Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: Ken Petrie (Ni’ihau)

This announcement came a while back, but I got busy with other write-ups and didn’t have a chance to comment on it until now.  Back in May, the film Ni’ihau, starring white actor Zach McGowan, was announced.  Since I’m talking about it here, it’s no surprise that his character shouldn’t be white.  The film is in fact about Ben Kanahele, a Native Hawaiian.  Also?  He was a real person.

Not that this is the first time a white actor has been cast to play a whitewashed portrayal of a real-life person of color (see also, Jim Sturgess in 21, Ben Affleck in Argo, Jennifer Connolly in A Beautiful Mind.)  But how long is this going to keep happening?  Ben Kanahele received a Medal of Merit and a Purple Heart for his bravery after the events of Pearl Harbor.  Do you know how many real-life Native Hawaiian heroes have had their stories told onscreen?  I’d wager it’s astoundingly few, if any.

Producer Ken Petrie, in talking about the project, said, “There is a weight to be shouldered [in any true story], and the material requires the utmost care and authenticity.”  And that staggers me.  How on earth can someone tout “the utmost care and authenticity” to the real history at the same time that they’re changing the hero’s race to yet another Some White Dude?  (I don’t wanna get too “Zach McGown who?”, but seriously.  I know this guy from a recurring role on the most recent season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I didn’t realize that from his picture in articles about the movie – I had to read a mention of it in an article and go, “Oh, that’s where I’ve seen him!”)

The other thing to keep in mind here is that Ben Kanahele was lauded for his actions combating a downed Japanese pilot after the attack, and while there’s been no word on who’s going to play the pilot, we all know the producers aren’t going to decide that his race is irrelevant to his character and change it.  So, we’re going to get a story about a heroic white guy fighting an enemy brown guy – awesome.  Not that the real story itself wouldn’t have dealt heavily with the villain’s nationality, considering the obvious of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the whole microcosm of America vs. Japan looks very different when the American hero is reimagined as a white man instead of the Native Hawaiian man he was. 

Doesn’t this movie care that it’s taking away a community’s hero?  (I know, I know – of course it doesn’t.)  A real person who did an important thing, who protected his people and stood for his country, and this movie wants to refashion him to fit its own carbon-copy shape.  And its producer wants to come forward and talk about authenticity?  Are you seriously kidding me with this?

Favorite Characters: Jo Grant (Doctor Who)

Since there was a Buster Keaton anniversary yesterday, here's the Sunday Who Review a day late.

Jo is a little bit deceptive as a character.  At three full seasons, she had a pretty long tenure on the show, and many fondly remember her time as a fun, sweet companion.  However, there are also many who view her as one of the more useless classic Who companions, mostly remembering instances of her going to pieces in a crisis or otherwise failing to contribute valuably to an adventure.  For me, Jo tends to fall more in the middle – I think there’s more to her than some would say, but I also think she was poorly served by the show at times, and that keeps her from joining the upper echelons of my top companions.

Bubbly, determined, and a bit dizzy, Jo Grant is assigned to be the Third Doctor’s new “assistant” at UNIT after the offscreen departure of Liz Shaw.  Within her first few minutes in the Doctor’s lab, she makes a clumsy, ill-informed wreck of things, and the Doctor isn’t at all surprised to learn that she had her muckety-muck uncle pull strings to get her a job at UNIT in the first place.  He doesn’t see anything she brings to the table and isn’t the least bit pleased to have her there.

This is the picture of Jo that sometimes gets painted, and to be fair, it is the picture that the show sometimes presents.  The Jo who blunderingly disrupts an experiment, the Jo who trips over her own feet while running from monsters, the Jo who gets captured at the drop of a hat, the Jo who starts crying, “I can’t!!” when there’s something super important that has to be done right this second or everyone’s going to die.  If you string all of these instances together (although, the getting-captured one can’t really be held against her, since that continues to be one of the companion’s chief functions,) it’s easy to write her off as a nothing companion from a more sexist era of television with little to recommend her.

But understand, that’s only the “sometimes” pictures.  For all of her slightly-scattered girl-next-door personality, Jo actually does have training as a government agent with skills that we see pop up occasionally.  We sometimes see her showing off some quick, smart moves to disarm a bad guy, and more often, we see her making good use of her escapology knowledge, working her way out of handcuffs, ropes, or whatever the villains have used to bind her.  It’s kind of a disjointed characterization, because she has a tendency to go from really competent and quick-thinking in one serial to hopelessly unhelpful in the next.  It’s hard to tell if the show tries for a consistent narrative with her that balances these aspects or if different writers simply have very different ideas of who she is and her place within the show.

Regardless of how useful she is or isn’t being, there’s also her personality, which is mostly earnest and likeable.  She reminds me a little of the “adorable” character on Joss Whedon shows, such as Willow, Fred, or Kaylee – sweet and kind with a bit of a spark to her.  She has a talent for empathizing with those that she meets on her adventures with the Doctor (particularly those of the dashing young male variety, although it doesn’t really come across most of the time as being a contributing factor for her) and a nice dynamic with all the UNIT folks, especially Sergeant Benton, who sometimes gets the “sad trombone” treatment from his other coworkers.  And of course, she’s a lot of fun with the Doctor, too.  Her lack of scientific curiosity can infuriate him, but she’s immensely loyal, very understanding, and has a knack for taking the wind out of his sails in a light, friendly way.  She’s not my favorite Third Doctor companion (Liz Shaw forever!), but I think she might be the one that balances him out the best.

Top Five Gags: Coney Island

October 29^th, 1917 – the day Coney Island was released.  This might not be the funniest of the Fatty Arbuckle shorts, but it’s still a good time.  What’s more, I think it marks when Buster’s niche really gets carved for the first time.  He’s still maybe a tiny bit outside the proceedings (going forward, Fatty and Buster present as a duo/team more often than not,) but he’s featured quite a bit and is getting more into the persona he maintains through the later shorts.  In the earlier ones, he feels a little more generic and is just kind of used as needed, but starting here, he seems like a much more integral part of the shorts.  As such, you’ll notice that more of my Top Five Gags are specifically Buster-related.

Watching the Parade

An easy laugh, but a good one.  Buster shimmies up a pillar to get a good view of a parade over the heads of the crowd; however, his plan backfires when he applauds and, no longer gripping the pillar, tumbles back down to the sidewalk.  Bonus points for the actual moment of Buster clapping.  Not sure if he was rigged up at all or if he was simply staying up by clenching his legs around the pillar, but he’s suspended in midair for a moment just before he falls.  It’s like a Looney Tunes cartoon come to life!

On the Waves

Al snags Buster’s girl, and Buster follows them down this lazy-river-style ride.  There’s no actual water involved – they’re on some kind of track that undulates and propels their “boats” along – so when Buster catches up to them, he jumps out and picks a fight with Al in the middle of the “river.”  But when Al knocks Buster on his butt, Buster drags himself to a nearby “dinghy” and clings to it needlessly.  Terrific sight gag!

Hammer and Bell

There’s plenty of good business surrounding the strongman game, but Buster’s little confrontation here (with Al again) is my favorite.  After Al gives Buster a kick, throwing off his hammer strike, Buster takes a swing at Al with the hammer and whiffs it, offering up one of those awesome revolving flips he does where he flies into the air and does a complete 360 before landing on his bottom.  It’s a classic Buster move, and I enjoy it every time he does it.

In the Changing Room

Nice little breaking-the-fourth-wall moment, with a little cheekiness thrown in.  Fatty, preparing to change into his swimwear, suddenly catches sight of the camera as he’s about to undo his pants.  Giving it a sheepish grin, he then gestures for the camera to angle upward, shooting him only from the waist up for the remainder of the shot.  It reminds me a bit of the moment in One Week where the cameraman puts his hand over the lens when Sybil Seely rises from the tub to retrieve to the soap.  Good little bit of pre-code humor!

Catching Al’s Eye

Fatty, for Reasons, has wound up on the beach dressed as a woman, and it only takes one look for Al to be smitten.  Now, this is a drag comedy bit as old as time, but the reason I like it is that it flips the usual expectation.  Rather than being panicked at Al’s affections and trying to get away without revealing himself, Fatty thinks it’s hilarious and encourages Al, inviting Al to come sit by him and batting his eyelashes but good.  Buster coming along to expose the trick with the aid of a trusty fishing pole is a perfect capper.

Countdown to Thirteen: The Assets: Episode 7 – “The Straw Poll” (2014)

Historically, a penultimate episode can be among the best in a run.  It’s often where the stakes run as high as they can go – there may be a big twist or a hard emotional punch, but it doesn’t have the finale’s tricky job of making everything wrap up in a satisfactory manner.  The penultimate episode is where everything can blow up, and you’re left on the edge of your seating waiting to see how it’s all going to shake out.  In my opinion, this is not that type of penultimate episode.

Team Sandy is working hard to identify the mole.  Sandy has a particular suspect in her sights, and she’s convinced they’re the one, but the others aren’t so sure.  As she sinks deeper and deeper into the investigation, those around her begin to think it’s less about a determined pursuit of the truth and more about a largely-groundless fixation on one person that may not be the one they’re looking for.

Remember my previous comments about how shifty the mole acts all the time?  Sandy’s suspicion of them adds up to little more than that.  Granted, it kind of vindicates my previous complaints about it, but it doesn’t feel right to have her zero in on them basically because of her insistence that it has to be them.  It definitely comes across the way her team sees it, like she’s decided and desperately wants it to be this person but can’t point to any compelling proof, just her conviction that they must be the traitor. 

That bugs me for several reasons.  First, we never see the point at which she comes to this conclusion (more on that in a minute.)  There are maybe a couple moments in the earlier episodes where she maybe twigs something a bit off about the mole, but there’s no logical joining of the dots to get to “It’s obviously X!  It all fits – why won’t you people open your eyes?”  Additionally, I feel it does a disservice to Sandy’s character.  While it’s true that she’s always relied at least in part on her admittedly-good instincts about people, it’s ridiculous that she thinks she can get the ball rolling on more intense scrutiny into this person without having any kind of tangible probable cause; we know she’s smarter than that.  And even when she does go looking for evidence, she doesn’t really get a chance to be impressive with her intelligence or dedication as she has in past episodes.  It really isn’t a very good episode for her in general.

The episode itself feels a little out of place due to a significant time jump.  Now, the show in general has a bit of a problem with time – it covers a pretty decent stretch, but while the flashbacks are well-marked, I’m a lot hazier about how much time is going by in the present day.  The characters will make an offhand reference to something from the previous episode as having happened months ago, and I go, “Wait – what now?”  A lot of time is passing between each episode, but it never really feels like that.  And here, where we have a really concrete jump of multiple years, there are some places where you can tell we’re in a different time – with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of the war puts a different complexion on things – but the characters are where it really counts, and neither they nor the interactions between them seem to reflect much change or growth.  It’s a little like when Downton Abbey would suddenly leap forward a year or two, and yet everyone’s plotline would’ve had virtually no forward momentum in the interim.  I’d say this works better than that, but the overall effect just doesn’t come through.