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So The Last Airbender comes out this summer. Here’s a good summary of my thoughts on the upcoming movie.

The Blog of Gene Luen Yang – The Last Airbender Movie.

So I’ve been getting a lot of hits from Google over the last couple of days regarding the movie based on Avatar: The Last Airbender (probably because the first set pictures were released). So I figured I would do a sort of summary post of my thoughts on the casting.

So what’s the problem?

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a hit cartoon that is set in a fantasy version of Asia. The culture, writing, and fighting portrayed in the series show a strong and obvious eastern influence, with many direct analogues. Now as the live action movie is being made, the main cast members (and all of the good main characters) are being played by white actors.

So why is this important?

Firstly, it’s important because every piece of media plays a part in a kid’s self image, as well as that kid’s image of others.  Gene Yang says it well when he says …

But intentionally or not, they are adding another chapter to Hollywood’s long, sordid history of Yellowface. By giving white actors roles that are so obviously Asian – and by stating from the get-go their preference for Caucasians – they tell Asian-Americans that who we are and how we look make us inherently inadequate for American audiences, even in a movie that celebrates our culture.

The truth is, we are not a post-race society, and it isn’t just the ethnicities of African descent that are affected by this fact. The values that have been a part of the past, influence the images that we see today, which in turn influences the values that will be in the future. The effects of racism have been compared to a moving walkway, if we do nothing, it keeps rolling along, and takes us with it.

This is why I will not be seeing the movie. I still love the series, and will recommend it to anyone. I may even have viewing parties as alternative events.  But for now, I don’t like where this walkway is going, and I think I’m going to start walking backwards.

I know I was sort of done with the Avatar thing, but I’m sort of surprised I missed this. The original casting call definitely shows an intentionality on the part of the casting directors of the movie. Read it, and let me know if you can guess what their intention was.

Lowbright: Diggin’.

These were the original casting calls:

AANG: 12-15 years-old, Male, Caucasian or any other ethnicity. We are looking for a young man to play the lead role in a motion picture franchise. He must be athletic and graceful with an ability in Martial Arts (not necessarily extensive experience, but at least an aptitude for it). Kids with experience in gymnastics, dance, or sports could also be good. He is a young adventurer and should seem like the type of young man who will grow up to be heroic.

KATARA: 14-17 years-old, Female, Caucasian or any other ethnicity. She is Sokka’s younger sister. She is a headstrong and determined girl with a real sense of idealism. She believes in herself and feels that she can play on the same team as the boys. She is beautiful, intelligent, passionate, feisty, and has a real sense of adventure.

SOKKA: 16-20 years-old, Male, Caucasian or any other ethnicity. He is Katara¹s older brother. He is intelligent but awkward, and very funny (although not necessarily intentionally so). He aspires to greatness, but he tends to doubt himself. He is always one to be swayed by a pretty girl.

ZUKO: 16-20 years-old, Male, Caucasian or any other ethnicity. He is a brooding, intense young man who wrestles – not always successfully – with being good. Regaining his honor is a driving impetus for him. He is extremely handsome and is the type of dangerous boy every girl falls in love with. Athletic and/or martial arts experience is a plus.

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.

Lowbright: Thank You – Avatar-gate Update.

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.

More interesting Avatar stuff.

Bent Out of Shape.

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?

lowbright: New day in politics, same old racist world on the silver screen.

I was speaking with Gene Yang (author of “American Born Chinese” and National Book Award nominee) about the casting and he said it best: “It’s like a white Asian fetishist’s wet dream. All the Asian culture they want, without any of the Asian people.”

J.R.R. Tolkien never specifically described his central human, and human-like, characters as being “Caucasian” or “European” (as far as I know) in “The Lord of the Rings”, but it would be pretty stupid to think they weren’t when the entire story and the world in which it was set came from an obvious extrapolation of medieval Europe. Why should it be any different for Avatar?

Click the link for an interesting post, as well as an address to which you can write to make your voice heard.

First Look: The Cast of The Last Airbender | /Film

So over the past year I’ve become a huge fan of the Avatar Series, and like many fans have been skeptical of the fact that M. Night Shyamalan was going to direct the movie adaptation. I like his movies well enough, but he’s never really done epic nor special effects.

With this casting I become even more skeptical. One of the things that I liked about the series was that the cast was made up of a diverse set of races from the Asian continent (and surrounding areas), even though the cartoon was made in the United States. Apparently this won’t be the case in the movie. Here’s hoping that this is a rumor without basis in fact

Also, the fanboy in me can’t conceive of Jesse McCartney as Zuko.