could. We were too immersed with our group that we stop being tolerant with those who belonged to other groups. We were too proud, because we were taught that our religion or ethnicity is way more superior than others. We were being selfish, and we no longer possess enough empathy for others. It's easier said than done, but it would be great if we just think about other people for a while, and stop being too selfish.

I believe that if we pass enough awareness regarding our differences, people will eventually understand that it is okay to be different. Just because we have different opinions regarding God and have different skin color, we can live without causing any conflict. Some people just couldn't grasp the concept of coexistence, but probably if we give them enough time, they will soften up.

It is definitely a long, difficult road to achieve complete coexistence within our society. But if we are being stubborn enough to raise awareness, and refuse to give up, it is not possible to bring changes in order to create a better future for our society.

"Why do God created us differently, if God only wants to be worshipped in one way?" "That's why God created love, so all the differences could be united." 

Source

Cin(T)a official site

Pancasila

Indonesia Country Profile

Blackface in South Korea's Television

As a casual Korean pop music fan, an issue has recently caught my attention.

A few weeks ago, the international Korean pop fandom were shocked by a skit performed on South Korea's very own Saturday Night Live.

(starts at 0:44)

In the video above, three young women were parodying Dreamgirls while lip-syncing to the theme song of the movie. Well, that doesn't sound very hurtful isn't it?

But what enrages the international fandom is the fact that these three women wore dark make ups. One of the woman even donned dreadlock hairdo although none of the Dreamgirl members donned it. In our eyes, it screams none other than blackface.

This is not the first blackface incident in South Korea's mainstream media. On August 2011, a famous entertainer Boom was just recently discharged from two-years mandatory military service. On his first major appearance after two-years absence, he dressed up as Stevie Wonder.

There are several blackface performance done by other entertainers too.

Shindong from idol group Super Junior, apparently as Oprah Winfrey

BEAST's member Lee Kikwang with dark make up and afro wig

I believe that this is a result from ignorance. They thought that it was funny because they did not understand how offensive blackface is. They didn't know that it was offensive because of its origin and its racist connotation which came from the past. Since there are no knowledge of it, they saw it as a form of entertainment instead.

Another thing is, although this looks like a very fine example of prejudice because they were portraying a specific racial group based on their stereotype, some comments on articles about these incidents said that they were doing this as a homage to the black culture. As other people often say, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

Some international fans who were aware of this issue is currently trying to raise awareness on it.  A petition were made in order to address the problematic skit.

Hopefully, the SNL blackface incident would be the last one being showed by South Korea's television.

Source
seems like blackface is still funny in Korea
Korean Entertainer Wears Blackface for TV Special