Blue Eye Samurai

Let's just keep this brief: "Blue Eye Samurai" is kinda racist. I guess that's not really interesting - race is an ongoing discussion - but this one is weird in how stealthily racist it is, just from premise alone, because I didn't have much of an appetite to watch beyond episode 1. It's a nice take on "Samurai Champloo", which I think could have used an overarching plot. But just looking at the show itself you get weirded out: Canadians making a show that takes place in Japan while dealing quite seriously with Japanese values seems...misguided. This isn't equal to "Samurai Jack", where 1) Jack is singular, 2) the writers take Jack's beliefs quite seriously and 3) it's really about cutting up robots, this show is addressing miscegenation, a pretty complex topic that occurs over and over in human history. Which is, like, fine to address. It's hard to come up with a suitable comparison. Looking at it the other way, Japanese animators don't have much to say about Westerners in any serious sense. They often comment on America's military presence, which I think is fair, given their situation. I would say "Blue Eye Samurai" is in the same spirit, I guess, with Charlie Hebdo's depictions of Muhammed, which I think were done with a fairly innocent but ignorant perspective. It's a depiction of a country and a culture by someone or some people that don't care all too much about the history of the country, and by history I mean the progression of ideas, the rationale behind etc and not "hey I read this up in Wikipedia, that sounds cool", thus it's a romanticized Japan? Or, an homage to Tokugawa Japan? Whatever it is, it needs to end in a question mark, though it seems the creators did try to take it seriously. Pulp, I get; I wouldn't care if the creators thought katanas and samurai were cool so let's make a chanbara, a la "Afro Samurai". Fun is fun and it - seldom - hurts anyone. But right off the bat the dialogue is wrong; characters don't speak with Japanese formality and instead sound like Americans (think "Avatar: The Last Airbender" which takes place in, well, a fantasy). Yes, I know: weeb obsession. But not really - there's a reason why those formalities exist, they guide Japanese thoughts, they inform the speaker of their standing, and thus the language, y'know, informs what the characters think and say. But no, they're basically Americans in Japanese form, and they're pretty much Disney caricatures, with the black-and-white extremes of comic relief and heel. When Iggy Azalea reduces hip-hop culture to fat asses and stacks, it's cultural appropriation, and when "Blue Eye Samurai" reduces Japanese culture to kimonos and katanas, it's also cultural appropriation. Then there's the issue of the main character not looking very Western; Japanese mother, sure, but little changes in build or facial structure, she just straight-up looks like Jin from "Samurai Champloo". Is it fair to say details matter? I would say no, but only, again, if fun is fun; Dave Chapelle crying, "Reach for the sky, honky", is funny because it's extreme and deliberately cartoony. This is not; the main character has Shakespearean-type (not Shakespearean-like, goodness no) angst. We've already had numerous conversations on Hollywood white-washing; ironically this is timed with Netflix's trailer for the live-action adaptation of "Avatar: The Last Airbender", where the last one was decried for this same quality. No, it doesn't help the protagonist that she's mixed, she's still treated as a unicorn, in the mythology of the show. Actually, I do have a comparable example: "The Karate Kid". Hurts bad now that the shoe fits, huh? Except the entire show is filled with Mr. Miyagi, and our protagonist is the lone Daniel, out to fuck shit up. And just like "The Karate Kid", Daniel is the one who validates the existences of every one of these Miyagis. I think it's fair to say, if you multiply a Miyagi, you also multiply the racism. I don't know, maybe if you showed this to a Japanese native, they would take this far less seriously than I do. They may even look at it as flattering, in the same sense that Japanese animation takes fascination with American gunslingers. Maybe my "racism detector" is a little busted, and I'm not sure if I'm Keegan or Jordan in this situation. Usually I'm on the other side, which is baffling me; I'm often defiant against these types of accusations. I'm likely going to check out the Metropolitan Opera's production of "Madama Butterfly" because I thought the accusations of cultural appropriation were odd, since, going by the libretto, it's largely about the tragedy and little about Japan. Though I have a bit of a soft spot for perspectives like Peter Dinklage's when he says that "Snow White" has a "fucking backwards story about seven dwarfs". I mean, he lived it, not me. That's where we get to the part of the conversation where we ask whether it's better to err on the side of caution than not. I think I'll err. Yes, people from Japan are literally a million miles away and will probably never see the thing, but I think they ought to be represented, as much as a Muslim or an African might have reasonable qualms about their depiction on screen. I don't know, call it the purist in me. Why do we have to put an asterisk on "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and "Homeland" but not this? "We can forgive it because it's animated." Furthermore, I thought the demand for cast change for "Avatar" was fine. I prefer things to be harder, not easier, for shit to be made that I've already seen before. "Blue Eye Samurai", by plot alone, looks like an interesting samurai flick, but I've already seen it. That's the other reason why I don't want to watch it: beyond feeling really, really grossed out (on par with my initial viewing of "Porgy and Bess") I didn't feel the dialogue stood out, because that's the heart of action, dialogue, which conveys, well, what the characters are doing! Anyway, fuck "Blue Eye Samurai", if only because of the headache it's given me.