Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: Max Landis (Ghost in the Shell)

I’m saving News Satire Roundup for tomorrow, since there’s one extra Daily Show episode tonight.  Instead, here’s Scarlett Johansson cast as Major Motoko Kusanagi in the forthcoming live-action Ghost in the Shell film.  More whitewashing, more Asian erasure, more people shouting online about why it’s not cool, and more people behind the movie scrambling to explain why they had no choice but to perpetuate a crappy, backwards practice.

Here’s an excerpt from a YouTube video posted by screenwriter Max Landis (not a screenwriter for Ghost in the Shell – just weighing in from an industry perspective) on why Johansson was cast, not because of a pattern of whitewashing in Hollywood casting, but because of the decline of the Hollywood “star system”:  “There are really, like, only 10 or 15 men who get movies made.  Two of them are Black – Denzel and Will Smith.  Um… the rest are white.  And then there are about, like, 5 women who can get your movie made.  Uh… one of them is Scarlett Johansson, ‘cause of Lucy, and, uh… I think they’re all distressingly white.”

First of all, never mind the fact that movies like Slumdog Millionaire, Creed, Ride Along, Keanu, and Life of Pi somehow manage to get around this utter impossibility of getting made without casting the 10-20 bankable names in the industry (not even Denzel or Will Smith!)  Let’s not even bring race into the equation.  Let’s just take a look at this ridiculously hyperbolic claim.

Only 10-15 men and about 5 women in Hollywood can get your movie made.  By extension, this would mean that every major studio production (I’m feel generous, so I’m not even going to count indie films) stars at least one of these 15-20 people.  Which of them starred in The Legend of Tarzan?  The Secret Life of Pets?  Independence Day:  Resurgence?  Now You See Me 2?  Central Intelligence?  Deadpool?  13 Hours?  Free State of Jones?  Yes, I see familiar faces, but it’s not the same ludicrously-few familiar faces over and over again.  I can buy that Matthew McConnaughey might be one of Landis’s 10-15 men, but what Alexander Skarsgård, Liam Hemsworth, or Jesse Eisenberg?  I know it can’t be Kevin Hart, because Landis already told us that Denzel and Will Smith are the only Black men in Hollywood who can get movies made.  Or how about women?  Last year, I saw movies starring Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Teyonah Parris, Alicia Vikander, Amy Poehler, Shailene Woodley, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlize Theron, Anna Kendrick, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Brie Larson, Daisy Ridley, Emilia Clarke, Margot Robbie, and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (I also saw Scarlett Johansson in Age of Ultron, but I wouldn’t call her “the star” of that movie.)  That’s 16 women, 2 of which shouldn’t apparently exist anyway because Landis tells us the only women in Hollywood who can get movies made are “distressingly white.”  So, which are the 5, and how did the rest of their movies get made?

And before you say, “Well, a lot of films are familiar properties relying more on the brand than the actors,” Landis covered that, too.  Later in his video, he names Star Wars as the only property in which the film itself trumps the fame of the actors in it and smugly points that they still cast “a white girl” (point of order – they also cast a Black man and a Latino man, but whatever.)

Long story short, Max Landis, your theory breaks down as soon as you start to tell it.  You specifically name Chris Hemsworth as someone who can’t get a movie made despite his talent, looks, and name recognition from Thor, but you ignore the fact that Chris Hemsworth keeps getting movies made.  (Black Hat, Rush, Red Dawn, In the Heart of the Sea, just to name a few.)  I’m not saying he’s box-office gold, but that’s not your bar.  The bar is, “Can he get cast as the star in a movie?” and the answer is yes, repeatedly, even though you just told us he can’t.

So if, unthinkably, miraculously, so many movies are somehow getting made without having one of these 15-20 magic names, then what’s Ghost in the Shell’s excuse?  What’s it about, if it’s not about race?  And if casting Scarlett Johansson was literally one of only five “distressingly white” choices Ghost in the Shell could have made, then where did basically every other movie I mentioned in this post come from, and how did they manage it when Ghost in the Shell couldn’t?

A Few Notes on Relationships in Delirium

The Delirium trilogy, set in a society that views love as a disease in need of curing, has some interesting things to say about love.  I’ve already looked at these a bit, particularly enjoying the fact that it explores different forms of love, not just romantic connections.  However, while the series gets at some neat ideas, it also takes what I feel is a fairly easy way out in a few areas (spoilers for Delirium and Requiem.)

When I find a dystopian story that views certain facets of life through a wildly different lens than we do, I always like to look for how this change affects the story’s society in everyday ways.  A police state moving at the behest of the combined medical/religious institution, complete with resistance movements, neighborhood informers, and people being “disappeared” is all well and good, but the details interest me too, the mechanics of how life works outside of the big plot stuff.  With Delirium, one question that immediately came to mind was, in a world without love, what do government-sanctioned relationships look like?

In this case, the nuts and bolts are what you’d expect.  Prior to their cure procedure, teenagers undergo an examination that “scores” them as members of society, and they are then assigned a pair that they will eventually marry and have a designated number of children with.  Naturally, the better their examination score (which generally seems to gauge levels of conformity and looks for signs of dissent,) the better their chances of getting an advantageous pair, and socioeconomic factors come into play as well, keeping most people in their assigned “lanes.”

Lena is assigned her pair, Brian Scharff, after she’s already met and fallen for Alex, so she obviously would have been against the match no matter who it was.  It bothers me, though, that Brian is such a blatant non-catch.  He’s described as a sickly asthmatic with numerous indoor, outdoor, and food allergies – none are which are actually criticisms against him as a person, but in fiction, asthma and allergies are usually “nerd” and/or “loser” markers, and they really pile it on Brian.  Lena repeatedly notices his wheezing breaths and seems grossed out by him in general, and that’s before he starts casually insulting her appearance when he thinks she’s out of earshot.  I don’t like this, because Brian doesn’t need to be unappealing or rude for Lena not to want to be with him.  The fact that he’s not Alex should be enough; he could have been a charismatic dreamboat and it wouldn’t have mattered, because Lena would’ve already been in love with Alex and known there was no point without love.  To give Lena additional non-Alex-related “reasons” to dislike him seems to flatten this plot thread, reduces it.

Similarly, while Fred Hargrove, Hana’s pair, seems perfect on paper – gorgeous, rich, Portland’s new mayor – he’s actually a dangerous control freak who is on his second go-around after having his previous pair committed for being “difficult.”  He’s totally sinister, has ruthless political ideas, and both verbally and physically threatens Hana behind closed doors.  Again, I wish the books didn’t go so far here.  I understand that it’s dramatic, and it’s true that a government-run pairing program like this would probably trap people with dangerous partners, but I don’t think it was necessary, really.  Given Hana’s fears that her cure hasn’t taken properly, she might have been paired with a perfectly good guy but still felt that the relationship was empty, that it was missing something that Fred couldn’t provide.  As in Lena’s case, adding these extreme circumstances makes the problem less about love and more about Fred specifically.

A Few Thoughts on Diversity in the MCU: Movies Edition

At times, I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe can feel a bit deceptive in terms of diversity.  Although each of its solo franchises to date resolves around a straight white male – Hollywood’s favorite toys – and women and people of color have had a limited presence, the women and PoC the films do include feature quite a few winners.  Because these supporting characters are so engaging, however, they can distract from the homogeny at the center of the films.  (Note:  I’ve already talked about the whole Doctor Strange thing, so I won’t go over it again here.)

Make no mistake – by and large, I love the Marvel women.  Natasha is my jam, I can’t wait for Hope to get her Wasp on, I heart Wanda Maximoff, and Peggy is responsible for half of my love for the first Captain America movie.  These women are all interesting, amazing, flawed, and kick serious butt.  Characters like Pepper and Jane, who fall more firmly into “love interest” territory and don’t take as much part in the action, are still relatively nuanced and get to be more than just damsels.  PoC are thinner on the ground; Rhodey, Fury and Sam are the most prominent, with bonus Heimdall (although, thanks to Civil War, we now have the awesome T’Challa – is it 2018 yet?), and while Vin Diesel, Dave Bautista, and Zoe Saldana are all core members of Guardians of the Galaxy, their characters aren’t PoC, since they’re all playing aliens.  Still, sticking with those first four, Rhodey is fun, Fury is great, Sam is cool, and Heimdall is awesome.  It’s also worth noting that Fury and Heimdall are instances of racebent characters who were originally white in the comics, which is cool.  Samuel L. Jackson is so Fury that some of the comics have co-opted his MCU appearance.  (Side note:  other than Zoe Saldana, who, again, is playing an alien, the MCU has yet to feature any major female characters of color.)

Some of these characters – Natasha, Wanda, Rhodey, Sam, T’Challa, and soon-to-be Hope – are recognized superheroes, though it’s mostly through technology and/or general badassery (Wanda’s the only one on the list with confirmed powers.)  Rhodey was introduced in Marvel’s first outing, Iron Man, although he didn’t debut as War Machine until Iron Man 2, which also introduced Natasha.  So, both of these characters have been around for much of the franchise’s tenure, and others have joined as part of a gradual fanning-out of Marvel’s diverse presence.

However, while I enjoy these character, Marvel has yet to put out a film starring a woman or PoC, a movie specifically about them with their name in the title.  Yes, the Phase Three lineup includes both – Black Panther will be the first starring a hero of color, and Ant-Man and the Wasp, with co-leads Scott and Hope, will sneak in before Captain Marvel becomes the first fully starring a female hero – but it will have been a long time coming.  Black Panther and Ant-Man and the Wasp are due for 2018, a full 10 years after the start of the MCU, with Captain Marvel following a year later.  Not to mention, both Black Panther and Captain Marvel have had their release dates pushed back to make room for the Spider-Man reboot and Ant-Man and the Wasp (to be fair, so has Thor:  Ragnarok, but that’ll be his third movie.)  Now, Tom Holland in Civil War has sold me on another new Spider-Man, but I was hyped for Black Panther even before I found out Ryan Coogler was directing it, I got my first taste of T’Challa in action, and they threw Lupita Nyong’o and Michael B. Jordan at us.  I need that movie.  And we still don’t have confirmation on who’s playing Captain Marvel!  Come on, guys – you can do better than that.

Which, interestingly, leads me to Marvel’s TV properties.  Check in next Wednesday for that.

Favorite Characters: Trixie Franklin (Call the Midwife)

The first of an eventual many Favorite Characters posts for Call the Midwife; that show sure knows how to pick ‘em.  When the show started, Trixie was my least favorite of the non-nun midwives (not because I disliked her – I just liked the others better,) but as I’ve gotten to know her and she’s grown over the seasons, I’ve come to realize her awesomeness.  Quite frankly, I love her to bits.  Some Trixie-related spoilers.

Surface impressions first.  Very posh, very modern, very fun-loving.  She’s always good for the latest fashions or music, she likes going out and having a good time, and she likes getting the lowdown on the local gossip.  She’s well aware that plenty of men find her attractive and enjoys that fact.  Looking at her, you wouldn’t necessarily think she’d handle the blood and messiness of midwifery all that well, but Trixie is a tough cookie who doesn’t blanch easily.  And as much as she likes enjoying herself, she also takes her work very seriously and is incredibly devoted to the women of Poplar.

So yeah, even the “surface impressions” already show a fairly complex character.  Years of TV archetypes prime us to assume that trendy, vivacious Trixie is frivolous, or a “princess” type, but she’s not.  She has many facets, all of which are honest parts of her, and none of which negate any others.  She can like looking glamorous in her free time and not mind getting her hands and everything else dirty when she’s working.  She can like dancing and dishing and handle high-pressure medical situations in a collected manner.  I like that.  And let’s be real – Trixie is a pretty awesome midwife.  Her professional demeanor is somehow chipper and down-to-business, cool and warm, at the same time.  She’s delivered babies on ships, she’s delivered babies in the middle of storms with no electricity, and she’s put an inverted uterus back in place with the patient lying on her kitchen floor and no doctor present.  Every time she meets an intense scenario with that gorgeous aplomb, I love her a little more.

As time goes on and we learn more about Trixie, even more of her many facets become visible.  She had already greatly improved in my estimation as a character by the time the series 3 Christmas special rolled around, but I think that’s the episode that turned my like into love.  With many local residents evacuated due to the discovery of an unexploded bomb, she realizes that one of her fellow evacuees suffers from shell shock/PTSD and is really struggling.  Her calm, soothing, nonjudgmental care for the man is gorgeous, and her memories of her father’s experiences with shell shock are heartbreaking.  When she admits her childhood role of doing whatever she could think of to make her father feel happy, you see where some of her tendency to use her bright, bubbly personality as a deflection came from.  This splendid character moment tells us something important about Trixie, it explains how she’s so empathetic to the young man in the evacuation at a time when mental health struggles weren’t viewed very compassionately, and it lays the groundwork for developments in season 4, when she starts leaning on alcohol as an anesthetic for her private heartbreak.  Trixie has seen alcoholism bring her hurting father down even further, and as she starts to see those same signs in herself, she’s able to find the strength to look for help.  It’s great to see her working so diligently at her sobriety in season 5, as well as gradually opening up to her friends and coworkers about it.

Allez-Oop (1934)

My feelings on this Educational short are a little mixed.  On the one hand, it has some nice circular gags and cool stunt work from Buster, and I get a kick out of the closing gag.  On the other, there are a few instances where Buster’s character is treated a bit too closely to the chump type he often had to play for MGM.  Overall, I think it comes down on the right side, but those moments still bug me.

Buster, a bashful clock repairer, thinks he’s hit the jackpot when a lovely woman with a broken watch darkens his door.  After some sweet meet-cute dancing around one another, he takes her on a date to the circus, where she falls for a handsome trapeze artist.  Jealous, Buster sets up a trapeze in his backyard in the hope of building up the skills needed to impress her (in case you were wondering, there’s a reason there aren’t too many homemade-trapeze success stories.)

Quite a decent little story here.  Buster’s awkward, roundabout courtship with his customer Miss Stevens is pretty cute and sets up some amusing gags.  There’s a great circular gag involving her grandfather clock, and I love Buster sitting in his shop waiting for her to call, getting increasingly frustrated with the literal false alarms of the clocks that keep going off instead of the phone.  And it’s nice that Miss Stevens is fairly charmed by Buster’s fumbling efforts right off the bat – it’s just the hunky trapeze artist that comes between them.  Speaking of the Great Apollo, it’s here that the short veers into somewhat uncomfortable territory.  I don’t mind Buster getting the “run along, pipsqueak” routine from a rival in his films, but it works so much better when it’s handled in a comic way instead of a “poor Buster” way, and it’s more of the latter that we get here.  It’s a little cringe-y to see Apollo laughing at Buster while he practices his inevitable disaster of a trapeze act.

That epic trapeze fail, however, is great.  While the first half of the short works more with character humor and detailed gags, the second half hits the physical comedy hard.  You only have to take one look at Buster’s rigged-up trapeze to know it’s going to end in tears, but goodness knows that’s not going to stop him.  (Note:  there is background music during this scene, so, as I supposed last week, it was definitely doable in this era.  For my taste, though, it tends a bit too much toward “sound effect” rather than music.  It makes the slapstick feel more buoyant, but I prefer music that follows the flow of the stunts to music that seemingly just reacts to them.)  One thing I love about this scene is that he’s continually problem-solving and trying to improve on his design.  He doesn’t get any better at it, since each fix only reveals a new problem, but he definitely approaches it with the ole Buster “never say die” attitude.  The climax of the short gives us more straight-up action, too, akin with something like Our Hospitality (albeit on a much smaller scale.)  It really doesn’t matter to me that there’s never any explanation how Buster’s characters so often start the film clumsy and end it gracefully athletic, because the former is always such a blast to watch and the latter is always so cool to see.  I’m glad that, even though these shorts don’t have the resources and care afforded to Buster’s independent work, he still had the chance after MGM to tell more of this kind of story.

Warnings

Slapstick violence and a scene of skeeviness from a no-good cad.

Doctor Who: Series 1, Episodes 27-30 – “The Aztecs” (1964)

*Disclaimer: While my review gets into some of the race/imperialist issues going on here, I wasn’t as forceful with it as I should’ve been. I think a lot of us have a tendency to go easy on our problematic faves, but it’s okay to love something and recognize where it can be better. “The Aztecs” has definite issues with racism and imperialist attitudes. Also? Brownface. “It was the ‘60s” can be an explanation, but that doesn’t make it an excuse.*

 

I’m going to (very gradually) be reviewing the backlogs of Who, popping in every so often to write about stories from Doctors One-Eleven.  In different posts about classic Who, I’ve mentioned how much I tend to enjoy the pure historicals, and this is a fine to kick-start a more literal interpretation of the Sunday Who Review.

The First Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara, materialize inside an Aztec tomb.  Because Barbara enjoys a little cosplay with her history, she immediately puts on an armband she finds in the tomb, and when the locals discover her, they see it and assume she’s a reincarnation of the god buried there.  The comfort this affords her and her friends (posing as the goddess’s servants) is short-lived, as one of the high priests starts to suspect Barbara isn’t the real deal.

A big theme of this serial is the ethics of changing history; Barbara, in her somewhat imperialistic way, believes she can keep all the merits of Aztec culture – their science, engineering, art, etc. – while doing away with their less cuddly traits.  Specifically, their religious practice of sacrifice.  The Doctor insists that she has to let the Aztecs’ story play out as it always has; on the subject of rewriting history, he gives his famous decree:  “Not one line!”  (He’d keel over if he knew about some of the stuff Eleven gets up to.)

Now, I’m no fan of human sacrifice, and I completely understand why Barbara wants to prevent it, but it does mean the story brushes up against paternalistic The White British Folks Know Best attitudes.  Tlotoxl, the high priest of sacrifice and Barbara’s chief skeptic, is a bloodthirsty schemer derisively referred to as “the local butcher,” and there are a few scenes of Aztecs gaping at the astonishing “magic” of the Doctor and co. (really, modern knowledge of science and so forth.)  To be fair, this kind of plot isn’t quite as problematic when the outsiders are time travelers with an obvious advantage, but it’s still uncomfortable.  Truth be told, though, considering when it was made, it’s not as bad as it could have been; the story also emphasizes the Aztecs’ wonderful accomplishments (and pays loving attention to the sets and costumes,) and characters like Autloc and Cameca are given far more depth and shading than Tlotoxl.  It strikes me that, in a way, “The Fires of Pompeii” is similar:  the “primitive” Pompeiians’ beliefs are sometimes gently mocked, sometimes put them in danger, and sometimes lead them to be wrongfully suspicious of the Doctor and Donna.  Yet, none of that bothers me.  Is it more sensitively written, is it different because “Pompeii” doesn’t involve race, or is it something else?

As for the big highlights… Ian proves that he can hold his own in a fight to the death way better than any science teacher I ever had.  The Doctor develops a sweet relationship with Cameca, a warm, intelligent older woman from the community.  Barbara’s “goddess” acting is fabulous; totally regal, uses her historical knowledge to play the part, and the outfit they give us is amazing.  And, of course, because it’s Doctor Who in the ‘60s, Watch!  Our!  Heroes!  Struggle!  To!  Lift!  The!  Huge!  Slab!  Of!  Styrofo- I mean, Stone!  Oh, Who…

Warnings

Some violence and scary stuff (expect those two as a given on Whoniverse reviews from here on out,) and shades of Mighty Whitey-ness.

Ghostbusters (2016, PG-13)

I’m not sure I’ve ever been so relieved to love a movie.  I’ve been following the news on the rampant hate surrounding this film for the past year, and I badly wanted it to be amazing – because the idea seemed fun and cool, yes, but also because a) I know how Hollywood works, and one poorly-received female-driven movie can poison the well in producers’ already-limited views, and b) it would be such a satisfying answer to the misogynists who’ve been dumping on it sight unseen.  The trailer for the movie seemed so-so at best, and I had my fingers crossed that it was a film whose humor works best in context (after all, there lots of successful, well-reviewed comedies whose trailers didn’t appeal to me in the slight.)  Well, I saw the film opening night, and for me, anyway, it was fantastic.

Erin, a physics professor on the verge of getting tenure, is horrified when an old professional embarrassment – a scientific book on ghosts that she wrote years ago with Abby, her former best friend and colleague – turns up online.  Scared that the book resurfacing will tank her career, she goes to confront Abby about it but gets swept up in Abby and new partner Holtzmann’s ghost-hunting research.  The three women get honest-to-god evidence of ghosts’ existence and immediately band together to further study the spectral phenomenon.  They’re soon joined by Patty, an MTA worker who’s had her own brush with the supernatural, and with the “aid” of their handsome-but-dopey receptionist Kevin, the fledgling Ghostbusters investigate the sharp rise in apparitional activity in New York City.

What can I say?  Fast, funny, some decent comic-horror scares.  Fun dialogue, great interplay between characters, cool gadgets, and terrific acting.  The film finds a good balance between action comedy, horror comedy, and straight-up silliness, with a few more serious character moments woven in just often enough.  The effects, for the most part, look good, although the real-world production design – the uniforms, the car, and the high-tech ghostbusting equipment – generally looks way cooler than the CGI.  The story lays good groundwork for the (hopeful) franchise.  Some of the specific plot elements are a little rough in execution, but the major characters and the dynamic between them is introduced beautifully.  I also like that, for the most part, it’s about “Ghostbusters who are women” rather than “lady Ghostbusters.”  Although portions of the outside world vehemently disagree, within the movie itself, it’s not a big deal that these characters are women; they just are.

All the main actors are excellent.  Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, both playing surprisingly subtle, bring smarts, heart, and laughs to Erin and Abby, and Leslie Jones is great as Patty, who’s both enthused and freaked out about her career change (her work here is more varied than I’ve seen from her on SNL, and I like it a lot.)  MVP, though, is Kate McKinnon’s Holtzmann, the wonderfully-weird techie with a passion for tinkering and a penchant for letting her freak flag fly.  As much as I enjoy all four characters, she’s the number-one scene stealer, with Chris Hemsworth as the goofy, oblivious Kevin coming in second.

Warnings

Scary moments for kids, suggestive humor, a little drinking, language, and gross-out humor.