So, yes, it's been a while since all the uproar about the casting of "The Last Airbender", the live-action movie version of the popular TV show "Avatar: The Last Airbender", started. For any who live under a rock, or have never paid attention to anything about Avatar, I still think this is an important issue for... well, everyone.
Quick recap: The world of the cartoon "Avatar: The Last Airbender" is a fictional feudal fantasy world. But instead of being based on European cultures and architecture and fashion and so forth, it's based on ASIAN cultures, etc. Korean, Chinese, Tibetan, and the Inuit/Siberian native cultures, mainly, I believe. The architecture is very true to its roots, from all I've heard, the costumes are at times
impeccably detailed. They eat with chopsticks, use modified versions of various martial arts, write in Chinese characters, and have names like Aang, Katara, Toph Bei Fong, and Iroh, and cities called things like Ba Sing Se and Omashu. All the characters are physically very Asian (Aang, with his wide eyes - an anime convention that implies youth - and shaved head, looks like he could be white, to the undiscerning viewer... until his hair grows in during season 3 and it's jet black and he's obviously meant to be Asian like the rest of the cast) and there is no hint of "Western Culture" except possibly in the dialogue, which is very modern and often goofy.
And then Paramount announced its casting for the live-action film. All three heroes of the first film, Sokka (Inuit-based), Katara (Inuit-based), and Aang (Tibetan-based), and the villain, Zuko (Chinese-based) were cast... white. Jesse McCartney (blonde hair, blue eyes) as Zuko, the kid who played Jasper (one of the PALE PALE PALE VAMPIRES) in Twilight as Sokka, some way-too-childish looking WHITE girl as Katara, and some Texas martial arts prodigy-type kid as Aang. Shortly after the casting was announced, fans everywhere started a letter campaign, among other things, and shortly after THAT, Jesse had to drop out, and they cast Dev Patel (a dark-skinned kid of INDIAN descent) as Zuko. Which means that you now have the White Heroes (most of whose nations are apparently going to be played by a cast of ETHNIC EXTRAS) against the Dark-Skinned Villain and his kingdom of genocidal Dark-Skinned Warriors. So in trying to placate the fans without doing what they want, they made it WORSE.
There are so many more issues that have come up, but that's the big one.
And yet... you get people saying we shouldn't be making a big deal of all of this. So here's what I have to say to them:
To the people who say that humanity is one race… perhaps technically you’re right. On THAT point. But you also say that since we're "one race", in a perfect world (and the world we should be striving to create), we wouldn't care what nationality any of the actors are. I say that's patently untrue. Even if we were viewing ourselves as one race, without the cultural stigma attached to characteristics like skin tone and eye shape and region of ancestry, the film should STILL be cast with people native to the Asian regions. Why, you ask? Because the world of the story is based on ASIAN cultures and ASIAN writing and etc. An area of the world, where humans have certain physical characteristics. It wouldn’t be LOGICAL to populate a country based heavily on Korean culture and so forth with people from Africa, because they aren’t the proper CULTURE. It might seem like a different word for the same thing, but… even if we don’t DISCRIMINATE and SEPARATE based on ancestry, if a story is based in the history of a certain area, even if it’s a fictional world heavily based on the history of a certain area, it should also be cast with people who could, appearance-wise, BE from that area. If we were “race blind”, as it were, this would be still be common sense (I’d hope). So either way you turn it, it comes out the same: The Last Airbender’s cast should be ASIAN.
To the people who says it just doesn't matter, period: These characters are heroes for COUNTLESS children of Asian descent. Paramount’s casting is a slap in the face to them, telling them that even if they can get cartoons about kids like them, they’re not good enough to be in the movies. It’s telling them that white kids are better than them, more popular than them, more talented than them, and better loved than them, and THAT is unacceptable.
And to the people who are saying that we fans shouldn’t be so “shocked” and “surprised” and so forth, because this is what Hollywood does (not that you're saying we SHOULDN'T be upset, but that we shouldn't be so surprised it happened)? I just say that I think everyone’s mostly surprised that they cast white kids in what has repeatedly been called an ASIAN world. It was always a fear, but with how popular the original series was, and how often and openly it had been described as an ASIAN world, we thought that maybe Hollywood would get the hint. We had our hopes dashed, and we’re angry about that as well as the casting. I think a lot of people would LIKE to have some faith in Hollywood again, and every once in a while, something happens that gets our hopes up, and then they do something like THIS and we get pessimistic again.
If anyone wants to read much better-written stuff on all of this and more, go to
Racebending.com.
ETA: More than the fact that it's just wrong, a quick quote from
this post on the subject, written by an Asian-American, is the biggest reason I'm fucking pissed about the casting:
"During our early Christmas dinner this weekend, the oldest of the nephews, who is 13, brought up the subject of the incredibly white child actors that had been picked for the film version. The three of them were confused and disappointed but unable to articulate exactly why. Then the youngest, all of 7 years old, asked me whether this meant that he couldn't be Aang when he played Avatar with his friends from now on."
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hopeful
drunk
pissed off
