Wes Anderson’s latest movie, the stop-motion animated Isle of Dogs, is facing backlash over its perceived appropriation of Japanese culture.
Set in a dystopian Japan of the future, dogs have been quarantined to a remote island after an outbreak of “canine flu.” Isle of Dogs follows the journey of one boy, Atari Kobayashi, on a mission to find his lost dog.
After the movie’s premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February, there were slight rumblings about the movie’s treatment of Japan, but now in wide release — the movie opens across Canada today — critics and filmgoers aren’t holding back. (It should be noted, however, that some people are wholeheartedly disagreeing with the cultural appropriation accusation.)
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Among the critiqued aspects of Isle of Dogs is the cast, the majority of whom aren’t of East Asian descent (Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand and Scarlett Johansson, for example). Lead actor Koyu Rankin, who’s half-Canadian and half-Japanese, along with Akira Takayama and Yoko Ono, are some of the handful of voice actors with Japanese heritage.
Another facet of the movie irking critics is the fact that the movie’s dogs speak English, despite living in the Japanese-speaking Megasaki City. Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang, one of the first to bring these criticisms to the fore, summarizes Isle of Dogs as a “white American filmmaker’s highly selective, idiosyncratic rendering of an East Asian society.”
Chang outlines his reasoning in his review, which he tweeted out on March 21.
One biting paragraph reads:
“The dogs, for their part, all speak clear American English, which is ridiculous, charming and a little revealing. You can understand why a writer as distinctive as Anderson wouldn’t want his droll way with the English language to get lost in translation. But all these coy linguistic layers amount to their own form of marginalization, effectively reducing the hapless, unsuspecting people of Megasaki to foreigners in their own city. Their assumed passivity is further underscored by the singularly unfortunate character of Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig), an American foreign-exchange student who becomes the angry, heroic voice of Megasaki’s pro-dog resistance. At one point, she even smacks down a scientist voiced by Yoko Ono. (Yoko Ono!)”
“The movie is a fantasy, and I would never suggest that this is an accurate depiction of any particular Japan,” said Anderson to EW prior to the movie’s wide release about the inspiration. “This is definitely a re-imagining of Japan through my experience of Japanese cinema.”
Some agreed with Chang’s criticisms.
Others said that there’s no cultural appropriation, and people are looking for things to point their fingers at.
Despite it all, the movie still retains a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92 per cent (critics) and 83 per cent (audience), which are pretty great numbers.
Neither Anderson nor Fox Searchlight has commented specifically on the controversy.