It's a Geisha's story, sort of

An old saying goes, "even bad press is good press." Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, at least for the soon-to-be-released film, Memoirs of a Geisha.

Based on the popular book by Arthur Golden, Memoirs has met stern criticism from the Asian-American community, as well as those in China and Japan, for a myriad of issues -- mainly the casting of the main characters.

The story is set in Japan and centers on the lives of Japanese men and women. A large part of the grievance is that the actresses, including Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh, are of Chinese heritage. Though Japanese actors such as Ken Watanabe (of The Last Samurai) are cast, critics say they participate in secondary roles.

Argument has been made that as a "stepping-stone" film for Asian-Americans, Memoirs rightly casts the most prominent thespians such as actresses Zhang and Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to provide face and name recognition for American audiences.

At what cost?

At the cost of implying that Japanese and Chinese (or Korean, Laotian, Vietnamese, for that matter) people are interchangeable, as goes the increasingly idiotic American credo of "Asians all look the same?"

Yet at the same time, casting strictly on one's ethnic background is not free from potentially dangerous issues.

It is shortsighted because the criticism is not meant to tell American audiences "Japanese people look like this, Chinese people look like that," but rather to state that the blanketing of a diverse group of ethnicities is irresponsible and ignorant.

The issue of actor and actress casting also lends itself to the other problem that the film, through its trailers, has sparked. Noticeably, the actors are speaking English.

Some, such as Zhang, have heralded the film as a breakthrough for Asian actors in American film. As Asians (and Asian-Americans) face an incredible lack of limelight when it comes to TV and film, one could argue that speaking English makes the film immediately accessible to the "average moviegoer."

But at what point does "being practical" take a step below being socially and culturally conscious in today's world?

For Asian-Americans, the actions and words of Asians anywhere reverberate throughout the United States, like it or not.

The issue isn't acting talent and serving the English-speaking American audience. Rather, it is that the portrayal and story-telling of Asian (in this narrative, Japanese) men and women will be seen as being all the same, from Tokyo to Tennessee.

Such is the case today when athletes like Ichiro Suzuki and Yao Ming are considered representatives of all Asian-American groups.

In an American entertainment industry where Asian-Americans (as well as American Indians, Latinos and to a lesser extent, Blacks) face a dolefully small inclusion in television, film and theater, to have a prominent representation of Asians and Asian-Americans in a romanticized and falsely over-sexualized topic like the geishas (who were not prostitutes, contrary to popular belief) is narrow-minded.

If the purpose of cinema is to provide an escape from everyday life and make ourselves more understanding human beings, what can we honestly say if the lone noticeable portrayal of Asians and Asian Americans we see on screen this year is based on a single image -- a very specific part of Japanese culture for an even more specific portion of Japanese men and women in a very short timeframe in Japan's history?

At best, after "Memoirs of a Geisha," the contextualization will occur and you step out of the fantasy. At worst, you conclude that, well, they speak English, sort of. They're "Japanese," sort of. And the story? It's a story about Japanese women, isn't it? Or was it the Geishas? Or was it just Asia in general? Wait, I thought they were prostitutes?