Altered Carbon

Months after Ghost in the Shell, we’re here again. @entertainmentweekly has the first look at the Netflix series, Altered Carbon, starring Joel Kinnaman.



The story follows an elite soldier named Takeshi Kovacs. This is him below during a flashback scene (where he’s initially played by Will Yun Lee) along with his sister Reileen Kawahara (Dichen Lachman). They were killers for hire who became revolutionaries…



When Kinnaman was announced as the lead, many, including @diversityinfilmtv​ noted this was another example of Hollywood stripping Asians of their cultural properties while shunning Asians. The defense of the series is that Kovacs occupies the body of a white male, so casting a white male was justified.

Those sticking to this talking point fail to recognize that this is not a foolproof defense. Consider the Ryan Reynolds’ vehicle, RIPD, 2013, wherein Reynolds portrays a white police officer (Nick) who dies and returns to earth in the body of an old Asian man (James Hong). Throughout the film, Reynolds is the POV character, not Hong, who appears a handful of times to remind the viewer of what Nick looks like to people he meets.

Altered Carbon, like Ghost in the Shell, is tone deaf to its own whitewashing when it argues that it should be viewed as a commentary on race and racism. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how much of Kovacs’ original life is revealed to the viewer, and whether his Asian body is really simply just a throwaway.

See also: Asian Consciousness, White Body