I definitely agree. It's definitely not the same as your situation, but when people hear I study/studied Japanese, some of them would come out with some really horrible stuff, ranging from not knowing the difference between China and Japan to incredibly offensive and racist jokes (not to mention assuming I'm a cosplaying otaku only into Japan because of some weird sexual fetish...).
The casting travesty that was Memoirs of a Geisha, how Last Samurai went from a great story with a Japanese hero to a crappy Tom Cruise vehicle, and the whole Avatar casting debacle (I don't watch the show and I still heard all about it) are good examples of this crap. I don't know if mainstream Americans are really that awful or if studio heads just think that they are, but it makes me so angry when they change things just because they think more people will want to see it.
And it really isn't that difficult to get it right, especially with things like costumes (time and money constraints aside). In many cases, 20 minutes on Wikipedia/Google would be enough to fix some things! It's usually just sheer apathy and laziness. Drives me nuts too....
grrr i get so annoyed with people who assume anyone who's interested in japan is obsessed with anime/manga.. ><
i also find it interesting that there are practically no big name asian american actors or actresses.. most of the big names are actors that are from japan or china (jackie chan, ken watanabe, zhang ziyi, chow yun fat) and then the few asian american ones that are out there (lucy liu, sandra oh, kal penn) end up in some of the most ridiculous shit. (did someone say harold and kumar?)
The casting travesty that was Memoirs of a Geisha, how Last Samurai went from a great story with a Japanese hero to a crappy Tom Cruise vehicle, and the whole Avatar casting debacle (I don't watch the show and I still heard all about it) are good examples of this crap. I don't know if mainstream Americans are really that awful or if studio heads just think that they are, but it makes me so angry when they change things just because they think more people will want to see it.
And it really isn't that difficult to get it right, especially with things like costumes (time and money constraints aside). In many cases, 20 minutes on Wikipedia/Google would be enough to fix some things! It's usually just sheer apathy and laziness. Drives me nuts too....
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i also find it interesting that there are practically no big name asian american actors or actresses.. most of the big names are actors that are from japan or china (jackie chan, ken watanabe, zhang ziyi, chow yun fat) and then the few asian american ones that are out there (lucy liu, sandra oh, kal penn) end up in some of the most ridiculous shit. (did someone say harold and kumar?)
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i'm entirely convinced that if we could get a woman as a head of a major studio that none of this nonsense would be an issue.
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