Welcome to my blog. Let’s talk about the 2017 film, “Ghost in the Shell.”  I have heard opinions from both sides about the whitewashing within the film. The “agree” side of whitewashing in the film was that the main character, Major, was a Japanese woman who was abducted and then had her brain inserted into an android body of a white woman. The “disagree” side says that the whitewashing doesn’t matter seeing as how the character is an android and the term doesn’t apply. Let’s analyze these sides.

What is whitewashing?

The term referred to is one that can be seen from the Urban Dictionary. Whitewash is a, “leaving behind or neglecting their culture and assimilating to a white, western culture.” Let’s look at the side that believes there is no whitewashing occurring. They focus on the target of the whitewashed, which is Major’s character. What is Major? She is an android, and not a human anymore. If she is not human, can she be whitewashed at all?

Sam Yoshiba is the director of Kodansha, the publishing company of the Ghost in the Shell manga. When asked about the decision to cast Scarlett Johanssen, he said that she matched the feeling of the manga itself. However, Yoshiba’s remark was seen by some to be evidence that some Japanese filmmakers or businessmen believe in order to sell better, there must be a white starring actor.

Let’s focus also on Hanka Industries, the company within Ghost in the Shell that funds the research for human androids. If we assume that their experiments to create androids have baseline caucasian features, then that is whitewashing as well. If they were to create more business, then they shouldn’t have only made one type of Android, which was of white individuals.

This view of Hanka Industries must also be reflective of the filmmakers who invented this kind of business that didn’t reflect the original anime. We can then say the film is a whitewashed creation.