So, trigger warning!
We’ll be talking a bit about whitewashing and cultural appropriation!
So, grab your favorite manga and that vintage VHS copy of Akira, it’s time for Geekery and Wine.
This is the second in this particular flight of four.
THE GEEK SIDE
So, I wanted to watch an anime with my eldest daughter who is 16. Anything our family watches on TV can usually be described as a “so-and-so show.” This means if I watch it with my wife, it is a “Mommy and Daddy Show.” Game of Thrones would be one such example. Then there are “Daddy/Daughter Shows” wherein both my high school junior and her 6th grade sister watch with me. But I also feel that each of them should have individual shows that we experience one-on-one and can have as a shared vocabulary.
But the question was, where to go next with anime?
Ouran Host Club was a huge favorite of my eldest daughter, she was introduced to it by her then best friend and Fairy Tail had already been one that she’d enjoyed, too. Her adult older brother had shared Fullmetal Alchemist, InuYasha, and Black Butler.
I love when anime has a science fiction or fantasy element but there are so many directions to go. And I wanted to be sure that it was sophisticated enough for the two of us to merit real, in-depth discussion.
Like many Gen X-ers, I came to anime through the classic Speed Racer re-runs of the 1970’s, I then re-discovered anime when I was in my early 20’s with movies like Akira, Fist of the North Star and Ninja Scroll, but I didn’t think that starting a daddy-daughter anime with people’s heads exploding in plumes of blood was the way to go. And to be honest I felt a little out of touch. So I checked on the Nerdist website and found Dan Casey’s The Dan Cave. And in a short film’s length of time (that short film incidentally called the “The Best Anime for Beginners to Watch) I had 10 series to ponder, some were classics that I knew, others would be discoveries for the both of us. And on that list was Death Note.
Now, everyone who has ever been an angsty teen has wished for the ability to command the power of life and death, right?
No…just…me?
Well, what if you found a mystical book where you could write a person’s name and method of their demise and it would come true? This is what happens to our protagonist Light Yagami. And that’s the premise of Death Note.
What follows is an amazing animated series about how power corrupts, with a cat-and-mouse game where our anti-hero is desperately trying to continue his crusade against evil while subtly being corrupted by it and not be caught by the authorities, thrown in for good measure.
It has monsters, both human and otherworldly. Shinigami, supernatural ministers of Death, ultimately control most of the Death Notes (each has their own copy) and these demonic creatures are only visible to those humans who are holding one of the stray Death Notes.
What made this extra compelling to start was the added bonus, a live-action version of Death Note that came out last summer. So, after finishing the series we could cap it off with the live-action film!
We watched the entire series together followed by the Netflix film and I’m not sure how I feel about it. At least insofar as the live-action goes. The anime was excellent.
Generally speaking, anime is always much more dramatic: the villains are more arch, the victims more innocent, simply from the way they are drawn. Lines extending away from a sprinting character to imply super-fast running is not something commonly seen in live-action (unless it’s the 2010 release of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World which was wonderful, btw).
What could a live-action film bring to the table that the anime could not? And why create something in another art form that was already amazing in its current incarnation?
Well, for one thing, a Netflix audience will have a wider reach than a manga or anime…at least in the US and add fans to the ranks of Death Note who don’t read Japanese comics or watch anime. It could even bring them back to the original manga.
I was so excited I couldn’t wait until we finished the series. I watched the trailer for the live-action film.
Two things struck me. One, westernized again and two, Asian bleaching.
The original series takes place in Japan. This was in Seattle.
Which is fine, there is a very large Asian population in Seattle.
But that large Asian population was ignored and the main characters were mostly Caucasian.
Fast Forward one Month
Now that I’ve seen this movie on Netflix I can say it is…an interesting interpretation. The relationship between Light and his love interest Misa-Misa in the anime has been replaced by a more earnest relationship between Light Turner and Mia. While in the anime the romantic relationship is hopelessly unbalanced, Misa-Misa seems at times an absolute fool for Light and has no internal goals except winning his affection, in the film, they are equal partners and the scriptwriter takes that equality as a means to have their relationship be very conflict-ridden and angsty.
I know that we are taking 37, half-hour episodes and condensing it into a 2-hour film. And I can appreciate that that means streamlining aspects of the overall story arc. But, it seems to me that there was more to be gleaned from the anime than just the names of the main characters and the concept.
Part of the reason I loved the anime Death Note was BECAUSE it was Japanese! Taking the Japanese culture out of it would have made it somehow less special, less transformative. Why would someone simply want the human story without the spices that made it distinctive?
Think about it in terms of food. You can have a bowl of spaghetti or you can have a bowl of Pho. Both are ostensibly a bowl of noodles, but the flavors, the nuances, and personal connotations are widely disparate.
And yet…and yet…
Looking closely, the art style of the Death Note anime anglicizes some of the main characters. The character of Misa-Misa has a distinctly paler skin tone than that of the other characters. And the antagonist L’s eyes are rounded and wider than any of the other characters. Perhaps this is to imply that he is naïve in the ways of the world (a wide-eyed innocent) or that he keeps his eyes wide open while investigating the Kira murders. Probably the latter…but it could be something else…
I went online and read an article in The Hollywood Reporter from April 4th, 2017 entitled 'Ghost in the Shell': 4 Japanese Actresses Dissect the Movie and Its Whitewashing Twist. The issue of whitewashing discussed in the article was prompted by the live-action film version of Ghost in the Shell wherein the character of Major was played by Scarlett Johansson, a white actor.
What struck me was this quote:
When THR interviewed Japanese fans about the whitewashing claims, they weren't bothered by it, and neither was Mamoru Oshii, who directed the 1995 anime version. How do you feel about their response?
[Actor Ai]Yoshihara: People in Japan worship white people.
This leaves me feeling really conflicted. I understand that having an international star like Johansson can bring extra box office punch to a film. But at the same time seeing characters that are so distinctly Asian in origin played by someone outside that culture seems just wrong. Especially considering that there aren’t that many mainstream Hollywood films that feature an Asian lead to begin with.
This also led me to do a bit more research on cultural appropriation and I found a really great article from mic .com
The article’s title?
Why do white people still not get that cultural appropriation isn’t ever cultural appreciation?
The gist was this: a white artist wears an item that is sacred to a culture or religion but wears it simply as ornamentation, without any of the cultural weight it also carries, thereby lessening it. And that white artist is free to simply discard the item when it is no longer cool. Whereas a person from that culture doesn’t have that luxury.
And I absolutely see it. Here is where my question comes in. Every artist lives in the world is waiting or even actively-seeking for something to fire their imagination. Something. Anything that is not the same same-ness that he or she experiences every day. And artists have this innate desire to seek The Truth with capital T’s on both words. But I don’t think any of us is under the illusion that we will find The Truth sitting there in whole cloth form. We need to find pieces of it and somehow make a tapestry into a whole. For example, for a time I thought I could find peace and serenity in Yoga, I obsessed over it. I tried to practice every day. I subscribed to Yoga Digest, I learned what each of the asanas were, and I tried to tell others about why they were significant. And I sought it for its contrast.
I’m not sure that, as an artist, I could create from just the elements of my own experience. There must be something exceptional to add to the mix otherwise why leave the house?
THE WINE SIDE
Ahh, Barolo…when I start to talk about it I think about challenging wines. What makes a wine challenging?
Prestige? Awards from the major reviewers? Wine Spectator? Robert Parker? James Suckling?
A high price tag? Could be all of the above.
Barolo itself is made from the Nebiollo grape and is from the Northern Italian region of Piedmont. And it’s true that this wine is usually pretty pricey. What I try to do to lessen that price tag is buy this wine younger and then leave it in the basement and let it get expensive. There were some that might have balked at the 15 dollar-a-bottle price of Cercius from the last show, but a passing glance at wine.com finds that you can’t even find a Barolo for less than $32 a bottle. A little searching did find one for $25 on another site. But still, it’s not an everyday wine, at least not for me.
And maybe that is what makes me think of this as a more advanced wine. A special occasion wine. One of those wines that you uncork an hour or more before company comes to “let it breathe.”
Alright let’s stop right there. For some out there, this last line crosses that pretentiousness Rubicon.
Phrases like:
“The wine has good legs”
Or “this has notes of…”
Or lastly, “An Oaky…usually Chardonnay”
But you get the idea. And in a lot of those situations, I would be the first to agree with you. But when it comes to aeration…yeah, I think there’s some validity there.
Wine aerators are easy to find and not very expensive. Some of them are simple devices inserted into the top of the bottle that introduce oxygen into the wine as it is poured. I’ve tried the Rabbit and the Vinturi and friends ask me, “Does it even do anything?”
The short answer is, yes.
Another, more familiar, technique is decanting, wherein wine is poured into a vase shaped pitcher. The vase is usually somewhat squat in silhouette, with the bottle of wine pooling at the bottom and an air space above, all enclosed in glass. This presumably gives the wine more contact with oxygen than it might through the thin neck of the bottle.
And finally, most effectively, I’ve poured the whole bottle of wine through an aerator into a decanter and then…ya know, let it respirate.
The craziest thing I’ve ever heard of though is when, a few years back, I went on a wine and food tour in downtown Denver. The gentleman next to me owned a liquor store in the trendy LoDo part of the city and he mentioned that instead of using an aerator he simply used…an immersion blender.
Whoa. Violent!
It reminds me of the Orc Barbarian in a D&D party who decides to use his battle axe to deal with the annoying flies around him. But, at least according to the liquor store owner, it works like a champ.
So, what kind of wines need aeration?
“Tight wines.”
When my wife takes a sip of a wine that is overwhelming either in its dryness or some other flavor that is displeasing (high alcohol content, bitterness, etc.) she might tell me that a wine is “tight” and needs an aeration to loosen up. Putting a little oxygen in the mix gives the wine a chance to get a little further into the chemical process that occurs when the bottle is opened and sometimes even an increase of a couple of degrees in temperature can help.
What about the wine itself?
I was able to save a 2005 Barreri & Rovati Barolo Riserva and it was really special. The first thing I noticed was the color of this wine. Perhaps it was due to the varietal or it could be the age, but I noticed it’s almost rust-colored hue. When I began started drinking wine and experimenting with different regions and varietals I thought that a rust-colored wine meant it had gone bad. It hadn’t and doesn’t, of course. Even some Pinot Noir’s have that reddish-orange color.
So, how does it taste? Taking a sip, yes it needed some oxygen. But it was going to be a really strong Italian wine, so that meant an alcohol content of at least 14%. It tasted a bit like bing cherries, too, which I appreciate. It went really well with steak on the grill, but it would have been great with pasta in a red sauce, too. And as an added bonus, I’d gotten it at Trader Joe’s for around $20, so that was cool.
And our connection point between Death Note and Barolo?
Death Note was first serialized in Shueisha's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 2003 to May 2006. Putting our Barolo about dead center in its run.
Audio goodness – Pest Control Liner Notes
As much as I’d like to, I can’t take credit for discovering Pest Control by Bill Fitzhugh. That honor goes to my old friend Eric. Back in 1997 he called me and said, “This is your book! It’s full of references to music, has crazy characters and wonderful amounts of humor.” Mind you, this was in the days before I was a narrator. This was just one friend recommending a book to another. And, a small piece of advice? If you have an “Eric” in your life, that friend who truly knows your taste and gives you amazing recommendations all the time, keep them on speed-dial…always.
Next time we got together he loaned me his copy…and he was sooo right. Pest Control is the story of Bob Dillon (D-i-l-l-o-n), a New Yorker, trying to start his own exterminating business. He puts out flyers to promote the new business endeavor and, due to a weak grasp of the English language of some foreign ne’er do wells, they mistake Bob for an international contract killer. Much hilarity ensues.
Now, those who have caught my live panels at comics’ conventions know I met Bill Fitzhugh because he was audacious enough to put his email on the back of his books.
I’ll show him, I thought. I WILL email him.
“Hi Bill, my name is Colby Elliott and I really love your work. Question, “Do you own the rights to produce audio for Pest Control?”
His response, “I own the rights for all my work.”
“Let me send you a sample of Pest Control, let me know what you think.”
His response was cautious, “I don’t open files from people I don’t know that I received on the internet.”
I get that. And luckily I had a giant spool of CD’s sitting next to my computer to burn off and send to him out in sunny California.
After a week or so we got back in touch, he’d liked it and I started recording Pest Control.
It was difficult. My previous book, Masters of Deception was non-fiction. This would be my first fiction book. There were characters with accents that spanned the globe: German, French, regional US and even some African countries thrown in for good measure. And some distinctive characters that came on scene briefly early in the book and then appeared tens of chapters later. I had to be very precise when writing my Character Bible, my handbook for keeping characters straight.
Additionality, I was, until then, still working from hard copy. But the sounds of page turns were a pain to edit out later so I decided it was time to go digital. I’d gotten a Kindle but I worried that the “click” of the page turn would be audible in the recordings. Something to keep an eye on.
I am very grateful to Bill for giving a new kid a chance. His faith in our collaborations has now yielded 3 audiobooks to date with another on tap for 2018 with one even winning an AudioFile Earphones award in 2017. But we did have our rough patches. You see, in addition to being a new audiobook producer I was also a new small business owner. And that, as anyone can tell you, has its own challenges. Once while trying to get our paperwork ducks in a row, I unknowingly sent him all of my personal information. He gave me a concerned phone call and let me know what had happened. But, Bill being Bill and truly unflappable said, “Oh, I was just headed out to go get a mortgage and open a few new credit cards.”
Thanks, Bill, for being patient with a newbie.
Next Time:
Destiny, Tremo and The Supergirls
So, until then…
My Geeks,
my nerds,
my dear, dear friends…adieu!
