We're the victims of a crime, we'll be loving you long time
I know a million people on lj have already ranted about this and these pictures are getting whored all over teh internets, but I really don't care. I'm pissed and I need somewhere to rant. (And even though not too many people read this journal, I should really start doing something with it so here you go.)
And what is the cause of my anger, you ask? Just a little film called The Last Airbender, its casting choices, and the ignorance of its crew members.
Now, not everyone is familiar with the show Avatar: The Last Airbender, and if you aren't, I will do my best to explain. Avatar is a cartoon set in an Asian-based fantasy world consisting of four nations/groups based on the four elements: the Air Nomads (Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western), the Water Tribes (Northern and Southern), the Earth Kingdom, and the Fire Nation. Individuals of each group have the ability to manipulate their respective elements, called "bending". The story centers around a twelve-year-old boy, Aang, who is the key to saving the world. He is the Avatar, an all-powerful being who is able to control all four of the elements and is reincarnated into the next nation in the cycle upon the death of the current Avatar. Aang's mission is to stop the Fire Lord from conquering the entire world, and restore peace. He's not alone though - people from all four nations come together to help him, forming a sort of surrogate family. That's just a quick plot/setting overview, I'll explain more about the characters later.
In early 2007 M. Night Shyamalan got the idea to make a live-action film of the show - a trilogy, in fact, one movie for each season of the show. Paramount jumped all over it and the original creators, Mike DiMartino and Brian Konietzko, voiced their approval for the project. Fandom opinion was divided due to Shyamalan's previous films, but the majority vote was "as long as Bryke's on board, it'll be okay."
And then we were shown the casting for the four main characters.
This is Aang in the cartoon.
This is who is going to play Aang in the live-action movie, Noah Ringer.
...okay, where do I start? Kid is cute. Kid is ADORABLE. Kid is not Aang, however. Aang's design, and the entire Air Nomad society, was based on that of Buddhist/Tibetan monks. Noah Ringer is a white kid from Texas who is apparently good at karate. I have nothing against Noah Ringer, let's get that out of the way right now. But c'mon, people, is it too hard to find a twelve-year-old Asian actor who resembles Aang at all? IS IT?
But, wait! Let's take a look at Ringer's stunt double!
Jade Quon, who I will bet you anything is at least twice Noah's age. And a woman. And Asian. This is actually the lulziest part of the whole thing, IMO, having seen woman!Aang in "The Ember Island Players." I'm torn between being outraged at the Asians being relegated to "stunt double" and just laughing my butt off at the irony.
Aang himself said it best: "That's not what I'm like, AND I'M NOT A WOMAN!"
Sorry, Aang, M. Night Shyamalan has a different perspective.
At this point I should probably explain why I am so pissed, aside from the fact that I am a fan of the show and would like the live-action actors to at least passably resemble the characters they are playing. I am pissed because I'm a hapa (half-Chinese) and I really appreciated the lengths the creators of Avatar went to to make sure the show was portraying Asian culture correctly, because not many people would make that kind of effort (Disney, I'm looking at you). I was, you know, sort of assuming that in the live-action movie the main characters would at least be played by THE CORRECT RACE, and that it would be a chance for Asians to shine without being just the comic relief or the nerd. Oh, how wrong I was.
Now let's get into the real cause of my anger. Because, let's face it, I might've accepted this kid if the other three main roles were cast accurately. I would've been uneasy about him, a white kid, playing an obviously Asian role, but I might've still had hope this would be a decent movie.
Katara and Sokka, siblings who live in the Southern Water Tribe, have been Aang's constant companions from day one. Katara, in fact, was the one who broke Aang out of the iceburg he been frozen in for 100 years and convinced him that he had to go out and stop the Fire Lord because no one else was going to. The Water Tribes were based heavily on Inuit culture and as far as I know, they were pretty accurate.
This is Katara.
This is the girl who will play Katara, Nicola Peltz.
Playing the "what's wrong with this picture?" game with this one is way, WAY more obvious than with Aang/Noah. First off: Katara is, for all intents and purposes, Inuit. Inuit = brown-skinned. Not tanned, brown-skinned. Nicola, as is plain to see, is WHITE AS A PICKET FENCE. What was going through the minds of the casting people, I cannot even begin to fathom. And even if they were going by physical features rather than race or whatever, I still call bull, because look at those big green eyes on Nicola. They're pretty, yeah, but Katara obviously has BLUE eyes, and if you were going to Race Lift Katara anyway you may as well pick someone whose eyes are the right color, casting people. *headdesk*
And then we have Sokka, who is my personal favorite Avatar guy.
And the guy who will play him, Jackson Rathbone.
Do I even need to comment? And AGAIN WITH THE GREEN EYES, what the heck?!
Also: I must interject a personal opinion here. I do not like Jackson Rathbone very much. This is partially because he was involved in the massive fail that is Twilight, and partially because of this terribly stupid comment he made back when casting was released:
"I think it's one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan...It's one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit."
To me, that sounds more than a little suspect. He is asking the audience to "suspend disbelief" that a white guy is playing an Inuit character. Not to mention the fact that apparently, if he gets a tan, everything will be okay. Well, it won't. I realize Jasper probably didn't mean for his words to come off as racist, but let's face it, if a white guy was going to play a black guy and he said "I think I'll just put some makeup on, it'll be okay and I hope the audience will suspend disbelief" he would be called out for it, right? That's called blackface, and its equally awful cousins are yellowface (for Asians) and brownface (what Jackson will be doing). Wikipedia can explain that better than I can, but here's the point: Jackson knows full well he's playing a character of a different race and that he has to alter his appearance drastically to do so, and he thinks this is okay. I do not think this is okay. I think that Jackson should've realized what was going on and said "Sorry guys, but I don't think this role is for me." And nobody give me crap about his not being able to support himself without this role; the guy will be a hot commodity for years because of Twilight. In fact, taking the role of Sokka will probably have a negative impact on his career.
Next up are the main Fire Nation roles, the villains. Prince Zuko, son of Fire Lord Ozai, is more of an anti-hero, but his main focus in life is capturing the Avatar so that he can regain his honor after his banishment and make his father proud of him.
This is first season Zuko.
At this point I should probably mention that there have been two live-action Zukos cast. The first was Jesse McCartney. Yes, that Jesse McCartney, the pop singer who used to be a Disney kid (kind of). This Jesse McCartney.
Well. The fandom reacted so strongly and the outcry against the casting in general, but in particular JMac, was so strong that Paramount decided "holy crap, we'd better do something!" So they kicked Jesse out (the official statement was something about a tour schedule conflicting with filming, but nobody bought that excuse) and hired Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame instead.
Let me be very clear here. I LOVED Slumdog Millionaire, I thought it was a truly beautiful film and deserving of all those Oscars it won (wait, that's a lie, I wanted "Down To Earth" to win Best Song, but "Jai Ho" is like crack in audio form so whatever, I'm not too bitter) and I thought Dev Patel was splendid in it. I think he's a very talented actor and just adorable. BUT I DO NOT WANT HIM PLAYING ZUKO.
Paramount was very sneaky in their recasting of Zuko. They were thinking that, with the addition of an Indian actor into the main cast, surely the fans couldn't cry "whitewashing!" and "racism!" anymore. Surely they were in the clear now. Right?
WRONG. Let's examine this situation for a moment. Originally, in the cartoon, we had our three heroes of mixed ethnicity (Buddhist monk and Inuits) being chased by a pseudo-Japanese antagonist. Now, we're going to have our three white heroes being chased by a dark-skinned antagonist. GOLLY, THAT'S NOT RACIST AT ALL.
But wait, it gets better! Now, the entire Fire Nation has to match Dev, so they will all be dark-skinned. I repeat: all of the villains will be dark-skinned.
This includes the fan favorite Uncle Iroh, who guides Zuko on his journey and helps him to determine which side he is truly on. This is Iroh:
And this is who is playing Iroh:
O HAI THAR YINSEN.
Honestly, I'm sure the guy's a great actor and I loved his work in Iron Man, but...he looks less like Iroh than Dev looks like Zuko. I didn't even think it was possible to get more off-model with the casting, but skinny Persian Jewish/Iranian man =/= fat pseudo-Japanese man.
A quick interlude of semi-positivity: there are two cast members I actually approve of, believe it or not. The first is Jessica Jade Andres, who will play Sokka's (eventual) girlfriend and leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki.
Suki:
Jessica Jade Andres:
Hey, look, an Asian actress playing an Asian character! It's all okay now, right?
...well, no, not exactly. Admittedly, Jessica is closer appearance-wise to Suki than any casting thus far, but there's another problem here. Two, in fact. The first is that in the first season, Suki only appears for one episode. Maybe they'll expand her role in the first movie, but it's pretty doubtful as they only have two hours to tell an 8-hour story - Suki's not going to be anything more than a secondary character at best. Then consider this: Asian women as a whole have been fetishized in American cinema probably since the beginning of American cinema. What does it say when you have one correctly cast actor...who is female and Asian, and the love interest of a main character?
And now back to the Water Tribe, because there's more fail to be found there. As I said, Katara and Sokka are from the Southern Water Tribe. At one point near the end of season 1, the group is looking for a waterbending master to teach Aang and Katara, so they travel to the Northern Water Tribe. There they find a drastically different culture from the SWT, who live very much as a close-knit family unit. The Northern Water Tribe has a clear line drawn between male and female waterbenders, the latter of which is only allowed to learn healing techniques and forbidden to fight. This grates on Katara, who is very much a feminist, when Master Pakku refuses to teach her because of her gender. Eventually she proves herself to be vastly superior to the rest of his students and even on par with Pakku himself, but all you really need to know right now is that NWT fails at female empowerment. Katara's Gran-Gran Kanna was as frustrated with this policy as her granddaughter, and in fact chose to run away from home as a teenager rather than marry Pakku and be trapped in her sexist home tribe.
Kanna looks like this.
And Katherine Houghton will play her.
Another important NWT character is Yue, Sokka's second love interest. Cute, isn't she? And also dark-skinned, though as a rule I've noticed the NWT tends to be lighter than the SWT.
Yue is to be played by Seychelle Gabriel, who is Mexican or something like that.
This is the other actor that I am actually okay with. After all, she really does have a nice face, similar in shape to Yue's. True, I would've preferred a genuine Inuit, but at this point I'm just happy with anything that looks correct. But again, we have a problem: she, like Suki, is both a secondary character and also Sokka's love interest. What does it say when both love interests of a character are racially correct, but the character himself has been whitewashed?
Aside from the fact that the SWT will be composed of (from pictures we've been shown) whites against an Inuit cultural backdrop, with the NWT probably dark-skinned in general, consider this: Kanna will not only be the "freak", born white in a tribe full of dark-skinned people, she will also be running away from the dark-skinned, sexist tribe to the equality-based white tribe. Unfortunate implications? Paramount doesn't seem to see 'em, but I sure do.
For the ones who said "tl;dr" to the above ranting, have these graphics from Racebending.com, a protest site, which really simplify the point I am trying to make.
Problem, what problem?
So the casting majorly pisses me off, and I was all ready to jump ship when the first announcements were made, waaaaaay back in late 2008. Then it got even better worse, because being the curious person I am, I started doing research, and what I learned frustrated me beyond belief. In a word: the crew of The Last Airbender managed to insult me even worse than Jasper already had.
From the mouth of Dee Dee Ricketts, our casting director, to prospective extras:
"We want you to dress in traditional cultural ethnic attire. If you're Korean, wear a kimono. If you're from Belgium, wear lederhosen...It doesn't mean you're at a disadvantage if you didn't come in a big African thing. But guys, even if you came with a scarf today, put it over your head so you'll look like a Ukrainian villager or whatever."
You can possibly pass off the last bit about the Ukrainian villager as an attempt at a joke; a joke in bad taste and sounding horrifically ignorant, but a joke. What you cannot do is tell me that this woman, who is casting for a film set in an Asian-influenced world, can be excused for not knowing that kimonos are a part of Japanese culture, not Korean. (And you know what, I'm not even touching the Belgian comment.) Seriously, a quick Google search for "kimono" brings up the Wikipedia article, and the first sentence of that article is "The kimono [...] is the traditional clothing of Japan." I...just...I...that kind of stupidity is really astonishing, people.
But even that didn't disgust me quite as much as THIS quote:
"There's been some talk that we're casting authentic Asians as a response to the backlash"
GORRAM IT, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WOMAN?!? What is an authentic Asian, and what does an individual have to look like in order to qualify as one? Is she talking about the stereotype that everyone seems to have in their heads of a yellow-skinned, squinty-eyed, short person that knows kung fu, speaks broken English and babbles "ching chong chang" all the time? Ignorance is one thing, but holy frick, this woman is approaching Darwin Award levels of failure...
Dee Dee isn't the only one spouting stupid comments, though. Producer Frank Marshall has shown just how much Paramount cares about Avatar fans who are upset about the way "their" characters are being treated; this was posted on his Twitter on April 20th.
The casting is complete and we did not discriminate against anyone. I am done talking about it.
Avoidance tactic, smart thinking! NOT. All that does, Mr. Marshall, is make you sound like a petulant child who doesn't want to explain to his mommy why he did something bad. Or even worse, a butthurt teenager who goes off to his room to sulk after bailing out of the argument because he doesn't want to admit his mistakes. How very mature, I feel the film is in such responsible and capable hands. And I also have beachside property in Wyoming if anyone wants to buy it.
Just yesterday this picture of Dev!Zuko was released and has now found its way onto most active ATLA fan communities.
The first time I saw it, I laughed so hard that I actually snorted. I still snicker when I look at it; Dev is excellent at "I need a hug!" faces, not so good at "RAWR IMA EATCHOO" faces. XD
But really, I do have a bone to pick with Dev!Zuko. Or rather, not him, but his "scar." Scar, you ask, what scar? Do you mean that faint discoloration around his left eye that perhaps looks like someone gave him a good shiner? Yeah, that scar. The scar that was a result of his father purposefully torching his own son's face because he spoke out against him. Zuko is basically supposed to look like the Phantom of the Opera, and I don't mean that crappy sunburn-esque thing in the Joel Schumacher movie (I really only like that version for the music). I mean it looks like this:
Half his face is supposed to be mangled and ugly, including his ear, and he doesn't have much of a left eyebrow anymore, you'll notice. Bryke (the creators) even said the tear ducts in his left eye were damaged to the point where he can't cry out of that eye. This scar is a defining attribute of Zuko and without it, he loses a big part of who he is as a character. Zuko needs that scar.
Eventually, after the fog of RAWR SMASH had lifted, it occurred to me that perhaps that pitiful...thing is a guide for the folks in post, who will CGI Zuko's scar in. If this is the case, they better darned well do it right or they'll have a lot of angry fans at their heels.
The topknot's disappearance (see Zuko picture in the casting section) I'm a tad more forgiving of, because quite frankly Zuko didn't look good with a shaved head and Dev wouldn't either. However, it's also annoying not to see it, if that makes sense. The topknots are in fact a part of Fire Nation culture, and thus probably a part of one Asian culture or another, and to just throw it out without comment seems more than a little disrespectful.
Now onto Zuko's costume. I will give you an idea of what the Fire Nation uniforms looked like in the first season, about the same point in-story as the Dev!Zuko screenshot:
Reddish color scheme. No fur. Odd, rather dorky-looking spiky helmets.
Why are the uniforms of the villains black anyway, when they weren't originally? Oh, wait, we need to hammer into your head that light = good and dark = bad. You know, like Stephenie Meyer did with Twilight and the vampires vs. werewolves...only worse.
In conclusion, the more they show us of this movie, the more I'm inclined to think of it as Epic Fail. The one good thing might be the sets; I've seen a picture of an Earth Kingdom set and it's gorgeous. But will authentic backgrounds make up for all the white people shoved into them? No, not at all. And that's why I personally am going to stay as far away from this pile of crap as I can except when I pirate it and watch it for lulz, and encourage everyone who feels that Asians and other ethnic minorities have been getting the short end of the stick for too long to do the same.
We wrote Paramount letters which politely explained our concerns, and then when we tried to show them the unfortunate implications the new wave of casting contained, they began to completely ignore us. Now the time has come for more drastic measures. And what is the most powerful force in all the world? No, it's not love, I'm sorry to say, though that's close. It's not friendship, though that's also close. It's also not rock. The most powerful force in the world is MONEY. If this film tanks at the box office, Paramount might finally understand that what they have done is wrong and that the fans are not happy that our legitimate complaints were pushed aside. Notice what happened with DragonBall: Evolution. The DragonBall fanbase, which has been around for decades and is much larger than the Avatar fanbase, boycotted that film because they weren't happy with how their show was being portrayed, and now it will be written off in years to come as just another crappy live-action adaptation of an anime.
With The Last Airbender, though, we want it to be remembered, but not for its box office record. We want Hollywood to learn that we are tired of seeing Asians and other minorities get shoved aside because "white America only wants to see white heroes." The success of Avatar on television has clearly proven them wrong; let's prove them wrong again.
Opening day for The Last Airbender has been announced as June 2, 2010. That day, I'm going to be sitting down and watching the real Avatar, the one that isn't whitewashed. Paramount won't get a cent of my money. If you've read every word I wrote and you still want to pay for this film, that is your prerogative and I can't stop you from doing it. But I hope you'll think about what you're supporting when you do.
I will close with this, a message not entirely applicable to this particular cause as it is talking more about altering the human mind than racism, but I feel it is appropriate nevertheless:
"Somebody has to speak for these people. You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people...better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave."
-Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity
I also recommend listening to this song, courtesy of Maurissa Tancharoen (co-writer of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog), which is a great satire of Hollywood's current mindset regarding Asians:
And what is the cause of my anger, you ask? Just a little film called The Last Airbender, its casting choices, and the ignorance of its crew members.
Now, not everyone is familiar with the show Avatar: The Last Airbender, and if you aren't, I will do my best to explain. Avatar is a cartoon set in an Asian-based fantasy world consisting of four nations/groups based on the four elements: the Air Nomads (Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western), the Water Tribes (Northern and Southern), the Earth Kingdom, and the Fire Nation. Individuals of each group have the ability to manipulate their respective elements, called "bending". The story centers around a twelve-year-old boy, Aang, who is the key to saving the world. He is the Avatar, an all-powerful being who is able to control all four of the elements and is reincarnated into the next nation in the cycle upon the death of the current Avatar. Aang's mission is to stop the Fire Lord from conquering the entire world, and restore peace. He's not alone though - people from all four nations come together to help him, forming a sort of surrogate family. That's just a quick plot/setting overview, I'll explain more about the characters later.
In early 2007 M. Night Shyamalan got the idea to make a live-action film of the show - a trilogy, in fact, one movie for each season of the show. Paramount jumped all over it and the original creators, Mike DiMartino and Brian Konietzko, voiced their approval for the project. Fandom opinion was divided due to Shyamalan's previous films, but the majority vote was "as long as Bryke's on board, it'll be okay."
And then we were shown the casting for the four main characters.
This is Aang in the cartoon.
This is who is going to play Aang in the live-action movie, Noah Ringer.
...okay, where do I start? Kid is cute. Kid is ADORABLE. Kid is not Aang, however. Aang's design, and the entire Air Nomad society, was based on that of Buddhist/Tibetan monks. Noah Ringer is a white kid from Texas who is apparently good at karate. I have nothing against Noah Ringer, let's get that out of the way right now. But c'mon, people, is it too hard to find a twelve-year-old Asian actor who resembles Aang at all? IS IT?
But, wait! Let's take a look at Ringer's stunt double!
Jade Quon, who I will bet you anything is at least twice Noah's age. And a woman. And Asian. This is actually the lulziest part of the whole thing, IMO, having seen woman!Aang in "The Ember Island Players." I'm torn between being outraged at the Asians being relegated to "stunt double" and just laughing my butt off at the irony.
Aang himself said it best: "That's not what I'm like, AND I'M NOT A WOMAN!"
Sorry, Aang, M. Night Shyamalan has a different perspective.
At this point I should probably explain why I am so pissed, aside from the fact that I am a fan of the show and would like the live-action actors to at least passably resemble the characters they are playing. I am pissed because I'm a hapa (half-Chinese) and I really appreciated the lengths the creators of Avatar went to to make sure the show was portraying Asian culture correctly, because not many people would make that kind of effort (Disney, I'm looking at you). I was, you know, sort of assuming that in the live-action movie the main characters would at least be played by THE CORRECT RACE, and that it would be a chance for Asians to shine without being just the comic relief or the nerd. Oh, how wrong I was.
Now let's get into the real cause of my anger. Because, let's face it, I might've accepted this kid if the other three main roles were cast accurately. I would've been uneasy about him, a white kid, playing an obviously Asian role, but I might've still had hope this would be a decent movie.
Katara and Sokka, siblings who live in the Southern Water Tribe, have been Aang's constant companions from day one. Katara, in fact, was the one who broke Aang out of the iceburg he been frozen in for 100 years and convinced him that he had to go out and stop the Fire Lord because no one else was going to. The Water Tribes were based heavily on Inuit culture and as far as I know, they were pretty accurate.
This is Katara.
This is the girl who will play Katara, Nicola Peltz.
Playing the "what's wrong with this picture?" game with this one is way, WAY more obvious than with Aang/Noah. First off: Katara is, for all intents and purposes, Inuit. Inuit = brown-skinned. Not tanned, brown-skinned. Nicola, as is plain to see, is WHITE AS A PICKET FENCE. What was going through the minds of the casting people, I cannot even begin to fathom. And even if they were going by physical features rather than race or whatever, I still call bull, because look at those big green eyes on Nicola. They're pretty, yeah, but Katara obviously has BLUE eyes, and if you were going to Race Lift Katara anyway you may as well pick someone whose eyes are the right color, casting people. *headdesk*
And then we have Sokka, who is my personal favorite Avatar guy.
And the guy who will play him, Jackson Rathbone.
Do I even need to comment? And AGAIN WITH THE GREEN EYES, what the heck?!
Also: I must interject a personal opinion here. I do not like Jackson Rathbone very much. This is partially because he was involved in the massive fail that is Twilight, and partially because of this terribly stupid comment he made back when casting was released:
"I think it's one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan...It's one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit."
To me, that sounds more than a little suspect. He is asking the audience to "suspend disbelief" that a white guy is playing an Inuit character. Not to mention the fact that apparently, if he gets a tan, everything will be okay. Well, it won't. I realize Jasper probably didn't mean for his words to come off as racist, but let's face it, if a white guy was going to play a black guy and he said "I think I'll just put some makeup on, it'll be okay and I hope the audience will suspend disbelief" he would be called out for it, right? That's called blackface, and its equally awful cousins are yellowface (for Asians) and brownface (what Jackson will be doing). Wikipedia can explain that better than I can, but here's the point: Jackson knows full well he's playing a character of a different race and that he has to alter his appearance drastically to do so, and he thinks this is okay. I do not think this is okay. I think that Jackson should've realized what was going on and said "Sorry guys, but I don't think this role is for me." And nobody give me crap about his not being able to support himself without this role; the guy will be a hot commodity for years because of Twilight. In fact, taking the role of Sokka will probably have a negative impact on his career.
Next up are the main Fire Nation roles, the villains. Prince Zuko, son of Fire Lord Ozai, is more of an anti-hero, but his main focus in life is capturing the Avatar so that he can regain his honor after his banishment and make his father proud of him.
This is first season Zuko.
At this point I should probably mention that there have been two live-action Zukos cast. The first was Jesse McCartney. Yes, that Jesse McCartney, the pop singer who used to be a Disney kid (kind of). This Jesse McCartney.
Well. The fandom reacted so strongly and the outcry against the casting in general, but in particular JMac, was so strong that Paramount decided "holy crap, we'd better do something!" So they kicked Jesse out (the official statement was something about a tour schedule conflicting with filming, but nobody bought that excuse) and hired Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame instead.
Let me be very clear here. I LOVED Slumdog Millionaire, I thought it was a truly beautiful film and deserving of all those Oscars it won (wait, that's a lie, I wanted "Down To Earth" to win Best Song, but "Jai Ho" is like crack in audio form so whatever, I'm not too bitter) and I thought Dev Patel was splendid in it. I think he's a very talented actor and just adorable. BUT I DO NOT WANT HIM PLAYING ZUKO.
Paramount was very sneaky in their recasting of Zuko. They were thinking that, with the addition of an Indian actor into the main cast, surely the fans couldn't cry "whitewashing!" and "racism!" anymore. Surely they were in the clear now. Right?
WRONG. Let's examine this situation for a moment. Originally, in the cartoon, we had our three heroes of mixed ethnicity (Buddhist monk and Inuits) being chased by a pseudo-Japanese antagonist. Now, we're going to have our three white heroes being chased by a dark-skinned antagonist. GOLLY, THAT'S NOT RACIST AT ALL.
But wait, it gets better! Now, the entire Fire Nation has to match Dev, so they will all be dark-skinned. I repeat: all of the villains will be dark-skinned.
This includes the fan favorite Uncle Iroh, who guides Zuko on his journey and helps him to determine which side he is truly on. This is Iroh:
And this is who is playing Iroh:
O HAI THAR YINSEN.
Honestly, I'm sure the guy's a great actor and I loved his work in Iron Man, but...he looks less like Iroh than Dev looks like Zuko. I didn't even think it was possible to get more off-model with the casting, but skinny Persian Jewish/Iranian man =/= fat pseudo-Japanese man.
A quick interlude of semi-positivity: there are two cast members I actually approve of, believe it or not. The first is Jessica Jade Andres, who will play Sokka's (eventual) girlfriend and leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki.
Suki:
Jessica Jade Andres:
Hey, look, an Asian actress playing an Asian character! It's all okay now, right?
...well, no, not exactly. Admittedly, Jessica is closer appearance-wise to Suki than any casting thus far, but there's another problem here. Two, in fact. The first is that in the first season, Suki only appears for one episode. Maybe they'll expand her role in the first movie, but it's pretty doubtful as they only have two hours to tell an 8-hour story - Suki's not going to be anything more than a secondary character at best. Then consider this: Asian women as a whole have been fetishized in American cinema probably since the beginning of American cinema. What does it say when you have one correctly cast actor...who is female and Asian, and the love interest of a main character?
And now back to the Water Tribe, because there's more fail to be found there. As I said, Katara and Sokka are from the Southern Water Tribe. At one point near the end of season 1, the group is looking for a waterbending master to teach Aang and Katara, so they travel to the Northern Water Tribe. There they find a drastically different culture from the SWT, who live very much as a close-knit family unit. The Northern Water Tribe has a clear line drawn between male and female waterbenders, the latter of which is only allowed to learn healing techniques and forbidden to fight. This grates on Katara, who is very much a feminist, when Master Pakku refuses to teach her because of her gender. Eventually she proves herself to be vastly superior to the rest of his students and even on par with Pakku himself, but all you really need to know right now is that NWT fails at female empowerment. Katara's Gran-Gran Kanna was as frustrated with this policy as her granddaughter, and in fact chose to run away from home as a teenager rather than marry Pakku and be trapped in her sexist home tribe.
Kanna looks like this.
And Katherine Houghton will play her.
Another important NWT character is Yue, Sokka's second love interest. Cute, isn't she? And also dark-skinned, though as a rule I've noticed the NWT tends to be lighter than the SWT.
Yue is to be played by Seychelle Gabriel, who is Mexican or something like that.
This is the other actor that I am actually okay with. After all, she really does have a nice face, similar in shape to Yue's. True, I would've preferred a genuine Inuit, but at this point I'm just happy with anything that looks correct. But again, we have a problem: she, like Suki, is both a secondary character and also Sokka's love interest. What does it say when both love interests of a character are racially correct, but the character himself has been whitewashed?
Aside from the fact that the SWT will be composed of (from pictures we've been shown) whites against an Inuit cultural backdrop, with the NWT probably dark-skinned in general, consider this: Kanna will not only be the "freak", born white in a tribe full of dark-skinned people, she will also be running away from the dark-skinned, sexist tribe to the equality-based white tribe. Unfortunate implications? Paramount doesn't seem to see 'em, but I sure do.
For the ones who said "tl;dr" to the above ranting, have these graphics from Racebending.com, a protest site, which really simplify the point I am trying to make.
Problem, what problem?
So the casting majorly pisses me off, and I was all ready to jump ship when the first announcements were made, waaaaaay back in late 2008. Then it got even better worse, because being the curious person I am, I started doing research, and what I learned frustrated me beyond belief. In a word: the crew of The Last Airbender managed to insult me even worse than Jasper already had.
From the mouth of Dee Dee Ricketts, our casting director, to prospective extras:
"We want you to dress in traditional cultural ethnic attire. If you're Korean, wear a kimono. If you're from Belgium, wear lederhosen...It doesn't mean you're at a disadvantage if you didn't come in a big African thing. But guys, even if you came with a scarf today, put it over your head so you'll look like a Ukrainian villager or whatever."
You can possibly pass off the last bit about the Ukrainian villager as an attempt at a joke; a joke in bad taste and sounding horrifically ignorant, but a joke. What you cannot do is tell me that this woman, who is casting for a film set in an Asian-influenced world, can be excused for not knowing that kimonos are a part of Japanese culture, not Korean. (And you know what, I'm not even touching the Belgian comment.) Seriously, a quick Google search for "kimono" brings up the Wikipedia article, and the first sentence of that article is "The kimono [...] is the traditional clothing of Japan." I...just...I...that kind of stupidity is really astonishing, people.
But even that didn't disgust me quite as much as THIS quote:
"There's been some talk that we're casting authentic Asians as a response to the backlash"
GORRAM IT, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WOMAN?!? What is an authentic Asian, and what does an individual have to look like in order to qualify as one? Is she talking about the stereotype that everyone seems to have in their heads of a yellow-skinned, squinty-eyed, short person that knows kung fu, speaks broken English and babbles "ching chong chang" all the time? Ignorance is one thing, but holy frick, this woman is approaching Darwin Award levels of failure...
Dee Dee isn't the only one spouting stupid comments, though. Producer Frank Marshall has shown just how much Paramount cares about Avatar fans who are upset about the way "their" characters are being treated; this was posted on his Twitter on April 20th.
The casting is complete and we did not discriminate against anyone. I am done talking about it.
Avoidance tactic, smart thinking! NOT. All that does, Mr. Marshall, is make you sound like a petulant child who doesn't want to explain to his mommy why he did something bad. Or even worse, a butthurt teenager who goes off to his room to sulk after bailing out of the argument because he doesn't want to admit his mistakes. How very mature, I feel the film is in such responsible and capable hands. And I also have beachside property in Wyoming if anyone wants to buy it.
Just yesterday this picture of Dev!Zuko was released and has now found its way onto most active ATLA fan communities.
The first time I saw it, I laughed so hard that I actually snorted. I still snicker when I look at it; Dev is excellent at "I need a hug!" faces, not so good at "RAWR IMA EATCHOO" faces. XD
But really, I do have a bone to pick with Dev!Zuko. Or rather, not him, but his "scar." Scar, you ask, what scar? Do you mean that faint discoloration around his left eye that perhaps looks like someone gave him a good shiner? Yeah, that scar. The scar that was a result of his father purposefully torching his own son's face because he spoke out against him. Zuko is basically supposed to look like the Phantom of the Opera, and I don't mean that crappy sunburn-esque thing in the Joel Schumacher movie (I really only like that version for the music). I mean it looks like this:
Half his face is supposed to be mangled and ugly, including his ear, and he doesn't have much of a left eyebrow anymore, you'll notice. Bryke (the creators) even said the tear ducts in his left eye were damaged to the point where he can't cry out of that eye. This scar is a defining attribute of Zuko and without it, he loses a big part of who he is as a character. Zuko needs that scar.
Eventually, after the fog of RAWR SMASH had lifted, it occurred to me that perhaps that pitiful...thing is a guide for the folks in post, who will CGI Zuko's scar in. If this is the case, they better darned well do it right or they'll have a lot of angry fans at their heels.
The topknot's disappearance (see Zuko picture in the casting section) I'm a tad more forgiving of, because quite frankly Zuko didn't look good with a shaved head and Dev wouldn't either. However, it's also annoying not to see it, if that makes sense. The topknots are in fact a part of Fire Nation culture, and thus probably a part of one Asian culture or another, and to just throw it out without comment seems more than a little disrespectful.
Now onto Zuko's costume. I will give you an idea of what the Fire Nation uniforms looked like in the first season, about the same point in-story as the Dev!Zuko screenshot:
Reddish color scheme. No fur. Odd, rather dorky-looking spiky helmets.
Why are the uniforms of the villains black anyway, when they weren't originally? Oh, wait, we need to hammer into your head that light = good and dark = bad. You know, like Stephenie Meyer did with Twilight and the vampires vs. werewolves...only worse.
In conclusion, the more they show us of this movie, the more I'm inclined to think of it as Epic Fail. The one good thing might be the sets; I've seen a picture of an Earth Kingdom set and it's gorgeous. But will authentic backgrounds make up for all the white people shoved into them? No, not at all. And that's why I personally am going to stay as far away from this pile of crap as I can except when I pirate it and watch it for lulz, and encourage everyone who feels that Asians and other ethnic minorities have been getting the short end of the stick for too long to do the same.
We wrote Paramount letters which politely explained our concerns, and then when we tried to show them the unfortunate implications the new wave of casting contained, they began to completely ignore us. Now the time has come for more drastic measures. And what is the most powerful force in all the world? No, it's not love, I'm sorry to say, though that's close. It's not friendship, though that's also close. It's also not rock. The most powerful force in the world is MONEY. If this film tanks at the box office, Paramount might finally understand that what they have done is wrong and that the fans are not happy that our legitimate complaints were pushed aside. Notice what happened with DragonBall: Evolution. The DragonBall fanbase, which has been around for decades and is much larger than the Avatar fanbase, boycotted that film because they weren't happy with how their show was being portrayed, and now it will be written off in years to come as just another crappy live-action adaptation of an anime.
With The Last Airbender, though, we want it to be remembered, but not for its box office record. We want Hollywood to learn that we are tired of seeing Asians and other minorities get shoved aside because "white America only wants to see white heroes." The success of Avatar on television has clearly proven them wrong; let's prove them wrong again.
Opening day for The Last Airbender has been announced as June 2, 2010. That day, I'm going to be sitting down and watching the real Avatar, the one that isn't whitewashed. Paramount won't get a cent of my money. If you've read every word I wrote and you still want to pay for this film, that is your prerogative and I can't stop you from doing it. But I hope you'll think about what you're supporting when you do.
I will close with this, a message not entirely applicable to this particular cause as it is talking more about altering the human mind than racism, but I feel it is appropriate nevertheless:
"Somebody has to speak for these people. You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people...better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave."
-Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity
I also recommend listening to this song, courtesy of Maurissa Tancharoen (co-writer of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog), which is a great satire of Hollywood's current mindset regarding Asians:
Click to view