In your production of The Last Airbender, a film adaptation of Avatar, what may be my favorite cartoon of all time, and arguably the best thing Nickelodeon has ever had the good sense to attach its name to, would it have been too much trouble to have the characters tell the stories of an alternate Asian history cast as, oh I dunno, maybe Asian people?
Really?
One of the things that I loved about the Avatar series was that they told this incredible and beautiful story of people in a mostly Asian world w/o fucking it up. The world of Avatar has an amazing rainbow of people from many variances of Asian and aboriginal peoples, and it isn’t full of stupid Americanized stereotypes. There are subtleties of culture and peoples depicted just this side of what could be history, and it is amazingly done, from Inuit people to Tibetan monks. The show was as beautiful as it was entertaining for adults and children. My entire household watched the whole series from start to finish in a marathon, and we arranged our schedules to do so over dinner each night for over a week. We cheered and shouted and laughed and cried. Yes, we grown ups as well as the one child in our house of five.
But then you go and screw it up by starting out w/ all four of the main characters played by an all white cast. I don’t believe I have to tell you how this is harmful both to the canon of the series, but to people everywhere, both long time fans of the show who would have loved to see this come to life, and to PoC who are greatly w/o mainstream media representation of people in popular culture who represent them. Who look like them.
When we completely whitewash a story about PoC to sell a motion picture we send a message that those people and their stories don’t matter. The absence of PoC from media speaks loudly that they are invisible and don’t matter. You have managed to privilege what you think will sell over what would have been the integrity of the story. You are going to completely ruin this story and all of the beauty in it by whitewashing it. There was opportunity abound to give a chance to a fresh face in Asian acting or Native or Aboriginal acting, but instead you have chosen to change the story in order to privilege the already famous and conventionally beautiful by Western standards.
I am so completely disappointed in this casting decision that I will boycott this movie, a movie I have been waiting anxiously for, and I will encourage everyone I know to do the same. I hope this is some kind of mistake, I hope it is some kind of rumor to get people talking about this movie or this series. I know I am probably holding my breath…
Thanks for ruining another movie.
Hugs and kisses
OYD
h/t to Alas, a Blog
Next on M. Night’s agenda: a remake of Roots, starring Jake Jake Gyllenhaal as Kunta Kinte.
Head, meet desk.
*sobs*
Thanks for posting about this, Ouyang. I think it either at womanistmusings or Racialicious that I first heard about this, and it has me pretty upset. I can’t do much, but I also plan to boycott the film and I’ve joined the Facebook group about it. They have info on who to contact to voice outrage.
Here is the Facebook group, if you are on: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=54866461619
And here is the original LiveJournal group about it: http://aang-aint-white.livejournal.com/646.html
I knew he was going to jack this up. I knew it. I just didn’t think this was how he was going to do this.
It must have been Racialicous, b/c I don’t frequent there, I want to think I would have caught Renee posting about this, since it is only like my favorite cartoon and I was so excited about this movie. Now I have to go find the posts.
I know, it was kinda like “I expected it to be a bad movie, I didn’t expect it to suck this way” thing for me.
I can almost, if you really really tried think you could get away with casting Katara/Sokka as “white”. They’re not, obviously, but the blue eyes blah blah blah could leave that open to interpretation. The rest of them? Puleeze.
I’m even more angry because my kids love Avatar and once they found out there was going to be a movie, were very much looking forward to seeing it. This leaves me in a no-win situation. The eldest, age 11, will understand, but the 8-year-old-tomorrow and the 5 yo? Not so much. Urgh.
Forget The Kid, I was looking forward to seeing this! Like, haven’t been this geeked since the previews for the last Harry Potter movie geeked.
Now I am disappointed, like, just saw Star Wars: Episode I disappointed.
Ya know?
Wha? Like HOW? I am barely aquainted with the Avatar universe (though I intend to remedy that situation as soon as possible) but How The Hell? The great thing about the characters is that they are diverse and kickass in different ways. That diversity is key to the conflicts between people, and race issues aside, wouldn’t it just lose so much if they’re all the same?
Besides, what have blue eyes got to do with anything, really? Can’t a POC wear contact lenses? Most white actors/actresses requiring blue eyes for a role have to. (ah, pet peeve,the fetishisation of blue eyes as an ideal. See ANY advert with an eye in it and it WILL be blue).
Besides, even if the characters LOOKED pale (which they don’t) or have outlandish eye and hair colours it doesn’t stand to reason that that would equal white. Same problem with people assuming anime characters are actually white, despite the fact that the Japanese see them as Japanese, and always cast them with Japanese staff in the live action films.
And race issues NOT aside: what would be the point about a film ABOUT an alternative Asian mythology if there’s no Asians in it? Are POC just a convenient selling point as long as they can sorta be interpreted as kinf-of-white (ie animated) but not when you actually have to look at real people? Is it that there are so few POC actors doing well in films? (no, since they are perfectly able to cast relatively unknown white actors and actresses), and isn’t this only making the lack of diverse actors worse? Really bad decision.
Bingo.
it feels kind of like “hey, thanks for selling us this far, but we will be fine w/ the white kids now”.
I just have to ask, how the fuck does one go from having Rufio (remember Hook?) play to Zuko to Jesse fucking McCartney? And b/c I know how this shit works, Uncle will be cast as the token wise Asian guy to keep the stereotype of the wisdom imparting Asian man alive.
Gah!
However, Anne, please do see the cartoon. It is amazing. Amazing I tell you!
I’ve been told it’s quite something. I’m impressed they managed to do an Asian-inspired cartoon/Western anime with martial arts and Asian beliefs and NOT mess it up, since I would think it an absolute minefield considering most of the media…
There’s ALWAYS a token Asian Wise Man… You know, they could have at least varied it to being a wise Asian woman once in a while, but no, obviously Asian women are all sexy vixens who secretly want to be submissive, or something… *rolls eyes*
I just don’t understand what the point would be of making an Avatar film with lots of blond, white Americans. Nothing against the actors, but wouldn’t that completely change the multi-nationality/racial plot, the whole international themes they have going, and all the settings and beliefs? WHAT’S THE POINT?!?
Heh, now that I got THAT out of my system, I can go back to wondering why even series I don’t follow can drive me mad. I guess it’s because I know that this crap is everywhere, and that it’s a repeat of a pattern I’m sick of. And you get people who tell you to just shut up, that you don’t know what you’re talking about if you haven’t experienced it, or that you should just not experience it and keep your mouth shut if you don’t like it. Even if I don’t pay to experience something, that doesn’t alleviate the fact that elements of it are problematic, and affecting how other people see the world. I can choose to not experience something, and critique it, or to experience it and critique it, and both are valid. Yes, it’s better to experience something to talk about it, but not essential. I can talk about why elements of strip clubs are problematic without having been in one, for example. This paragraph is of course a response to all the mindboggling comments you see popping up in reply to people raising concerns about the casting…
Sad, too , b/c if you watch it, there is a definite calling out of the cultures who believed in dominating the known world and destroying anyone who stood in their way of unification (I am talking to you, China, and Imperial Japan). The different cultures are easily identifiable, and yet not done in a demeaning way.
And did I mention that it was funny?
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