https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2...-dogs-sparks-controversy-depiction-japan/amp/
The film Isle of Dogs has become the subject of a heated debate online, with commentators accusing it of racism and "cultural appropriation".
Directed by The Royal Tenenbaums' Wes Anderson, the stop-motion animation is set in a near-futuristic version of Japan, where all dogs from the fictional city of Megasaki have been exiled to an off-shore rubbish dump, following an outbreak of "dog flu".
Reviewing the film in February, Telegraph critic Tim Robey wrote that the film's use of Japanese "archetypes" was "certain to get Anderson in hot water once the film is more widely seen".
That seems to be the case: following the film's US premiere last week, a Los Angeles Times review has sparked widespread debate. Reviewer Justin Chang criticised Anderson's "weakness for racial stereotyping", asking: "Does this white American filmmaker's highly selective, idiosyncratic rendering of an East Asian society constitute a sincere act of homage, or a clueless failure of sensitivity?"
Chang took issue with the use of language in the film, noting that the people of Megasaki speak in Japanese – without subtitles – while the dogs all speak American English, voiced by a cast including Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston and Tilda Swinton.
"All these coy linguistic layers amount to their own form of marginalisation, effectively reducing the hapless, unsuspecting people of Megasaki to foreigners in their own city," Chang wrote, describing the film's dystopian world as "ugly in ways beyond what even its maker could have intended".
