MANAA criticizes the yellowface depiction of Asians in “Cloud Atlas”

Here’s an update to my post of a few weeks ago, about the use of yellowface to have white actors playing Asian characters in “Cloud Atlas.” MANAA, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, adds its voice to the chorus criticizing the big-budget Hollywood sci-fi for its ridiculous and laughable depiction of Asians:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Guy Aoki (818) 241-7817

MANAA ASSERTS OFFENSIVE USE OF YELLOWFACE MAKE-UP AND
EXCLUSION OF ASIAN ACTORS IN THE FILM “CLOUD ATLAS”

LOS ANGELES-The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) is criticizing the new Warner Brothers motion picture “Cloud Atlas”—promoted as artistically groundbreaking because its actors swap racial and sexual identities—as business-as-usual in its exclusion and offensive yellow-faced renditions of Asian people.

A multi-ethnic epic spanning 500 years and around the globe, “it’s an artistically ambitious approach to filmmaking,” according to the organization’s Founding President Guy Aoki.

“Unfortunately, it reflects the same old racial pecking order that the entertainment industry has been practicing for decades.”

“Cloud Atlas,” written and directed by Tom Tykwer (“Run, Lola, Run”) and Lana and Andy Wachowski (“The Matrix” trilogy) and based on the novel by David Mitchell, utilizes an all-star cast that includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, and Hugo Weaving. In order to stress a thematic continuity among the movie’s six different interwoven stories, the filmmakers cast many of the same actors as different characters in each time period.

One of the stories takes place in a totalitarian, mechanized Neo Seoul Korea in the year 2144. An Asian female clone (South Korean actress Doona Bae) is encouraged by another female clone (Chinese movie star Xun Zhou) to break out of her oppressive pre-programmed routine to serve men and become an independent thinker. The segment also includes White actors Sturgess, Weaving, and James D’Arcy as ostensibly Korean characters, using eye prosthetics to make their Caucasian features look more Asian.

“’Cloud Atlas’ prides itself on its ‘multi-racial cast,’” said Aoki, “but that basically means White men and women of color, like La Jolla Playhouse’s ‘The Nightingale,’ which was criticized last Summer for using only two Asian American actresses but allowing five White men to play Chinese characters.

Aoki said, “’Cloud Atlas’ missed a great opportunity. The Korea story’s protagonist is an Asian man–an action hero who defies the odds and holds off armies of attackers. He’s the one who liberates Doona Bae from her repressive life and encourages her to join the resistance against the government. It would have been a great, stereotype-busting role for an Asian American actor to play, as Asian American men aren’t allowed to be dynamic or heroic very often.

“But instead, they cast Jim Sturgess in yellowface,” Aoki continued, referring to the historically frowned-upon practice of using cosmetics, such as eye prosthetics, to make Caucasian actors look Asian.

“In fact, every major male character in the Korea story is played by non-Asian actors in really bad yellowface make-up. When you first see Hugo Weaving as a Korean executioner, there’s this big close-up of him in this totally unconvincing Asian make-up. The Asian Americans at the pre-screening burst out laughing because he looked terrible–like a Vulcan on ‘Star Trek.’ It took us out of the movie. And Jim Sturgess and James D’Arcy didn’t look much better.”

MANAA Vice President Miriam Nakamura-Quan stated, “In the modern age of movie make up, it is disturbing to see poorly done Asian eye prosthetics to make Caucasian men look Asian. The race-changing make-up totally disrupted the flow of the film. The old yellowface movie characters of the past like Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan looked more realistic than the characters in ‘Cloud Atlas.’ Why couldn’t they have cast a handsome Asian American actor of mixed race to play the multiple roles in Neo Seoul and the other time periods? It would have made the movie more believable.”

Added Aoki, “It appears that to turn white and black actors into Asian characters (black actor Keith David was also Asian in the 2144 story), the make-up artists believed they only had to change their eyes, not their facial structure and complexion. In two scenes in other segments of the film, Bae and Zhou are made up to appear Caucasian. The filmmakers, Aoki said, “obviously took more care to make them look convincingly white. The message the movie sends is, it takes a lot of work to get Asians to look Caucasian, but you can easily turn Caucasians into Asians by just changing the shape of their eyes.”

In another story set in the South Pacific in 1849, Maori slaves are played predominantly by blacks, including Afro-British actor David Gyasi. “You have to ask yourself: Would the directors have used blackface on a white actor to play Gyasi’s role?” asked Aoki. “I don’t think so: That would have outraged African American viewers. But badly done yellowface is still OK.

“In any case, this was a lost opportunity to cast real Asian Pacific Islanders. Why weren’t there any real Asian male actors portraying any of the major characters in this supposedly racially diverse film?” Aoki concluded, “It’s a double standard: White actors are allowed to play anything–except black characters–and have the dominant roles; Asian male actors are non-existent. And Pacific Islanders are played by blacks.”

Asked Nakamura-Quan, “If, in the making of this complex movie, the creators of ‘Cloud Atlas’ can make creative leaps in time, place, characters, race and gender, why can’t they also take a creative leap in the casting?”

MANAA, the only organization solely dedicated to advocating balanced, sensitive, and positive depiction and coverage of Asian Americans, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. It led nationwide protests against the movie “Rising Sun” in 1993 and challenged Sarah Silverman’s use of “chinks” in her joke on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” in 2001.

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8 Responses to MANAA criticizes the yellowface depiction of Asians in “Cloud Atlas”

  1. phil says:

    Gil: I would agree that those yellowface depictions are hideous and totally unacceptable. A question though: what do you think of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestler “Tensai”? His realt name is Matt Bloom, and he’s a white Jewish-American guy who plays a Japanese character.

    He doesn’t wear yellowface, but he has a numebr of Japanese-style tattoos, including kanji tattooed on his face and head. He appparently lived and wrestled in Japan for a number of years, but in one of his promos in which he speaks Japanese, his accent sounds pretty bad and you can tell he’s far from fluent in it, and certainly not a native speaker either.

  2. Gil Asakawa says:

    Thanks for the comment — I’m not familiar with Tensai so I’ll check him out. If he’s a genuine Japanophile who lived in Japan and appreciates a lot about Japanese culture, well I know lots of anime fans who do the same. Many time their enthusiasm might be misguided and not culturally authentic or even appropriate but that motivation’s different from Hollywood’s conscious decision to keep casting white actors to play Asian roles. Thanks again!

  3. Janice says:

    It wasn’t only the Asian makeup that threw me off. The stereotypical cherry blossom wallpaper they threw in out of nowhere, how they portrayed the “neo-Seoul”–lots of exoticism and multi-Asian cultures in one scene, and the typical Western gaze on Asian female (bangs, skinny, submissive)… I, being an Asian woman and artist, was very offended watching the film. The only thing that was “Korean” about the neo-Seoul they portrayed was some random Korean words they put in the background. Everything else was what Western culture think of as the exotic Asia (still, in 2012!) all put into one. It was just poorly researched Asian setting with typical Western gaze. Did anybody else feel this way, too?

  4. Gil Asakawa says:

    I haven’t seen it yet… hoping to wait to rent it as a DVD….

  5. phil says:

    Janice: your comment reminds me of a conversation I had with a Peruvian fellow regarding the 4th Indiana Jones movie “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.: He (and many other people of Latino background) was offended by how the movie just threw Mexican, Mayan and Andean cultures and locales together. I saw it when it came out, and I have to agree with him. Also, the “nuking the fridge” scene rivals “jumping the shark” in Happy Days for cheesiness.

  6. phil says:

    Gil: back to the WWE (formerly known as WWF), for a moment. They have had positive portrayals of Asians, such as the half-Japanese wrestler Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, who was sort of like Bruce Lee as a wrestler. However, Mr. Fuji (really Harry Fujiwara, a Japanese-American) played a really treacherous heel wrestler-cum-manager, who would throw salt into “good guys'” eyes, bow to babyface wrestlers before hitting them from behind with a cane, etc.

    I understand that Killer Khan (he played a Mongolian wrestler, but he was really Japanese; I forgot his real name) was cast as a babyface in Japan, but as a heel when he wrestled in the U.S. “Tensai” seems to be rather a neutral character at this point, neither a face nor a heel.

  7. Gil Asakawa says:

    Hi Brian, thanks for all the cool info. I didn’t know that wrestling had such examples of Asian portrayals. I wonder if it’s because in the 1950s, one of the biggest stars in pro wrestling was a Japanese (actually Korean) wrestler named Rikidozan. Rikidozan started as a sumo wrestler but quit and started pro wrestling (probably because of racism in Japan against Koreans) and became a huge star by beating American wrestlers visiting Japan. This was a big deal for Japanese, who were still recovering from the defeat in WWII. Apparently beating Americans made his Korean ancestry moot… When he toured and fought in the US he was always cast as the villain, like Killer Khan. He died in 1963 after being stabbed by a yakuza gangster with urine-soaked knife in one of his nightclubs. I’ll have to check out more about WWE and the history of pro wrestling! Happy Holidays…

  8. phil says:

    Gil: yes, I saw that movie about Rikidozan…I think his Korean name was Yeok Do San, from what I understand. He beat the U.S. heel wrestler “Classy” Freddie Blassie…at one point, Blassie “bit” into Rikidozan’s head and a bunch of red paint came out, and apparently several Japanese fans actually had heart attacks while watching, and one of them died I think.

    And yes, it’s sad that the Yakuza guy stabbed him with that knife, and he developed peritonitis (spelling?) and died after about a week. He definitely helped pro-wrestling become popular in Japan; today, pro-wrestling has the biggest popularity in Japan, the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the U.K., though it also has moderate followings in a number of other countries.

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