adiva_calandia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adiva_calandia) wrote2013-05-19 09:47 pm
adiva_calandia) wrote2013-05-19 09:47 pm
Entry tags:
On Dark Knight and Into Darkness. Darky dark darko.
Two caveats before I start:
1. I have not seen Star Trek and do not intend to any time soon; I have read a number of reviews, both positive and negative, and synopses that treat on the issue I am about to discuss.
2. I am putting this behind a cut partly because of length and partly because I'm sure some people are tired of debating the casting thing. I am also cutting because the casting thing is technically a spoile,r because the studio and Abrams went to great lengths to make the casting thing a spoiler. I am extremely unhappy about the fact that I feel obligated to spoiler cut this, because it should never have been a spoiler. For a more eloquent explanation of my feelings, check out this post. I shouldn't even have to say it, but SPOILER: IT'S ABOUT THE SPOILER.
So this is me boycotting Star Trek: Into Darkness -- explicitly because of the casting, with a side order of mixed reviews on the movie as a whole. I know people who found it really enjoyable, and it sounds like there are elements that I would like (IE, John Cho, forever), but.
My thoughts on the whitewashing have gotten -- well, not exactly more complicated. Here's what happened:
Roommate Zoidberg came home yesterday and related a conversation he had with someone at rehearsal that went basically like this:
Zoidberg: It's really problematic the way they cast Khan with a white guy and a lot of people are mad about it.
Guy He Was Talking To: You know, nobody got up in arms about Tom Hardy playing Bane.
Which really did give me pause. I think Zoidberg and I had similar reactions: pausing for a second, blinking, and then saying "Well, that doesn't make what Abrams did better. It makes The Dark Knight Rises worse." Zoidberg added that he didn't mind, because he didn't much like TDKR anyway. I did enjoy TDKR, but thinking of it in this light does make me like the movie a lot less.
Bane is supposed to be from Santa Prisca, a Caribbean island colonized from the Spanish, and in a lot of the non-comics media he's portrayed with a Latin American accent. Hardy's Bane has . . . some kind of accent, but not one I would readily identify as Latin American (although EW reported that Hardy listed Bane's Caribbean heritage in his influences for developing the voice); the location of the Pit is really obnoxiously vague but I've always read it as being somewhere in Central Asia, implying that Bane should be of Asian or Middle Eastern descent; and Tom Hardy is as white a Brit as they come.
There are layers, here. Latino can still mean white -- Ricardo Montalban, appropriately, is an example of a Latino actor who people have mistaken for white (although, okay, the only people I've seen saying Montalban was white are people trying to claim that Khan was white, when in reality Montalban faced a fuckton of prejudice and opposition in his own time because he was Latino, and also fucking watch "Space Seed," he's not white) -- but Tom Hardy isn't a white Latino, he's a white Brit. In Knightfall, the Batman comics arc that TDKR draws most of its plot from, there's practically no emphasis on Bane's heritage aside from his luchador-inspired outfit, and the way he's drawn sure looks white. And maybe it'd be problematic for Batman to beat up and kill a Hispanic villain, right?
But Bane, like Khan, isn't just a thug. The central part of his character is not just that he's stronger than Batman, he's smarter than Batman: he's one of the few characters who deduces Batman's identity as Bruce Wayne. And Nolan's Bane is particularly fascinating and complex because he's driven by his love for Talia -- much the way Khan is driven by his loyalty to his fellow supermen, his family. Other people have talked much more eloquently than I can about what it means for Khan to be a non-white ubermensch, but what it comes down to is the recognition that intelligence, cunning, strength of body and strength of will are not exclusively white traits. We all love antiheroes, and Khan is one of the best antiheroes out there, and he is decidedly not white. By casting a white actor -- apart from accidentally rehearsing a history of appropriation where white Brits and Americans take over things that belonged to people of color, WHOOPS LOL -- Abrams created the implication that only white people can be cunning and strong and brilliant and interesting.
(Tangential point: ST:ID is still doing better at diversity than TDKR by a long ways, because of the presence of Sulu and Uhura being BAMFs. The only truly significant non-white characters in Nolan's Batman trilogy I can think of are Lucius Fox and Mayor Garcia; other than that you get Ken Watanabe's fake Ra's al Ghul, Commissioner Loeb, Lau, and . . . well, Surrillo, I guess. Whomp-whoooooomp.)
So what conclusion can I draw from all this? Nothing about Star Trek that I didn't already know. Abrams fucked up, majorly, and the studio compounded that fuck-up by doubling down for months and claiming that Cumberbatch wasn't Khan. This isn't really news at this point.
But I am a hell of a lot more frustrated with Nolan now than I was before, and his persistent problem with diversity in his casts is becoming more and more clear to me the more I thinkg about it. Perhaps the real conclusion to draw here is that this shit is deeply ingrained in Hollywood. Abrams is just the most recent and most egregious example.
And boy howdy do I want to see him explain this fuckery in some interviews.
1. I have not seen Star Trek and do not intend to any time soon; I have read a number of reviews, both positive and negative, and synopses that treat on the issue I am about to discuss.
2. I am putting this behind a cut partly because of length and partly because I'm sure some people are tired of debating the casting thing. I am also cutting because the casting thing is technically a spoile,r because the studio and Abrams went to great lengths to make the casting thing a spoiler. I am extremely unhappy about the fact that I feel obligated to spoiler cut this, because it should never have been a spoiler. For a more eloquent explanation of my feelings, check out this post. I shouldn't even have to say it, but SPOILER: IT'S ABOUT THE SPOILER.
So this is me boycotting Star Trek: Into Darkness -- explicitly because of the casting, with a side order of mixed reviews on the movie as a whole. I know people who found it really enjoyable, and it sounds like there are elements that I would like (IE, John Cho, forever), but.
My thoughts on the whitewashing have gotten -- well, not exactly more complicated. Here's what happened:
Roommate Zoidberg came home yesterday and related a conversation he had with someone at rehearsal that went basically like this:
Zoidberg: It's really problematic the way they cast Khan with a white guy and a lot of people are mad about it.
Guy He Was Talking To: You know, nobody got up in arms about Tom Hardy playing Bane.
Which really did give me pause. I think Zoidberg and I had similar reactions: pausing for a second, blinking, and then saying "Well, that doesn't make what Abrams did better. It makes The Dark Knight Rises worse." Zoidberg added that he didn't mind, because he didn't much like TDKR anyway. I did enjoy TDKR, but thinking of it in this light does make me like the movie a lot less.
Bane is supposed to be from Santa Prisca, a Caribbean island colonized from the Spanish, and in a lot of the non-comics media he's portrayed with a Latin American accent. Hardy's Bane has . . . some kind of accent, but not one I would readily identify as Latin American (although EW reported that Hardy listed Bane's Caribbean heritage in his influences for developing the voice); the location of the Pit is really obnoxiously vague but I've always read it as being somewhere in Central Asia, implying that Bane should be of Asian or Middle Eastern descent; and Tom Hardy is as white a Brit as they come.
There are layers, here. Latino can still mean white -- Ricardo Montalban, appropriately, is an example of a Latino actor who people have mistaken for white (although, okay, the only people I've seen saying Montalban was white are people trying to claim that Khan was white, when in reality Montalban faced a fuckton of prejudice and opposition in his own time because he was Latino, and also fucking watch "Space Seed," he's not white) -- but Tom Hardy isn't a white Latino, he's a white Brit. In Knightfall, the Batman comics arc that TDKR draws most of its plot from, there's practically no emphasis on Bane's heritage aside from his luchador-inspired outfit, and the way he's drawn sure looks white. And maybe it'd be problematic for Batman to beat up and kill a Hispanic villain, right?
But Bane, like Khan, isn't just a thug. The central part of his character is not just that he's stronger than Batman, he's smarter than Batman: he's one of the few characters who deduces Batman's identity as Bruce Wayne. And Nolan's Bane is particularly fascinating and complex because he's driven by his love for Talia -- much the way Khan is driven by his loyalty to his fellow supermen, his family. Other people have talked much more eloquently than I can about what it means for Khan to be a non-white ubermensch, but what it comes down to is the recognition that intelligence, cunning, strength of body and strength of will are not exclusively white traits. We all love antiheroes, and Khan is one of the best antiheroes out there, and he is decidedly not white. By casting a white actor -- apart from accidentally rehearsing a history of appropriation where white Brits and Americans take over things that belonged to people of color, WHOOPS LOL -- Abrams created the implication that only white people can be cunning and strong and brilliant and interesting.
(Tangential point: ST:ID is still doing better at diversity than TDKR by a long ways, because of the presence of Sulu and Uhura being BAMFs. The only truly significant non-white characters in Nolan's Batman trilogy I can think of are Lucius Fox and Mayor Garcia; other than that you get Ken Watanabe's fake Ra's al Ghul, Commissioner Loeb, Lau, and . . . well, Surrillo, I guess. Whomp-whoooooomp.)
So what conclusion can I draw from all this? Nothing about Star Trek that I didn't already know. Abrams fucked up, majorly, and the studio compounded that fuck-up by doubling down for months and claiming that Cumberbatch wasn't Khan. This isn't really news at this point.
But I am a hell of a lot more frustrated with Nolan now than I was before, and his persistent problem with diversity in his casts is becoming more and more clear to me the more I thinkg about it. Perhaps the real conclusion to draw here is that this shit is deeply ingrained in Hollywood. Abrams is just the most recent and most egregious example.
And boy howdy do I want to see him explain this fuckery in some interviews.
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"What?? They were ours?!?"
Look, ATLA, I feel bad for all you guys. I really do! And I am not exactly the Pan-Latin spokeswoman. But ... remember that girl from Tumblr I mentioned, who was super angry but it was clearly her expressing deeply held feelings and frustrations?
I will say that the emotional angle of appropriation/whitewashing never hits me so hard as when it's in my general ethnicity. To speak more directly to your points:
1) I agree with this post.
2) I support your boycott and join you in it!
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(and to the guy setting no one got up in arms- he clearly doesn't live in my corner of the internet.
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It is a thing. Also, Nolan's Ra's didn't get shirtless nearly enough.
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Which doesn't really explain why the League seems to consist entirely of Asian men, one British dude with a French name, and whatever Bane is. The League of Shadows doesn't really make a load of sense.
Comic book Ra's is a 1,300 year old survivor of a tribe of desert nomads of mixed Arabic and Asian ancestry. Talia's mother was apparently of the same ancestry, but Ra's didn't meet her till Woodstock. Really. (This is all courtesy of Denny O'Neil's version of their origins. And as Denny created them, he should know.)
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It's one of the reasons my Tumblr dashboard was so furious with Batman Inc. That, and he was eleven.
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Just, you know, over here pretty much anything related to TDKR got overwritten with reactions to Aurora, so that may have been an influencing factor in the discussion too.
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Yeah, I'm just avoiding the new Trek movie, because the reactions I've heard are basically fun but hugely problematic. Which is a good enough reason for me to not spend my money on it.
Icon is for Abrams and Nolan.
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Not that I should put them on, mind you.
I am also skipping NuTrek 2, but the racefail is just the icing on my "JJ has ruined Star Trek" cake. Most of which is made of "that is not Kirk" flour and "Trek is not supposed to be an action film" eggs.
Have you seen any indication that anyone in the MSM has picked up on the racefail as a problem? It seems like the "don't tell anyone it's Khan" strategy has had the effect of making sure no critics can call Abrams and Paramount to the table for the casting.
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It's hard to tell, MSM-wise. Like, is io9 mainstream? They're part of the Gawker behemoth, so . . . kind of? I'm thinking that the MSM has probably been respecting or subject to the spoiler-zone, and I'm hoping that post-opening weekend there will be more and more interesting reactions.
And now I have a bunch of Thoughts about names and Bane and Khan and Ra's and I am probably too not awake to articulate them at the moment, but I will try to articulate them sometime soon!
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Basically: the history of the colonization of the Caribbean is overwhelmingly related to not just exploitation for capitalist purposes benefiting primarily the Global North, but to slavery (and in some cases, indentured servitude -- it was a Thing for many sugar plantation owners to bring out Chinese workers in the 18th and 19th centuries, thinking they'd be more tractable than slaves of African descent). Given the origin of this narrative -- DC Comics, the United States of America -- the big narrative staring us in the face is the one that journalists, purveyors of fictions of all kinds, historians, and politicians from the United States have been worried about since before the first slave rebellion in Haiti: miscegenation. The Caribbean, as a region, is multiracial and multicultural in fact and in code. The United States has traditionally had a problem with that.
The casting choice for Bane in the Nolanverse positions Bane as the colonizer, rather than the colonized. I haven't seen the movie or read the comics, so I can't talk about what effect that might have on the narrative. But it seems to me that could cut (at least) two ways: on the one hand, there should be more and better roles for people of color in Hollywood and it's actively hurtful and harmful to take characters originally written as other than white and cast a white actor. On the other hand: suddenly, in this good (Batman) versus bad (Bane) narrative, it's no longer a referendum on whether the Global South colonized get to take direct action against the Global North colonizer. What I do know for sure is that it's not my call to make that call, for plenty of reasons.
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