(Untitled)

[glockgal]

A HISTORY ON YELLOWFACE

Yellow (and brown)-face: A History in Pictures by vejiicakes.
- This is interesting and educational! Film buffs, history nerds and social Americana geeks - ENJOY. I certainly did. Our memories are selective, I understand. And now, here's a great at way to answer the question 'What's the big deal? It's just one movie'.

Yellowface

Comments

[qurinas]

So, I have been following this with interest since you started posting about it. I find that I agree with you on nearly all counts.

However, I have a question (a sincere one)...

In regard to casting of extras, if they wanted to make it look culturally diverse, what is offensive about people wearing clothes that are ethnic in origin?

Or was that not offensive and just the fact that the casting director was (seemingly blissfully) ignorant of names or types of clothing by region?

ETA: I meant to add "historical" in there too along with ethnic in regard to clothing, since the show seems to have clothing that is not modern.

[yeloson]

It's the fact that on one hand, we have them saying that "Race doesn't matter/Avatar isn't asian" for the casting, and then turning around looking specifically for ethnic extras. The inability to properly identify ethnic clothing is just extra lolsprinkles on the sundae of fail.

[qurinas]

Oh, yeah. That is pretty offensive. That is total ass, in fact.

Thanks for pointing that out. :) (I guess I am slow hehe)

[glockgal]

Yes yes! Exactly what yeloson said. I love it when eloquent people explain things jumbled in my own head. XD

[yeloson]

I'd like to hope that hella people start showing up at these casting calls in these shirts.

[glockgal]

It would be pretty awesome, wouldn't it? XD Man, I loved so many of your slogan ideas.

[reishin]

oh, snap, some of your links take me back. I loved Yul Brenner in King and I, and it didn't even register to me that he wasn't Asian till a few years back. Growing up, I don't think I identified as 'Asian' at all. Not until middle school, when we moved to a mostly white neighborhood and people expected me to 'identify' myself and shit. Then, the only go-to Asians on screen were ... the extras from M.A.S.H. -HAH- and the typical Asian nerds who all bowed and loved tall American ladies~~ from the 80s flicks.

That's a terrible thing to do to Asian kids growing up.

*HUGS*

[jedifreac]

When I was little I thought Yul Bryner was an Asian man who got plastic surgery to try to be white (I had heard about this guy named Michael Jackson...)

And so I always pitied poor Yul Bryner--I thought he had some sort of complex It never entered my mind the possibility that maybe they had cast a white person as an asian person. I mean, why would they do THAT?

[glockgal]

I know! I still love Yul Brenner in The King and I, I mean. I know that show is completely awful not just in the yellowface, but really the overall message, but. Yeah. It's childhood nostalgia for me, eheh. Just like Enid Blyton and her scores of 'evil Gollywog' stories. *wince* It's such a strange feeling, innit? Because I relate these things to my childhood - which was a relatively happy childhood - but it kind of hurts to realize why I grew up thinking white was the default, and why it's been so difficult to break out of that mindset.

*MAJOR HUGS*

[vejiicakes]

IT'S HIS ABS. WE WERE BLINDED BY THE ABS T___T

(That and there was like, this look he gave Deborah Kerr after she had to stop dancing from exertion that was just predatory and unnnnf.)

And suddenly I'm reminded that Rita Moreno as Tuptim belongs on that list as well. Which I kinda feel bad about, because the lady couldn't even get away with being her OWN ethnicity without Hollywood interference. (Oh, Moreno is full Puerto Rican! Well, she doesn't look the way we want Puerto Ricans to look, so here, put on this brown makeup. We don't want audiences mixing you up with the virginal Puerto Rican girl character, who's just going to be Anglo Natalie Wood in much lighter brownface to make her interracial romance with the white guy seem that much safer. Ho ho, it's SO funny that we're championing interracial romance THIS way!) And.. here, I LOVED West Side Story! D:

[xinester]

Thanks for these Avatar updates! I always read everything you link even though I don't always comment. D:
I tried explaining this Avatar thing to some of my roommates and ughhh I was so saddened by the fact that they didn't really get it. It sucks that so many people think race in media can be so easily glossed over.

[glockgal]

Ooooh, I totally know you read the stuff - and sometimes there really isn't anything to comment (other than the usual "WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE" ahahah.

It sucks that so many people think race in media can be so easily glossed over.

Incredible, isn't it? IRL, I've found myself picking and choosing whom I want to talk to about the issue. I'm kinda saddened that I've already built up a (perhaps misguided) wariness of who'll understand and who'll be completely indifferent. Sometimes the indifference is worse to bear than the defensiveness, y'know?

[la_fono]

SO MUCH FAIL. "It doesn't mean you're at a disadvantage if you didn't come in a big African thing. But guys, even if you came with a scarf today, put it over your head so you'll look like a Ukrainian villager or whatever."

She. Actually. Said. That?!

*boggle*

[glockgal]

And and and she didn't think there was ANYTHING WRONG with saying it publically!! Mind TOTALLY boggling, YES.

Given all the amazingly horrible stuff being spewed by people involved in this movie, it's given me such a new perspective on the 'liberal' nature of Hollywood. Yeah. So very liberal.