[ SECRET POST #4408 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4408 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



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02.
[Snowpiercer]


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03.
[Taylor Swift/Tom Hiddleston]


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04.
[Game of Thrones]


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05.
[Titans]


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06.
[BoJack Horseman]


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07.
[Criminal Minds season 4, episode 14 "Cold Comfort"]


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08.
[She-Ra]


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09.
[Queer Eye]










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 29 secrets from Secret Submission Post #631.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. https://i.imgur.com/V4kXnZ5.png
[BoJack Horseman]

[(Anonymous)]

I generally give voice actors a pass on these things because voice acting is about which voice fits best and that voice can be male or female or a person of an entirely different ethnic background than the character. However, I do get why it would bother you.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm assuming there's in-show context that makes it obvious she's Asian, because... she doesn't look Asian to me (in this one shot at least).

[(Anonymous)]

How would you make her look "more Asian" though? Not with tiny narrow eyes I hope?

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, it's a problem I (personally) have with cartoons in general. The majority of the time they don't look like... anything, to me. Unless they go the caricature route, which isn't a solution just because I can't tell what ethnicity a cartoon (or anime) was going for.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Yeah Sailor Moon was a confusing experience for this reason. Blonde and blue eyed but totally meant to be Japanese. Sometimes context clues give you nothing.

[liz_marcs]

I guess I'm the weird one because to me Diane looks Vietnamese. I grew up in a city that had significant Vietnamese and Hmong populations and went to school with a few Vietnamese kids. If they were animated, they'd pretty much look like Diane.

[(Anonymous)]

+1000000

[juliamon]

When compared directly with other human characters in the show it's a bit more obvious, also her last name being Nguyen helps.

[(Anonymous)]

Her last name is "Nguyen", which is a pretty obvious clue, we're straight up told her heritage, and at some point we meet the rest of her family.

[(Anonymous)]

IIRC, the creators of the show noted it as one of their regrets (their "original sin," as they mentioned it) when starting off Bojack Horseman, compared to when it developed further to speak about the racial, sexual, and cultural problems of our era. But, since Alison Brie came to fit the role, they also knew it wouldn't be right to change her, either.

I think they wanted to make amends with that mistake in the episode Diane went to Vietnam to explore her heritage, only to realize she doesn't fit in.

[liz_marcs]

Part of what's compounding the guilt (I think) is that they did originally cast an Asian actress in the part, who backed out somewhat last-minute-ish. So Alison Brie was not just the last person cast, she was cast at the last minute.

I always got the sense that RBW felt guilty for going with another "actor from cult fave with some name recognition" rather than going back to the list of Asian actresses they did audition and casting one of them. It could be at the time he was in panic-mode and didn't think things through, or it could be he honestly didn't think it mattered since it was a cartoon. Who's to say?

It doesn't help that this is, almost beat-for-beat, the same thing that happened when Brie was cast on Community. Annie was supposed to be Asian, and they in fact had actually made an offer to an Asian actress for the role. For whatever reason, someone somewhere decided they wanted someone else (signs point to either Sony or NBC) and Brie was brought in at the last minute, again the last person cast who was also cast at the last minute.

The Community story started getting publicly circulated (people who listened to the DVD commentary for Community knew for years) right around the time the whole issue about Diane blew up. It served to pretty much amplify the issue, even though I think it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Annie wasn't *inherently* a character with an undetermined Asian ethnicity, while Diane is most definitely Vietnamese-American (albeit removed by at least two generations since her parents are definitely have working-class Boston roots). So I definitely get why people are uncomfortable with Diane.

[(Anonymous)]

... This is getting out of hand. What's next, abled voice actors voicing disabled characters is problematic?

[liz_marcs]

You're kind of missing the point.

In a perfect world where white VOA and POC VOA are regularly cross-cast regardless of the ethnicity of the animated face, it doesn't matter.

However, this being NOT a perfect world, a white VOA tends to be the default while POC VOA tend to be left out in the cold. And yes, there are a handful of POC VOA that are cross-cast if you take ALL animated media into account (movies, TV, streaming, video gaming), the default is still pretty much white VOA.

Add in that you have an *explicitly* Vietnamese-American character, it does matter in this instance. While I wouldn't go so far as to call it white-washing (white voicing?), I can completely get why someone who is of Asian descent would be uncomfortable with casting a white actor to voice a Vietnamese-American character.

In RBW's defense, he's been doing a shit-ton of work making sure POC VOAs are cast in Bojack Horseman. Some voicing animal characters, some voicing white characters, some voicing characters that match the VOA's ethnicity. Some are even in major roles.

So, on balance, it ultimately might not matter as much when you're specifically talking about Bojack Horseman since production is doing its best to hire POC VOAs in major roles and not just as background characters. However you still have to take history and the broader media into account. And that is, historically, white VOAs voicing animated POC characters has been the default, while currently white VOAs are mostly still the default regardless of the animated character's ethnicity.

It's about fairness, full stop.

[(Anonymous)]

Well said.

[(Anonymous)]

Damn right!

[(Anonymous)]

I don’t think this is as big of a deal as casting white people to play Asian characters. Then again I come from anime fandoms where most characters are voiced by Japanese seiyuus regardless of nationality, so.