Update

[amberdulen]

EXCITING NEWS. The upstairs floor of the house, heretofore vacant, has been leased. My housemate (does that count? We don't actually have to interact) is moving in next week; all I know is that she's single and attending college on the G.I. Bill. Which is enough for me to rest easy, actually. My landlord was like, "Yeah, I showed it to a couple

Comments

[ladyarkham]

Whoa, new housemates!

I kind of liked Slumdog Millionaire, but the part with the kid and his eyes just had me about climbing the walls from freaking out.

See, irked argues that Airbender characters, being fantasy characters, aren't supposed to pertain to any particular real-world races, and so it doesn't matter what races the actors who play them are. I can't really find a good argument against that. (I hated that the actresses in Memoirs of a Geisha were Chinese, though, so even if I can't argue with him, I think I'm still with you on the "racefail" thing.)

[izhilzha]

See, irked argues that Airbender characters, being fantasy characters, aren't supposed to pertain to any particular real-world races, and so it doesn't matter what races the actors who play them are.

Hmmm. Well, I have't watched Airbender yet, so don't know how well this flies for that adaptation, but when races are important to the storytelling, casting without regard to race seems kind of silly. See: the adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea, where it's actually plot-relevant that the white barbarians look different from the most widespread of the races (who look Middle-Eastern/Indian) or the culture from further south (who are black). I guess what I'm saying is I object to adaptations meddling with baseline worldbuilding. *g*

[irked_indeed]

That makes sense to me. But would it much matter if it was Indian-looking barbarians with a widespread black race and a southern white one?

In a literary purist sense, I can see the irritation, just as I can see any other case of "THEY CHANGED IT NOW IT STINKS"; I just can't muster any outrage from a... well, racial perspective.

[izhilzha]

As you point out, it might not, as long as the demographics are still intact in some way; but when they cast it entirely color-blind (i.e. two men from the same island and tribe, but one is white and blond and blue-eyed, and one is black) it becomes a problem, of internal consistency at the very least.

[irked_indeed]

Internal inconsistency makes sense to me as an objection. I can dig that.