World Politics // Current TV

Asians Need Not Apply: Mickey Rourke As Gengis Kahn

One of the most infamous cases of the practice of Yellowface the equivalent of Blackface for Asians in Hollywood is the portrayal of the warlord Gengis Khan by John Wayne in the film, The Conqueror. Five decades later one would think that attitudes would have changed and the practice of casting white actors for historically Asian or ethnic characters would have changed let alone altering them with makeup to fit caricatures of a people but sadly it hasn't. The same story is playing out now as Mickey Rourke has been cast in a retelling of this story. Unlike the John Wayne film Mickey Rourke will be filming in China, Mongolia, and India for the role undoubtedly with people who could claim to be descendants of the Khan's as background roles and arrow fodder while Rourke plays their cultures hero. This is far from Sin City or Iron Man rather this is an iron clad cinematic sin.

We at the Otaku group recently profiled a series of recent cases at first independently and then with our profile of the racebending group linking what is becoming a disturbingly clear pattern. With the adaptations of Dragonball, The Last Airbender, Prince of Persia, Akira, the Weapon, etc all fictional adaptations whose source material featured Asian heroes and it's Hollywood adaptation replaced them with Caucasian actors. We echo the sentiment of the folks at cinematical who brought this most recent case to our attention, who titled their article you gotta be kidding me!

Hollywood has a checkered past in portrayals of Asians in cinema. There has never been a single instance where a white historical figure has been portrayed by an Asian actor in American cinema while the reverse is playing out in the present as it has in the past. Hollywood has even rewarded this practice. Two Oscars have been awarded to white actresses portraying Asians once in 1937 for the Good Earth a novel based on cultural identity in which that identity was changed to "Eurasian" white rather than Asian, removing the social commentary about racism and the attitudes of the day on mecegination. The second Oscar even came not to a white woman playing an Asian woman and not in the 1930's but playing an Asian man in the 1980's! Awarded to linda Hunt, in the year of living dangerously. It is also worth pointing out that seven films featuring blackface were also nominated for Oscars. The point being it wasn't a fringe practice in Hollywood rather it was the accepted and rewarded status quo that benefited white actors and as the Academy being self selecting and still overwhelmingly white continued to reward white actors regardless of the context of their roles. It didn't end blackface out of it's conscience it rewarded it and found it preferable to hiring black actors for roles as evidenced by the Oscars it handed out to those performances. It ended it because the public refused to pay good money on a bad cinematical practice and we need to send the message that Yellowface to is a practice we won't pay to see.

Arguably the most famous detective novels of their day, Charlie Chan stared an Asian detective and was based on the real life exploits of detectives in Hawaii yet Hollywood cast a caucasian in the role through more than three decades of it's popular portrayal on the silver screen. When Bruce Lee pitched the idea for Kung Fu after the success of the Green Hornet the studio took the idea but cast Keith Karadine instead of lee telling the prominent oscar nominated actor Mako who was helping lee pitch the project that whites would simply turn the tv sets off if they saw an Asian man play a hero. To be clear the studio favored Keith Caradine over an Oscar nominee and the man who went on to have two of the top ten grossing films of the following decade. Indignities like this that Mako saw within Americas acting community on stage, screen, and tv pushed him to create the East West Players to advance Asian American actors and when he was nominated for a Tony he accepted the nomination by saying he would refuse the award until conditions for Asian actors improved. Among Mako's last work was the role of Iroh in the animated version of Avatar the Last Airbender. The film adaptation now features three white leads in the place of originally Asian roles and spits in the face of his legacy.

This casting then comes in a long context that removes any ambiguity from this most recent decision. It is a brazen and at this point blatantly racist move where we shall again see that only the identity of the lead character shall be changed from the Asian persuasion. The message couldn't be more clear. With historical (Mickey Rourke as Gengis Kahn) mythical (White lead the Forbidden Kingdom) fictional (The Weapon, White Lead.The Last Airbender, Three White Leads. Dragonball, Two White Leads. Akira, All White Leads.) or contemporary (21 and Extraordinary Measures both are true stories with the people they are based on still living and still Asian while cast white.) The message is, ASIANS NEED NOT APPLY IN HOLLYWOODOne of the most infamous cases of the practice of Yellowface the equivalent of... more

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Monsanto's GMO stealth attack faces rising opposition in South Africa

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Fear and foreboding in the Middle East

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Peak water drying out Cyprus

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Water Is Life Group series: Women, the waterbearers of life

Women all over the world are living in slavery. They are slaves to the backbreaking often dangerous job of providing water for their families daily. In countries whose governments are corrupt, the environment is devastated, and the water is not fresh and in many instances in scarce supply. In households where traditions preclude them from education, economic opportunity, and equality in any form. And they are the missing link in regards to the economic success they and many of these countries could have if only this tragedy were given the attention it deserves.

The typical day of a woman living in one of these countries begins at about 2AM every morning. She awakens to make a trek to a water source with her five gallon Gerry can in order to collect water for the family for the day. It won’t go far depending on the number of children she has, and she may even have to forfeit using any of it in order to provide for their needs first. She treks along rocky terrain with her can sometimes with others, sometimes alone, or with her daughter who doesn’t attend school in order to help with this task. The trek can be dangerous, with them taking a chance on being raped, robbed or worse. Once she reaches the water source she must stand in line waiting for her turn to fill her can of what is many times polluted water that may well give her children dysentery. But it is all they have.

Once she fills her can she must then make the backbreaking trek back to her village once again. Her trip can take her anywhere from six to nine hours a day not including her other chores in bringing up her children, providing for them, many times harvesting any crops grown, feeding them whatever they have, and providing spiritual guidance. This then takes time away from her and her daughter having opportunity in education or in pursuing any sort of life where they can contribute to advancing their own lot in life.

And this is their life, every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year.

It is hard for many in this world of plenty to relate to the lives of women who must struggle for all they have and who are denied their identity and their dreams. For us, getting up in the morning and turning on our showers or our taps is something we don’t even think about because the water is always there. We don’t think of the water used for cooking or bathing, or washing, or doing other tasks that people in these countries wouldn’t ever have a chance to do. While we waste water on golf courses, in pools, and to build desert resorts, water is gold to those who live in countries where there isn’t even enough for the basic necessities of life.

cont.Women all over the world are living in slavery. They are slaves to the backbreaking... more

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Island To Have 42 Tons of Rat Poison Dumped On It To Protect Its Wildlife?!?

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ITS DARPA TECHNOLOGY IN ISREAL! :) (AGAIN!)

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U.S. Conservative Media Reacts to Haiti

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201001150038

(I'll preface this post by explaining that it does come from a media advocacy organization therefore I won't be reposting the editorial elements of this article in its summary however I'll be providing my own based on the facts of the data on news coverage which speak for themselves.)

This week has brought to us what sadly may prove the worst humanitarian crises of a generation. Struggling U.N. aid workers have discussed that as bad as the southeast asian tsunami was this is proving frustrating in new ways as there are no longer any functioning beurocracies with more than ten government ministries either damaged or destroyed and the U.N mission itself severely damaged and personnel displaced. The Haitian government has said that they fear as many as 100,000 are dead and that the total may be much worse.

In the face of this crises, the leading conservative media outlet in America has chosen to devote only seven minutes to Haiti over its top rates shows compared to its rivals including MSNBC which were shown to have devoted more than two hours. Fox's headline detailing the presidential response read, "President Obama Reacts to Haiti Earthquake Faster than Christmas Bomber." Upon the announcement that the Obama administration had accepted Haiti's request to give Haitians in America temporary protected status, an immigration policy designed to respond to natural disasters or war the headline read "Obama Moves to Grant Amnesty to Haitian Illegal Aliens." On the same topic a fox news guest and sitting congressman suggested that all Haitians in America should be immediately deported and forced to become relief workers.

Rush Limbaugh first stated that Obama was responding quickly to appeal to his black light and dark skinned constituency. Then, in response to a caller said that "Americans already give to Haiti, its called the federal income tax." When a caller brought up what his mother was doing to help limbaugh replied, We've been helping them for thirty years and its all come to nothing. In 1994 Limbaugh had this to say about Haiti. "We are there because the congressional black caucus want's it. Our only interest in Haiti is that they make baseball bats." Previously this year Limbaugh criticized Obama for ordering the killing and capture of somali pirates stating a white president killing an African child would be treated differently.

Glen Beck mirrored the Fox Headlines by complaining, that he believed that the presidents reacted quickly to intentionally divide Americans. While Pat Robertson of the 700 Club Said that Haitians were cursed because their slave revolt was a deal with the devil to rid them of the French and they had suffered misfortune throughout history as a result.

Fox did respond to the criticisms of its coverage, with two minutes devoted to it on their editorial program Red Eye. Thats a third of the time they had previously spent covering the disaster on their editorial programs. Calling the group responsible for the study disturbed, and then playing a supposed animated reenactment of the organization talking about the study which ended with one of the two characters representing the media advocacy organization soliciting the other for gay sex.

I'll judge Fox and the rest of the conservative media through their own rubric: "We Report You Decide." Please let me know what decision you reach on this fair and balanced news coverage of more than 100,000 killed, three million made homeless and the two million children among the affected. If you believe I am fabricating these reactions I will post each individually for your edification.http://mediamatters.org/blog/201001150038 (I'll preface this post by... more

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Yemen forces 'kill al-Qaeda chief'

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Mexico likely afraid of 2010

Forget 2012. As far as many Mexicans are concerned, the ancient Mayas were being generous: the sky's actually going to fall next year. Why? Because it's 2010, Mexico's bicentennial, and Mexican history has an eerie way of repeating itself. Mexico's 1910 centennial, after all, saw the start of the bloody, decade-long Mexican Revolution, which killed more than a million people. And that cataclysm was precisely a century after the start of Mexico's bloody, decade-long War of Independence in 1810.

You get the picture. As a result, there's been no shortage of talk lately about possible unrest, especially in the form of armed rebel groups, erupting south of the border in 2010. But is there really a basis for concern? None as apparent as the popular grievances that existed in 1809 or 1909. But this is still Mexico; and while Spanish colonizers no longer oppress the country, and dictators like Porfirio Diaz aren't brutalizing campesinos, the country nonetheless is reeling from the worst criminal violence in its history and one of its hardest economic slumps. "We are very near a social crisis," JosÉ Narro, the director of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, said recently. "The conditions are there."

Mexican insurrections often do coincide with important dates. Most recently, Zapatista guerrillas in the poor southern state of Chiapas started a revolt on Jan. 1, 1994, the day the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. A big fear now is that Mexico's drug cartels, responsible for almost 15,000 killings in the past decade, are lending their resources and firepower to emerging guerrilla groups. If so, their plan may be to sow bicentennial terror and turn Mexicans against President Felipe CalderÓn's drug-war offensive. This past fall authorities say they seized an arsenal of large guns and grenades allegedly being sent from the Zetas, a vicious drug gang, to JosÉ Manuel Hernandez, a purported leader of the rebel group called the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). The EPR in recent years has claimed responsibility for attacks on Mexican oil infrastructure, including the bombing of six pipelines in 2007.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091231/wl_time/08599195005100Forget 2012. As far as many Mexicans are concerned, the ancient Mayas were being... more