who are we and who do we want to be?
Writing for The Atlantic , Christopher Orr sides with the more positive take on Wes Anderson's choice of a Japanese setting and having (mostly) Japanese-speaking humans in his latest film, Isle of Dogs . Yet, in passing mention of the other side, Orr makes an interesting error that both clarifies the positive take and suggests a whole other version of the problem... Let me backtrack. Orr writes (parenthetically): Unlike the dogs, the Japanese characters--which is to say all of the human beings save one--do not have their words rendered into English, except when explicitly restated by a translator voices by France's McDormand. I leave to individual viewers to decide whether this is a way of center-staging the hounds--my view--or sidelining the Asian protagonists. First, a small point: Orr's initial phrasing suggests that the dogs are not Japanese, which is either a mislabeling because they are obviously just as much from Japan as the human characters, or it is a cute sor...