Aw, Gaiman, why you gotta play like that?
Neil Gaiman is scripting the James Cameron-assisted movie version of Journey to the West.

I feel really kinda queasy about this. There are no few Asian writers for whom this story came with their milk teeth, like Cinderella does to an English-speaker, and Gaiman has been...bad...about stuff relating to other cultures before. I really doubt that having been for a visit to China is enough to justify his treatment of the script.

(And let's not talk about James Cameron. Ick.)

Mercredigirl over at Dreamwidth has more to say.

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franzen
2011-03-28 11:28 pm UTC (link)

I think this comment (and my tl;dr response) does a better job of making my point. It's not that I think Gaiman is always bad, it's just that I'm no longer inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I always wanted to write a SJ blog post on what to do and how it feels when you realize that, hey, your totally awesome liberal parents? Not quite as progressive as you wanted them to be. And maybe they still say some really fucked up, ablist, racist, sexist shit. And you love them, but there comes a time when they can't be heroes any longer. Pretending that -ist behavior can be explained away or justified is not okay, no matter who it's coming from. They're your parents, but to the world, they're being -ist jackasses.

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sorchar
2011-03-29 12:12 am UTC (link)

I hear you there. My mother (who has grown increasingly right-wing over the years, which is one reason I'm glad we live on opposite sides of the country) shocked the hell out of me when I was about fourteen by telling me, apropos of nothing, that I wasn't allowed to date black guys. This is the woman who claimed to have demonstrated in college for civil rights (I always did have my suspicions) and when I called her on it, claimed she wasn't racist because she had black friends. Oh, and this was in the 80s, when people really should have known better.

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judyhazeleyes
2011-03-29 08:31 pm UTC (link)

That reminds me of my great-aunt and great-uncle (I have no genetic aunts or uncles, so they kinda fill that role for us) - I always knew they were homophobic, based on how badly they dealt with their gay son's death from AIDS, but I had no idea they were racist until one day I was talking about a cute Japanese boy in my class and my aunt said, in genuine horror: "Don't you go bringing him home!"

To my uncle's credit, he turned around and barked at her, "SHE CAN BRING HOME WHOEVER SHE WANTS." But it was still an awakening. I don't see them much these days - at some point, I just became unable to smile through the ignorance and knew I'd lose my mind if they blurted out something unacceptable in front of me.

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