Ghost In The Shell’ Insists Scarlett Johansson Plays the Major

Ghost In The Shell’ Insists Scarlett Johansson Is ‘Well Cast’. Paramount’s live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell is currently the most talked-about movie on the internet, though not for reasons the studio might’ve hoped for. Scarlett Johansson’s starring role in Ghost in the Shell, a property originally set in Japan and starring Japanese characters, has resulted in widespread cries of Hollywood whitewashing. The furor only got worse, when it was leaked that Paramount tested (and ultimately rejected) technology that would make white actors look more Asian for the film.

 A lot of the criticism is valid, but lost amongst all the hubbub is the opinion of the folks who actually own the Ghost in the Shell franchise. The Hollywood Reporter got ahold of Sam Yoshiba, an executive at Kodansha, the Japanese company that originally published the Ghost in the Shell manga, and he definitely wasn’t siding with those who dislike Scarlett Johansson’s casting:

“Looking at her career so far, I think Scarlett Johansson is well cast. She has the cyberpunk feel. And we never imagined it would be a Japanese actress in the first place. This is a chance for a Japanese property to be seen around the world.”

Western adaptations of Japanese manga and anime properties will always be a difficult nut to crack. Yes, almost all anime is set in Japan, but most of the characters exhibit some level of mukokuseki or “statelessness.” Japan is such a homogeneous society it’s 98 – 99% ethnically Japanese that it’s simply assumed most, if not all, Japanese comic and cartoon characters are Japanese, and so creators feel free to give them traits that might not be traditionally associated with Japanese people. So yes, manga and anime characters are almost all Japanese, but at the same time they’re sort of no race at all.

This leads to all sorts of cultural misunderstandings when America tries to adapt Japanese properties. Hollywood assumes these “stateless” characters can be cast as any race, but the fact remains, they’re still Japanese. It’s a conundrum with no easy solutions statelessness is an almost impossible thing to express with real-life actors. Obviously Paramount’s CGI attempts to solve the conflict didn’t work out, and all this is in some ways beside the point of an argument that posits this should have been an opportunity for Asian and Asian-American actors, who remain underrepresented in big Hollywood productions.

Of course, none of the controversy will end up mattering much if Ghost in the Shell ends up as another forgettable Hollywood anime adaptation like Dragonball Evolution. Let’s hope that’s not the case.

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