Abstract
'Ghost in the Shell' was first produced as a Japanese animated film in 1995. The movie and its sequels established a cult status due to the philosophical depth in portraying the posthuman condition. It was remade as a live action Hollywood film in 2017; and this version failed at the box office. One reason had to be the “whitewashing” issue – that the female protagonist was played by a white actress in the Hollywood movie, rather than a Japanese character as in the original anime. This review essay critically discusses issues of whitewashing, racial ‘identity’, the shifting identity of the ‘cyborg’, and the constitutive tension between the human and the machine.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Mizukoshi, Kosuke
(2018)
"Perils of Hollywood Whitewashing?: A review of 'Ghost in the Shell' movie,"
Markets, Globalization & Development Review:
Vol. 3:
No.
1, Article 6.
DOI: 10.23860/MGDR-2018-03-01-06
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Author Bio
Kosuke Mizukoshi is an associate professor of marketing in the business school at Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan. His research focuses on marketing communication, especially on the Internet, and he also has an interest in critical and practice studies.