Week 3: Yellow Face

By openly preferring Caucasian actors over Asian actors in an open casting call, Paramount demonstrated their innate racist assumptions – that a no name White actor was more capable of increasing box office numbers and (perhaps) “acting” than an equivalent Asian actor regardless of the Eastern-based characters in the series. Additionally, by casting Asian actors as secondary or supporting characters, Paramount clearly wished to create an “authentically diverse” universe, one that is distinctly Eastern and non-Western in its roots. 

We as consumers support movies that clearly exploit, manipulate, and misguide us in every sense. This is institutional racism because we as consumers need entertainment of some sort, so we keep supporting. It is just within the last two decades that black actors are winning Oscars, Asians have roles on t.v., that Mexicans get portrayed as more than a gang banger. Even then, the shows minority actors are on, those actors are not true to themselves, or play a stereotypical role of their ethnicity which adds to the racial divide our country already has.The article face painting left me flabbergasted because i did not know directors of movies were so racist. I say racist in the sense they openly prefer white actors over a minority actor, even if it for a minority role. not only did this article surprise me, but i also felt insulted. I felt insulted because directors know with the correct make-up and technology enhancing programs that they can trick their viewers, but they don't care what we prefer, or what we think would produce the best movie. Face painting is not only done to Asian actors and actresses, but also Latino, Native Americans, and black.Yellow face, brown face,and black face are all insults because it says to the people in these ethnic groups that they are unable or incompetent to perform these role properly. However when reading the article"a Certain Slant: A Brief History of Hollywood Yellow face i learned that film producers and directors were not the first to participate in yellow face. in fact it originally started with plays. Regardless of Yellow face start it upsets me that it is still used today in movies such as The Last Air-bender. As a consumer and not producer, i have no control over the casting process. however i do have control on what i spend my money on. i think consumers should demand more. We need to not pay to see movies that use yellow face,  brown face, black face tactics. There are more than enough talented Asians, Latinos, Blacks and other minorities capable of playing a specific role. We also need the help of actors and actresses to worry less about their paycheck and more about equality. Yes it shows talent to act as someone else  while no one knows. i believe it takes more talent to represent your character the best way you can when their are so many temptations. As mentioned before i find the concept disrespectful to the consumers of the product we are buying. I would not want  to purchase a shirt thinking it is an XL to find out it is really a small, or chips that are really rice cakes. We as consumers should not be ok with paying to see a kung fu movie with all Asian actors to find out the actors are white, but its really Asian stunt devils. How unjust, disrespectful and misleading can it get?

http://www.asianweek.com/top-25-yellow-face-performance-20-16/ This link shows the 25 most infamous yellow face film performances.