Asian-American Actors Are Fighting for Visibility. They Will Not Be Ignored.; New York Times, 5/25/16

Amanda Hess, New York Times; Asian-American Actors Are Fighting for Visibility. They Will Not Be Ignored. :

"In September, it was revealed that in the planned adaptation of the Japanese manga series Death Note, the hero, a boy with dark powers named Light Yagami, would be renamed simply Light and played by the white actor Nat Wolff. In “The Martian,” released in October, the white actress Mackenzie Davis stepped into the role of the NASA employee Mindy Park, who was conceived in the novel as Korean-American.

The list goes on. In December, set photographs from the coming “Absolutely Fabulous” film showed the Scottish actress Janette Tough dressed as an over-the-top Asian character. Last month, Marvel Studios released a trailer for “Doctor Strange,” in which a character that had originated in comic books as a Tibetan monk was reimagined as a Celtic mystic played by Tilda Swinton.

And in the live-action American film adaptation of the manga series Ghost in the Shell, scheduled for next year, the lead character, Major Motoko Kusanagi, will be called Major and played by Scarlett Johansson in a black bob.

Studios say that their films are diverse. “Like other Marvel films, several characters in ‘Doctor Strange’ are significant departures from the source material, not limited by race, gender or ethnicity,” the Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in a statement. Ms. Swinton will play a character that was originally male, and Chiwetel Ejiofor a character that was originally white. Paramount and DreamWorks, the studios behind “Ghost in the Shell,” said that the film reflects “a diverse array of cultures and countries.”

But many Asian-American actors aren’t convinced."

When “X-Men: Apocalypse” fails its heroes of color, it fails the “X-Men” spirit; Salon, 5/30/16

Nico Lang, Salon; When “X-Men: Apocalypse” fails its heroes of color, it fails the “X-Men” spirit:

"As Angelica Jade Bastien wrote in a review of the film for RogerEbert.com, it’s “deeply troubling” that the X-Men series continues to “[trade] in the language and ideas of the Civil Rights Movement without caring one iota about its characters of color.” That linkage is not an accident: The comics are overtly an allegory for racial equality. “X-Men” No. 1 hit shelves in 1963, a year before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. According to Lee, he wanted to explore societal marginalization and the status of outsiders, calling it a “good metaphor for what was happening with the civil rights movement.” Lee told The Guardian, “Instead of them just being heroes that everybody admired, what if I made other people fear and suspect and actually hate them because they were different?”

The film series, however, has doubled as both a civil rights metaphor and an allegory for queer liberation—in ways that are extremely overt. In “X2: X-Men United” (which many believe to be the franchise’s best entry), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) comes out to his family as a mutant, a scene in which they could easily be discussing something else. “Have you ever tried not being a mutant?” his mother asks. Many young LGBT folks have probably heard a version of that question. In “Days of Future Past,” director Bryan Singer (who is bisexual) is even less subtle. Whitelaw explains, “Magneto dons his maroon cape and helmet, floats up above the White House in front of dozens of TV cameras, and urges closeted mutants to literally ‘come out.’”

These themes, however, remain little more than subtext. While the “X-Men” films might draw on the experiences of racial minorities and LGBT people for inspiration, these groups rarely get play a major role in telling their own stories. This is true not just of Singer’s series: People of color are routinely whitewashed in comic book movies, with more bankable white actors cast in their place. In the Batman comics, Ra’s al Ghul is Middle Eastern. He was played, though, by the Liam Neeson in “Batman Begins,” who was born in Northern Ireland. The Anglo-Scottish Tilda Swinton will appear as The Ancient One in “Doctor Strange,” despite the fact that the character is Asian."