Taking it to Twitter

[aang_aint_white]

We have been told that Frank Marshall, one of the producers of The Last Airbender, has an account on Twitter. We've also been told that many of our supporters have been sending him harassing messages.

While we understand that this is a rare opportunity to communicate more directly with the producers, rude behavior reflects badly on all of us. It

Comments

[rotae]

I Twittered!! :D

LeDoctor: Our vision for the movie is of ONE world, made up of four Nations, influenced and inspired by the Asian undertones of the series.

LeDoctor: This world will have an ethnically diverse cast that represents many different heritages and cultures from all corners of the globe.

Rotae @LeDoctor: But Avatar is an entirely Asian world! I don't seem to recall the European or American influences in it.

Rotae @LeDoctor: Why bother basing a film on Avatar if you're just going to ignore the source material?

Peace,
Rotae

[rotae]

http://screenshots.avatarspiritmedia.net/220/698.jpg

If that isn't a reference to europe's most popular religion I don't what is.

[aang_aint_white]

Storyboard artists referencing a famous European statue in one shot of one episode does not equate a European setting nor Caucasian characters.

[skemono]

Really? It just looks to me like a weeping girl holding a dead (well, almost-dead) boy. Since when was weeping over the corpses of loved ones solely the purview of Christianity?

[singingsun199]

Mourning the dead isn't solely Christian, but there is a Christian statue just like that.

But it's jsut one reference. And Aang is more like a Hindu Avatar/Dalai Lama/The Hero combo anyway. =/

[skemono]

Mourning the dead isn't solely Christian, but there is a Christian statue just like that.

Yes, the Pieta, I know.

But it's jsut one reference.

I still don't think it actually is a reference to that. It's a girl holding a boy's body in preparation for moving it.

[singingsun199]

The scene is set up exactly like the pieta statue. Katara looked at Aang the way Mary looked at Jesus, with a torn expresion and a sideways glance. SHe held him the same way, and her hair was around her head like Mary's head covering.

But, lol, it doesn't really matter, does it? XD

[aang_aint_white]

I think it has more to do with the Avatar staff being art geeks than the overall cultural setting and themes of the show. ;)

[skemono]

The scene is set up exactly like the pieta statue.

Not really, it's not. For one thing, Aang is facing the wrong way. For two, Katara is kneeling after having caught Aang, instead of sitting down.

Katara looked at Aang the way Mary looked at Jesus, with a torn expresion and a sideways glance.

I'm not really sure where you're getting that, since Michelangelo's Mary doesn't seem to really be looking at Jesus at all. But even if she were, it would have to be at a sideways glance because they're both with horizontal, dead bodies. This does not make one a reference to the other, they're both just vaguely similar depictions of a similar situation.

SHe held him the same way

Again, not really. In the Pieta, Jesus is draped across Mary's lap, with one hand sort of propping him up while the other hand is kind of waving in the air. In Avatar, Katara is holding Aang with both arms, not in her lap at all.

[robotech_master]

As I've blogged elsewhere, I think that's basically an excuse they came up with after the fact to explain why they're casting non-Asian. They're hiding behind the "PC-ism" of "ethnic diversity" (and, in another tweet, claiming the movie will be more "diverse" than the show) to cover their true motives.

The motive in question is, I think, a desire to appeal to a general audience beyond Avatar fans (nothing unusual in this: all live-action movie adaptations have to appeal beyond fans, or they can't make back their investment), and a fear that a general audience won't turn out to see an all-Asian-cast movie.

Regardless, I don't think all the protesting in the world will change matters now. They've already gone too far into the production to be able to back out and recast. All a protest will do is generate more buzz and perhaps get even more people to go see the movie and find out what the fuss is all about.

[tallycola]

While it's certainly *not* too late for the production to change (productions can change at any time in the game, sometimes being entirely re-shot), and I don't think our somewhat small protest is really going to generate them buzz... I do think it's kind of out of our control now. We might have to let this one go.

[erikonil]

With a continuing issue like this, you really can't just let it go otherwise it just continues. In the up coming King of Fighters movie they've already cast the lead character, a Japanese teen called Kyo Kusanagi with a white actor. From what it looks like, Tesuo in the upcoming Akira movie is being anglacised. For the Street Fighter movie that just came out, they got someone who had such a small bit of Chinese in her that you wouldn't have known she had any at all. In the movie '21', they replaced the two main Asian leads with white actors.

This is something that is symptomatic in Hollywood. They won't stop unless people let them know that it's not something we're willing to tolerate. African Americans did it back in the 60's and 70's, it's time that the viewing public started demanding the same treatment for Asian and Native actors.