Again about Tales of Earthsea:
Ursula K. Le Guin said this:
Ursula K. Le Guin said this:
"I have received letters that broke my heart, from adolescents of color in this country and in England, telling me that when they realized that Ged and the other Archipelagans in the Earthsea books are not white people, they felt included in the world of literary and movie fantasy for the first time."
— Speech to the Book Expo America children's literature breakfast, June, 4, 2004.
They ruined her book in the American miniseries, but I never expected the Japanese to miss this point: the characters of Earthsea are black. They are dark skinned, the same colour as say, American Indians or native Pacific Islanders.
They made Ged white! They made everyone white! Only Tenar is supposed to be white!
They'res scarcely enough non white fantasy/sci-fi heroes around, somebody's gotta leave us with something to look up to.
This is a bigger issue:
For decades, we've had to endure Tolkien's "White men of the West" vs. the "swarthy, evil multitudinous men of the East", which you can argue was a product of the times. Conan the barbarian was a tanky white man versus hordes of ethnic-looking people, also a product of the times.
Spot the difference:
- Muad'dib Paul Atredies, Emperor of the Universe, (Dune, F. Herbert)
- Rand al'Thor, The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time, R. Jordan)
- The Companions of the Lance (Dragonlance, M. Weis/T. Hickman)
- Harry Potter, and his friends.
- Garion, Overlord of the West (Belgariad, Malloreon; D. Eddings)
- Every superhero in every comic: Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Wonderwoman, 90% of the X-men, Captain America, the entire former and present Avengers, the entire Fantastic Four;
- Name your-science fiction hero - Hari Seldon, every Star Trek Captain, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, the list goes on.
They're all white.
The only non white people are sidekicks, lesser characters, comic relief, or GET KILLED. Even when we do get our boys on the screen, they are naught but comic relief, and never, ever get the girl, and never get to be the hero or overshadow the white people.
The only non white people are sidekicks, lesser characters, comic relief, or GET KILLED. Even when we do get our boys on the screen, they are naught but comic relief, and never, ever get the girl, and never get to be the hero or overshadow the white people.
- Ororo/Storm (X-men) - the only non white person on the (Ultimate Universe, 1610) roster. Seems a little bit token, methinks. Meanwhile, every white boy fantasy is played out, white leaders like Professor X and Cyclops, white heroes with awesome powers like Angel and Wolverine. The only token that they'll even allow non-white is the "hot chick" role - e.g., Psylocke, who used to be British, is now Japanese; resident hottie Storm is black.
- Hiro Nakamura/DL Dawkins (Heroes) are excellent! But we don't let this infringe on our white man fantasy - these heroes are powerful, but the guys who can take any power they wants just by thinking about it/chopping heads off and is gloriously and ridiculously unmitigated supermen are Peter "I'm important, look at me" Petrelli and Gabriel "I can't die" Sylar.
- DL dies (cause he's black) and Hiro doesn't get the girl.
- Takezo Kensei, greatest Samurai in Japanese history - some English guy!?!
- The Last Samurai - starring Tom Cruise!?!
- The Immortal Iron Fist, greatest martial artist ever... is... Danny Rand = some white guy!?!
Don't get started on David Eddings: the defenders of the west (who are white, blond, Alorns = Vikings, Asutrians = Frenchmen, Mimbrates = English, Tolnedrans = Romans) against the unrelenting hordes of the East (Nyssians = Egyptians, Murgos = Huns, Malloreans = Persians).
Even Forgotten Realms and their franchises are in on the act, the Tuigan (= Mongols) invade the Western Empires of Faerûn (= the goodies, who live in Europe) from the East, and it's up to King Azoun IV of Cormyr (= France) to stop them.
Baldur's Gate, the arguably greatest RPG ever made, gets my props for including Yoshimo, "Japanese", and prompty loses them by making him betray the entire party.
Even Jackie Chan isn't allowed to be sucessful with women in a romantic way in any Hollywood movie - the white girls find him "cute" but the cardinal rule is that he should never, ever get jiggy with them. Chris Tucker's character gets them in Rush Hour, Owen Wilson's character gets them in Shanghai Noon.
White people reading this definitely think I'm bitching about nothing at all. Don't give me shit about how "no one notices what colour people are in the novels." That's cause you have a luxury to have been blind all your life to the divisions of peoples and colour that non-whites face everyday, entrench in our shared popular culture. It's a luxury that we don't and can't share.
Ursula K. Le Guin said this:
"I think it is possible that a good many readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, maybe don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being 'colorblind.' Nobody else does."
— Commentary on Slate, Dec. 16, 2004.
I'm not being unreasonable - all I'm asking for is one Asian character, I don't care who or what he is, but one Asian character in a major book, comic or film made by anyone, that I can look up to.
Just treat him/her exactly the same as you would treat any white protagonist. They do cool things. They have cool powers. They are attractive, and get the girl. They *aren't* some cheap Fu Manchu rip off, and they save the day, flying the spaceship, fighting the sword fight, finding the holy artifact.
Please.
Yellow men need role models too!
5 comments:
Dude, I think it's not just the people in the West that are guilty of portraying themselves as superior. To give an example that I know of, Dragon Ball series does the opposite of what happens in the West. Asian characters feature predominantly as the heroes (eg Goku, Gohan, Kuririn, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Kamesennin) and western looking characters play a minor or evil role. (Mr. Satan, Red Ribbon commanders, bank burglars tend to be western, gay-looking characters are mostly western) Also, Japanese seems to be the global language even in the 'other world'. The only place which had language problems was on Planet Namek.
Hey, awesome comments - made me think about it a lot more.
I don't think you should really feel guilty that Japanese cartoons make Japanese look good and "western" characters in it look bad. Our Asian (and Indian, and African and Native American, etc.) culture is, through unfortunate developments in historical fate, a marginal one when compared to the global film and literature of the US and Europe.
And even then, I'm not actually saying that they are portraying themselves as superior - I think that's also perfectly okay.
Do you believe that the Japanese characters in DBZ, drawn by Japanese, being cool, capable and heroic is not so good? I think it's okay.
But my point really is that while I can think of plenty of anime I can think of (say, Full Metal Alchemist) where the protagonists are white and are awesomely cool and totally heroic, the reverse isn't true in Western film and literature. I don't watch that much anime, but I'm sure other people could ramble off a list of awesome white characters in anime without straining too much.
I'm saying that minority groups should be allowed to join the canon of fantasy film and literature. I strain my knowledge of fantasy film and literature, and the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Earthsea, by Ursula K Le Guin.
I am eternally grateful for Japanese culture and cartoons being popular enough to have been screen in Australia during my childhood. Without DBZ, and the Ninja turtles (whom I always assumed were Japanese, since they were Ninja of a sort), Samurai Pizza Cats, the Yellow Power Ranger, and Su Wu Kong (that's Monkey Magic) from "Monkey!" I would have never had an Asian hero in my entire childhood to look up to. Incidentally, all of these are Japanese, and not Chinese!
Do you think that this explains why anime so popular in the west, especially amongst the westernised asian population like you or me?
In the playground games of primary school, the white kids had every major film, literature, comic book and television hero to choose from, and I had a few that at least they had heard of, which was just fine and dandy. It would have been even worse to have been, say, black, or Native American - they only had token characters in white-dominated shows, and never got be the leading man or lady in any of them, and much of the time, they were the baddies.
Later on, I discovered Chow-Yun Fat on the God of Gamblers series, Ekin Cheng and Jordan Chan in Young and Dangerous, Jackie Chan's amazing leetness, Jet Li in the greatest film of them all - "Once Upon a Time in China", Ma Wa Shing's "Tian Xia" and the film Storm Riders, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Thankyou, Chinese and Japanese culture - from our marginal cultural fight back, our kids aren't left without heroes. If I hadn't discovered these gems, there would have never been fantasy worlds for me to live in where people were that with which we could identify. Actually, that's probably why I love Hong Kong film so much - there isn't that much literature featuring Chinese heroes that I can read, so I'll have to make do with film.
Did you find something similar growing up in Australia?
hmmm
i grew up on asian movies and that was basically all i ever saw
i do remember in most of them, like once upon a time in china and almost all jackie chan movies, the bad guys were white guys who spoke bad cantonese/mandarin and knew extremely good kungfu or fencing
but they were all based in china
Yes, that was what I was wanting to say. How everything portrayed depends on the author of the story. It depends on what the author has experienced, their perception and knowledge. My assumption is that in the West it's predominantly white authors, so I assume that the result is what we see on the screen now. In addition, the English language as a pseudo global language contributes to the biased portrayal on what we see.
I totally agree with you that Le Guin's portrayal of mostly black characters in Earthsea is a very respectable and inspiring thought. It immediately warmed me to the author without having read her work.
As with growing up in Australia, I am fortunate to be able to enjoy material from both as an Australian and a Japanese viewpoint. I also fortunate enough to have exposure from two different cultures and for that, I am grateful of.
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