"Whitewashing" in Cinema and Theatre.

[mike_field]

Maybe it's time....but Indian?

 

[Stephen Jay Hawkings]

Hang on, was he Indian or Native American? Or Japanese?

 

[mike_field]

This takes a command decision. I need to dig out a video player and subject myself to that film again.

I'll do it when it doesn't take me 10 minutes to type this message.

Night folks.

 

[BodyButter]

Hang on, was he Indian or Native American? Or Japanese?

The name is Japanese but he looked and sounded Indian to me.

 

[BodyButter]

What if he was aiming for Japanese and just came off as Indian? Jeasus, that would turn the whole thing into a joke.

 

[BodyButter]

Here's what The Telegraph thinks:

Pete Postlethwaite in The Usual Suspects (1995)

A cast-iron conundrum, this one. Where in heaven's name is Postlethwaite's shady lawyer from? He's called Kobayashi, an unambiguously Japanese name. So why does he sound like a Latvian who was educated in Burkina Faso but now drives a minicab in Merthyr Tydfil?
Besides which, a less Far Eastern-looking actor it would be hard to find: Postlethwaite's bulbous hooter is not only bigger than the average Japanese nose, it's bigger than the average Japanese.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture...le-vowels-the-five-worst-accents-in-film.html

 

[BodyButter]

Some lads on another forum think that Kobayashi's accent/appearance/name don't make sense because the character is invented by Verbal on the fly in the police station.

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-177595.html

 

[Stephen Jay Hawkings]

Some lads on another forum think that Kobayashi's accent/appearance/name don't make sense because the character is invented by Verbal on the fly in the police station.

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-177595.html

Come to think of it, that's probably the best explanation. Makes most sense.