Rage Against the Hollywood Machine?
Last month, I presented on Avatar: The Last Airbender--yes, a kid's animated TV series--to the Media Action Network for Asian Americans in downtown Chinatown. Before you start laughing at the absurdity of a 22 year old woman presenting to the ADL of APAs on a kid's cartoon, I guess I want to note that people have started to take any hint of racism towards African Americans quite seriously, yet people who wouldn't dare make career suicide statements about African Americans might get away with an equally offensive statements about Asian Pacific Americans. Movies might work the same way.
Check out Disney's flip-the-hell-out damage control for their newest film, "The Princess and the Frog". But while Disney is "diversifying" (and cashing in on it, I might add,) the Avatar movie is still stubbornly trying to whitewash its cast. I want to point out that the Avatar animated series has a significant 18-14 fan demographic, that the casting of white actors to dress up like Asians is pretty racially offensive, and that for Asian Americans, there really isn't much else out there. There isn't a nationwide NAACP with enough power to rip across headlines when inflammatory racist statements or negative, stereotypical depictions of Asians go down, even when it's something as trivial as movies.
But then the other day when Ken told some of our friends that I was working on some Asian American media advocacy stuff, they laughed.
so...yeah.
I guess working on this Avatar thing has made me a lot less sheltered. At times it seems futile or even a little ridiculous, but then I remember I'm not just bitching at Hollywood, I'm also forcing myself to face reality. I've grown up in university towns with large Asian American populations. I have no idea, nor control, over what the average non-Asian American thinks about Asian Americans.
Last week someone said this:"This is an American show, baked fresh daily in the USA. That's why the actors should be American."
I see this argument all of the time. It's like these people can't fathom the possibility that two white American males would want to make a show set in an Asian fantasy world. The fact that the show doesn't have slanty-eyed characters or have random gongs going off or have characters speaking lispy-accented English must mean the characters are white, right?
Just because it was "freshly baked" in America doesn't mean it's white-bread, you idiot.
(Besides, while the show was written and produced in the US, it was animated in Korea.)
And news flash: Asian Americans do have to deal with this on a regular basis. I mean, when you get asked "Where are you from?" and you say, "Los Angeles" or "Irvine" or "California" is your answer good enough? Because when people ask me that question, they usually don't stop pestering me until I say "Taiwan," even though I'm not and never was from there. People stop when Ken says "Pennsylvania." His American-ness is undeniable, because of how he looks.
Frankly put: Underlying many people's defense of these casting decisions is this insidious implication that Asians and Asian Americans are "less than" or simply "not" American.
And that's really hard for me to swallow, so here's how I spit.
We have an official website now, webmastered by glockgal.
And there's an online petition going on that's kind of my virtual headcount. It's not a worthless petition, I already have some concrete plans (currently under wraps) for it.
Thank you, everyone, for your continued support.
Check out Disney's flip-the-hell-out damage control for their newest film, "The Princess and the Frog". But while Disney is "diversifying" (and cashing in on it, I might add,) the Avatar movie is still stubbornly trying to whitewash its cast. I want to point out that the Avatar animated series has a significant 18-14 fan demographic, that the casting of white actors to dress up like Asians is pretty racially offensive, and that for Asian Americans, there really isn't much else out there. There isn't a nationwide NAACP with enough power to rip across headlines when inflammatory racist statements or negative, stereotypical depictions of Asians go down, even when it's something as trivial as movies.
But then the other day when Ken told some of our friends that I was working on some Asian American media advocacy stuff, they laughed.
so...yeah.
I guess working on this Avatar thing has made me a lot less sheltered. At times it seems futile or even a little ridiculous, but then I remember I'm not just bitching at Hollywood, I'm also forcing myself to face reality. I've grown up in university towns with large Asian American populations. I have no idea, nor control, over what the average non-Asian American thinks about Asian Americans.
Last week someone said this:"This is an American show, baked fresh daily in the USA. That's why the actors should be American."
I see this argument all of the time. It's like these people can't fathom the possibility that two white American males would want to make a show set in an Asian fantasy world. The fact that the show doesn't have slanty-eyed characters or have random gongs going off or have characters speaking lispy-accented English must mean the characters are white, right?
Just because it was "freshly baked" in America doesn't mean it's white-bread, you idiot.
(Besides, while the show was written and produced in the US, it was animated in Korea.)
And news flash: Asian Americans do have to deal with this on a regular basis. I mean, when you get asked "Where are you from?" and you say, "Los Angeles" or "Irvine" or "California" is your answer good enough? Because when people ask me that question, they usually don't stop pestering me until I say "Taiwan," even though I'm not and never was from there. People stop when Ken says "Pennsylvania." His American-ness is undeniable, because of how he looks.
Frankly put: Underlying many people's defense of these casting decisions is this insidious implication that Asians and Asian Americans are "less than" or simply "not" American.
And that's really hard for me to swallow, so here's how I spit.
We have an official website now, webmastered by glockgal.
And there's an online petition going on that's kind of my virtual headcount. It's not a worthless petition, I already have some concrete plans (currently under wraps) for it.
Thank you, everyone, for your continued support.