Friday, September 3, 2010

Not Carina Lau at Venice Film Festival.

The stars and director of Showtime are at the Venice Film Festival doing the usual press appearances. Among them was Gao Ting-Ting, a young actress who is not Carina Lau although she was identified as such by Getty Images and Zimbio. The mistake was picked up by a number of newspapers in the U.S. and probably elsewhere. Was it a dumb mistake? Unconscious racism? Whatever the case, here are a few images of Gao Ting-Ting that were IDed as Carina Lau:




For reference, Carina Lau:


Mistakes can happen especially under deadline pressure and they have been made by Getty and Zimbio recently. This picture, for example, from an AmFar benefit at the Cannes Film Festival this past may was initially tagged "Fan Bing-Bing and guests" and changed when it was pointed out to them that the guests were Yves Carcelle, president of LVMH which is the largest luxury goods company in the world and Kylie Minogue. Both of her guests have many more images available through Zimbio than does Fan Bing-Bing.


yellowcranestower

Zimbio for more pictures of Not Carina Lau.

2 comments:

  1. Hi ewaffle --

    Here's a theory on what happened: the person writing the caption has little knowledge of Asian cinema. (S)he knows though that Judge Dee is one of the Asian films being screened at Venice and stars Carina Lau. And so when (s)he sees a photo associated with an Asian film, viola!

    If so, yes, we're talking dumb mistake, (unconscious) racism and ignorance...

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  2. If so, yes, we're talking dumb mistake, (unconscious) racism and ignorance...

    A powerful combination that informs much of the media, online and traditional. Toss in a lackadaisical approach to accuracy and one has a potent brew.

    ReplyDelete