Did this poll start when Zuko was the little blond kid? Also I know my personal problem with how they casted Zuko is that they put the tan person as the Villain just to further ingrain in kids heads Brown people should be feared. Which is exactly the opposite of the show. But again I'm preaching to the choir.
This poll dates to when the pictures of the cast were first released. So they were definitely voting on Dev Patel as Zuko.
Oh yeah, duh. Completely forgot about the villain thing and what it means to have a brown Fire Nation Royal family and white heroes. At the same time, I have seen some fans criticize Patel for not looking like Zuko because Zuko is light-skinned. We even got some hate mail about how it was all racebending's fault for making Zuko brown.
I think so...something about how we got the casting changed so we should be happy that we ruined Zuko. It caused my boyfriend to snark, "Yes, it's all your fault racebending. You made them replace Jesse McCartney with a talentless hack like Dev Patel."
That's odd... I don't have a login. I've never been on that site before, as far as I know, but the page showed a set of radio buttons in place of the results.
Surprisingly, Dev Patel, who has the best proven acting chops of the bunch, has the lowest approval rating--I wonder why that is?
The most reasonable explanation is racism, either of the "this actor is too brown not hot enough to play my favorite character" variety (see also: the controversy over Blaise Zabini from Harry Potter) or of the "white people are the default, so they can play anyone, but PoC can only play people they look exactly like" variety.
Combine that with the people who have genuine reservations about making the only PoC the villain (as mentioned by livvylove; though I think that most of those people would choose "all of the above" in this poll rather than focus their indignation on Patel), as well as the people who dislike Patel precisely because he's a known quantity whom they were unimpressed by for whatever reason, but who are willing to give an unknown actor the benefit of the doubt, and you get that 15% disapproval rating.
May I just ask what the controversy is with Blaise Zabini? I don't really follow HP anymore, and when I looked the name up on Google, none of the links mentioned a controversy.
The higher numbers for Zuko might have to do with the poll only allowing one choice. The people who have a problem with the whitewash would be expected to have a problem with the casting of Katara, Sokka, and Aang, and so would seem more likely to choose "all of the above" (even for people with less of a problem with Zuko's casting); the casting of Zuko, on the other hand, would tend to attract votes from the they're-all-white crowd. (I'd certainly have picked "all of the above", and Dev Patel is the actor cast who I have the least trouble with.)
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Oh yeah, duh. Completely forgot about the villain thing and what it means to have a brown Fire Nation Royal family and white heroes. At the same time, I have seen some fans criticize Patel for not looking like Zuko because Zuko is light-skinned. We even got some hate mail about how it was all racebending's fault for making Zuko brown.
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Wait, what? Really? O_o
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The most reasonable explanation is racism, either of the "this actor is too brown not hot enough to play my favorite character" variety (see also: the controversy over Blaise Zabini from Harry Potter) or of the "white people are the default, so they can play anyone, but PoC can only play people they look exactly like" variety.
Combine that with the people who have genuine reservations about making the only PoC the villain (as mentioned by livvylove; though I think that most of those people would choose "all of the above" in this poll rather than focus their indignation on Patel), as well as the people who dislike Patel precisely because he's a known quantity whom they were unimpressed by for whatever reason, but who are willing to give an unknown actor the benefit of the doubt, and you get that 15% disapproval rating.
But mostly I think it's racism.
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