I love him but....

[witchwillow]

Hiro Nakamura is not Japanese.

I know it seems like he is. He speaks Japanese, looks Japanese, has a Japanese corporate mogul father and a Japanese sister and most of all he has a Japanese salary-man as his best friend. But on tv, he's not Japanese.

Comments

[hederahelix]

You know, I didn't read comic books, so I'm coming to Heroes without some of the necessary geek background (and also, I'm several episodes behind . . . so, take that as you will).

But reading this, I'm struck by the fact that we could read Hiro as a whole new kind of cultural appropriation. The rise of the popularity of Japanese media in the US (magna, anime, I suspect that machinima would fit in here too) has to be read as part of how Hiro is read: namely, that now that (white) US fans have begun dabbling in and appropriating Japanese culture, we're going to see that trend play out in the characters as well--and that Hiro could be read as a white appropriation of all things Japanese in that light. (esp. given the comments that Osa has made in interviews about how he corrected their translations of Japanese words in some scripts)

So, um, yes.

However, and it's a small but, because I haven't seen the last two or three episodes (due to TiVo hijinks and needing to figure out which key episode I missed in the first half of the season, because at some point I came back and all sort of things had happened that I didn't know about, and wow, was I lost), does the Future version of Hiro change that at all? I know you probably can't answer that without spoiling, but of the snippets I've seen, that might be the only thing that has even the possibility to undercut that reading, and I'm guessing that in the bits I haven't seen, there are aspects to Future! Hiro that show how that's not the case (and from the snippet I saw of Monday night's ep, while changing channels, I'm assuming that Future! Hiro is more about sacrificing himself for others, which actually fits with the appropriation instead of challenging it, but I'll defer to those of y'all who've seen it, while I wander off and try to avoid any further spoilers.

[witchwillow]

Huh, I'd have said he struck me as driven and obsessed and perhaps self-sacrificing in terms of what he'd do to achieve his goal of stopping the explosion in NYC.

[sabonasi]

After ".07%" aired, there was a discussion in my blog about depictions of sacrifice in American media in terms of race and gender. I was kind of hashing out how you see two different categories:

1. The sacrificial lamb, who's okay with dying for the greater good, who stays dead, and whom may not be recognized by anyone but the audience as a hero. Generally Characters of Color and female characters.

2. The heroic last stand, who heads the battle, goes down fighting, is brave and courages up against greater odds, and may not stay dead but whom will at least be mourned. Generally white men.

Isaac's in the first category, but I'd say that Future Hiro is more in the second category.

[witchwillow]

Not just Isaac in the Future. Ahem.

But yes, I think 'Five Years Gone' F!Hiro falls into the second category.

[oyceter]

I keep being torn about the portrayal of race in Heroes; everyone really totally starts out as a stereotype, but they've been giving Hiro and Ando a lot of depth, despite the whole Asexual Asian Male thing.

I mean, yes, I do think having Hiro as the geek fanboy otaku who must break away from the evil Japanese salaryman thing is completely a stereotype and an appropriation of the "oooo Japanese culture is cool trend," but on the other hand, the thing that I've really liked about what they do with Hiro is that he is the hero, as opposed to being the Mystical Asian on the sidelines enabling everyone.

Well, there is definitely some of that too (sigh).

But there's the thing where I think the writers have been fairly consistently portraying Hiro's attitude as the good attitude, not just for Hiro, which would be really annoying, but for all the heroes -- they should be stepping up to the plate and trying to save the world like Hiro is. Either that, or I fanwank too much when I watch ;). And I am just so excited about the fact that there are Japanese characters who actually speak Japanese on screen! With subtitles!

I can't find the link, but rachelmanija commented to me before that it was really neat what they were doing with the subtitles; because of them, we "hear" Hiro and Ando without the accent, and so, when they do speak with the accent, we aren't sympathizing with the white characters who have to make out what they're saying; we're sympathizing with Hiro and Ando's language difficulties because of course usually, the viewer has no problem understanding them. I also liked the small touch of them having Hiro and Charlie largely speaking in Japanese so that the balance of power there wrt language was different than it usually is.

On the other hand, the asexual Asian guy thing still annoys me. I am very glad Hiro got Charlie, but the whole Ando-as-funny-horndog-haha thing still gets to me.

In conclusion: still irked! But also still liking some things they do with the character! Very confused ;).

[em_h]

I don't see Hiro as a kind of stealth whiteboy -- though I do think that there's a certain amount of the "acceptable POC" thing, whereby relatively light-skinned Asians are more "almost-white." It's particularly that he speaks Japanese a great deal of the time, and among the several good things about this is that it reminds us constantly that, yes, this very popular character is someone who'd normally be coded as "the Other." If the poster below is right, that the writers didn't mean for him to speak Japanese most of the time & that this was Masi Oka's twist on the character, that's very interesting.

I think Hiro may be a character who was initially conceptualized as a kind of combination of Funny Asexual Asian Guy and Mystical/Magical Asian, but is in the process of becoming much more than that. And I'm curious to know how much that has to do with Masi Oka (who does seem to have taken an active role in shaping his character), how much was the writers having to respond to the fact that Hiro became their breakout character, and how much was in their original plan. I'm betting that the original plan didn't have Hiro acquiring anything like the depth he's in the process of developing.

With Claire, I suspect she was always planned to develop more or less as she has, but Hiro I suspect not. (And btw, on a tangent to do with gender rather than race, how much does it bother me that saving the cheerleader was the key to saving the world apparently ONLY because it prevented Sylar from getting her power, not because she herself has a key role in the worldsaving? A lot, that's how much.)

[annwfyn]

Totally on a tangent - wow - first time I've heard anyone on the internet away from machinima forums talk about machinima (I worked for Strange Co from '97 to 2001)

In fact, should I know you?

I'm Sally. I did the voice of Laetitia in Nightfall, and wrote all the 'day in the life' pieces for machinima.com.

[annwfyn]

Ah...I was never scifi soc, just a good friend of Hugh's who got involved with it all and stayed involved for ages.

Either way, nice to encounter you online. :p

[hederahelix]

Oh, I didn't take it as derailing at all. I have *just* learned that such a thing exists, and I certainly don't know the first thing about it (the context about which I heard about it was in a larger conversation about vidding vs. fan films and issues of gender. I might possibly have gotten it *entirely* wrong, so I'm more than happy to be corrected as needed.

Which is a long way of saying thank you. At least, I think that's what I'm trying to say.