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Race, Racism, And Representation Within The Anime

I want Jynx back

I just realized how long it's been since we last saw one. I think it's safe to say that she's not coming back even with her purple face upgrade, at least if the production staff are paying any amount of attention to the racial tension in the West. Having Jynx return would just lead to trouble.
 
I've explained why Jynx is unintentionally racist and I've explained why Ash-Passimian isn't unintentionally racist
No you didn't? You claimed that there is "no resemblance to racist imagery," which is not true as I explained it. Then you ignored it in favor of a "feeling vs logic" narrative.
 
Pulsaro23,

1) I'm pointing out that your posts are long-winded because that's what they are. I actually read every word of every post you make, and guess what? You repeat yourself constantly. You give three or four examples when one will suffice. You circle back to certain arguments (i.e. the slippery slope one) instead of clearly addressing the questions being asked of you. You seem to think that filling your posts with tons of detail makes them better and more complete but it actually just makes them feel bloated and difficult to read.

This isn't me dismissing you, this is me trying to help you figure out why you seem to be having so much trouble getting your points across in this thread.

2) "Partial lack of reason" and "partially throwing logic out the window" still mean the same thing.

3) You're wrong. Me bringing up black people in a conversation about blackface (!!!) isn't me "trying to insert race in a problem that has nothing to do with race." Please try again.
 
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I originally didn't plan on contributing much to this thread because I felt I didn't have much to add to the topic, and I also falsely assumed this thread would become way too heated (but it's been pretty civil so far so I'm happy to see that). I do not wish to engage in long back-and-forth arguments (I simply have better things to do) but after reading through it I'd like to share my views. Agree or disagree as you like.

It really doesn't matter to me that the Passimian episode got skipped in the dub. Would I rather see no episodes of one of my favourite animated shows being skipped? Of course. But it's so important to listen to each other, especially in a time where people are so extremely divided on so many topics. I think TPCi made the right choice as well by skipping this episode. Of course, I think most people can agree that there was no bad intention behind Ash dressing up as a Passimian, but it's certainly tonedeaf and it's easy to see the negative connotations of a boy dressing up as a monkey with black paint. Racism is so deeply rooted in society that a lot of it is unintentional nowadays, but just because there's no bad intentions does not mean we should just ignore it. That only keeps up the status quo of the deeply rooted nature of racism.

Besides, it's just a filler. No important connections to the overall saga, nothing to be missed in future episodes. Does it really matter that TPCi chose to skip it? Is that so much more important than the feelings of a large group of fans? Than breaking the status quo? For anyone who would suggest that skipping this episode would lead to more episodes being skipped and any potential "politically correct censorship" being applied en masse; that argument really doesn't hold up. It's a false "what if" sliding scale argument. This Passimian episode being skipped is just one instance in recent years. And I really doubt Pokémon, or any other tv show would just blatantly start banning or skipping episodes for whatever reason. If that happens, we can talk about the issue then, but it's not happening now.

This episode came in a time where more and more people start speaking up about racism and how even unintentional things can be very hurtful to people. I'm Caucasian so I don't have the same experiences as people with different skin colors do, but I can still listen to what they have to say, and empathize with their reasons. I think a couple of people in this thread perfectly expressed why Ash dressing up in a monkey costume with black paint on his face could be considered hurtful. If you've had to deal with racism all your life I can see how that can affect you. I don't have the same experiences, but I can imagine why one would feel that way.

I'd like to bring up an example: I grew up and still live in The Netherlands, a country known for its "Sinterklaas" holiday. Sinterklaas has a group of helpers called "Zwarte Piet" or "Black Pete" (typically portrayed by caucasian people with complete blackface). Within my country it is a very controversial subject, with one group of people believing the figure to be extremely outdated and racist (the idea of Zwarte Piet bearing similarities to slavery, and the figure itself having stereotypical black traits), and another group of people considering it to be harmless folklore and any criticism an attack on an age-old tradition. Growing up, I had no idea Zwarte Piet could be considered racist. I just saw it as a happy figure, associated with presents and a joyful tradition. In general, Zwarte Piet was considered very normal, at least when I was little.

It wasn't until much later that I took notice of people bringing up problems with Zwarte Piet. Did I stick my head in the sand and ignore this in favour of my own perception I had held all my life? No. I listened to what these people had to say, analyzed the situation and formed my own opinion on the matter. I can now see how Zwarte Piet could be considered hurtful to people, and how it harms their position in society and their enjoyment of a national holiday. I now believe the figure could be adjusted so that anyone, black or white, can happily celebrate Sinterklaas.

I apply the same principle here. I listen to what people have to say and I can see that they have a point. I don't know how big the negative response was when the Passimian episode initially aired, but blackface in general has been protested against for years. This is not just one guy with a protest sign parading in front of a government building, claiming that he's upset. It concerns a large group of people pointing out something part of a larger problem (deeply-rooted, if not unintentional, racism). Unlike, say, fundamentalist religious people claiming Pokémon is satanic and urging it to be banned (anyone can see that doesn't make much sense) this is something most people can acknowledge. Racism, intentional or unintentional, DOES exist, and if anyone denies this or refuses to at least listen to people pointing it out, then you are sticking your head in the sand.

So to conclude (I'm sorry for the long post, I usually like to keep it shorter); I think it's important to listen to each other, and not dismiss people bringing up problems with the Passimian episode as illogical (besides, humans are very illogical beings by nature. It must be very tiring to live a life solely driven by logic. Not everything is a math equation with one solution). Why do people see Ash dressing up as a Passimian as blackface? Why could this be considered hurtful? Is it better for humanity/society if we take these issues serious and at the very least talk about it with eachother? I personally believe it is.
 
They should not have painted Ash's face for the costume. I feel like having him dress up like one would have been enough and not caused as much of a stir. The face painting was unnecessary. Though I could be completely wrong since I'm white as the driven snow. But I *DO* understand the monkey/ape connotations racists use towards black Americans. I mean, hell. People still insult Obama's wife Michelle in this manner. I get more incensed that I probably "should" (in other's opinions) about these things because I have to deal with racist family members. My dad was racist as hell. Good lord was he racist. My mom is racist as well, though she wants to think she isn't. My brother is also racist. I have to deal with this all the time, especially whenever the topic of black lives matter comes up. It's so frustrating to hear these blatantly ignorant things come out of people's mouths.

Young kids are impressionable. I know this really well. I volunteered at a preschool for about a year, and one of the groups of kids had a girl who did not want to play with another because she was 'too dark'. This was a white girl to the only black child in the group. You bet your behind I shut that down immediately. A kid might see ash painting his face darker, and do it innocently and actually look a lot more like blackface than Ash did. And if they have racist parents, they'll probably take pictures and post it on social media with harmful text to "own" anyone who'd be offended. A thoughtful parent might clean their face off and tell them how that can look bad and hurtful to other people.

When I was really young my dad would flip out if I got a black barbie doll in my kids meal. That had an effect on me growing up, but thank god it didn't result in me becoming racist like him. When I was a toddler just learning about the world after learning to speak, I saw a black boy my age in a store one day and I was like "Mommy! His skin's darker than mine is! That's so cool! Hi!!" according to my mom. She was at least relieved I didn't repeat any of the racist things my dad would say, but it was still kinda iffy that baby me still thought the difference was enough to warrant a comment about it. Thank god I at least thought it was cool though. :| Children don't really have a filter to know when something's appropriate to mention or not.

I also really like how they changed Jinx's colors back in the day. I'd have changed more though. In fact I wish they would have made her skin like a bright pale blue and her lips purple to fit more with the ice typing. Maybe make her hair white instead of yellow too. Make her dress a pale red for contrast.

The fact both of these changes/removals happened shows that there is a visible offense that can be taken. The fact that some people argue it looks like blackface proves that it CAN come across as blackface.

This'll probably be my only post here since I am absolute shizz when it comes to arguments and my aspergers and social awkwardness makes it even more difficult to coherently make points.
 
On the topic of race and representation, white actors and actresses have begun stepping away from voiceover roles pertaining to POC (Jenny Slate, Mike Henry, Kristen Bell), so could we see similar changes in the Pokémon anime? Immediately, I think to Brock, who has been voiced by Bill Rogers since the departure from 4Kids back in 2006, taking over the role from Eric Stuart who had voicing him since 1998, both of whom are white.

Of course, no one is forcing TPCi to make this change, but they may do it out of respect for the changes going on in the world, and maybe even to prevent controversy later down the road. And considering how quick they were to retroactively ban episodes featuring Jynx's old design, and more recently, skipping SM064 (which featured Ash dressed up as a Passimian), I wouldn't be surprised to see Bill Roger's leave the role of Brock in favor of having a POC voice him instead.
 
I don’t think the race of the person who voices a character matters. Sure, if a character needs a voice which calls for intonations a PoC can do better, I’m up for it, but it isn’t something that matters much in my opinion. Not to mention that Brock is supposed to be Japanese (or Asian, at least). He just happens to have a darker skin tone, so I don’t think the change is necessary (unless, of course, the entire cast would somehow be shifting to Asian to reflect the races).

I don’t think casting calls for voice should be restricted by race/caste/whatever, just who captures the character better: even if it leads to people of different races being voiced by white people or white people being voiced by PoC. In Pokemon's context, Brock doesn’t need a specific dialect (not to mention adding some African American dialect to an Asian who just happens to be dark skinned is problematic, to say the least: there are more than two races and Asians exist too specially in a period when racism against Asians is at an all time high) so him being voiced by anyone suitable is fine.

VAs are not visible to the audience and some talented VAs can have voices suited to other races (like how some Indians can speak in perfect accent-less British English. Such a change is therefore, unnecessary to me personally (for information, I’m Indian).
 
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On the topic of race and representation, white actors and actresses have begun stepping away from voiceover roles pertaining to POC (Jenny Slate, Mike Henry, Kristen Bell), so could we see similar changes in the Pokémon anime? Immediately, I think to Brock, who has been voiced by Bill Rogers since the departure from 4Kids back in 2006, taking over the role from Eric Stuart who had voicing him since 1998, both of whom are white.

Of course, no one is forcing TPCi to make this change, but they may do it out of respect for the changes going on in the world, and maybe even to prevent controversy later down the road. And considering how quick they were to retroactively ban episodes featuring Jynx's old design, and more recently, skipping SM064 (which featured Ash dressed up as a Passimian), I wouldn't be surprised to see Bill Roger's leave the role of Brock in favor of having a POC voice him instead.

Brock has likely the same race of Ash (Asian). So, almost all the cast of Pokemon need to be replaced for Asians voice actors in this argument.

The assumption that a darker skin Asian is neccesarily a black person has its own problems, since there are many Asians with darker skin tone that aren't related to black people.
 
On the topic of race and representation, white actors and actresses have begun stepping away from voiceover roles pertaining to POC (Jenny Slate, Mike Henry, Kristen Bell), so could we see similar changes in the Pokémon anime? Immediately, I think to Brock, who has been voiced by Bill Rogers since the departure from 4Kids back in 2006, taking over the role from Eric Stuart who had voicing him since 1998, both of whom are white.

Of course, no one is forcing TPCi to make this change, but they may do it out of respect for the changes going on in the world, and maybe even to prevent controversy later down the road. And considering how quick they were to retroactively ban episodes featuring Jynx's old design, and more recently, skipping SM064 (which featured Ash dressed up as a Passimian), I wouldn't be surprised to see Bill Roger's leave the role of Brock in favor of having a POC voice him instead.

I mean using this logic why stop at Brock? Just have Japanese-Americans or people of Japanese descent in general voice the characters since most of them are obviously supposed to be Japanese.

But it's really not practical because I bet there aren't enough Japanese-American voice actors to fill those roles.
 
Two things regarding the supposed race of the characters:

1) Should Iris, Cilan, Clemont, Bonnie and the Alola gang be considered "Asian" in spite of them coming from regions inspired by countries in the America, Oceania and Europe continents?

2) If race should be represented accordingly with the voice actors...Shouldn't nationality be just as important? The "There isn't enough people" argument doesn't apply anymore as actors can send their lines from anywhere in the world.

My answer to both questions is No. As @PkmnTrainerV said, talent is more important, and representation is more about how the character is portrayed than about who's behind the mic.
I'd be 100% OK with the cast of the English dub consisting mostly of Japanese-American actors.
Then I assume you aren't OK with Rica Matsumoto as Ash because she is an adult woman playing a young male boy.
 
Then I assume you aren't OK with Rica Matsumoto as Ash because she is an adult woman playing a young male boy.

That's not really the same thing though because if someone has a problem with a boy being voiced by a woman then it becomes an issue about gender (and age I guess) rather than race.
 
I see this misunderstanding a lot. It's not "every character must be voiced by actors who are 1:1 the same," it's simply "we need to stop letting white actors hog all the POC roles." There are a lot of really talented non-white voice actors out there today but you (general "you," not "you" specifically) wouldn't know it because they keep getting passed over in favor of white talent.

Nicolas721 said:
Then I assume you aren't OK with Rica Matsumoto as Ash because she is an adult woman playing a young male boy.

I am OK with it, actually. The reason women tend to get cast as young boys is because 1) casting directors don't have to worry about their talent going through puberty-induced voice changes halfway through a season, and 2) the child labor laws that limit the amount of time young actors are allowed to spend in a recording booth don't apply to them.

Again, it's not "actors need to match their characters 1:1," it's "POC voice actors aren't getting enough work."
 
I see this misunderstanding a lot. It's not "every character must be voiced by actors who are 1:1 the same," it's simply "we need to stop letting white actors hog all the POC roles." There are a lot of really talented non-white voice actors out there today but you (general "you," not "you" specifically) wouldn't know it because they keep getting passed over in favor of white talent.



I am OK with it, actually. The reason women tend to get cast as young boys is because 1) casting directors don't have to worry about their talent going through puberty-induced voice changes halfway through a season, and 2) the child labor laws that limit the amount of time young actors are allowed to spend in a recording booth don't apply to them.

Again, it's not "actors need to match their characters 1:1," it's "POC voice actors aren't getting enough work."

The misunderstanding is because the characters' races are usually used to say that actors of their own races should play them.

If people said directly "There are a lot of talented non-white people, but they don't have enough opportunities. Also, they should be taken into account regardless of the character's race", there would be less confusion.
 
I see this misunderstanding a lot. It's not "every character must be voiced by actors who are 1:1 the same," it's simply "we need to stop letting white actors hog all the POC roles." There are a lot of really talented non-white voice actors out there today but you (general "you," not "you" specifically) wouldn't know it because they keep getting passed over in favor of white talent.

I agree. An awesome, recent, example is Neo Cihi, a Japanese American non-binary voice actor who is the English voice for Hau. Ever since the Veronica Taylor split, I haven't been a major fan of the English VAs we've had since then for the most part, but when I heard Hau I was very impressed; their voice isn't what I imagined for Hau, but it was still very fitting nonetheless in my opinion. I had to look up Hau's VA and was elated to find a POC behind the voice. They are fairly new and upcoming as well, so I'm glad they were given a chance; I'd say it paid off well and more opportunities for POC Voice Actors should be given.
 
I see this misunderstanding a lot. It's not "every character must be voiced by actors who are 1:1 the same," it's simply "we need to stop letting white actors hog all the POC roles." There are a lot of really talented non-white voice actors out there today but you (general "you," not "you" specifically) wouldn't know it because they keep getting passed over in favor of white talent.

Yeah, that's something that I've seen pop up during the past couple of days. People think that there aren't enough Japanese American voice actors available for anime dubs, but I think it's more like it's hard for a lot POC voice actors to break into the voice acting industry in general. Part of that could be due to how I think only a few locations in the country are ideal for voice actors, but I think it's more to do with just how often they are passed over in favor of white talent like you mentioned.

Having more POC voice actors involved with POC roles would ideally help more people break into the voice acting industry and make it more diverse, which sounds pretty good to me. I don't see it happening with the Pokemon dub at least not yet. The fact that they made Journeys into a joint dub production with LA and New York makes me think that they want to keep Ash and Team Rocket's current voices. Plus, as nice as it would be to incorporate more diversity behind the scenes, the entertainment industry in general isn't really known for welcoming POC with open arms right away, so something like having more POC voice actors matching with their characters' ethnicity is most likely going to be a slow, if any, kind of process.
 
I agree that people from all races need more opportunities. However, if a white actor is fired because he's the wrong race from the character....isn't that racism?

(And two things before someone twists my words:
1. Actors who quit roles don't count. Whether or not it's the best decision it's debatable, but it's something very brave to do. However, not many actors are able to afford quitting a role in an already poorly paid industry.
2. New projects and new roles don't count either because you're hiring people instead of firing. Those should be the ones we hope have better representation.)

I'd be 100% OK with the cast of the English dub consisting mostly of Japanese-American actors.
You sound like you want Ash and Team Rocket to be recasted. If that's not the case then I apologize.
 

Goodbye Rica Matsumoto! You must be replaced by a man with a high-pitched voice like Daiki Yamashita's.
Goodbye Aoi Yuki, Reina Ueda and Kaito Ishikawa! You must be replaced by dark-skinned people.

And if that doesn't make my point clear...
Goodbye Yūki Kaji and Mariya Ise! You must be replaced by people with a French background.
Goodbye Hitomi Kikuchi, Fumiko Takekuma, Kei Shindō! You must be replaced by people with a Hawaiian background.

And you said we have to feel empathy for others. What kind of empathy is saying "Sarah Natochenny, Michele Knotz and Carter Cathcart, go home because you're not Japanese"?
 
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