(Sorry for topic derailment!)

I think he was implying that, in England, it is still acceptable and common to refer to people of East Asian descent as “Oriental” - a factoid that I had never heard before.

@ Robert: Not entirely convinced that the team’s playing on the “perceived” racism of the casino owners in this instance is racist. To make a similar analogy to the ones you made in a later comment, would a female player gaming the casino by taking advantage of the casino’s sexism (e.g., “no GIRL could play cards”) be sexist too?

The Institute has a student body that is somewhere around 20% or 25% Asian (for you Brits, “Oriental”, as I’m not counting people from the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent).

RonF, I’m not sure if you meant your bracketed comment to be tongue-in-cheek, but I’d like to point out that we prefer not to be called “oriental”.

No, DBB… it’s a whole friggin industry.

The actors cast are cast because those are the actors they think will draw the audience and make them money.

We’ve already addressed this. Kevin Spacey and Lawrence Fishburne are the true draws in the film. Anything the MIT students bring to the table are probably just window dressing at this point.

In addition to that, there’s the persistent attitude that Asian Americans can’t bring enough box office draw - but they’ve never really been given the chance to prove it anyway.

Hell, I even mentioned the Forbidden Kingdom, where it wasn’t even about box office draw - they wanted to throw in a white protagonist just because. With friggin Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the film.

Isn’t it a problem that they apparently believe that Asians can’t draw an audience?

Handsome white protagonist - Check
Pretty Love interest - Check
Deceased past love interest or family member to add character depth - Check
The loyal black friend - Check …

The people that pay for these movies want a return on their investment and they have determined that some prescribed formula will get them that return. Part of that formula involves having characters that an audience can relate to. In this country the largest potential movie audience is white. I imagine the cast of most movies made in China are Chinese and in India (bollywood) are Indians etc. So the hollywood knuckleheads think that the movie’s main characters also have to be white (there are exceptions like Danzel Washington, etc.) But I think they completely miscalculate who an audience will relate to or want to see.

Inspired by real events doesn’t mean you have to copy everything - heck, watch any episode of Law and Order - they take stuff from real headlines all the time as inspiration, but then add all sorts of different twists and changes to them.

Ditto…
Ah, personally, to me there’s a difference between casting for scripts based on fictional characters and those based in non-fiction. Whatever, are you saying that you’d be completely fine with Djimon Honsou playing George Washington, or Ken Watanabe playing Isaac Newton? Contrary to your assertion, colorblind casting rarely works the other way around (non-whites playing whites)… that’s why it’s notable when it happens and Hollywood never misses an opportunity to pat itself on the back for it when it does.

The problem is that Hollywood exports its movies to every corner of the globe, _and_ controls what comes into its own country, so I’m not sure that’s really even. That “localization” probably gets more play than the original in most countries!

Then you have the “protagonist must be white even if the backdrop is another country or community, whether it’s by replacing the central character or by making up a random one”, the latter being used in movies like The Last Samurai, The Forbidden Kingdom, Lost in Translation, (even F&F Tokyo Drift), etc., but you mentioned that already.

(The third thing is that there are still plenty of stories where it’s very very hard for nonwhites to break in at all because of storyline reasons - and this is very particular to film. You see nonwhites act in, say, Shakespeare plays all the time, but rarely in Shakespeare movies.)

This is different. This is based on a story that is already American, and the fact that the protagonists were Asian is not an unremarkable detail - far from it.

So you missed all of those Asian horror remakes recast with white actors? The Departed? etc etc etc? C’mon, it happens so often now it’s almost normal.

GAAAAH! That annoys me to no frillin’ end. More so when white people see no problem with it or give you any variation of the “I don’t care about color as long as the actors/acting/movie is good” bullshit.

*tosses hands in the air*

So you missed all of those Asian horror remakes recast with white actors? The Departed? etc etc etc? C’mon, it happens so often now it’s almost normal.

Meanwhile, can you name 5 instances of “non whites” taking the roles of “whites”, and not just “this Asian guy has a white-sounding name, he must have taken a white guy’s role!”

You make it sound like Asian Americans have so many roles and whites have so few.

It’s obvious racism because the race of the people involved _was_ an issue. To change it is remarkable. And they made them white for the obvious reason that protagonists must be white.

Except that in a way, it was - Japanese audiences apparently didn’t mind that all the main parts were played by Chinese actors. That certainly went against what everyone took for granted.

That certainly wasn’t my experience in Japan itself. Perhaps there’s a disconnect between the Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Regardless, I agree that “you can’t use Chinese actors to portray Thai” or “Hong Kongese is not the same as Taiwanese” are a bit misguided. Studios have limited budgets, the number of Asian American actors is limited, and it hurts pan-Asian identity.

Roughly speaking though, the geisha is to the Asian woman what a mobster is for Italian men or casino owner is to Native Americans. It’d be one thing to just portray these caricatures on film, but the way Memoirs actively celebrated it and was hailed by some as a kind of watershed for Asians in cinema was just ridiculous.

Why is it okay for “non whites” to take the roles of “whites” but not okay for “whites” to take the roles of “non whites?”

Who said it’s not okay for whites to take over the role of non whites? This happens all the time in the movies and on the stage, and with nary a peep. That’s because most of this turnover is a perfectly legitimate part of the business.

But that doesn’t mean every single instance for any possible reason is okay. Why don’t we debate the particulars of this specific movie?

They may have been trying to evade the much commoner Asians-as-gambling -addicts stereotype.

“And I wish the blogger hadn’t cited “Memoirs of a Geisha” as an example of Asian advancement.”

Except that in a way, it was - Japanese audiences apparently didn’t mind that all the main parts were played by Chinese actors. That certainly went against what everyone took for granted.