{"id":9593,"date":"2015-01-07T11:56:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T19:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9593"},"modified":"2019-12-24T07:21:37","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T15:21:37","slug":"default-human-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2015\/01\/07\/default-human-being\/","title":{"rendered":"Default Human Being"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Sociological Images: <a href=\"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/08\/30\/guest-post-why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white\/\" title=\"Sociological Images: Why do the Japanese draw themselves as white?\">Why do the Japanese draw themselves as white?<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Why do the Japanese draw themselves as white? You see that especially in manga and anime.<\/p>\n<p>  As it turns out, that is an American opinion, not a Japanese one. The Japanese see anime characters as being Japanese. It is Americans who think they are white. Why? Because to them white is the Default Human Being.<\/p>\n<p>  If I draw a stick figure, most Americans will assume that it is a white man. Because to them that is the Default Human Being. For them to think it is a woman I have to add a dress or long hair; for Asian, I have to add slanted eyes; for black, I add kinky hair or brown skin. Etc.<\/p>\n<p>  <strong>The Other has to be marked.<\/strong> If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I came across this in the context of people not understanding the dissatisfaction with the <a href=\"http:\/\/bitchmagazine.org\/post\/scarlett-johansson-is-the-wrong-choice-for-ghost-in-the-shell\" title=\"Bitch Magazine: Scarlett Johansson is the Wrong Choice for 'Ghost in the Shell'\">whitewashing<\/a> of Ghost in the Shell with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/scarlett-johansson-star-dreamworks-ghost-761118\" title=\"Hollywood Reporter: Scarlett Johansson to Star in DreamWorks' 'Ghost in the Shell'\">Scarlett Johanssen being cast<\/a> as Major Motoko Kusanagi, but I believe it&#8217;s important in a lot of other contexts as well: we need to realize that our concept of the &#8220;default human being&#8221; is\u00a0<em>highly<\/em> dependent upon our own culture and ingrained biases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We need to realize that our concept of the &#8216;default human being&#8217; is highly dependent upon our own culture and ingrained biases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2043,2037],"tags":[14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}