I recently stumbled upon this on Kotaku:
I don't know where to begin saying what's wrong with this. First of all, it's a movie based on a video game. The movies of Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, and Resident Evil have all shown us what happens when you try to make a movie out of a video game. But to make it even worse, we have Jake Gyllenhaal starring as the eponymous Prince of Persia. We're told in the fucking title that the main character is Middle-Eastern, and we have a white guy playing him.
Now you may be thinking, "this is unrelated to Asian movies, so why are you talking about it here?" Well, first of all, Persia was on the Eurasian continent, in southeast Asia, so I'm not entirely off, geographically speaking. And even if I was, I said in my last post on the subject that despite the title, I'll be talking about incidents involving other races as well. I've just named this series "Asian Appropriation Alert" because most of the examples I see today involve Asian characters, and because it has a nice ring to it. Anyway:
I was criticized on Racialicious for going too far with my argument about the movie based on Hachiko. But I think this is an even more extreme example. With Hachiko, the filmmakers were taking a Japanese story and putting it in an entirely different location. You could argue that there was an artistic reason for this. I think other movies have done the same thing for artistic reasons, although in the case of the Hachiko I don't really see art playing a part. The Prince of Persia movie is an entirely different story, and anyone can tell that just from its title. The movie is called Prince of PERSIA, and it's set in PERSIA, and it's about said Prince of PERSIA. Is Jake Gyllenhaal Persian? Hell no. This is just another example of a movie where a character's race is specifically stated, in the fucking title of the movie, and that character is played by a white person. Even if you think I'm being to sensitive, or whatever, you still have to admit that this makes the movie NOT MAKE SENSE. Movies like these don't only strike a blow against equality, they strike a blow against plausibility.
Personally, I'd rather watch this movie instead:
also, it's a disney production
Juje
July 21, 2009 at 11:23 AMYea, I dunno about this one. The game was made by Ubisoft Montreal, and the Prince speaks with a British accent. The story and all the characters have pretty much been a bastardization of the culture from the beginning. Not to say that this isn't appropriation, it's just always been like that.
BackDoorAngel
July 21, 2009 at 6:04 PMI actually don't think this is a good example of appropriation. Appropriation would be making a movie about a Persian legend and "whitening" it up for western audiences. Prince of Persia is already an entirely western creation. The "Persia" bit is less "mighty empire which eventually becomes Iran" and more "Arabian Nights," an exotic fantasy setting. I actually prefer them casting a white dude instead of trying to half-ass it by casting a Spaniard (The 13th Warrior) or Indian (Lost) as an Arab (not that Arabs are Persian, but you get the point.
When I was working for a theater, their were two ways to deal with a play set in an exotic locale. The first is to be as authentic as possible, with everyone using perfect accents (and casting the correct ethnicity for each character,) but this is difficult and time-consuming. The second was to ignore the issue completely, cast whoever you want, and forego accents. This sounds jarring, but actually allows suspension of disbelief and is quite effective.
Naturally, film is a different medium and there's a lot less suspension of disbelief involved.
As for it sucking, this movie has the distinct advantage of having its main screenwriter be Jordan Mechner, the talented man who wrote the Prince of Persia games. It just so happens that he is a professional screenwriter as well.
So it automatically bypasses the first hurdle of any movie adaptation - a writer who doesn't get what made his source material so great.
A great read are his journal entries from the '80s, when he was writing POP and being a struggling screenwriter: http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/page/35/
Back on topic:
Exotification - yes. Appropriation - not so much.
Bobbicus
July 21, 2009 at 9:37 PMOk, point taken. It is a bit of a stretch to call this appropriation, since the source material itself is completely inauthentic to begin with. Still, I'd say this goes one step further then just exotification, since we still have the issue of Jake Gyllenhaal playing the prince of Persia. And just because the series has always been like this, to quote the Specials, it doesn't make it all right. Basically, I have no problem with the setting being a fantastical version of the Persian empire that's not at all historically accurate. The issue I have is just with the casting.
Jake
July 22, 2009 at 3:11 AMWell, it has nothing to do with Persia. "Prince of Persia" was just a working title that stuck (another considered title was "Baghdad.") No connection to real-life Persia whatsoever.
Bobbicus
July 22, 2009 at 11:39 AM