I’ve figured out my relationship to Christmas, but I still haven’t figured out my relationship to Lent.
That being said, I think I’ve found a personal, legitimate reason to fast (and no, I’m not officially sharing it here yet).
It messes me up when an 8 year old casually says to me that their father is in jail, and has been there “forever”. I hope that’s something I never get used to.
During the Children’s Story today, I spoke about the Parable of the Mustard Seed . One of the women in church gave me a small packet of mustard seeds after service. Another member gave her a pack when she was in the hospital with cancer. Though (and because) she’s been cancer free for years, she’s always carried a packet with her as a reminder.
I’ve been considering that small package all day. I think that God wants us to consider that the Kingdom of God is such that the things that seem small right now can transform a community so that 8 year olds no longer refer to incarcerated fathers as another fact of life.
I realize that this post may make more sense if I had already done the Kingdom of God post. It’s coming. It’s a bigger, more personal post than I had originally thought.
I basically decided that I needed even more whitespace. Anyway, I would love feedback. Tell me what you think about the new design, and how can I improve it.
I just wanted to highlight this bit of news from the Jamaica Gleaner. I love what these teachers are doing with what, in general, is not a lot of resources.
They were employed to teach but Carol Jennings-Smith, Jacquelin Greenland and Curline Christie of St Andrew Technical High School (STATHS) have gone the extra mile.
The teachers, among other educators, have established a school welfare committee. Funds raised from this committee are used for the school’s breakfast programme and the purchase of shoes for needy students, among other things.
The educators were also instrumental in the success of Kamal Gilzene, a resident of Grants Pen, a depressed neighbourhood in St Andrew, who defied the odds and earned a university degree.
So I think I’ve decided that barring some amazing revelation, or a 180 on the part of the studios, I’ll most likely not be seeing this movie in theaters. If you’ve been following my blog you probably know why. I did want to link to a post by Derek Kirk Kim about it.
If you need a reminder as to why this fight is worth fighting, simply take a look at this. When viewed in one gulp like this, it’s just overwhelming and terribly disturbing. Asians have been constantly maligned and forcibly excluded from the screen–and thus from the fabric of America–since the beginning of cinema to this very day. This Airbender casting is just further insurance that it never ends. Whether you signed a petition, wrote in a letter, or just made your disappointment known publicly, thank you for doing your small part to fight this.
He then points us to this video (It’s all pretty good, but the most relevant section is after the 4:36 mark)
Then he goes on to say
White roles go to white actors who are phenomenal, mediocre, and shitty without condition. Why shouldn’t that be the case for Asian actors going after roles of Asian characters? The argument that only extraordinary Asians should be allowed to be on the screen is completely unfair and, if you’re Asian yourself making this argument, self-defeating. When they go to cast “Rob Roy,” are they really trying to find the most talented actor? No, they are trying to find the most talented white actor. As it should be–that role is for a white Anglo-Saxon character. As such, a role for an Asian character like that in Avatar MUST go to an Asian actor, even if the best one they can find is simply mediocre. (You know, like a million kids’ movies like “The Chronicles of Narnia” starring mediocre white actors.) Or else we don’t have true equality.
So yeah, I’m not making a big fuss about boycotting the movie or anything. I’m not even going to say that the Avatar cartoon was some great example of Asian culture. As a friend points out, the kids act pretty Western, and it was written by white guys.
On the other hand, being Western in culture and Asian in ethnicity is not a contradiction, and the characters in Avatar are Asian in ethnicity. I’d also like to point out that the only non-white person cast (that we know of) is the star of an Oscar-winning movie, the rest are relative unknowns and relatively unproven, the lead is a guy who, by all reports, has never acted before. I find it unreasonable to believe that they could not find actors of Asian descent who were similarly unproven or similarly unknown.
Anyway, I didn’t particlarly want to say too much, instead I mostly wanted to point people towards a good argument by a good artist.
But here’s where the plot begins to snarl. “Avatar” isn’t meant to mirror existing Asian history, imagined future or mythological canon; it’s clearly set in an original fantasy world … invented by two white Americans, Bryan Konietzko and Mike DiMartino. Many of the voice actors for the original series are white as well. And though the actors selected for the big-screen version are white, the director who chose those actors is one of the few top-tier Asian American filmmakers in Hollywood, M. Night Shyamalan.
It’s an object lesson in how hard it is to maintain claims of authenticity and cultural ownership in a world where boundaries are rapidly beginning to blur. If it’s okay for white guys to come up with an “Asian” story and even voice it behind the scenes, why is it not okay for white guys (and girls) to portray that story on screen?
