And somehow, I think the constant re-doing of numerous Asian films with a white cast should be tossed in there as well.

Well, as someone living in Asia, I’d like to note that while I agree with Nora about the difference between “amusing, relatively benign” imitation of the kind Clint described and really offensive denigration, believe me, the latter kind of thing goes on too. Lots of other societies than the West are just as gleefully ignorant about depicting other cultures or societies. While the West, especially the US, has a kind of “special status” in terms of this — it just produces so much entertainment media and so on — he US isn’t even particularly the most aggressive in disrespectfully making a hash of others’ cultures.

(And yes, to some degree ignorance gets used as a defense, but… well, in this era, ignorance is often willful, isn’t it? I mean… Internet. Cheap air travel. Research. Duh.)

Here in Korea, it’s a rare moment to find non-Koreans in a movie or on TV who aren’t villainous in some way. (Slowly less so, but still…) And if there is a Westerner who’s nice, it’s usually one or two decent folk surrounded by much more powerful bad guys. (A fantastical example, and this is of a movie I actually really like, is The Host. The white presence in that movie is just bursting with anti-American sentiment, anxiety about Korean subordinate status to America, and so on. There are three major white characters, only one of whom isn’t menacing.)

(On TV, it’s even more stark — Western women are sex kittens all, waiting for any man to pounce and woo her, while Western men are menacing rapists-in-waiting who are obsessed with bedding Korean women. Though that’s true of SOME Westerners I’ve met here, that’s not more true in any greater proportion than it is among Korean guys. And newspapers run the most horrifying things here… caricatures of modern black Americans with bones in their noses in Flintstones garb. Without comment. Or outcry. Or recognition that it would offend anyone.)

Don’t get me wrong: I’m way beyond ranting now, or resenting it. One gets around to, uh, sort of accepting it, or accepting at least that the media is stupider than enough of the people one meets in person. Accepting that ranting about it on the internet does no good, anyway. (I try get my students to be aware of it in their own creative projects, though, or in classroom discussions.)

But as much as one resigns oneself to it — and I don’t know that resignation is a good thing — this kind of thing does impact politics, sometimes in wrongheaded ways, and for example can persuade people to denigrate foreign countries to their own detriment at times, even when they rarely meet people of another race. This is the thing I’ve been seeing more and more, as I experience what it’s like to be a minority, albeit a privileged minority in a number of ways: the people who sneer sideways at you for being different are losing out in a big way. They’re screwing themselves out of someone who would happily and eagerly work with them, cooperate, etc.

Things are different when you’re not a *privileged* minority, of course. I’m aware of this. If white people think THEY have it bad in the media here, they should pay a little more attention to how Southeast Asians (or blacks, for that matter) are portrayed in the media in Korea.

Not to rant. I think I’m trying to say that while it’s easy to ignore that other societies have media just as bigoted, or moreso — and it certainly helps focus on the media most readers are likely to encounter — it’s probably also fanciful. It’s worth noting that to the degree the inherent vileness an stupidity of this kind of thing is at least debatable amogn us, we’ve achieved something. Not everything we need to achieve, and not that our answers are always easily reached, but we have achieved something!

Because these kinds of discussions don’t even tend to start up at all, where I live. You see blackface minstrel performance on TV, or a show depicting young white men as rapists hunting innocent Korean women, say, and declare, “That’s offensive!” and even some smart, educated people just go, “Huh?”

Whether it be in their “sacred texts” or various books, films, radio & television ministries, there is a blatant & unapologetic misrepresentation of any culture that is in opposition to their particular beliefs.

For centuries religious organizations have condemned any group that does not follow their dogma. Let’s use Christians as an example (though most well-known religions fall under the same umbrella of misrepresentation).

Christians have long associated those of different beliefs as Satanists, even though many (such as most modern Pagans/Wiccans) do not even believe in the devil.

Pick up any book written by an evangelical writer & you will, often, find a blanket assault on other “faiths”. Rarely do these arguments distinguish between the different faiths. Little thought is given to their origins/history except in regards to its opposition to the Christian faith. They will often make reference to their pagan “roots”, but only as a means of condemnation.

It doesn’t seem to matter that various ancient beliefs did not always share a common history. Whether it was the Greeks, the Romans, Egyptians or Norse. Or (in a more modern sense) whether it’s Wiccans, Mormons, Muslims or Pagans, to the evangelicals they are simply “of Satan”.

I have read many books & attended many churches during my life & have found few who speak/write of other beliefs in a fair manner. I know that these evanglists are pushing an agenda, but their flock suffers as a result. They fail to research these cultures for themselves & have been conditioned to overlook/ignore their uniqueness. Thus the cycle of misrepresentation is passed on to each generation.

I meant to say something on Silvia’s original essay this B4aBeer cites, so I might as well say it here. The Cabeza de Baca work is neat and all, but depending on the translation/interpretation it gets sorta well, stupid. The Cyclone Covey version I read essentially tries to depict the first European explorations into the interior of North America. the original account was believed to be more Central America. The Covey text can be interpreted to impose an earlier European claim on North America. As though it validates cultures of the Southwest US through European influence and exploration.

It irritates the hell out of me. First, there are no facts in the accounts to support these arguments. Covey basically moves the original path of Cabeza de Baca’s journey a couple parallels to the North. Not to mention Cabeza de Baca was a “captive” the entire time and likely made up most of his account to save his neck after the Spanish found him on the West Coast– 900 miles away from where he was supposed to be. His account is like Scheherazade’s tales used to postpone a death sentence.

http://www.badmovies.org/movies/q/

The fact that it is treated as religious revelation doesn’t make it any less fantasy fiction, it just makes it dangerous fantasy fiction, and badly researched and poorly conceived alternate history fiction.