Why Don’t Asia’s Heroes Look Asian?

by NURY VITTACHI, TIME correspondent

Come with me to a place where many of the deepest, darkest, innermost thoughts on the super-sensitive subject of race arc hidden. The place is the comic-book section of the street-side newsstand.

This is a pet interest of mine, for two reasons. First, I once worked as a cartoonist myself. Second, while fate has given me the coffee-colored skin of a South Asian, my wife has the milk-tea look of a Caucasian and my adopted children the vanilla-latte appearance of the Chinese.

In modern societies, we say all races are considered equal. But we are lying. I spend most of my time in Asia, and our comic books reveal what we really think on the subject: Caucasians are superior, and we want to be like them.

Ouch! No! This cannot be true. It would be too painful. But let me show you the evidence. Every comic on the newsstand outside my office in Hong Kong depicts heroes with round eyes, straight European noses and fair hair.

In Tokyo, similar rules hold true. Comic heroes are tall, round-eyed, straight-nosed and often blond. Japanese artists frequently draw eyes as oval orbs and they often ink in only the bridge of the nose, ignoring the nostrils. These techniques make the faces as Caucasian as possible.

The comic-book racial differences between South Asians and Caucasians are more subtle, but artists still make the necessary adjustments. Rarely in South Asian comics – or in the movies – will you find dark brown skin or the big, expressive Indian nose. I am in no way suggesting that this is a form of conscious racism forced upon us by Caucasians. We do it to ourselves, and we do it unconsciously.

Over the years, I have found only one group of artists that regularly tries to put accurate racial characteristics into their drawings of Asians. Plaudits, please, to the unsung doodlers of a multinational firm not usually credited with great cultural sensitivity: the Walt Disney Co. I cheer because Aladdin has a big, hooked nose – like some of my Arab friends. In The Lion King, set in Africa, Mufasa has wide, flared nostrils and a hot chocolate voice. Of course, Disney doesn’t always get it right: Mulan’s eyes, for example, are way too steeply angled. But Disney tries – unlike us here in Asia.

Contemplating this issue has led me to consider a question other Asians may already have asked themselves: All things being equal, would I prefer to be Caucasian? Yes, I reply, shocking myself. All men want to be heroes. All heroes are Caucasian. End of argument.

In the meantime, my five-year-old is progressing well with his reading. The other day, I laid a bunch of comic books from around the world in front of him and asked which character he most identified with. He chose a talking beetle called Dim, from A Bug’s Life, ‘because he has blue skin and six legs.’ But that’s a kid for you. Long may he remain racially color-blind.

^{No sex, no violence, just film}

Despite its severe Islamic censorship and taboos, Iranian cinema attracts a world cult following, says

Geoff Brown

Imagine yourself as a filmmaker in post-revolutionary Iran. Instead of shooting at Universal Studios, the venue for your creative labours is called The Studio of the Voice and Portrait of the Islamic Revolution of Iran.

Perhaps your cameras are out on location in the streets. Your film project has already jumped three censorship hurdles imposed by government agencies: synopsis approval, script approval, and cast and crew approval.

Now all that is left is to make the film, get the Government’s final thumbs up, and be given an exhibition licence. But you cannot relax for one moment.

Your leading lady, should you have one, must not be a seductive beauty. Nor must there be any physical contact between male and female, even if the characters are man and wife or brother and sister. No violence, naturally. Nor can any character burst into song.

To the West, it may seem almost inconceivable that great and entertaining films could emerge from such restrictions, all put in place at different times since Iran’s Islamic revolution. Yet each year a miracle happens. Iran’s films are regularly invited to festivals, win prizes, including the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and have become a cult among cinema aficionados.

To understand this remarkable phenomenon we must backtrack to the heights of the Islamic revolution in 1978-1979. 180 cinemas around the country were burnt down during the revolution – testament to the way films had come to be seen as part of the deposed Shah’s Western leanings. Filmmakers set out into the new era timidly, afraid of treading on toes and risking punishment. Sticky areas such as religion were best avoided altogether. Women, too, were for a time thought too hot to handle. But children seemed safe, and cheap, too.

Yet there was much more than expediency involved. Making films about youngsters’ growing pains was an ideal way to do your bit for a society rebuilding itself around Muslim values.

Visually, such films tend to be as decorous and simple as their characters, far removed from Hollywood’s bedlam. And the West loves them for it. When Iranian films first broke through internationally in the late Sixties, they seemed just one brand of exotica among many. Now they appear unique – films on a human scale, they refresh our jaded eyes.

Not that all Iranian cinema is classy enough to reach the West’s cinema festivals and art houses. They make their dross, like everyone else. And a chasm sometimes exists between films aimed at local audiences and those obviously prepared to charm outsiders.

The best have the potential to please both camps, such as The Apple about two teenage daughters kept virtual prisoners by their father.

And paranoia can still rise up among government bodies. One part of the episode film, Tales of Kish, was withdrawn from the Fajr Film Festival, Iran’s international showcase, because the 13-year-old heroine showed too much hair under her scarf.

Despite hints at thawing attitudes, an Iranian film that supinely apes Western ways is nowhere in sight. For all the chafing at individual restrictions, that must be a sign of artistic health.

The Times