ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
July 18, 2016
Asian actors too busy to fret over Hollywood ‘whitewashing’
By Yuri Kageyama
The Associated Press
OKYO — The film world of Asia,
known for producing Akira Kuro-
sawa, Satyajit Ray, Brillante
Mendoza, and other greats, is too busy
making movies of its own to fret much
about the debate slamming Hollywood —
the casting of white people in roles written
for Asians.
While hurt, irritated, or dumb-founded
perhaps about the so-called “white-
washing” syndrome, performers in Tokyo
aren’t expressing the level of outrage of
Margaret Cho, George Takei, or other
Americans, The Associated Press has
found.
Many shrugged off the phenomenon as
inevitable, given commercial marketa-
bility needs, noting Asian films also cast
well-known actors over and over.
Casting white people in non-white roles
is as painfully old as Charlie Chan and Fu
Manchu in American entertainment. That
kind of monolithic casting continues —
recently with the tapping of Tilda Swinton
as a character that was originally Tibetan
in the new Marvel Dr. Strange movie.
It’s also a sensitive topic. South Korean
actor Lee Byung-hun declined to be inter-
viewed through his representative, who
noted Lee was set to be in a Hollywood
film.
Kaori Momoi, who appeared in Memoirs
of a Geisha as well as Russian filmmaker
Aleksandr Sokurov’s The Sun, suggested
acting was ultimately about individual
talent, not skin color or nationality.
Momoi praised the devotion, skill, and
professionalism of Scarlett Johansson,
whose starring in Ghost in the Shell, based
on a Japanese manga, has stirred an
uproar as a prime example of “white-
washing.” Momoi played the mother of
Johansson’s character.
“I felt blessed to have worked with her,”
she said, urging actors to be selective of the
directors they choose to work with. “And so
what’s fantastic is fantastic. What fails
just fails.”
Like other actors with experience in
Asia, Momoi saw Hollywood more as an
opportunity. She was already a superstar
in Japan when she started acting in
movies abroad about a decade ago. What
she enjoyed was the challenging novelty of
it all, “getting away from being Kaori
Momoi,” as she described it.
“Compared to Japan, there is so much
potential and recognition in the U.S. for
independent films,” said Momoi in a
telephone interview from Los Angeles.
She got to know film people at
international festivals, including Berlin,
which showed Fukushima, Mon Amour, a
AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File
Yoo Hyo-lim/Yonhap via AP
T
film she was in. She has become a director
herself, having two films to her credit,
including Hee, being released later this
year, in which she also gives a harrowing
rendition of an aging prostitute.
Claudia Kim, known in her native South
Korea as Soo Hyun, noted she has been
lucky to play independent Asian women in
most movies, such as Dr. Helen Cho in
Avengers: Age of Ultron, the 2015 movie
based on Marvel comics.
But she was baffled when she learned a
white actress was picked for the Asian role
in a Hollywood movie she had auditioned
for. She declined to identify that film.
“It is definitely not a pleasant experi-
ence,” she told The AP, calling the choice
“ridiculous.”
Vijay Varma, an India actor who starred
in Monsoon Shootout, a crime story with
multiple endings that was shown at the
Cannes Film Festival, pointed out
insularity was prevalent in Bollywood as
well.
Families dominate the business, al-
though he was an exception and came from
a family unrelated to movies. Bollywood
counts on mass appeal, casting the
“familiar,” just like Hollywood, he added.
When an effort that defies boundaries
turns out to be a great movie, like Life of Pi,
which starred an Indian actor, combined
live action with computer graphics, and
had a Taiwan-born director, Ang Lee, “it
feels really good,” Varma said.
While some Japanese may wonder why
Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi is the heroine
in Memoirs of a Geisha, they also feel no
qualms routinely casting Japanese to play
Chinese and other non-Japanese Asian
roles, feigning embarrassingly phony
accents and mannerisms.
Landing roles in Asian movies is
relatively off-limits for Americans, usually
relegated to blatantly “foreign” roles. Koji
Fukada’s Sayonara starred Bryerly Long,
an American, as a dying woman in Japan,
but the film also starred a humanoid robot
RACE AND ROLES. South Korean actress
Claudia Kim (top photo) poses during an interview in
Seoul, South Korea. The film world of Asia is too busy
making movies of its own to fret much about the
debate slamming Hollywood — the casting of white
people in roles written for Asians. Kim, known in her
native South Korea as Soo Hyun, noted she has been
lucky to play independent Asian women in most mov-
ies, such as Dr. Helen Cho in Avengers: Age of Ultron,
the 2015 movie based on Marvel comics. In the bot-
tom photo, actress Gong Li arrives on the red carpet
for the screening of the film Café Society and the
opening ceremony at the 69th international film festi-
val in Cannes, southern France. Li, the star of Chinese
auteur Zhang Yimou’s films, such as Raise the Red
Lantern, characterized the dilemma as a “problem
of marketability.”
as her loyal companion.
Gong Li, the star of Chinese auteur
Zhang Yimou’s films, such as Raise the Red
Lantern, characterized the dilemma as a
“problem of marketability.”
“Asian culture has not meshed well with
U.S. film culture. It’s not integrated. There
are a lot of American A-listers who are
making movies in China right now, who
have not done well. So it’s the same
whether you cast a famous actor or not
not-so-famous one. Chinese people don’t
know who they are,” she said as she
walked the red carpet recently at Cannes.
Examples abound. Hollywood Adven-
tures had an American setting and
Chinese stars but was doomed by the stiff
translation of English dialogue. Nicolas
Cage and Hayden Christensen made the
action fantasy Outcast for the Chinese
market, where it flopped. Jackie Chan’s
Dragon Blade, co-starring Adrien Brody
and John Cusack, was a hit in China, but
its U.S. showing failed to replicate the
martial arts superstar’s past Hollywood
successes.
Matt Damon and director Zhang Yimou
are hoping for a better reception in their
upcoming science-fiction thriller The
Great Wall.
And many performers in both places
hope for a more multicultural future.
Respecting diversity in casting could
lead not only to better films, but also a
better world, said Monisha Shiva, an
Indian-American actress who has worked
in both India and the U.S., and found the
former to be more empowering.
“I was the center. I was the story,” she
said in a telephone interview from New
York.
“The magic of acting is to give people
visions and imagination, and imagine a
different world. You want that. It’s
important to use actors of color,” said
Shiva. “Art is to start to make new visions.
And it’s a way to heal.”
Associated Press writers Angela Chen
in Hong Kong and Youkyung Lee in Seoul,
South Korea, contributed to this report.
Elephant’s plight sparks uproar in Pakistan
CRUEL CONFINEMENT. Elephant Kaavan takes a bath at a zoo
in Islamabad, Pakistan. The plight of Kaavan, a mentally tormented bull
elephant confined to a small pen in the Islamabad Zoo for nearly three
decades, has galvanized a rare animal-rights campaign in Pakistan.
(AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
By Asif Shahzad
The Associated Press
SLAMABAD — The plight of Kaavan, a mentally
tormented bull elephant confined to a small pen in
the Islamabad Zoo for nearly three decades, has
galvanized a rare animal-rights campaign in Pakistan.
Local and international animal-rights organizations
launched the campaign a year ago after reports that
zookeepers were beating the elephant and denying it food.
An online petition has gained more than 400,000
signatures and small protests have been held outside the
zoo. Raza Rabbani, the chairman of Pakistan’s senate,
called on authorities to transfer Kaavan to a sanctuary.
The campaign has also attracted international
attention, with rights groups and celebrities, including
singer Cher, calling for the elephant to be moved to a more
humane facility.
Elephants are gregarious by nature, and males can
become aggressive when they are separated from the
herd. Kaavan, who was brought to the zoo from Sri Lanka
in the mid-1980s, grew even more unruly when the female
elephant he was being kept with died in 2012.
Activists say caretakers have responded to his
I
aggression by chaining his legs, beating him, and
confining him to an enclosure that is far too small.
Sunny Jamil, an activist at the Help Welfare
Organization, a local animal-rights group, says the
mangled ceiling fan in the roof of the enclosure testifies to
its insufficient height. Jamil, who visits the zoo regularly,
says the pen can reach 100º Fahrenheit in the summer,
and that the elephant is given little water to cool down. “It
is cruel,” he said.
Mohammad Jalal, the caretaker for the 36-year-old
elephant, says “I have hardly seen him happy.” Kaavan
swayed back and forth as Jalal spoke — a sign of mental
torment — and at one point hurled a brick at onlookers,
nearly striking an Associated Press cameraman.
Animal-rights groups have called on Pakistan to
relocate Kaavan to an animal sanctuary in Myanmar and
have launched petitions to cover the costs.
But the Capital Development Authority, the local
agency in charge of managing the zoo, has refused,
perhaps fearing it would lose visitors. Instead, it is
working on bringing in another female elephant, said
Sanaullah Aman, an official with the agency. Aman
denied the allegations of abuse and said “every possible
step” was being taken for Kaavan’s wellbeing, without
elaborating.