Gemma Chan reflects on that episode of Sherlock from her early career
The Crazy Rich Asians star did not always find herself playing roles avoidant of racial stereotypes
TV News Gemma Chan
Gemma Chan, known for her roles in Crazy Rich Asians and within the MCU, did not always get to play such well-rounded characters at the start of her career. After appearing in another Steven Moffat-led series in 2009—Doctor Who—Chan starred in a particularly controversial episode of Sherlock, the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-based show starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
Chan guest-stars in the second episode of season 1, titled “The Blind Banker.” She plays Soo Lin Yao, a Chinese pottery expert who works at the fictional National Antiquities Museum in London. The episode received criticism for leaning into racial tropes, with Chan wearing a qipao (Chinese traditional dress) and speaking in a thick Chinese accent, while vaguely Asian-sounding flute music plays in the background. In an interview with Vogue, Chan reflects on the “racially tone-deaf exercise in orientalism,” saying that now she would reconsider her options.
“Would I necessarily make the same choices now, if given the choice? Maybe not,” Chan admits. “I think I would speak up more if I felt that a role was leaning into an orientalist trope of some sort. I’m much more aware. And I think I’m in more of a position where I could say something.”
This was early on in the actor’s career, and years before her breakout as Mia in Humans. Chan makes it clear she understands how it feels to lack power in an industry, and find yourself needing to take on more unseemly roles in order just to get by with little room for input. For her, finding her footing as an actor meant taking on “every job going—bit parts, one line parts, anything.”
“With complete respect to everyone involved… I’m not here to throw shade on anyone… but yeah, I totally hear what you’re saying,” she says. “I don’t look down on anyone doing any position or in any job on set. The industry has really shifted, even in just the time that I’ve been working. Changing the actual culture—changing in practice—takes longer.”
It should not be lost on anyone that Chan did not write the character herself—that was a room full of white men, who bear the responsibility concerning how the character was portrayed. Showrunner Moffat and episode writer Stephen Thompson also penned numerous other inaccuracies in addition to Chan’s character, including the “Suzhou” numerical system being incorrectly identified as “Huangzhou,” and the episode’s assertion that origami is a Chinese art-form rather than a Japanese one, which would have taken a mere Google search to clear up.
The Eternals star also reflects that even with some of the changes in narratives on Asian characters, there’s still plenty of room to improve, especially when it comes to who’s calling the shots and writing the characters. That way, actors of color don’t find themselves needing to take on culturally insensitive roles in order to get anywhere in the industry.
“Individual successes are one thing. But structurally, when you look at who can actually get projects green-lit in the UK, who are in those positions of power, those gatekeeping positions—there aren’t that many Asians,” she says. “There aren’t many people of color in those positions.”
Over ten years out from her Sherlock appearance, Chan sees her current work as a way to honor her culture and continue to open doors for those that follow her. Even as acting tutors told her it would be better if she focused on finding work in the U.S., she did not see that as her path to creating long lasting change back home in London.
“There’s a way that you can honor the spirit of your ancestors by actually trying to do something different, which I know is a privilege,” she says. “This is the argument I tried to put to my parents back then, when things were tough: hopefully, you work to make sure the next generation has even more of a chance to do something different and change things for the better for the rest of the community, or the next generation after that. That’s something I feel in my bones. I want a rising tide to lift all boats.”
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Also the episode where the damsel in distress is all alone, tied to a chair, with a damn crossbow pointed at her. It’s framed as this tense, dramatic situation that could have been totally solved if she just . . . fell over
Making the episode even more inexplicable is that unlike the rest of the fairly tightly plotted show, you could skip it entirely and not miss a single thing. Some fans even suspect Thompson wasn’t given any kind of guidance by Moffat and Gatiss beyond the basic idea of Sherlock and Watson in the present day, which led him to transplant 19th century “Yellow Peril” villains into it in a way that doesn’t fit at all (and they’re not even part of the original Holmes story the episode is loosely based on).
In retrospect, entrusting a Sherlock Holmes adaption to a couple of people who were interested in the vague idea of Sherlock Holmes but had little experience (or interest) in writing mysteries might not have been the best decision, creatively.
Mofatt and Gatiss can do dialogs and scenes, but they can’t do structure – and in mysteries, structure is everything.
I though the first 3 series of Sherlock were consistent in having 1 amazing episode, 1 good, and 1 bad.Blind Banker, Hound of Baskerville, and The Empty Hearse were the worst of their series.
Except for the fact the “tightly plotted” show also relied on sexist tropes of women being emotional over men they like such as Adler losing because she “fell under Sherlock’s spell” and used her love for him as a password, mocking Molly over her unrequited love for Sherlock, Mary being turned by love, and the final villain of the entire show being Sherlock’s secret sister undertaking terror plots all because her brothers didn’t hug her enough.So yeah the idea Moffat and Gatiss were progressive forces and this was a one off is fanciful.
It’s a little tiresome how Adler always gets trotted out at Sherlock’s love interest, because she’s basically the only meaningful female character in any of Doyle’s stories. And even in the one story she actually shows up in, she’s not a love interest, she’s just a dramatic foil for Holmes. Holmes is about as asexual as characters get.(That said, I love Rachel McAdams and can find no fault in her performance as Adler in the 2009 film)
Except he isn’t asexual, as someone who is on that spectrum that’s something I always found grating. His character has a Victorian era disdain for women as a distraction and as the “inferior emotional sex”, he is simply a straight up misogynist in the original books except for his housekeeper as a caregiver. However adaptions instead like to bullshit it as “asexuality” lest they have to critically examine their love for the character and have to maybe change his attitudes towards women in the modern day.
The vast majority of Victorian misogynists still pursued sexual relationships with women. Holmes’s unconflicted disinterest in any form of relationship fits asexuality fine.
I don’t think he’s explicitly meant to be asexual (and certainly not in the modern sense) but in all Doyle’s stories he barely ever evinces anything that could be called romantic or sexual attraction to anyone, and even when he does it’s usually because he’s just doing so as undercover detective work. That’s not incompatible with being a typical misogynist of the era, which he is, along with every other male character in the stories when the topic comes up. Plenty of Victorian (and Edwardian) misogynists fell in love and got married.
Plenty of Victorian (and Edwardian) misogynists fell in love and got married.That doesn’t mean anything though. Holme’s distaste towards women and therefore relationships is entirely rooted in multiple entries in his disdain for women as a sex and his belief he is above such “emotional” pursuits. He doesn’t simply have an aversion to sex or romance as concepts but respect for women (aromantic asexuality), he has a hatred of them as tools for women to corrupt and control weak men.Basically he’s what we’d now call an ‘incel’.
Eh, maybe. I suppose of the common characteristic of incels is only wanting to date women who would never have anything to do with them (because they wouldn’t put up with the incel’s misogyny and controlling nature), so I suppose you could say the same thing about Holmes… except that incels usually want to have sexual relationships (albeit ones in which the woman is submissive to them). Holmes never seems to evince any interest in sexual relationships at all.
Agreed on Rachel McAdams, shame they ended up fridging her in like the first ten minutes of the sequel. They couldn’t even give her the decency of a tragic on-screen death, makes it glaringly obvious the sequel was written by men relying on lazy narrative tropes.
Ahems in Violet Hunter.
Hell, Helen Stoner and the mysterious woman who shot Milverton were pretty badass.
I still think the first two series were wonderful. S3 was clearly enamoured of its own cleverness; S4 was just horrendous.
It’s telling that the further Moffat and Gatiss moved away from simply adapting the source material the quicker it became smug garbage.
Well look at the premier of S3. They chose to not actually resolve how Sherlock survived his fall. Which was… Ugh.But they go further and literally write a character in a s a fanboy theorist just to mock the shit out of him. Iirc I remember reading that Moffat and Gattis took some his goofy ideas directly from fan theories. Like wholesale lifting online comments. I would say it could not possibly beore smug, but then they did the mind palace bullshit and decided the way out was “Sherlock shoots a dude.” Also, while they’re doing whatever they wanted, they still haaaaaad to kill Mary off. Y’know you didn’t have to? Lol
Not just refused to resolve it but then for years proclaimed there was an “obvious clue” that solved it no one spotted and still refuse to say what it is…The pair of them are so fucking full of it.
Hell, that happened in Doctor Who when Moffat was in charge: River Song, Amy and Rory’s daughter who’s turned into The Doctor’s assassin only to switch sides because she falls for him.
Yeah, Moffat and Gatiss have been straight-up awful in updating Conan Doyle – same goes for their work on Doctor Who and that recent Dracula disaster.
Seeing this reminds me how glad I am that they sanitized Tintin for the CGI movie years back. That shit got friggin’ RACIST.
I read a bunch of Tintin books as a kid, and even as a 9 year old I knew that shit was racist as fuck.
I found a collection of old Tintin cartoons in French. Good heavens.
They’re no better translated, believe me! Got some in a box of books that some relative gave to my kid, and I was eager to finally read them. “Oh, this is some solid art! Subtly kineti-…wait, huh? Oh…OH. HOO boy.”
See also; Asterix.
Oh man, I loved Asterix books as a kid, partly because we visited the UK several times and they were everywhere. Every B&B we stayed in had at least a small library and there were always a couple of Asterix books.I probably shouldn’t revisit them, because it’ll probably ruin my fond memories.
II got a bunch of used asterix and my kids love them. I pulled a few from circulation. It could also be the English translations but on the whole it’s nowhere near as what the fuck as a lot of early Tintin. Parental guidance lol
Asterix at least tends to stick to European ethnic stereotypes due to geographic restrictions of the era it’s set in. (Mostly.)
Affirmative, I recently tried re-reading a couple Asterix and I found them to be astonishingly lackluster. Bad jokes, boring stories… plus in several of them there was an appearance by an ugly African stereotype (the pirate ship’s lookout).And don’t get me started on one of Goscinny’s other projects, Isnogud. Oriental stereotypes out the wazoo. How could that guy feel so comfortable writing about a culture he has no connection to?
The racism of Tintin is highly overstated. The vast majority of the adventures are entirely unproblematic, or are no more racist than, say, Indiana Jones. (So, for example, Prisoners of the Sun sees the heroes captured by a group of Incas who have survived in a remote valley, and making their escape by predicting an eclipse, which strikes the Incas with awe. That sort of thing.)Sure, Tintin in the Congo is cringe-worthy, and the anti-Semitic stereotypes in the original version of The Shooting Star (published under the Nazi occupation) reprehensible, but those are more the exception than the rule. There isn’t much that needed sanitizing in the adventures the movie was based on.
Except in the very early adventures, the creator, Hergé, was meticulous in accurately depicting far-flung countries. He would not have made the sort of mistakes described in this article. There are buffoonish non-White characters, but not more buffoonish than many of the White characters, and Tintin habitually sides with locals against White (or, in the case of The Blue Lotus, Imperialist Japanese) oppressors.
I mean, you say that like Indiana Jones isn’t also critiqued for being deeply racist.
That said, those books are an interesting portrait of an author reevaluating their values is time went on, often for the better. I’d let my kid read them, with the caveat that we talk about what’s going on and think about that context.
It’s funny you mention that Inca plotline. I’d totally forgotten about it, and you reminded me of one of my favorite short stories, by Agusto Monterosso. I’d link it/summarize it, but it’s so short I think I can just paste it here. I think you’ll get the joke of it all, and why I was reminded of it (I promise it’s short!):“When Brother Bartolome Arrazola felt lost he accepted that nothing could save him anymore. The powerful Guatemalan jungle had trapped him inexorably and definitively. Before his topographical ignorance he sat quietly awaiting death. He wanted to die there, hopelessly and alone, with his thoughts fixed on far-away Spain, particularly on the Los Abrojos convent where Charles the Fifth had once condescended to lessen his prominence and tell him that he trusted the religious zeal of his redemptive work.
Upon awakening he found himself surrounded by a group of indifferent natives who were getting ready to sacrifice him in front of an altar, an altar that to Bartolome seemed to be the place in which he would finally rest from his fears, his destiny, from himself.
Three years in the land had given him a fair knowledge of the native tongues. He tried something. He said a few words which were understood.
He then had an idea he considered worthy of his talent, universal culture and steep knowledge of Aristotle. He remembered that a total eclipse of the sun was expected on that day and in his innermost thoughts he decided to use that knowledge to deceive his oppressors and save his life.
“If you kill me”–he told them, “I can darken the sun in its heights.”
The natives looked at him fixedly and Bartolome caught the incredulity in their eyes. He saw that a small counsel was set up and waited confidently, not without some disdain.
Two hours later Brother Bartolome Arrazola’s heart spilled its fiery blood on the sacrificial stone (brilliant under the opaque light of an eclipsed sun), while one of the natives recited without raising his voice, unhurriedly, one by one, the infinite dates in which there would be solar and lunar eclipses, that the astronomers of the Mayan community had foreseen and written on their codices without Aristotle’s valuable help.”
I mean, you say that like Indiana Jones isn’t also critiqued for being deeply racist.
Yeah, I wasn’t thinking of the most outrageous bits in Temple of Doom. I should have said Tintin is less racist than Indy.Thanks for the story—I think I’ve read it before, and I was alluding to the same objection when I brought up the Tintin take on it. The “eclipse as miracle” conceit originally comes from a story by Gaston Leroux (most famous for The Phantom of the Opera, but I would also recommend The Mystery of the Yellow Room, which is excellent), and has been plagiarized and parodied a number of times.
I didn’t know that about Leroux — that’s fascinating, thanks! It’s so interesting though, because more recent reevaluations of Phantom have mentioned how Leroux’s portrayal of the Turk were somwhat progressive in that they didn’t fall into the typical stereotyping and orientalism of the time, despite the pulpy material. That contrast in portrayals kind of reminds me of how important it is to understand creators and works by keeping their wider trajectories and contexts in mind.
Didn’t Columbus claim to have pulled that stunt? I know it more from Haggard, Twain, and err, Blyton.
Didn’t Columbus claim to have pulled that stunt? I know it more from Haggard, Twain, and err, Blyton.Yeah, looks like I got mixed up: I just skimmed the Leroux story (“The Bride of the Sun” available on Project Gutenberg) and there’s no such incident there, though it matches Prisoners of the Sun in other ways.I did find a blog posts that tracks down a ton of instances of the stunt in fiction and supposed history, including the ones you mention. Un-linked to evade Kinja bug: strangehistory DOT net/2011/02/12/3004/
As a Belgian comic strip enthousiast, I can fully understand that some of Hergé’s work can be misconstrued as inherently racist, and I hate to apply the ‘back then things were different’ excuse, but it’s not without merit regarding this particular situation. He received a lot of criticism for drawing cartoons for Nazi-occupied newspapers during World War II, for example, but purposefully stayed away of propaganda – or any political topics whatsoever – during that period, and was known for loving and admiring many different cultures. To name just one other ‘celebrated’ Belgian cartoonist from the period for comparison, Willy Vandersteen actively supported the Nazi cause at that time, and our national history regarding Africa is an awful one to say the least: just look up King Leopold II and Congo, for example.Now, about this ‘The Blind Banker’ situation: it’s an updated version of ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’, a story written by Conan Doyle in 1905, and sure, the writers did an awful job updating it – but apart from the acting and visual style, that entire series was a mess regarding the ‘modern reboot’ of Sherlock Holmes. In an ideal world, Moffat, Gatiss, and the writer of this episode would never again be allowed near a keyboard.
In my notifications there’s a reply to my comment from Utopian Hermit Crab that’s pending approval. But it doesn’t actually show up in the thread when I click on it, so there’s no way for me to approve it, or even read it beyond the first sentence or so. Does anyone know a solution?(Great going, Kinja!)
I have the same issue. Sadly, I don’t think that there is a fix.
French stuff is generally really bad about this. Even French adventure games from the 90s and 2000s frequently fell into racial tropes, particularly extremely racist stereotypical art of black characters.
Does it count as hate speech when I say the damn French ruin everything with their fart-huffing arrogance and lack of a sense of social responsibility?I mean, it’s true!
Every day, Outback Steakhouse’s reckoning draws nearer.
My favorite piece of Outback trivia is that noted Kiwi Jermaine Clement used to do ads for them:
In order to process this new information I’ll just be sitting in the corner, screaming. Thanks.
The tone of that ad is kind of amazing. I assume these only aired in NZ?
Nope, these are All-American. Either they were too dumb to know Jermaine wasn’t Australian, or assumed their audience would be.
I mean, if I remember correctly those ads aired before anyone in the U.S. knew who Clement was, and it’s not as if there’s that’s much of a difference between a Kiwi and an Australian accent.**They’re like: “where’s the car,” and we’re like: “where’s the car”!
We don’t serve your kind here!
Both.
I remember when those commercials aired. He was amazing in these commercials. I kind of hope that he just wandered into the audition and they’re like he’s from New Zealand but who cares, he’s brilliant.
I definitely remember seeing these ads, well before I knew who Jemaine was, growing up in New England. I’ve gained appreciation for them simply because Jemaine is now one of my favorite people so I’m just glad he got a payday at the expense of those damned Aussies who kept bullying Murray.
WHAT IS HIS HAIR “With like a chicken…hobby?”
Even more amusing, he is making ZERO effort to Ozzy up his accent. He is as mush-mouthed Kiwi as it gets.
Not that it matters, since 99.9% of north americans can’t tell the difference.
I’m Australian, I’ve been to one Outback Steakhouse in my life.In Busan, South Korea.
Mine was in Bangkok. Knew the place was fucked when one of the dishes was named after T-ba.
Walked around Metz in France looking for a place eat one evening and the only thing I found open was the ‘Downunder Bar’. Ended up getting some Dijon mustard burger in McDonalds as it was at least vaguely French. Then was extremely disappointed when I left and found a nice little French restaurant a few doors down.All pre internet searches of course.
In college I went to Paris with my girlfriend, and we planned out our meals in advance using a Lonely Planet guide. Our second day there, still pretty jetlagged, we had to walk something like a mile from the nearest Metro stop to get to a “recommended” restaurant that was only one dollar sign… and we arrived at an abandoned building. There was a dance club next door, and the bouncer just laughed at us when we asked (in our bad French) if there was a restaurant on the block. It would have really helped to have either the internet or a budget of more than $20 per meal. Alas.
The “that’s not a knife” synergy of your username/comment is incredible.
It’s been a long game, but it’s finally paying off.
The need to answer for naming a fucking chicken dish after Toowoomba.
I swear, I’m fascinated by The Blind Banker, because it plays every Orientalist cliche straight as can be. The scene they’re talking about here, when I heard the piercing flute music, I rolled my eyes and thought, “Oh, here we fucking go…”
They even un-ironically use the phrase: “Ancient Chinese proverb.” Fucking gag me.
Was there any commentary as to the health and well-being of the young woman’s knees?
But I like Asian flute music!
Here you go, Todd!
End-blown?
That’s $50 extra.
same as in town!
Ironically, The Blind Banker was incredibly sensitive and nuanced in its portrayal of visually impaired financial experts.
Always surprising how quickly public opinion can turn. “Sherlock” was huge when it was coming out—people in the states could hardly wait for it to make its way over. Just crazy how fast it became regarded as schlock.
Sherschlock
No, schit…
It left Canadian Netflix, but I was gonna do a rewatch. Or partial rewatch. I think the copout that started series 3, and then series 4 and the special the preceded it soured a lot of folks on it. Maybe? But damn the first two series when airing were fucking fantastic.
There were some generally good episodes, and Cumberbatch and Freeman were a delight, but even during the good seasons there were some truly terrible episodes (see above). It was easier to ignore the schlock when each episode was relatively self-contained, but the more it leaned into a longer story arc, the whole thing just sort of fell apart.
Some of us were calling it schlock from the beginning.It’s telling that the only time you’d get interesting mysteries solved would be in a montage in every 3rd episode where Sherlock would solve a bunch of them.So, you’d be trolled with the show you wanted to watch inside a show about Cumberbatch’s hair, and quirks.
The main thing I remember about that episode is the ridiculously campy dialogue of the main villain (“General Shan”). She’s got Watson and his date tied up in an _abandoned_ tunnel, yet she insists on delivering a theatrical “ladies and gentlemen” speech to…who exactly? Ugh.
Chinese woman hiding from tong/triad to cyborg slave, you’ve come a long way baby.
I wonder if Chan (who is after all English) and/or the authors of this article know that wearing traditional Chinese clothing like qipao isn’t “orientalism” for the benefit of Westerners but actually a thing among many young Chinese people proud of their culture. It’s called the Hanfu movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanfu_movement
gonna hazard a guess that if chan didn’t know about that, moffatt and gatiss 1000000000% did not either, and just gave her the most asian clothes they could think of
This counterpoint would make sense if we were just discussing fashion trends, and not, you know, an episode of Sherlock that played into every horrible orientalist stereotype it could fit into its runtime. Not to mention that the episode didn’t take place in China, which is where the Hanfu movement is relevant…
I thought the character was supposed to be Chinese and by the nature of her job really into old Chinese culture.
That style of fashion is “old” in that it originated early last century, but far off from “ancient pottery old.” Doesn’t quite add up.
unless Gemma’s character is an active hanfu member I fail to see the connection
I’m not familiar with the Hanfu movement, but I’m guessing that style of keipo (I’m Cantonese :P) is not traditional enough to fit in since it originated in the 1930s/40s, whereas per that Wiki page, the Hanfu movement “seeks to revitalize pre-Qing Dyansty Han Chinese fashion,” ie 1600s or earlier.And “traditionally” (in the sense of the last 100 years), it’s more something you would wear to look fancy for a special occasion or the like. Wearing one to work could only be seen as a modern fashion statement, which is plausible but still kind of a dicey character choice for the reasons Ninja Robot Pirate said.
Frank, you know the rules: all cultural interpretations must be made through the lens of white, middle-class, ‘Murrican guilt. It’s a slippery slope; next you’ll be saying “Latino” and “Latina” instead of “Latinx”.Hand over your internet connection.
When Gemma Chan was in Doctor Who it was not Stephen Moffat’s show, it was the penultimate story of Russell T Davies’ run “The Waters of Mars”. It’s a small quibble but I think relevant, the fan community has a lot of opinions about how Davies and Moffat each had different tacts and approaches in terms of diversity in both casting and depth afforded to those diverse roles.
That she feels the need to comment on it, when she was just a young actor with very little power, trying to make a living (and given that acting is seen as more of “you’re always working, taking every job” endeavor in Britain) is just sad.
RE: Origami is a Japanese (non-Chinese) artform… This is a little dodgy. While origami is the Japanese term and closely associated with Japan, China has a rich paper folding tradition which you could call origami for a lay audience.
Would it be better if it was guqin music in the background instead of flute music?All joking aside, I’m generally skeptical of characterizing relatively benign attempts to portray other cultures as “orientalism” or “appropriation”. Movies and tv shows are rarely accurate about anything, so you just gotta give em some slack sometimes.As a Nigerian-American, I’m generally happy whenever Nigerian or African elements crop up in pop culture, even though they are almost always horribly innacurate. As long as it’s not child soldiers mining blood diamonds while getting eaten by fucking tigers or some shit. A well educated professional dressed in traditional garb? Shit, I’d kill for that portrayal any day.
What abou current WWE intercontinental champion Apollo Crews. With his… Enforcer… General Azeem…
Huh.The Nigerian Diaspora is truly astonishing. Freaking Poland?
Mainly, this otherwise 100% american wrestler decided to embrace his Nigerian heritage (cool!)… By immediately carrying a spear and speaking with an “African” accent. I may have read he was basing it off his father’s accent but I’m not sure how good of a turn it can be when an American black man suddenly develops a coming to America accent overnight. ….. But he’s having more success than he ever had….Conclusion: Vince MacMahon might be racist?
I know Pedro Pascal based Oberyn Martell’s accent on his own dad. I liked how Game of Thrones sometimes used accents to distinguish between different regions, but it wasn’t as consistent as I’d like and I don’t even know what Aidan Gillen was going for.
Gillen’s character was supposed to feel out of place in some ways, and his entire life was basically calculated affectation, so there’s a CHANCE that was intentional. But, yeah, I don’t know either.
“Vince MacMahon might be racist?”Only if you do something silly like consider everything the man has ever said, done, or thought!
while getting eaten by fucking tigers or some shit.A tiger? In Africa?!
Maybe it escaped fr0m a z00!
Oh you beat me to it. Funny, I was trying the emphasis back and forth and ultimately decided tiger. Just going on memory though.
I think some caution is merited about the way people bandy about jargon that describes specific cultural things like depiction, but that a episode based on source material from a period of much greater allowance for racist stereotypes came off poorly is not an occasion for caution, especially when the speaker is one of the people who’s life and career is affected by orientalistm and appropiation. It is complicated—Crazy Rich Asians is a mess of tropes and stereotypes too. But personally, the amount of slack provided these kinds of things has always been too much.And the bar moves–shows have access to people and research now that means you don’t have to rely on Marco Polo’s vacation writings or something. And with increased presence so does the bar. Your own desires are relative to how much you see Nigerian or African elements now. When they add some businesspeople, do you think the work will be done?
A tiger? In Africa?
The National Antiquities Museum in London is FICTIONAL! Way to bury the lead.
I watch Sherlock purely for the cultural accuracy.
I just wanted to say that Moffat’s Sherlock is an awful show that doesn’t understand the stories it’s adapting.
Movies and TV show all have very long list of credits, with people of all ethnicities and backgrounds, and somehow many movies can’t find the right people to ensure non-English non-Caucasian stuff gets sorted and done right.I remember that episode of Sherlock and there were so many cringe-worthy moments, which was ridiculous in this day and age. Then again, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed had a scene in which the Chinese actors were speaking in three completely different dialects, and not a few movies have Mexican villains who are played by Cuban Americans who can’t speak proper Spanish. Netflix’s Narcos had a Brazilian actor playing Colombian Pablo Escobar, and the actor couldn’t speak Spanish. Geez…
And yet in the past two months we have heard the cast of Kim’s convenience, a show entirely about a korean-canadian family, still failed in properly sorting it. Una’s actress had to correct them on food!
The thing is that they ALSO get the english/caucasian stuff wrong too. As any Boston masshole will be quite happy to bitch about whenever a movie set in Boston has the wrong accents.A certain amount of innacuracy is just to be expected from a movie.
Or Bad Boys having the haitian gangsters with horrible fake accents yell “DE DEVIL IS NOT WELCOME HERE”… which I wasnt sure which accent they were trying to do and could easily have gotten a random haitian in miami to get that line done for them.
The Big Valley has a Shang-Hi episode with Tongs (etc) that, because of the racist casting of the time cast a white lady in the main villain role. It almost makes it’s way back around to being non-racist by having her so entitled that she feels like all Chinese people should exist to be her labor force. The only flaw is that she was obviously written to be a racist Asian dragon-lady trope. But fuck, did they almost back their way into a profoundly anti-colonialist episode.
Okay, but origami most likely DID originate in China, considering you know – they invented paper?Also fun fact, most advanced origami was exported back to Japan from Germany. (Bonus fact: Salmon sushi/nigiri was a Norwegian invention to sell more Norwegian salmon to Japan)
That episode was painful. Even in its best seasons, the Cumberbatch Sherlock could only manage two good episodes and one truly terrible episode. There was a brief period of time where the internet consensus was that unlike the Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock movies, the Cumberbatch/Moffat show was the real deal. I don’t think that consensus held for more than a couple of seasons. Ritchie/RDJ > Cumberbatch/Moffat
sorry every time Sherlock is mentioned I have to remind everybody that he sorted one of the cases by going to IDATEDAGHOST.COM