Supplemental Post 4 - Lauren Sullivan

After years of anticipation, I saw Isle of Dogs over the weekend. I went into the film with excitement (as I always enjoy Wes Anderson movies) as well as apprehension (because I was afraid to see Anderson mishandle or problematically depict his Japanese characters and setting). And while I did thoroughly enjoy the film, there were of course some questionable elements (which I could go on about, but will limit my discussion to how it relates to stardom). Anderson introduces the stop-motion film, its canine protagonists, and Japanese setting by explaining that the Japanese human characters will speak in their native tongue and will only be translated into English through occasional interpreters or subtitles and that all dog barks will be dubbed in American English. The film operates with the assumption that the audience is English-speaking and does not understand Japanese, which is used to depict the language barrier between humans and dogs, as the story is told from the dogs’ perspective. While I understand this creative decision, it seems a little insensitive to the history of cultural appropriation, orientalism, and white-washing in Hollywood, and works to other its Japanese characters. This is strengthened in the film’s casting of Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton, who have stirred up a lot of controversy in the past with their whitewashing roles in Ghost in the Shell and Doctor Strange, respectively, as well as Bill Murray, who, alongside Johansson, problematically depicted Japanese culture in the Tokyo-set Lost in Translation. I know that Swinton, Johansson, and Murray all appear in multiple Wes Anderson films and that Anderson’s recurring cast defines his work, but do think public knowledge and reputations of stars undeniably come into play when interpreting a film and thus should be taken into account by the filmmaker. I also feel uncomfortable with the non-Japanese-speaking cast being nearly all white and feel that Greta Gerwig’s character, a white American exchange student that leads pro-dog protests, functions like a white savior. This shows that even in animated films with mostly non-human characters, where the stars are only heard and never seen, stardom still plays a role in and complicates the interpretation of a film.