Funny results to white peoples' ignorance

Back in 2000, I read and fell in love with every single line of Memoirs of a Geisha, and ever since then I've wanted to see it become a movie. Steven Spielberg had a claim over it for four years, but he kept postponing production because of other projects. Earlier this year, he finally decided to start, and he first recruited Chicago producer Rob Marshall to direct. Now, despite the fact that the book was written by a white man (don't be fooled by the title), and that the two people heading the movie project are two of the biggest names in Hollywood, you think they'd offer more credibility and a cultural accuracy to the movie. But no, it isn't as easy as that.

Despite Asian efforts to produce the image of a multi-national, multi-ethnic group of people, rather than either being judged as Chinese or Japanese, it has become egregiously apparent that we have not suceeded. The title character-- the Japanese Geisha Sayuri -- will be played by none other than Crouching-Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Zhang Ziyi. But, wait a minute... isn't she Chinese??? Other names on the billing: Michelle Yeoh, Karl Yune, Navia Nguyen, Tsai Chin, Kenneth Tsang. Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese. At least they cast the Chairman as Japanese-- Ken Watanabe, the true star of the Last Samurai.

This is the white man's defense: they are actors before anything else.
My response: There's a reason no person would cast Denzel Washington as George Washington in a Revolutionary War epic, and there's a reason why Tom Hanks will never be Martin Luther King. Great actors in their own right, but they couldn't convey a part. Likewise, Korean does not equal Vietnamese does not equal Japanese. What really boils my boba tea is that these people absolutely refuse to go any other way.

So, what now? We are to sit and wait until the movie comes out next year. But for now, we can laugh. They have to get so many different translators on the movie set so that the actors, who know their native tongue (and maybe a few know English) can communicate with each other.

Moral of the story: Ignorance is costly.