Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings)

Nope – I didn’t forget about you, Kubo.  This was an instance where the first trailer was reeling me in hard but took a sharp left turn when it proudly displayed the main voice actors for this Japanese story:  Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, and Rooney Mara (I know stop-motion takes a long time to make, and I’m not sure when in that process the vocals get recorded.  I’m wondering if, for Mara, this was pre- or post-Pan?)  To be fair, as I said in my review, the film also features George Takei and Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa as the two least-significant characters in the main cast.  (A couple big spoilers.)

Now, this was a film that I did see despite the whitewashing, although I was conflicted about it and the casting still leaves a bad taste in my mouth (I always have such a sinking feeling when I see a white actor I love helping to perpetuate this practice.)  But as usual, those behind the film rush forward to assure me it’s not what it looks like.  Here’s what director Travis Knight had to say on the subject:  “For Kubo, most of our characters are not even human.  For those that are humans, it was important for us to have authenticity in terms of the characters. Most of the characters that are human characters are [voiced by actors] of Asian descent.”

First, let’s quickly address the fact that, again, the human characters voiced by Asian actors are all-but-nameless villagers who are little more than extras and don’t have important roles in the film.  In the purely-human characters, Asian voice actors might physically outnumber the white ones, but the actor voicing Kubo is white, and any character played by an Asian actor has only a sliver of screentime or significance compared to him.

But what I really want to focus on here is Knight’s point that it’s fine to be more flexible in casting non-human characters.  This is actually an area where I concede to some wiggle room.  Call it the Mushu Principle, if you like – Disney’s Mulan was voiced almost entirely by Asian actors, with the notable exception of Eddie Murphy playing the dragon spirit Mushu.  This doesn’t bother me, and I fully admit to loving how Murphy plays off of Ming-Na Wen’s Mulan.  If care is taken in the rest of the casting, I don’t think having actors of a different race voice non-human characters is necessarily a problem.

However, the situation with Kubo’s non-human characters is a lot dicier.  While there are a number of them, they can be split into two major categories:  gods and enchanted beings.  On the side of the gods, we have Ralph Fiennes as the Moon King and Rooney Mara playing the Sisters.  Now, we can argue about whether or not it would be insensitive to portray gods in a Japanese story as being white, but regardless of where you fall on that issue, the Moon King and the Sisters are definitely made to look Japanese, which makes Fiennes and Mara’s casting seem much more suspect.  Would Fiennes be cast as a god with demonstrably Asian facial features in a live-action film?  I sure hope not.

Then, there’s Monkey (Charlize Theron) and Beetle (Matthew McConaughey.)  One’s a monkey, one’s a beetle – on first glance, it seems racially neutral, and in the interview with Knight, it’s mentioned that he points to Monkey while making his comments about non-human characters.  But these characters aren’t just magical talking animals.  Over the course of the film, it’s revealed that they’re actually Kubo’s parents.  Monkey is the last vestiges of Kubo’s mother’s magic bringing a wooden talisman to life, and Kubo’s father was cursed by the Moon King and turned into the amnesiac Beetle.  Kubo has a vision of them in the bodies of his parents at the end of the movie, plus Theron voices Kubo’s mother both before and after she becomes Monkey.  And Kubo’s parents look Japanese.  Kubo’s mother is a former god who may or may not have gotten a human body when she left the Moon King’s realm, but either way, she’s clearly meant to appear Japanese.  And Kubo’s father was definitely human and decidedly Japanese.  Meaning these aren’t just non-human characters; they’re magical creatures who used to be people.

Again, think of it in turns of live-action.  If there was a live-action movie in which a Japanese man was turned into a beetle, would people be cool with having Matthew McConaughey play both versions of the character on the grounds that “it’s fine – most of the time, he’s a beetle anyway”?  I really, really hope not.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016, PG)

I debated for quite a while before seeing this movie.  From the first trailer I saw, it looked absolutely stunning (it’s made by Laika Entertainment, who also did Coraline,) but it also showed me that the wonderfully-animated Japanese characters on the screen were voiced by the likes of Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, and Rooney Mara – to be fair, George Takei and Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa are also in it, but they play easily the two least-prominent members of the main cast.  While I won’t get into all of that right now, there may unfortunately be a Dear Hollywood Whitewashers post in this film’s future.  Long story short, I couldn’t decide whether or not it was a film I ought to give my dollars to.  Well, here we are, so – for good or bad – you can see what I decided.

Kubo is a young storyteller living in a cave with his mother.  Everyday, he walks to the nearby village and earns their supper spinning tales with his natural showmanship and his shamisen, a musical instrument that channels his magical abilities to make origami come to life and act out his stories.  Kubo is in fact that grandson of the Moon King, a greedy god who stole one of Kubo’s eyes when the boy was a baby and still wants to take the other one.  Kubo and his mother have stayed safe by keeping out of the moonlight, but when Kubo misses curfew one night, the Moon King and Kubo’s evil aunts catch his scent.  Separated from his mother but remembering the stories she taught him, Kubo goes on a quest to find a valuable set of armor, the only thing that can protect him now.  Along the way, he is joined by a monkey (a wooden talisman brought to life) and a samurai stricken by a curse that stole his memories and turned him into a beetle.

It looks incredible.  My, oh my, just jaw-drop gorgeous.  Kubo’s magic is brilliantly animated, all the characters look great, and the landscapes are fantastic.  And what’s more, all that stop-motion beauty has an excellent story to go with it.  Although many of the story beats follow decently-well-worn paths, the way they’re rendered here is very effective.  The ups and downs of the relationships between Kubo, Monkey, and Beetle are a highlight of a film that already has a lot going for it, and even if certain emotional moments are expected, they still hit the right notes.

There are two themes I really want to mention.  The first is grief; despite the excitement, adventure, and magic, this is also a pretty heavy film.  Kubo still feels the loss of the father he’s never known – Kubo lost his dad when he (Kubo) was a baby, also at the hands of the Moon King.  And though he’s lived all this time with his mother, he feels like he’s been losing her for years.  Whether it’s depression at the loss of Kubo’s father, a reaction to leaving the Moon King’s realm and living in the mortal world, or some sort of spell the Moon King or her sisters have put on her, she’s been receding from herself, all but imprisoned in her own body and only briefly able to come fully to life.  As Kubo carries out the quest based on his mother’s stories based on his father’s deeds, he’s not just going on a hero’s journey.  He’s confronting his history.

The second theme deals with Kubo’s role as a storyteller.  The very first line of the film, and Kubo’s repeated call throughout, is, “If you must blink, do it now.”  It’s how he opens all his stories, with an entreaty to the audience not to let their attention waver for an instant.  The idea is that the hero is sustained through the audience’s investment and needs them to carry the day – if they lose their focus, they could change the outcome.  I love that idea, the thought that readers/listeners/viewers affect the stories they consume.  Writing it out, it sounds a bit, “Clap if you believe in fairies,” but in execution, it’s superb.

Warnings

Scary moments for kids, some violence, and heavy themes.