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bedlamsbard(I posted this earlier this evening on Tumblr, but I thought I'd go ahead and repost it here as well.)
Okay, this is the thing about Pacific Rim for me. I am a Japanese-American woman. I’m half-Japanese — my mother is Japanese, my father is Caucasian, but visually I read as some kind of Asian. (Sometimes people are very confused because, middle name aside, both my first name and my surname are European; my surname is actually an English noun.) Now, I don’t want to get into the fairly common assumption that all East Asians look alike (hint: we don’t) or the equally common assumption that if you come from some ethnic background that isn’t white European, you should be completely fluent in whatever language that happens to be (I’m about an eighth Swedish, but no one demands to know why I can’t speak Swedish: people do demand to know why I don’t speak Japanese, what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with my parents, why have I failed to be a proper ethnic minority) or, ha, even other Asian languages (no, dude, I can’t read those Chinese characters for you).
Okay, though. Here’s the thing about Pacific Rim. I’m a 23-year-old Japanese-American woman. I watch, if not a lot, a fair number of movies a year. I can’t think of a single big name movie (disclaimer: that I have seen, and there are a lot of movies that I haven’t seen) where the lead female Japanese character is actually played by a Japanese actress. Not even Memoirs of a Geisha, which is actually set in Japan. And especially not a movie that’s set in the present day or the near-future.
Normally that’s not a big deal. I honestly never thought about it growing up. I never thought about seeing characters who looked like me on TV or in the movies; I never really thought about seeing characters who looked like me, who had a similar cultural background to me, in books. Last year was the first time in my life that I read a book that had a mixed-race Japanese/Caucasian female main character in it (Unspoken, by Sarah Rees Brennan). IN MY LIFE. Now, I’ve never sat down and seriously searched out books with Japanese female characters in them. The only one I can think of was one of the Dear America books that was set during WWII, in the internment camps. (And boy, do I have stories about assumptions made about that, but that’s neither here nor there; let’s just put that aside by pointing out that you probably shouldn’t assume that just because someone is Japanese-American and from the West Coast, they had relatives in the internment camps.)
Pacific Rim is the only big-name movie I have ever seen that has actually cast a Japanese woman as a Japanese woman.
Now, I don’t want to get into arguments about acting ability or dance skills or whatever (which I think was the reason that non-Japanese actresses were cast in Memoirs of a Geisha — which I should probably add I haven’t seen because it’s not something I’m interested in), but this was the first time in my life that I have gone to a movie theatre, that I’ve sat down, that I’ve looked at the screen, and I’ve seen someone who not only looks like me, but has some of the same verbal and physical tics that I and my mother have. During the flashback scene in Tokyo I sat there and besides homg giant monsters what help, what was going through my mind was, she looks like I did when I was that age.
I’ve never had that before.
Look, I get unreasonably excited whenever there’s an Asian woman on my TV screen — whether that’s Grace Park in Battlestar Galactica, Hettienne Park on Hannibal, or Lucy Liu in Elementary, but, the only time that’s been a Japanese-American woman was Aya Sumika on Numb3rs. (And I’m not going to watch Hawaii 5-0 just because they’ve apparently cast every Asian actor in Hollywood. Sorry, H50.) Look, I don’t know the numbers of Japanese or Japanese-descent actresses in Hollywood or any other nation’s film industry, so I don’t know if it’s a case of “there aren’t any." (I kind of doubt it, though.) Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. All I know is that for the first time in my life I walked into a theatre and the lead actress was someone who looked like me. And that’s kind of a big deal.
And that’s not getting into the fact that Mako wasn’t just eye candy or a love interest or incidental to the actual events of the story. She wasn’t! She was the heroine! She was someone who looked like me and she was the heroine. And — this is kind of a big deal too — she was a Japanese woman, in a modern/near-future setting, with a Japanese name. Aya Sumika’s character on Numb3rs is named Liz Warner. Grace Park’s character on BSG is Sharon Valerii or Sharon Agathon (BSG gets a pass for being set in another galaxy, I guess, and because they have a classics thing going with the naming that I’m really into because I’m a classicist), Lucy Liu’s character on Elementary is (granted, by narrative necessity) called Joan Watson, Hettienne Park’s character on Hannibal is Beverly Katz. And okay, like I said above, middle name aside I have a European name. I get it. I don’t think that a character is any less Asian (or whatever ethnicity) because they don’t have an Asian name. But given that TV and movie characters very seldom actually have names that actually say, hello! I am of whatever ethnicity! (I presume, to be fair, because they are mostly written to be baseline white and that shakes out in casting), I think it was fucking ballsy to actually have a Japanese character and call her Mako Mori. Even if she’s from Japan.
Anyway. I didn’t expect this to get so long. But that’s one reason why, even if I’m sort of dubious about a couple of other decisions Guillermo Del Toro and Co. made in the movie, Pacific Rim has me. Because for the first time in my life I went to a movie theatre and the heroine was a woman who looked like me.
(Apparently The Wolverine also has Japanese actresses playing Japanese characters, so go summer 2013 line-up, I guess.)
Okay, this is the thing about Pacific Rim for me. I am a Japanese-American woman. I’m half-Japanese — my mother is Japanese, my father is Caucasian, but visually I read as some kind of Asian. (Sometimes people are very confused because, middle name aside, both my first name and my surname are European; my surname is actually an English noun.) Now, I don’t want to get into the fairly common assumption that all East Asians look alike (hint: we don’t) or the equally common assumption that if you come from some ethnic background that isn’t white European, you should be completely fluent in whatever language that happens to be (I’m about an eighth Swedish, but no one demands to know why I can’t speak Swedish: people do demand to know why I don’t speak Japanese, what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with my parents, why have I failed to be a proper ethnic minority) or, ha, even other Asian languages (no, dude, I can’t read those Chinese characters for you).
Okay, though. Here’s the thing about Pacific Rim. I’m a 23-year-old Japanese-American woman. I watch, if not a lot, a fair number of movies a year. I can’t think of a single big name movie (disclaimer: that I have seen, and there are a lot of movies that I haven’t seen) where the lead female Japanese character is actually played by a Japanese actress. Not even Memoirs of a Geisha, which is actually set in Japan. And especially not a movie that’s set in the present day or the near-future.
Normally that’s not a big deal. I honestly never thought about it growing up. I never thought about seeing characters who looked like me on TV or in the movies; I never really thought about seeing characters who looked like me, who had a similar cultural background to me, in books. Last year was the first time in my life that I read a book that had a mixed-race Japanese/Caucasian female main character in it (Unspoken, by Sarah Rees Brennan). IN MY LIFE. Now, I’ve never sat down and seriously searched out books with Japanese female characters in them. The only one I can think of was one of the Dear America books that was set during WWII, in the internment camps. (And boy, do I have stories about assumptions made about that, but that’s neither here nor there; let’s just put that aside by pointing out that you probably shouldn’t assume that just because someone is Japanese-American and from the West Coast, they had relatives in the internment camps.)
Pacific Rim is the only big-name movie I have ever seen that has actually cast a Japanese woman as a Japanese woman.
Now, I don’t want to get into arguments about acting ability or dance skills or whatever (which I think was the reason that non-Japanese actresses were cast in Memoirs of a Geisha — which I should probably add I haven’t seen because it’s not something I’m interested in), but this was the first time in my life that I have gone to a movie theatre, that I’ve sat down, that I’ve looked at the screen, and I’ve seen someone who not only looks like me, but has some of the same verbal and physical tics that I and my mother have. During the flashback scene in Tokyo I sat there and besides homg giant monsters what help, what was going through my mind was, she looks like I did when I was that age.
I’ve never had that before.
Look, I get unreasonably excited whenever there’s an Asian woman on my TV screen — whether that’s Grace Park in Battlestar Galactica, Hettienne Park on Hannibal, or Lucy Liu in Elementary, but, the only time that’s been a Japanese-American woman was Aya Sumika on Numb3rs. (And I’m not going to watch Hawaii 5-0 just because they’ve apparently cast every Asian actor in Hollywood. Sorry, H50.) Look, I don’t know the numbers of Japanese or Japanese-descent actresses in Hollywood or any other nation’s film industry, so I don’t know if it’s a case of “there aren’t any." (I kind of doubt it, though.) Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. All I know is that for the first time in my life I walked into a theatre and the lead actress was someone who looked like me. And that’s kind of a big deal.
And that’s not getting into the fact that Mako wasn’t just eye candy or a love interest or incidental to the actual events of the story. She wasn’t! She was the heroine! She was someone who looked like me and she was the heroine. And — this is kind of a big deal too — she was a Japanese woman, in a modern/near-future setting, with a Japanese name. Aya Sumika’s character on Numb3rs is named Liz Warner. Grace Park’s character on BSG is Sharon Valerii or Sharon Agathon (BSG gets a pass for being set in another galaxy, I guess, and because they have a classics thing going with the naming that I’m really into because I’m a classicist), Lucy Liu’s character on Elementary is (granted, by narrative necessity) called Joan Watson, Hettienne Park’s character on Hannibal is Beverly Katz. And okay, like I said above, middle name aside I have a European name. I get it. I don’t think that a character is any less Asian (or whatever ethnicity) because they don’t have an Asian name. But given that TV and movie characters very seldom actually have names that actually say, hello! I am of whatever ethnicity! (I presume, to be fair, because they are mostly written to be baseline white and that shakes out in casting), I think it was fucking ballsy to actually have a Japanese character and call her Mako Mori. Even if she’s from Japan.
Anyway. I didn’t expect this to get so long. But that’s one reason why, even if I’m sort of dubious about a couple of other decisions Guillermo Del Toro and Co. made in the movie, Pacific Rim has me. Because for the first time in my life I went to a movie theatre and the heroine was a woman who looked like me.
(Apparently The Wolverine also has Japanese actresses playing Japanese characters, so go summer 2013 line-up, I guess.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 07:58 am (UTC)Hence the fact that none of the actors in the movie? were actually Japanese - i think there was problems with actually screening the show IN Japan.
And I agree with you - Mako Mori was the FIRST hollywood film I've seen with an actual Japanese actress, as a Japanese character, not made fun of for her accent, not a stereotype of a Japanese caricature, but a hero - THE hero of the movie, with a backstory and NOT a fridged character for White Man Pain, or anything.
I just.
Love her.
She was written as Japanese, IS japanese, and her foster father is Idris Elba. I just.
This MOVIE.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-31 04:05 pm (UTC)It's really shocking to realize that there are so few movies with actual Japanese actresses playing Japanese women in them. Even movies set in Japan seldom seem to have the main actress be Japanese.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-31 04:07 pm (UTC)nods a lot of movies - if they weren't made IN Japan BY Japanese directors, wouldn't use Japanese actors for the jpanaese characters.
Western movies esp tend to just... think that all East Asians (or even just all Asians in general) are interchangable and throw any old character in willy-nilly, like casting Lucy Liu as the Japanese Asassin in Kill Bill.
facepalm
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-31 06:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-01 02:02 am (UTC)there are probably PLENTY.
But they get cast as Koreans - or just 'Non Asian' which is OKAY I MEAN IT"S OKAY but it's also NOT okay how they just never seem to cast Chinese as Chinese or Japanese as Japanese or Korean as Korean.
(And then just cast Asian characters with Random Generic Asian names of No Particular Descent because no one cares anyway RIGHT?)