(Untitled)

[djknom]

I've been a supporter of this cause since the beginning and joined the Facebook Racebending group very early on (think back to when we had no idea how Noah Ringer looked like, when Jesse McCartney was still cast as Zuko, and before we even thought of the term "racebending").  I decided to share a recent thread I posted on the group's discussion

Comments

[lmikia]

I have to say this because I just got back from watching Boondock Saints II and it had a The Last Airbender trailer with it.

Here's something I realized for myself. I probably would have been completely fine with Noah Ringer being Aang, IF, no one else in this world was white. Like if Noah Ringer, as the last of the Air Nomads, was the last of that "race" (read: white)
IDEALLY, I would love to have had an entirely Asian cast but there has to be small compromises before that.

Now I'm not saying that I hate Noah Ringer being Aang, because I would be lying. I don't think he's -that- bad. (Of course I would prefer Brandon Soo Hoo hands down, but that's another thing) It's just the fact that in the series, the different elements are represented by a different race. Katara & Sokka are an entirely different race from Aang. They LOOK different. So why make them the same now? freaking M. Night and co. has me asking too many "Why" questions in regards to this movie.

[lmikia]

well...maybe not "completely" fine....

[mycophobia]

I actually think that would bother me more. Like "omg the last white person, MUST SAVE ALL THE POOR COLORED PEOPLE"
I would prefer it to have Aang/the heroes their proper race and everyone else white, if it had to come to that. :/

[a_white_rain]

Yeah IA. Aang was the one I wanted Asian the most. Followed by Sokka because he's a type of character who usually isn't played by an Asian.

Except the girl in me who wanted to see a lovely brown girl play Katara. It's a little hard to explain, but seeing a white girl as Katara frustrates me the most in some crazy way.

Except for the part where I wanted no white people at all because it's not always about white people.

[full_metal_ox]

It's not hard to explain at all: seeing the canonically dark-skinned Katara played by a white actress shattered a lot of people's Paper Mirror: http://www.metrokitty.com/?id=271

It's the same betrayal fans of Earthsea felt over the whitewashed Sci-Fi--excuse me, SyFy--channel adaptation (http://www.infinitematrix.net/faq/essays/noles.html) --particularly those who regarded Earthsea as the first fantasy epic that gave them a role as something other than villains, exotic local color, or Benighted Natives.

[a_white_rain]

Oh that's really an interesting comic. Though I must say I'm white so idk how much that applies. I guess it's just that I want girls to see themselves in Katara - a lovely brown girl who is a hero in every sense of the word - and I'm so angry that that's taken away. I guess I'm just so so sick of girls not getting their fair share that any wrong against a woman just hits me harder. hm.

[full_metal_ox]

"I guess it's just that I want girls to see themselves in Katara - a lovely brown girl who is a hero in every sense of the word - and I'm so angry that that's taken away."

That's one of the things that Ursula LeGuin sought to achieve in Earthsea:

"I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for "young adults") might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees--hoping that the reader would get 'into Ged's skin' and only then discover that it wasn't a white one."

(A point I've seldom seen addressed is that avoidance of heroes of color is an insult--albeit a far subtler one--to white viewers, too; Hollywood evidently credits white viewers with the ability to identify and sympathize with transforming robots, commando penguins, kung-fu pandas, and pointy-eared space aliens, but not with fellow human beings whose melanin content differs from their own.)

[a_white_rain]

Hollywood evidently credits white viewers with the ability to identify and sympathize with transforming robots, commando penguins, kung-fu pandas, and pointy-eared space aliens, but not with fellow human beings whose melanin content differs from their own
It's stupid and ridiculous. I can never say I've related to a character quite so much as I have with Katara.

[lmikia]

Touche. That actually never occurred to me. I know that we couldn't have the Fire nation being white because that would just throw so many people up in arms, but I don't want them to be Earth benders either.

[chickosaurusrex]

Here's something I realized for myself. I probably would have been completely fine with Noah Ringer being Aang, IF, no one else in this world was white. Like if Noah Ringer, as the last of the Air Nomads, was the last of that "race" (read: white)

Yeah, you know, I was prepared to give that one up too. It still wouldn't have been internally-consistent with the world, but I understood that most people see Aang as white, and that a white lead character might make people feel more comfortable.

I just didn't expect them to make the obviously characters of color white kids, too.

[mrcab]

I have always felt the exact opposite: If Aang were actually cast with a young Asian-American actor, I probably could have lived with the rest of the cast and all its "diversity". Probably... eh... probably not, but more-so than the other.

[chickosaurusrex]

Hmm. I can certainly see people's arguments in favor of an Asian Aang.

I guess it's a moot point either way, what with how the casting ended up.