[ SECRET POST #2200 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2200 ⌋

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

01.


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02.


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03.


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04.


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05.
[Vanessa Ferlito]


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06.
[Iron Man]


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07.
[The Tudors]


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08.
[Kuroko no Basuke]


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09.
[The Iron Giant]


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10.
[Ace Attorney]


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11.


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12.
[American Horror Story Asylum]


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Notes:

Going to pull a few secrets from the first page of next week's post to fill tomorrow's.

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 009 secrets from Secret Submission Post #314.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Oscar Nominations

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe the Academy didn't want to reward or acknowledge yellowface.

Re: Oscar Nominations

[thene]

And there was me wondering if it had been snubbed because, of the six protagonists, two were women of colour and one was a gay dude.

Re: Oscar Nominations

[(Anonymous)]

da, people really kneejerk with this sort of thing. They see a white person in makeup as an asian person, but then completely ignore the asian actors dressed as white people, or mexican people, or Halle Berry as a white jewish woman. Or the men playing women, and women playing men. It was all about the interconnectivity of humans through time, and all some people saw was "white people being racist!!"

I'd call it "yellowface" if it was in a mocking manner, or done so that they could cast white people instead of korean people. But that's not what was up with this film.

Re: Oscar Nominations

[thene]

I think the concern was valid but that interconnectivity of the film as a whole justified its anarchic casting decisions - HOWEVER it's a genuine weakness that there are no Asian men in the cast at all. It's not typical of the Wachowskis; they're much more committed to diversity than virtually the entire rest of Hollywood, and they've worked with plenty of Asian male actors in the past. (Come to that, I cannot think of a single sci-fi movie featuring positive portrayals of queer people that was NOT directed by the Wachowskis.) So I think the condemnation over it by people who haven't actually seen the film is kinda OTT, and it depresses me that people who flamed on Cloud Atlas will mostly be cheerfully supporting totally/near-totally white, straight movies like The Hobbit or Avengers because being inoffensive is all it takes to make people love you i guess.

Seriously, Cloud Atlas just might be the best film I've ever seen, and its relative failure made me more depressed about the intelligence level of the mainstream audience than anything ever has. The haters have their reasons but are, ultimately, gonna hate.

Re: Oscar Nominations

[morieris]

it depresses me that people who flamed on Cloud Atlas will mostly be cheerfully supporting totally/near-totally white, straight movies like The Hobbit or Avengers because being inoffensive is all it takes to make people love you i guess.

So offense is okay as long as it is art. Not an instance of people being overdramatic, but one that uses practices closely linked to offensive ones in the past. In some instances I can get behind that (Like with Django).

Re: Oscar Nominations

[thene]

Mm, apart from Django, Cloud Atlas had more POC in it than any other Western-made film I saw last year, and it was made by people who have a relatively strong record on diversity. So I feel like people in fandom who genuinely value diverse casting ought to have a more nuanced approach to it than 'CLOUD ATLAS IS BAD now let's all go see The Hobbit'...but for the most part, they don't, and that makes me sad.

Re: Oscar Nominations

[morieris]

Okay, I see what you're saying and closely agree especially about "I racebend and want more diverse casting don't come after my Hobbit/Avengers movie what does these white men ever do to youuu"

Re: Oscar Nominations

[morieris]

I'm not very familiar with this movie, but I'm kind of...confused at why all that had to go down and people of the appropriate race could not have been cast instead of this. Wasn't their only connection between reincarnations a certain birthmark?

Re: Oscar Nominations

[thene]

Cloud Atlas is based on a book, and has six plotlines. It has a core cast of actors who played 4-6 roles each, which were of varied ages, races and genders. The six plots are widely spaced across time, but each one is somehow related to the one before it.

It's really, really good and messes with all of the casting expectations. As I said in my comment upthread I think it was weaker for having no Asian men in the cast, but the multi-directional racebending (along with the drag, etc) was intentional and there would have been plenty of it anyway. But the book itself created a problem; of the six story settings, four are based in the historical or modern US/UK, one in a far-future and still multi-ethnic Hawaii...but there's one that's set in Korea and it has four major male speaking roles in it. For the film's main conceit to hang together, some of the non-Asian actors in the rest of the film had to have some role there. I DO think it would have been better if the male hero of that plotline had been played by an Asian actor (who - like Doona Bae and Halle Berry - would doubtless have played white characters in other stories) but I don't think they could have done it with no 'yellowface' at ALL. (For example, Hugo Weaving played all the villains because it's what he does. Male, female, white, Korean, hallucinatory green devil thing.)

Wasn't their only connection between reincarnations a certain birthmark?

I cannot even put the answer to this into words. That is how good Cloud Atlas is. I sometimes spontaneously tear up just thinking about it.

Re: Oscar Nominations

[morieris]

Hm. I think I'll find a copy and give this a read.

Re: Oscar Nominations

[thene]

Right - I've not read it yet but I gather it's structured differently, with the book stories being bifurcated Russian dolls rather than mingled together like the film's are - it was that mingling that built both its tension and the connectedness of it all, for me. I really need to go read it too.