Description
Book SynopsisWhitewashing the Movies addresses the popular practice of excluding Asian actors from playing Asian characters in film. Media activists and critics have denounced contemporary decisions to cast White actors to play Asians and Asian Americans in movies such as
Ghost in the Shell and
Aloha. The purpose of this book is to apply the concept of “whitewashing” in stories that privilege White identities at the expense of Asian/American stories and characters. To understand whitewashing across various contexts, the book analyzes films produced in Hollywood, Asian American independent production, and US-China co-productions. Through the analysis, the book examines the ways in which whitewashing matters in the project of Whiteness and White racial hegemony. The book contributes to contemporary understanding of mediated representations of race by theorizing whitewashing, contributing to studies of Whiteness in media studies, and producing a counter-imagination of Asian/American representation in Asian-centered stories.
Trade Review"David C. Oh’s
Whitewashing the Movies: Asian Erasure and White Subjectivity in U.S. Film Culture makes a strong case that these are still relevant approaches for scholars and critics seeking to make sense of Hollywood’s continued displacement of Asian characters on-screen, even when box-office analysis confirms over and over that stories about nonwhite characters reap significant financial returns....[I]f Oh’s target is Hollywood, he strikes it with example after example, a repetitive bull’s-eye that shows no mercy for the liberal hypocrisy and creative stagnation of Hollywood’s 'colorblind' racism." * Film Quarterly *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 Whitewashing Romance in Hawai’i:
Aloha 2 White China Experts, Asian American Twinkies:
Shanghai Calling and
Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong 3 White Grievance, Heroism, and Postracist, Mixed-Race Inclusion in
47 Ronin 4 Satire and the Villainy of Kim Jong-un:
The Interview 5 White Survival in Southeast Asia:
No Escape and
The Impossible 6 Whitewashing Anime Remakes:
Ghost in the Shell and
Dragonball Evolution 7 Transnational Coproduction and the Ambivalence of White Masculine Heroism:
The Great Wall,
Outcast, and
Enter the Warriors Gate Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
