My mind is made up.
I'm leaving this uncut because I feel so strongly about it, but if anyone at all says they'd rather not see it on the front page, I will cut it immediately.
No matter how hard people bitch at me, no matter how my friends reason and justify and try to make it okay, I am NOT going to accept the casting in The Last Airbender as anything other than "racist, shitty, and incredibly offensive".
The rest of the movie could be fine. I mean, I don't think it is, but it could be. The CGI seems quite good. The writing could be excellent. Hell, even the acting could be amazing. But the casting will NEVER NOT MAKE ME SOB AND DESPAIR FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY.
Because I am SICK TO DEATH of Hollywood NEVER EVER EVER paying any attention to "yellow" people. Unless the movie is set in (usually ancient) China and/or has Generic Kung-Fu Action as a main attractant, Asians (and by Asian, I mean Pacific Asian--Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and there's so many countries in this lable I'm just going to slap a big "etc" on this list and leave it at that) are ALWAYS either science geeks, or fetishized to sickening degrees, or appear as background extras with funny accents and lots of proverbs.
"The reason The Last Airbender has no Asians in the main cast is because there aren't any really big Asian actors in Hollywood"--GEE I WONDER WHY.
I'm a Chinese drama student and the implication that Asians can't act offends me. I'm a Chinese girl and the amount of Asian fetishization in media offends me. I'm Chinese, and The Last Airbender's BRUTAL SLAUGHTER of the influences and source material, and its BLATANT AND UNMASKED whitewashing of the primarily-Asian cast offends me.
The casting of Dev Patel as Zuko offends me personally because it is clearly Tokenism and minority substituting (and Hollywood's refusal to acknowledge Pacific Asians as serious dramatic actors). AN INDIAN PERSON AND A CHINESE PERSON ARE NOT THE SAME THING I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'VE NOTICED BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY DIFFERENT AND THEY DON'T EVEN LOOK SIMILAR SO YOU CAN'T GET AWAY WITH IT. Not to mention Dev Patel, despite being an amazing actor, doesn't even look like Zuko. Why wasn't he cast as Sokka? (Oh, right, because then they would've had to recast Nicola too. DERP.)
The casting of Katara and Sokka as white doesn't make me feel hurt on a personal level but it's even more blatant and horrific. Especially because now we've got two Inuit heroes cast as white and blonde, and a Chinese/Japanese villan cast as brown. Which is racist. I mean, no matter how you look at it, it's racist. JUST the while white heroes vs. evil nation of brown people will carry no more than extremely unfortunate implications, but when the heroes were brown to begin with and the villans were yellow...
Aang being cast as white is okay. Only because the way they stylised his youth makes it easy to cast a Caucasian kid who actually looks like him. Katara and Sokka, white? Zuko, Indian? NO NO AND NO.
(Oh and Suki's Asian, by the way. Because she serves only to be hot and femdommy in the first season, you see.)
The idea that white kids will only be able to ~~CONNECT with a character if they are also white is the most STUPID AND OFFENSIVE PILE OF BULLSHIT EVER, EVER. I'm a Chinese girl so CLEARLY I CAN ONLY CONNECT WITH CHINESE WOMEN IN FICTION. That would probably explain why I have so many FEELINGS OF LOVE IN MY HEART *sparkles* for that one double-amputee half-Xerxese guy and his gearheaded, blonde, Amestrian girlfriend. Or the little redheaded German girl who turns into a Magical Ballerina Princess but is really actually a duck, and the part-Arabic grumpy boy with a sword that's in love with her. Or the cast of TTGL, who are a demographic all on their own, really.
And what about the thousands of white kids who were able to connect with all the characters in the original cartoon? None of them were white to begin with, yet it has such a massive audience. The whitewashing was pointless and rude and will ruin the moive and I am unhappy with it. >:U
I swear, if they do not cast Toph--Toph Bei Fong--as Chinese, I WILL COMMIT BLOODY MURDER. And Mai. Mai has also got to be Pacific Asian. If they ruin these characters HEADS WILL ROLL. D
No matter how hard people bitch at me, no matter how my friends reason and justify and try to make it okay, I am NOT going to accept the casting in The Last Airbender as anything other than "racist, shitty, and incredibly offensive".
The rest of the movie could be fine. I mean, I don't think it is, but it could be. The CGI seems quite good. The writing could be excellent. Hell, even the acting could be amazing. But the casting will NEVER NOT MAKE ME SOB AND DESPAIR FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY.
Because I am SICK TO DEATH of Hollywood NEVER EVER EVER paying any attention to "yellow" people. Unless the movie is set in (usually ancient) China and/or has Generic Kung-Fu Action as a main attractant, Asians (and by Asian, I mean Pacific Asian--Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and there's so many countries in this lable I'm just going to slap a big "etc" on this list and leave it at that) are ALWAYS either science geeks, or fetishized to sickening degrees, or appear as background extras with funny accents and lots of proverbs.
"The reason The Last Airbender has no Asians in the main cast is because there aren't any really big Asian actors in Hollywood"--GEE I WONDER WHY.
I'm a Chinese drama student and the implication that Asians can't act offends me. I'm a Chinese girl and the amount of Asian fetishization in media offends me. I'm Chinese, and The Last Airbender's BRUTAL SLAUGHTER of the influences and source material, and its BLATANT AND UNMASKED whitewashing of the primarily-Asian cast offends me.
The casting of Dev Patel as Zuko offends me personally because it is clearly Tokenism and minority substituting (and Hollywood's refusal to acknowledge Pacific Asians as serious dramatic actors). AN INDIAN PERSON AND A CHINESE PERSON ARE NOT THE SAME THING I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'VE NOTICED BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY DIFFERENT AND THEY DON'T EVEN LOOK SIMILAR SO YOU CAN'T GET AWAY WITH IT. Not to mention Dev Patel, despite being an amazing actor, doesn't even look like Zuko. Why wasn't he cast as Sokka? (Oh, right, because then they would've had to recast Nicola too. DERP.)
The casting of Katara and Sokka as white doesn't make me feel hurt on a personal level but it's even more blatant and horrific. Especially because now we've got two Inuit heroes cast as white and blonde, and a Chinese/Japanese villan cast as brown. Which is racist. I mean, no matter how you look at it, it's racist. JUST the while white heroes vs. evil nation of brown people will carry no more than extremely unfortunate implications, but when the heroes were brown to begin with and the villans were yellow...
Aang being cast as white is okay. Only because the way they stylised his youth makes it easy to cast a Caucasian kid who actually looks like him. Katara and Sokka, white? Zuko, Indian? NO NO AND NO.
(Oh and Suki's Asian, by the way. Because she serves only to be hot and femdommy in the first season, you see.)
The idea that white kids will only be able to ~~CONNECT with a character if they are also white is the most STUPID AND OFFENSIVE PILE OF BULLSHIT EVER, EVER. I'm a Chinese girl so CLEARLY I CAN ONLY CONNECT WITH CHINESE WOMEN IN FICTION. That would probably explain why I have so many FEELINGS OF LOVE IN MY HEART *sparkles* for that one double-amputee half-Xerxese guy and his gearheaded, blonde, Amestrian girlfriend. Or the little redheaded German girl who turns into a Magical Ballerina Princess but is really actually a duck, and the part-Arabic grumpy boy with a sword that's in love with her. Or the cast of TTGL, who are a demographic all on their own, really.
And what about the thousands of white kids who were able to connect with all the characters in the original cartoon? None of them were white to begin with, yet it has such a massive audience. The whitewashing was pointless and rude and will ruin the moive and I am unhappy with it. >:U
I swear, if they do not cast Toph--Toph Bei Fong--as Chinese, I WILL COMMIT BLOODY MURDER. And Mai. Mai has also got to be Pacific Asian. If they ruin these characters HEADS WILL ROLL. D