Avatar casting and Charlie Chan--way tl;dr
I have not updated for a while! I think I've been too embroiled in reading and participating in discussions about the Avatar situation. For those who don't know Avatar:The Last Airbender is a fabulous anime-inspired animated show from Nickelodeon set in a world based on various Asian and Inuit cultures. EW just announced tentative casting for four of the leads, and of the three we've seen pictures of their all--you guessed it--white. (Odds don’t look good on number four, but we don’t know yet.)
There have been a lot of great posts about this, particularly in response to arguments that this kind of casting is fine since it's not really Asia, or in anime style makes everyone look white, or it's just fantasy, or that's the way Hollywood works, or it's just a movie so caring about it makes you a shallow liberal, or these kids were obviously just the best actors in the world for it, or there's not enough non-white actors to do it...suffice to say, I disagree with these arguments and urge anybody who wants to to check out aang_aint_white and consider writing a letter of protest if you feel strongly enough. No, the letters might not have any effect on the actual movie, but letting people know we would have liked the movie to not be cast all-white will have more effect than doing nothing, right? That's how these things change.
Which is what it made me think about how things change. Right before this news came out I happened to see Tropic Thunder, which of course features Robert Downey Jr. playing an actor playing a character using blackface. Next to the actual black man played by actual black man Brandon T. Jackson, Downey's character comes across as flat and unrealistic. His black character, that is--when he's playing the Australian white guy underneath he's more like a human being. It's not that Osirus (the black character) doesn't have emotions, it's that the stereotype laid on top of them is so flat and shallow it doesn’t let them come through.
Since I was a kid and caught them on TV, I loved Charlie Chan movies. As an adult I am very conflicted about this since...dude, Charlie Chan? The white actor in yellowface? (Actually Warner Oland did not wear make-up for Charlie Chan; for a long time he’d been a go-to white guy to play Asians.) In the first talkie that Charlie Chan appears in he is played by an Asian actor. When he became the lead, he turned white.
Now, from what I understand about the history of the character, he was created to be a positive representation of a Chinese American (I've never read the books so can't speak for them). My impression of him in the movies was always that his ridiculous fortune cookie quips were part of the persona he cultivated to seem harmless, like Miss Marple playing the dotty old lady or Poirot playing the strange little Belgian. The Charlie Chan movies are still a product of their time--and those were blatantly racist times. (White!Charlie in early films is sometimes assisted by Steppin Fetchit.)
But the thing is, no matter how anybody defends Warner Oland or Sidney Toler as CC because they're familiar, they are total weak points in the movies. The strong points, for me, were always Charlie's family. Charlie is often helped on a case by one of his many children, who are played by actual Asian American actors-I loved those team-ups. The difference between them and white!Charlie is…well, it's like watching Kirk Lazarus (the Robert Downey Jr. character) and Alpa Chino in Tropic Thunder. Only of course Keye Luke and the many Asian actors in the CC movies children can't react to Charlie as a white guy playing an Asian the way Alpa Chino/Brandon T. Jackson reacts to Kirk Lazarus.
The whole thing about Charlie's kids is that while their race is Asian, they're American, not Chinese. They speak in teen slang, chase girls or boys, get into trouble, act goofy, fight with each other (sometimes in actual Chinese, which I loved), listen to loud music, complain about Pop's rules, roll their eyes at his fortune cookie slang etc. If they're stereotypes they're stereotypes of young Americans at the time and not Asians.
These characters and actors hold up over time, imo, in a way the white Charlie Chan just doesn't. In fact, I listened to a recent recording of an old Charlie Chan screenplay--I think the movie itself might have been lost in a fire. It was cast with contemporary actors. I can't remember who played Charlie, but it was a Chinese actor. Even just with the voice casting there was a huge difference listening to Charlie Chan's lines spoken in a natural Chinese accent. Where Warner Oland's sounded labored and seemed always trying to indicate fake Eastern mysticism inherent in the accent, this accent spoke only of a guy coming from China originally. For Oland (like Kirk Lazarus in TT) a large part of Chan's personality seemed to reside in the accent. Here the accent was neutral and any personality came from the person underneath.
There's always a reason not to cast non-white people when movies get cast. But part of me will never not be confused at making a choice that imo is just a bad one. There's this rumor that white people--including white children--won't see a movie with non-whites in the lead (even if they're missing out on an awesome story with magic martial arts, apparently), but I look at the old Charlie Chan movies and think how can they honestly believe that? Doesn't everyone find it a chore to have to deal with the white guy doing the 40s-white-guy-version-of-a-Chinaman routine? (At the time, sure, even Asian people probably considered it so unlikely they'd see a real Asian person that Charlie Chan was a breakthrough, but not today.) Am I the only one who watches those old movies and wonders what the movie could have been like with a real person there? People say "“it’s all about the acting" but there's also an advantage to not having to act something that in real life is unconscious.
My point being, this is one of those times that show the value of non-colorblind casting. Colorblind casting is great sometimes. I see Shakespeare in the Park every year and those plays work just fine with black Romeo speaking to his white father for instance. There's plenty of roles that could be cast with actors of many different races. But other times an actor's race brings something to the table, like in scenes where Charlie Chan's children naturally say something about the country the way Charlie Chan can't. I think Avatar is definitely one of those times. The Avatar world isn't "really Asia" but yes, it does say something very different to have white people dressed in these fashions in this architecture doing these martial arts and telling this story. Some people have also claimed that this is an American show, not a show from any country in Asia, and so this casting reflects that. The characters in Avatar do reflect American sensibilities in many ways. But that's the point. White Charlie Chan *didn't* reflect America, it reflected a false, arbitrary decision about casting made by producers. He was a denial of a big part of America. The Chinese American actors playing Charlie's children were the ones who said something about actual America, just as imo a more diverse cast in Avatar would.
There have been a lot of great posts about this, particularly in response to arguments that this kind of casting is fine since it's not really Asia, or in anime style makes everyone look white, or it's just fantasy, or that's the way Hollywood works, or it's just a movie so caring about it makes you a shallow liberal, or these kids were obviously just the best actors in the world for it, or there's not enough non-white actors to do it...suffice to say, I disagree with these arguments and urge anybody who wants to to check out aang_aint_white and consider writing a letter of protest if you feel strongly enough. No, the letters might not have any effect on the actual movie, but letting people know we would have liked the movie to not be cast all-white will have more effect than doing nothing, right? That's how these things change.
Which is what it made me think about how things change. Right before this news came out I happened to see Tropic Thunder, which of course features Robert Downey Jr. playing an actor playing a character using blackface. Next to the actual black man played by actual black man Brandon T. Jackson, Downey's character comes across as flat and unrealistic. His black character, that is--when he's playing the Australian white guy underneath he's more like a human being. It's not that Osirus (the black character) doesn't have emotions, it's that the stereotype laid on top of them is so flat and shallow it doesn’t let them come through.
Since I was a kid and caught them on TV, I loved Charlie Chan movies. As an adult I am very conflicted about this since...dude, Charlie Chan? The white actor in yellowface? (Actually Warner Oland did not wear make-up for Charlie Chan; for a long time he’d been a go-to white guy to play Asians.) In the first talkie that Charlie Chan appears in he is played by an Asian actor. When he became the lead, he turned white.
Now, from what I understand about the history of the character, he was created to be a positive representation of a Chinese American (I've never read the books so can't speak for them). My impression of him in the movies was always that his ridiculous fortune cookie quips were part of the persona he cultivated to seem harmless, like Miss Marple playing the dotty old lady or Poirot playing the strange little Belgian. The Charlie Chan movies are still a product of their time--and those were blatantly racist times. (White!Charlie in early films is sometimes assisted by Steppin Fetchit.)
But the thing is, no matter how anybody defends Warner Oland or Sidney Toler as CC because they're familiar, they are total weak points in the movies. The strong points, for me, were always Charlie's family. Charlie is often helped on a case by one of his many children, who are played by actual Asian American actors-I loved those team-ups. The difference between them and white!Charlie is…well, it's like watching Kirk Lazarus (the Robert Downey Jr. character) and Alpa Chino in Tropic Thunder. Only of course Keye Luke and the many Asian actors in the CC movies children can't react to Charlie as a white guy playing an Asian the way Alpa Chino/Brandon T. Jackson reacts to Kirk Lazarus.
The whole thing about Charlie's kids is that while their race is Asian, they're American, not Chinese. They speak in teen slang, chase girls or boys, get into trouble, act goofy, fight with each other (sometimes in actual Chinese, which I loved), listen to loud music, complain about Pop's rules, roll their eyes at his fortune cookie slang etc. If they're stereotypes they're stereotypes of young Americans at the time and not Asians.
These characters and actors hold up over time, imo, in a way the white Charlie Chan just doesn't. In fact, I listened to a recent recording of an old Charlie Chan screenplay--I think the movie itself might have been lost in a fire. It was cast with contemporary actors. I can't remember who played Charlie, but it was a Chinese actor. Even just with the voice casting there was a huge difference listening to Charlie Chan's lines spoken in a natural Chinese accent. Where Warner Oland's sounded labored and seemed always trying to indicate fake Eastern mysticism inherent in the accent, this accent spoke only of a guy coming from China originally. For Oland (like Kirk Lazarus in TT) a large part of Chan's personality seemed to reside in the accent. Here the accent was neutral and any personality came from the person underneath.
There's always a reason not to cast non-white people when movies get cast. But part of me will never not be confused at making a choice that imo is just a bad one. There's this rumor that white people--including white children--won't see a movie with non-whites in the lead (even if they're missing out on an awesome story with magic martial arts, apparently), but I look at the old Charlie Chan movies and think how can they honestly believe that? Doesn't everyone find it a chore to have to deal with the white guy doing the 40s-white-guy-version-of-a-Chinaman routine? (At the time, sure, even Asian people probably considered it so unlikely they'd see a real Asian person that Charlie Chan was a breakthrough, but not today.) Am I the only one who watches those old movies and wonders what the movie could have been like with a real person there? People say "“it’s all about the acting" but there's also an advantage to not having to act something that in real life is unconscious.
My point being, this is one of those times that show the value of non-colorblind casting. Colorblind casting is great sometimes. I see Shakespeare in the Park every year and those plays work just fine with black Romeo speaking to his white father for instance. There's plenty of roles that could be cast with actors of many different races. But other times an actor's race brings something to the table, like in scenes where Charlie Chan's children naturally say something about the country the way Charlie Chan can't. I think Avatar is definitely one of those times. The Avatar world isn't "really Asia" but yes, it does say something very different to have white people dressed in these fashions in this architecture doing these martial arts and telling this story. Some people have also claimed that this is an American show, not a show from any country in Asia, and so this casting reflects that. The characters in Avatar do reflect American sensibilities in many ways. But that's the point. White Charlie Chan *didn't* reflect America, it reflected a false, arbitrary decision about casting made by producers. He was a denial of a big part of America. The Chinese American actors playing Charlie's children were the ones who said something about actual America, just as imo a more diverse cast in Avatar would.