Standard tropes for different folks – a lesson in TV writing that in its way makes way too much sense:
by Kathryn VanArendonk
Spoilers ahead for season six, episode four of Girls.
Month: March 2017
More Aliens than Asians on Screen: White-Washing Ghost in the Shell
by Kathryn Graham
This month, Ghost in the Shell will be released with Scarlett Johansson, a white actress, cast as Japanese character: Major Motoko Kusanagi. This is a process known as ‘white-washing’: Hollywood’s long-standing racist practice of casting white actors as characters of color.
In the 1930’s, we had ‘yellowface’: ‘Predictably, Asian Americans actors would spend most of the war years cast as sinister Japanese, often in films now viewed with some embarrassment. There were still “good Asian” roles being written–but they were restricted to Caucasian actors while Asian Americans played the villains.’
In 2017, we have white-washing, which is not the same thing, but still casts white people in roles that should have been Asian roles. The result: there are almost no roles for Asians on screen even in stories where the characters in the source material were Asian.
Want to Write About TV? Gig Available
flexjobs has an opening for “an opinionated TV writer,” which sounds to us like a golden opportunity for many (well, at least one) of TVWriter™’s frequent visitors.
Here’s the posting:
Cartoon: ‘Carpe Diem’
Grant Snider schools us on leading the creative life:
TVWriter™ loves Grant Snider and his Incidental Comics site. And we’re absolutely certain you will too!
Larry Brody’s Poetry: ‘The Actor’s Wife’
by Larry Brody
NOTE FROM LB:
No Navajo Dog today, just good old-fashioned showbiz, circa 1990. The following soliloquy came from my head, but it’s made up of bits and pieces from all too many women I knew back in the day.