Frank Marshall shares info on casting calls
On April 20th, 2009, Frank Marshall twittered:
The casting is complete and we did not discriminate against anyone. I am done talking about it.
Today, nearly a year later, Marshall contacted UGO.com in response to Michael Le of racebending.com “to clarify something that seems to be a central issue in these discussions.”
You can read the full email response to UGO.com and view what Marshall claims are the original casting sheets here.
The initial casting breakdowns that Marshall claims the production wanted to use makes no reference to race. (That being said, a UCLA study has found that when breakdowns do not designate a race/ethnicity, “these roles were understood to be for white actors.”) However, this still doesn’t explain why the official website for casting, www.thelastairbendercasting.com (now defunct) and other documents that were actually used by casting people read “Caucasian or any other ethnicity.” And this language certainly doesn’t excuse the production from casting white actors to depict people of color, erasing the character’s ethnicities, or reinforcing a glass ceiling. Whatever the production's intentions, it still doesn't make up for what actually happened.
That being said, Latino Review is already using Frank Marshall's comments to slam Racebending.com.
I saw this t-shirt at WonderCon. I would have interviewed the guys about it but they probably would have screamed at me because I'm white.
le sigh.
EDIT: And io9.com jumps into the fray, too with an article featuring erikonil's artwork!
The casting is complete and we did not discriminate against anyone. I am done talking about it.
Today, nearly a year later, Marshall contacted UGO.com in response to Michael Le of racebending.com “to clarify something that seems to be a central issue in these discussions.”
You can read the full email response to UGO.com and view what Marshall claims are the original casting sheets here.
The initial casting breakdowns that Marshall claims the production wanted to use makes no reference to race. (That being said, a UCLA study has found that when breakdowns do not designate a race/ethnicity, “these roles were understood to be for white actors.”) However, this still doesn’t explain why the official website for casting, www.thelastairbendercasting.com (now defunct) and other documents that were actually used by casting people read “Caucasian or any other ethnicity.” And this language certainly doesn’t excuse the production from casting white actors to depict people of color, erasing the character’s ethnicities, or reinforcing a glass ceiling. Whatever the production's intentions, it still doesn't make up for what actually happened.
That being said, Latino Review is already using Frank Marshall's comments to slam Racebending.com.
I saw this t-shirt at WonderCon. I would have interviewed the guys about it but they probably would have screamed at me because I'm white.
le sigh.
EDIT: And io9.com jumps into the fray, too with an article featuring erikonil's artwork!