If I peel off all the flak about racism, what I basically get is the classic "OMG, shut up, you hater! Nobody wants to hear about your hate!"
Because I'm dissing the WONDERFUL Cassandra Clare. Oh, of COURSE she did her research! It's all the movie producers' fault! Nope. No excuse. Her BOOK description of Bane also have so many problems with it that it just makes no sense.
Grievances:
1) Magnus Bane's mother is half-Indonesian and half-Dutch. He is 800 years old. Assuming TMI is set in 2000s, Bane is born in the 1200s. Meaning that his mother was born sometime before that. Never you mind that the Portuguese, who "found" Indonesia before the Dutch, didn't arrive until the 1500s. The Dutch came along in the 1600s. So where did this random Dutch guy come from?
2) Don't even act like "it could be some guy who got lost" or undocumented. The Europeans didn't even try going that far until 1400s because they were so scared they would fall of the edge of the flat Earth. The fact that Bane's mother has a Dutch father and somehow managed to marry a Dutchman implies that there were quite a number of Dutch people in the Indies. WHERE DID THEY ALL COME FROM? And why aren't there any documentation on them? They're WHITE PEOPLE. WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT COMMON IN INDONESIA. THEY WOULD ATTRACT ATTENTION. THEY WOULD BE DOCUMENTED.
3) There's no excuse of "the documentation got lost". There are artifacts documenting Chinese people having trade relationships with Indonesia dating back from the 850s.Even if the Indonesians somehow lost theirs out of spite, won't the Dutch have their copy to prove that they have found this wonderful land of spices and natural resources since way back? Come on, this is a major time fuck-up that make no sense. Unless Bane's demon father brought him back in time for whatever messed up reason, this is a proof of research fail.
4) I could go on about Bane's physical description. Golden skintone? Really? The locals tend to have OLIVE skintone, not golden. I can give that a pass. Maybe his Indonesian grandma had Chinese/Persian/Arabic heritage and didn't realize it. It could happen, but it's pushing it.
5) Let's face it. Bane is only there to be an exotic decoration. That gratuitous modern Indonesian for "I love you" that he said in City of Lost Souls? Yeah. Unless he's been keeping tabs on that side of his heritage, and I don't see any proof of that (in the first trilogy, at least), there's no reason why he would even know that phrase. The Indonesian language used nowadays is a pretty new thing. It's 100 years old at the most. Before that? Classic Malay is the closest thing. Bahasa Indonesia separated from Malay and developed as its own language in 1901. The language became modernized in 1947.
6) Oh, he knows using magic because he's the High Warlock? Doesn't change the fact that it's not necessary. What's the point in having Bane speak just on line in Indonesian except for Clare to make herself look cool? "Hey, I know a foreign language! Isn't that great?" It's just stupid since there was never any indication that he cared about that side of him. Only occasional mentions to remind the readers that yes, he is in fact a POC. Durrrrrr~
7) And no, Godfrey Gao doesn't look Indonesian one bit. Godfrey Gao is hot. He's awesome. But he just doesn't look the part. If you want comparisons... Look at Avatar The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra. If Gao is Fire Nation, the Indonesians would be the Water Tribes. It just doesn't fit, okay?
Oh, I should just be grateful at least an Asian person is on screen? It doesn't matter. South-East Asians get even less coverage than East Asians. Our only claim to fame in Western media are as victims of disasters and in this bloody gorefest of an action movie. Hurray. If I stop yapping, Hollywood is going to continue to ignore the minority groups and act like it's okay to do this. It's like saying being shot in the foot is better than being shot in the head. Hey, at least you're not dead! You can't substitute one POC for another. The African-Americans are not interchangeable with the Latin@. The Indians aren't interchangeable with the Chinese. The Middle Eastern people aren't interchangeable with Native Americans.
You're slowing down progress by showering Clare with praises. If every time someone makes the tinyest step forward the world threw a praise party for them? Hollywood is going to take this as "Oh, look how easy it is to shut them up!". You're setting the bar too low. Hollywood needs to know that THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. If you truly believe Clare is our ally for our equality cause, then she needs to realize this. She needs to know so that she would not deliver the wrong impression to the higher-ups. Her approval of Gao and YOUR approval of her tells Hollywood that what they're doing is okay. The next time something like this happens again, they're going to go and say "Look, POCs approved of us doing this. We are not going to listen to you, kthxbai" and whatever we say will fall on deaf ears. You won't like that, will you?
