mohandasgandhi:

No, no, Huffintgon Post, that’s not a question.

The two directors of the film don’t quite seem to get it:

For their part, the Wachowksis understand the criticism, but hope people will actually see the film first to better understand the significance of the decision.

“That’s good that people are casting a critical eye. We need to cast critical eyes toward these things. What are the motivations behind directors and casting? I totally support it,” Andy Wachowski told HuffPost Entertainment. “But our intention is the antithesis of that idea. The intention is to talk about things that are beyond race. The character of this film is humanity, so if you look at our past work and consider what our intention might be, we ask that those people give us a chance and at least see the movie before they start casting judgement.

Echoed Lana Wachowski: “Their suggestion is that our tribes have to always remain separate. That the things that makes us different are essential elements to our representation and our identity. Why we were attracted to the book is that the book has a bigger perspective. The book suggests that there is a humanity that is beyond our tribe, our ethnic features. A humanity that is beyond our gender. A humanity that unites all of us and transcends our tribal differences. As long as we continue to build these intractable and insurmountable walls between us to make these distinctions, we will continue to have intellectual apparatus that allows us to make wars and that allows to dominate, exploit and destroy others. Because we don’t think of them like we think about our own kind, our own tribe.”

The way to “look past race,” which is another way to describe “colorblindness,” or the ineffective neo-liberal approach to racism, is to utilize traditionally racist depictions of East Asians and incorporate yellowface into a film to accomplish the goal of showing our inner humanity for one another? I’m not quite sure they thought this through entirely.

Fuck everything about this movie. what a shame to an otherwise great novel.

(via racebending)