Month: November 2016

Unsung heroes: Cisco Ramon

cisco-ramon

Ife

(Originally published on Geeks of Color)

Hello guys, Ife here with an article about an Unsung Hero of color, Cisco Ramon aka Vibe . I want to talk about this dude in all of his bad assery. From his origin to his live action adaptation in the CW TV show “The Flash”.

Cisco Ramon took the alias of Vibe when Aquaman disbanded the Justice League. Then he heard speculation of a new League was coming together in his hometown of Detroit. He decided to quit his position as a street gang leader to become a member of the new League. Ramon’s League qualifying ability was that he was a metahuman able to emit vibratory shock waves. His younger brother ended up developing similar powers. He went under the alias of Reverb and was associated with Booster Gold’s team The Conglomerate.

Vibe has the most unique set of powers in the DC Comic Universe in my opinion. He omits shock wave that can shatter concrete of steel. He has an above average agility, He even has the ability to stop the speed force. I know what you guys are already asking yourself, and yes this makes him a HUGE threat to The Flash, or anyone who harbors the speed force. Amanda Waller says that “Cisco Ramon might be one of the most powerful super-humans on the planet. He wields vibrational powers that could in theory shake the Earth apart. And he’s the only person we know of who can find and track inter-dimensional breaches.” Fun Fact: Vibe can’t be detected by security cameras.

flash-season-2

Now, in The Flash TV show Cisco Ramon is a mechanical engineer at S.T.A.R. Labs and he was one of the people that helped build the particle accelerator that malfunctioned and turned people through out Central city into metahumans.including him and Barry Allen. He figured out his powers later on in the series his powers are the same but different from the comics. He gets visions when he touches certain things. For example when he hugged Kendra Saunders a.k.a Hawkgirl and saw her when she was emerged but she didn’t know of her powers in that lifetime. Or when he touched Jay Garrick a.k.a Zoom of Earth-2’s helmet. And figured out that the person that was trying to help them was actually the villain. When he went to Earth-2 he saw his doppelganger which would turn out to be Reverb. Reverb then revealed to him that he was wielding a very crucial power which was the vibrational waves. His doppelganger then displayed it by hitting The Flash with his sonic waves. Vibe actually did it once on Earth-1 when he was trying to stop Caitlin Snow’s doppelganger ‘Killer Frost’ he attempted to do it again but then failed. But it became regular for him to have special made glasses that helped him Vibe and he was able to open the breach between Earth-1 and Earth-2. He is very intelligent and he is an above average hacker.obviously not at the skills of Felicity Smoak but he gets the job done.

I wanted to touch on this character cause he is a hero of Hispanic heritage and a very underrated hero who does a lot of things on the Flash tv show. I think the actor Carlos Valdes does a very great job portraying his character. The writers and creators of the show did an excellent job of giving him the perfect sense of humor. He is one of my favorite characters in the DCTV universe. He has known to be a bit of ladies man on some occasions. I believe his character will developed extremely well. Also there are some people who don’t know who he is, but now they know. Thank you for reading this, you can read many more by me and other GOC writers on this website. Thank you and Keep it Frosty.?

Japan celebrates hijab fashion with the Modest Fashion Show

AJ+/screengrab
AJ+/screengrab

I’ve wanted to feature hijab fashion on the site for some time, and highlighting the Modest Fashion Show seems like as good a time as any.

The Modest Fashion Show, which recently took place in Tokyo, Japan, highlighted just how much hijab fashion is overlooked in the mainstream fashion world. It also highlighted how creative modest fashion actually is.

Take a look at the fashion show for yourself:

What I’d love is for the mainstream world to think of more than just the usual suspects as their target demographic. People of all faiths love Michael Kors, Prada, and the like. As Singaporean designer and founder of MeemClothings Nur Hanis told AJ+, “I think it’s really endless opportunities to design. There’s no one way to do or to wear the hijab.”

Also, frankly, not every woman wants to have their back or even their arms out when they’re wearing a simple dress, regardless of their faith (like me).  Wouldn’t it be great if we could see modest fashion in conjunction with the more skin-revealing styles on the catwalks? I think so.

What do you love about modest fashion? Give your opinions in the comments section below!

“Real NDNZ Re-Take Hollywood” challenges Hollywood’s Native American stereotyping

Twitter
Twitter

Hollywood’s still growing in its discussions about diversity in entertainment, and one area the industry is lacking is multifaceted, unique, and contemporary portrayals of Native Americans. Indigenous multimedia documentarian Pamela Peters is aiming to push the conversation into overdrive with her photography exhibit, “Real NDNZ Re-Take Hollywood.”

The exhibit, which ran this August at These Days gallery in Los Angeles, featured Native actors and writers dressed as ’50s and ’60s star icons like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face and Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde.

To quote from the exhibit’s page:

REAL NDNZ RE-TAKE HOLLYWOOD showcases photographs from Diné photographer and filmmaker Pamela J. Peters, whose work seeks to disrupt and decolonize clichéd portrayals of Native Americans. This series “re-takes” and recreates classic, iconic portraits of movie stars of yesteryear by replacing those past film icons with contemporary Native American actors. Photographing “Real NDNZ” in the elegant clothes and iconic poses of James Dean, Audrey Hepburn, and others from the classic period of Hollywood film—rather than in the buckskin, feathers, and painted faces featured in most Hollywood films—deconstructs time-worn, demeaning representations and opens up new possibilities for seeing Indigenous peoples as contemporary, creative people.

Peters told AJ+ that her project was aimed squarely at disintegrating society’s stereotype of the Native American.

“For so long, the image of Native Americans has always been the relic of the past, with stereotypes–buckskin, feathers, leather,” she said. “…I really want to dispel that ugly stereotype that many people perceive when they think of Native American.”

Learn more about Peters and her work at her website and on Twitter.

How “Star Wars” forgot about black women

I love the new direction Star Wars is taking with The Force Awakens and now Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I even support the fact that Rogue One is rumored to be the first Star Wars film to not begin with the classic Star Wars preamble crawl. Rogue One is also running with the diverse platform The Force Awakens started, featuring a woman as the main character (Felicity Jones) and a main ensemble cast featuring Forrest Whitaker, Riz Ahmed, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Fares Fares, Jimmy Smits, James Earl Jones (as the voice of Darth Vader, of course), and Genevieve O’Reilly.

But for the most part, Star Wars has only been killing it when it comes to white women and men of color. Once again, it’s time to ask the age-old question: What about the black women?

In the latest Rogue One trailer, this lovely lady makes an appearance:

star-wars-rogue-one-black-woman
Lucasfilm/screengrab

But do we get to learn more about her? I’m already wanting to know the rest of her story and who she is in the resistance.

What’s the worst part of this erasure is that it’s not like Star Wars hasn’t prominently featured black women before. It’s just that the women are usually in the written tales of the franchise. For instance, Imperial naval officer Rae Sloane, who appears in various Star Wars books, her first appearance being A New Dawn.

Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm

And Sana Starros, Han Solo’s self-proclaimed former wife, is featured in the Marvel’s Star Wars comics, first appearing in Star Wars 4: Skywalker Strikes, Part IV.

But Disney and Lucasfilm might have not taken a prime opportunity to actually cast Sana or any other woman of color as Han Solo’s opposite in the upcoming Han Solo spinoff film. Emilia Clarke is set to play a prominent role in the Han Solo film, a role that Tessa Thompson, Zoe Kravitz, and Adria Arjona (Guatemalan/Puerto Rican) might have auditioned for. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it’s currently unclear if Clarke’s role is the same role the other actresses tried out for, if the film will feature multiple women. As it stands right now, though, Clarke’s is the only name we’ve heard since the news of Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover landing the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian roles, respectively. That doesn’t bode well for black female Star Wars fans who have been waiting to see themselves represented in a big way in what’s supposed to be a highly diverse intergalactic universe.

Also something that’s annoyed many a black woman fan—the fact that the one black woman we do have in the new Star Wars universe, Lupita Nyong’o, is playing Maz Kanata, a character that is completely CGI. (A similar annoyance with black men in sci-fi can be read about in this companion article concerning Idris Elba’s role in Star Trek Beyond.)

lupita-nyongo-maz-kanata
A.M.P.A.S./Lucasfilm

Another strike against Lucasfilm and the Star Wars universe is how often black women and other women of color are often cast as Twi’leks, whose women are often enslaved as sex objects. To quote Wookipedia:

“Since female Twi’leks were regarded as graceful and beautiful beings, many of them were forced into a life of slavery at the hands of the galaxy’s wealthy and powerful.”

It’s more than a little disturbing that while women of color are all but absent in the Star Wars universe, they are readily cast as women who are sold into a sexual slavery.

twileks-lyn-me-oola
Lucasfilm

It’s even more disturbing that Oola, the only sex slave coded as a black woman due to the actress, gets killed moments after we see her on screen in Return of the Jedi. There could have been a better outcome for her instead of just being used as disposable eye-candy.

oola-main-image
Lucasfilm

Meanwhile, the Star Wars universe is proliferated with brunette white female protagonists:

star-wars-brunettes
Lucasfilm

This isn’t to disparage against these actresses, since I like all of them. But I’m trying to prove a point. Star Wars has a predilection, a tradition, in fact, of casting brunettes, when brunettes don’t signify all of woman-kind. If Star Wars is really going to be the franchise that puts women first, it’s got to put all women first. Black women and women of color in general have been historically forced to identify with women who do not look like us or experience life like us. You’d think that in a galaxy far far away, it’d be all too easy to find women of color, and not just women of color who happen to be sex slaves. In a way, Star Wars reiterates a fact of life that has been apparent to many women of color; we’re usually more palatable heard and not seen, and if we are seen, then we have to be as vampy and erotic as possible in order to matter. That’s not the kind of message Star Wars needs to bring into something as uplifting and inspiring as a sci-fi space opera that preaches equality for all people.

Am I still going to see Rogue One? Of course. Supporting it means I’m supporting the actors of color who are prominently featured. But my dollars will hopefully act as a means for Star Wars to increase their focus on diversity. Hopefully, this will mean that someday soon, we’ll finally have a sistah in space.

“Being Asian in Hollywood” is now a free e-book!

being-asian-in-hollywood

Recently I posted my longform article “Being Asian in Hollywood,” featuring several members of the Hollywood community. I’ve now compiled the article into a free e-book, just for JUST ADD COLOR readers.

The design of this e-book was inspired by the beauty and talent of Anna May Wong, and photography featuring her decorate the pages of this book in homage to her. Wong is someone who wasn’t featured prominently in this article, but it’s due to her sacrifice, and the sacrifices of other Asian actors in old Hollywood, who paved the way for today’s current crop of stars.

Here’s a look at some of the pages that you’ll see inside:

Download Being Asian in Hollywood here or click the cover in the site’s sidebar!

Bruno Mars and Donald Glover bring back the oldies for 2017

bruno-mars-24k-magic-childish-gambino-awaken-my-love

If there’s one good thing that might come out of 2017 is that this just might be the best year for pop culture ever, particularly music. That is, if Bruno Mars and Donald Glover’s latest offerings are anything to predict by.

First, let’s talk about Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic. The album is short, but it’s jam-packed with late ’80s and early ’90s production value. One of my favorites is “Calling All My Lovelies,” which sounds one part ridiculous ’80s funky slow-jam and one part ridiculous skewering of the sensitive male ego. (Mars’ character’s dismay at once again being on the receiving end of Halle Berry’s voicemail is hilarious.)

The other fave, “Finesse,” is pure ’90s New Jack Swing. I’d been wishing songs could go back to this sound for years, and someone finally did it! Thank goodness it was Mars, who has shown a deft understanding what made party jams of the recent past so cool.

Rolling Stone Magazine called 24K Magic “a lush Nineties throwback,” with Christopher R. Weingarten writing:

“Mars wanted Magic to recreate the nostalgic wonder of the school dances he attended in he Ninetines–and his croweded productions, infectious attitude and soaring voice go well beyond ‘tribute’ into the realm of ‘IMAX reboot.'”

Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, is now taking listeners on a ride through the ’70s with his first offerings from his latest album, Awaken, My Love!, available Dec. 2. “Me and Your Mama” is great if you’re looking for some blaxploitation-esque funk, but “Redbone” really gets to the Bootsy Collins feel that I grew up listening to, thanks to my dad.

Glover also referenced memories of his childhood when talking about his new album to XXL Magazine:

“I remember listening to songs my dad would play–albums by the Isleys or Funkadelic–and not understanding the feeling I was feeling. I remember hearing a Funkadelic scream and being like, ‘Wow, that’s sexual and it’s scary.’ Not having a name for that, though; just having a feeling. That’s what made it great.”

Even Glover’s cover art evokes the same scariness and enigmatic mystery that surrounds the best of Funkadelic and Bootsy Collins’ cover art. Even though you’re repelled by the cover of Awaken, My Love!, you still want to know what’s inside the album. You want to know what has made this woman poke her head above the muck to grace us with her eerie smile.

(There’s also a reaffirming, apologetic blackness to the cover art as well, but you didn’t come here for an art treatise.)

To me, it makes sense that music would start harking back to another time and place, simply because music, as an escape, can take us back to times of our youth. With everything ranging from politics to the very state of the earth up in the air, it makes sense that millennials and Gen Xers want to go back to a time when everything seemed more stable and, frankly, a lot more fun. Right now, we all need an escape, and Mars and Glover are giving us the escape we need.

Now, if only Kid Sister would come out with another retro-’80s album, if Sharaya J would actually release her full-length album (WHEN WILL IT GET MADE?!), and if Monica, Missy Elliot, Remy Ma, and Lil Kim come out with stuff that evokes the ’90s and early ’00s, then we could really kick off 2017 on the musical good foot. For now, though, I’ll just keep Mars and Glover on and endless loop.

Who do you hope comes out of the woodwork and gives us the album we need to get through 2017? How are you liking Mars and Glover’s retro sounds? Give your opinions in the comments section below!

Get your No Face fix with Hot Topic and Her Universe’s “Spirited Away” apparel

Hot Topic
Hot Topic

Spirited Away is one of my favorite movies, so consider me intrigued when I found out that Hot Topic now had a section devoted solely to Spirited Away apparel.

The store has some of their own items as well as apparel from Her Universe decked out in Spirited Away motifs. There’s a variety of shirts and a Chihiro dress to choose from, but some of my favorites feature the darker elements of Spirited Away, most notably No Face.

I’d buy all the stuff I featured here, but if I had to choose between these items, I’d definitely throw down money for the No Face sweater, the socks, and the Haku bomber jacket.

I’m just going to be real and say that I’m a person who has moved away from buying stuff because of the geek factor; I don’t always want to advertise my geek interests on my clothes, if you know what I’m saying. I did that enough in middle school and high school as a shorthand for “being cool,” and I don’t want to revisit those awkward days as an adult. However, I will buy quote-unquote “geek clothes” if they can easily transition between geek fashion and mainstream fashion.

If you’re like me and want your geekier sensibilities to mesh within your closet of work clothes, jeans, and casual fashion, then I’d definitely suggest getting these items in particular. If you’re looking for something extremely graphic and bold in the vein of something from Forever 21 or Torrid, then I’d suggest going with these patterns and prints, since they lend themselves more towards the graphic styling that’s dominating a lot of mainstream fashion these days.

For me, these pieces are the most stylish, but there are plenty of other pieces where those came from; check out Hot Topic’s selection of Spirited Away apparel and see for yourself!

Rami Malek to do the Fandango as Queen’s Freddie Mercury

MR. ROBOT -- "eps2.9_pyth0n-pt2.p7z" Episode 212 -- Pictured: Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson -- (Michael Parmelee/USA Network). Freddie Mercury in New Haven, CT at a WPLR Show in 1977. (Carl Lender/Creative Commons)
MR. ROBOT — “eps2.9_pyth0n-pt2.p7z” Episode 212 — Pictured: Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson — (Michael Parmelee/USA Network). Freddie Mercury in New Haven, CT at a WPLR Show in 1977. (Carl Lender/Creative Commons)

This news is something I’ve had on my proverbial news desk for a while, but it got sidelined by all of this election malarkey. But I’m talking about it now–RAMI MALEK IS PLAYING FREDDIE MERCURY!

According to Deadline:

Bryan Singer is in talks to direct Bohemian Rhapsody, the long-in-the-works movie about the seminal British rock band Queen, with Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek playing frontman Freddie Mercury. The film is coming back together and is on the fast track at 20th Century Fox and New Regency with original producer Graham King and his GK Films.

Malek is the third actor listed to play Mercury for this particular project. First was Sacha Baron Cohen and later Ben Whishaw.

I’m excited for Malek to play Mercury. But first, let’s take two deep dives into Malek taking on the Mercury mantle:

1. Wasn’t Freddie Mercury Indian? Yes, Freddie Mercury’s family is from Gujarat (they later relocated to Zanzibar). Mercury’s family were Parsi, which is, as Wikipedia states, “one of two Zoroastrian communities…primarily located in South Asia.” Parsis migrated to Gujarat from Greater Iran, so there’s a crossover of Persian and Indian influence. While there are some Hollywood “all brown people are the same” tactics happening with Malek’s casting, at least this is closer to a semblance of respectful accuracy than Hollywood has been about big roles like these in the past. Remember, Sacha Baron Cohen and Ben Whishaw were the first and second choices for this movie. At least Malek is brown.

(To say it again, the key word here is CLOSERRegardless of Malek’s and Mercury’s backgrounds, they actually cast a brown person to play a brown person. In Hollywood, when the lowest threshold has been cleared, that’s a win.)

2. Will Malek be able to truly inhabit Freddie Mercury? We originally didn’t know how Heath Ledger would be as the Joker, and he’s possibly the best Joker since Jack Nicholson, so folks shouldn’t sweat Malek’s performance in this film. I’m personally not worried at all about Malek’s ability to take on this role; he’s killed it every week on Mr. Robot. He’s killed in his movies, including A Night at the Museum. So let’s cut the guy, the first non-white Golden Globe winner for Best Actor in a Drama, some slack. He’s a fine actor.

As far as his singing ability, or should I say “singing” ability, the film’s creative team can always get someone to sing for him. That’s what happens in films all the time. If you’ve seen a Bollywood movie, nine times out of 10, the actors aren’t actually singing.

I think he’ll be able to act like he’s singing just fine, especially if he pulls a Deborah Kerr; for her role in 1956’s The King and I, she practiced singing despite the fact that she can’t actually sing. Since she knew she’d have Hollywood background singer Marni Nixon doing her vocals, she still wanted to appear as if she was singing; she didn’t want there to be a clear visual of her just opening and closing her mouth like a puppet. Basically, this bit of movie history is just to say that we know Rami Malek can’t sing already (or so we think); we just have to suspend our disbelief, and I think he’s talented enough to make us do that.

I’m ready to see what Malek’s going to do. What do you think? Give your opinions in the comments section below!

Being Asian in Hollywood: Actors, directors, and creators talk representation

(Top row, from left) Sinakhone Keodara, Jodi Long, Asia Jackson, Kesav Wable. (Bottom row from left) Quentin Lee, Mandeep Sethi, Kunjue Li, Chris Tashima. (Photos: IMDB, Twitter, Kesavmwable.com)
(Top row, from left) Sinakhone Keodara, Jodi Long, Asia Jackson, Kesav Wable. (Bottom row from left) Quentin Lee, Mandeep Sethi, Kunjue Li, Chris Tashima. (Photos: IMDB, Twitter, Kesavmwable.com)

Representation in Hollywood is an issue by itself, but Asian representation in Hollywood is near non-existent. With the state of Hollywood being that black equates to “diversity” (despite there being more types of diversity out there than just being black) and Asian characters are still overrun with stereotypes or whitewashing, Asian actors and actresses have had a tough uphill battle in breaking through the glass ceiling.

JUST ADD COLOR is all about exploring how all types of diversity are showcased in Hollywood, so I thought it would be fantastic to have an ongoing series called POC in Hollywood. First up, the Asian American experience in Hollywood. In this longform piece, we’ll take a closer look at some of the issues and biases plaguing Asian creatives in Hollywood.

This is a longform, so if you’d like to jump to specific parts, here’s the table of contents:

Whiteness as the default

IMDB
IMDB

Historically, Hollywood has used Asian locales and people as props, while white characters are given layered characteristics. In short, white characters have been treated as humans, while everyone and everything else are only developed in stereotypes.

The most recent examples of this include The Birth of the Dragon, in which a white character is used to frame Bruce Lee’s biopic, Doctor Strange, which sees Tilda Swinton playing an Asian role and Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, which is a white character used to exploit a stereotypical Asian mysticism, Ghost in the Shell, which uses Japanese culture to frame Scarlett Johansson as The Major and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel series, which features India as a backdrop for white characters and Dev Patel playing a stereotypical Indian character.

“What’s particularly silly about The Birth of the Dragon is that they invented a fictional white character thinking that that would be what North American audience would want,” wrote Quentin Lee, The Unbidden director and founder of Margin Films in an email interview. “The filmmakers obviously fell flat on their faces. Not only it wasn’t historically accurate for the story, the film ended up insulting Bruce Lee and the audience who would support it. It was a creative misfire.”

Chris Tashima, an Academy-winning director for the 1998 short film Visas and Virtue and co-founder of Cedar Grove Productions, wrote that while he hasn’t seen The Birth of the Dragon yet, he found the basis of the film “ridiculous.”

“It’s understandable, why this has been the practice—being that traditionally, decision makers have been white males, and like anyone else, will want to see stories about themselves, and that audiences have traditionally been thought of as young, white males,” he wrote. “However, all of that is changing. It has been changing for a while, and it’s easy to see where it’s going: towards a diverse world. That’s an old practice and you’d think Hollywood would want to project, and put themselves on the cutting edge, and be more inclusive. It’s old, and tired, and more and more, I think audiences will want to see something different, something more truthful.”

“I think the overarching theme that runs through how Hollywood/the West represents POCs has to do with the ease with which they are able to strip POCs of agency over their own stories,” wrote Kesav Wable, Brooklyn-based actor, writer, 2011 HBO American Black Film Festival finalist for his short film, For Flow and Sundance lab short-listed screenwriter for a script about a Pakistani boxer wrongfully accused of planning a terror attack.

“This may come across as a bit exaggerated or radical, but I do believe that there is a link between white imperialist concepts such as ‘manifest destiny’ and ‘white man’s burden,’ which validated a lot of the literal takings from POCs that happened throughout earlier periods in civilized history, and now, in a media-hungry world where information, content, and stories are the most valuable currencies, there is an analogous “taking” of the narratives that POCs have lived through. By depicting POC characters through the lens of a white character, it enables white audiences to keep POCs’ stories at arm’s length, and to not completely empathize with those characters because they are not given the complete human dignity and complexity that is afforded the white character.”

“Perhaps, this, in a way, damps down the guilt that white audiences may feel if the POCs stories/circumstances have to do with the literal takings that were exacted by their ancestors. Or it’s just good for a cheap laugh. The truly insidious effect of POCs being usurped from their own narratives is that, even many of us POCs begin to start viewing things through a white lens and stop questioning whether these stories truly represent who we are because of how pervasive white-controlled media is.”

Wable used the upcoming film Happy End, which is about a bourgeois European family living amid the current refugee crisis. “Granted, I haven’t seen the film, so it’d be presumptive of me to conclude that refugees are not conferred with dignity/complexity as characters, but the very thought that French filmmakers think that shining a light on a bourgeois family with the refugee crisis as a ‘backdrop’ can be instructive about their world, speaks volumes about what it is white people are most interested in; themselves,” he wrote. “In this case, apparently, the context is a rueful rumination on their own blindness to the refugees’ plight. Somehow the irony of the very film’s existence as a manifestation of that blindness seems to be lost on them.”

Mandeep Sethi, filmmaker and emcee, also discussed about Hollywood’s tendencies to erase non-white people from their own stories. “I think centralizing POC stories around white characters is Hollywood’s way of taking a black or brown story and making it about white people,” he said. “Our culture is full of amazing stories and histories and Hollywood loves to cherry pick what they like but leave out the real nitty gritty including the people who created, interacted, and setup that story.”

Dev Patel in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. (Twentieth Century Fox/IMDB)
Dev Patel in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. (Twentieth Century Fox/IMDB)

Sinakhone Keodara, founder CEO of Asian Entertainment Television and host of Asian Entertainment Tonight, wrote that Hollywood’s penchant for using whiteness as a default is “a heinous tradition that is long overdue for a change.”

“Rather than trying to normalize Asian presence on screen to a wide American audience, Hollywood often goes the tired, well-worn and ‘safe’ route of using a white character in an attempt to more easily relate the character to a majority white American audience.  It’s cheap and unnecessary, because the proper and more effective way of relating a character to an audience is writing a character with emotional depth,” he said. “Ethnicity informs and colors our individual and community experiences, but emotion transcends ethnic boundaries.  With political correctness aside, Hollywood needs to stop engaging in a form of neo-emotional and neo-psychological colonialism against people of color, especially Asians by injecting whiteness into our stories.”

“I think that centralizing PoC stories around white characters is always going to happen as long as the people telling these stories are white,” wrote Asia Jackson, an actress, model and content creator. “What Hollywood needs is not only diversity on-camera, but to also make greater efforts to allow filmmakers of color to tell their own stories.”

Jodi Long, an actress who was a castmember of the first Asian American TV sitcom All-American Girl and member of the actors branch of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, wrote that while whiteness as the default is the reality in Hollywood, a study shows a much needed change in film. “I just saw a new study The Inclusion Quotient done by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media where the reality in terms of box office is changing, where women and diverse actors in lead roles are now performing extremely well,” she wrote. “Money talks in Hollywood but we still have to get beyond the implicit (unconscious) bias that factors into which projects get greenlit based on outmoded ways of thinking.”

Scarlett Johansson as The Major (Major Kusanagi) in Ghost in the Shell. (Paramount)
Scarlett Johansson as The Major (Major Kusanagi) in Ghost in the Shell. (Paramount)

Kunjue Li, Ripper Street actress and founder of China Dolls Productions Ltd., also addressed how money rules Hollywood, despite Hollywood not making the audience demand actually work for them financially. “I don’t think [whitewashing] is the right thing to do, and second of all, I don’t think it’s very commercial,” she said. “…[I]f they want to sell to Chinese audiences, which is the second biggest film market, then they need to tell a Chinese story…I think you have to tell a Chinese story [with] a Chinese cast.”

“If the film [was] an an American-Chinese co-production, [it would] actually help with the film itself because then it doesn’t have to go through the quota system…which means that only 30 percent of foreign films are allowed to show in China markets every year. If they do it as a co-production, then they get 1/3 of Chinese funding, but they have to have 1/3 of a Chinese [cast]. They’ll have one-third of Chinese funding, they’ll have domestic showings, they don’t have to go through the quota system, it’s much more feasible. Commercially, [whitewashing] doesn’t even work. I don’t understand why people keep doing that.”

Next: The pain of exoticism

VP-elect Mike Pence gets booed at “Hamilton,” internet loves it

Twitter
Twitter

As many have said online already, it’s heavy irony that Vice President-elect Mike Pence expected to enjoy a nice night at Hamilton, a show created and acted by a non-white and mixed-sexual orientation cast, despite his previous policies that went right for the jugular of LGBT and non-white people’s lives. Hamilton is already a fan favorite in America, especially on the internet, so when fans saw Hamilton‘s cast take Pence to task for his rhetoric and his alignment with Donald Trump, Twitter escalated quite quickly.

First, there’s video of Pence getting booed as he sat down:

And here’s video of the cast standing in solidarity to let Pence know about the frustrations policies and his candidate have caused much of the American public. Brandon V. Dixon is the one who addresses Pence directly.

There’s also a video of theater-goers outside yelling “F*** MIKE PENCE.”

On the whole, the internet was on the side of the protesters, however there were some who felt like Pence should just be left alone. But there were others who felt like him being booed was the least of which they feel he deserves. Check out the Twitter moment for yourself.

What did you think of the Hamilton cast booing Pence? Give your opinions in the comments section below!