Fear of a Black (Fantasy) Planet

[tablesaw]

No time for a list of things just yet.

The casting for the live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender has been announced. See if you can spot a problem:

Comments

[thefreak]

Yeah, I was one of those, "They don't look Asian" people. But then, I have never seen an episode of the show (though I have a rabid fan friend). So I didn't know that one of them was supposedly Inuit...?

Also, as I told Jo, the only manga I ever bother reading/watching are ones where they look like they are, say, Japanese. Looking at all those pictures posted on /film, all I saw was a bunch of white kids with blue eyes and tans. Maybe M. Night based all his casting on just those pictures and didn't bother reading anything about the story.

I don't mean anything offensive, just that it's what I see when I look at their choice of character shots.

[sparkymonster]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_the_Last_Airbender

Loathe as I am to use wikipedia as a source for shit, check the map of the nation/world

[thefreak]

Yes, I see what he's wearing...and he himself looks like a white boy with shaggy brown hair. I haven't seen the wardrobe choices yet for the film, but if they suck, then I'll agree with outrage. :)

[bossymarmalade]

Asian people don't all look the same. There are variations of eye shape and skin colour; some of the people I know who are more Indian than I am also can pass for white people without a second glance. Amazing, but true.

[tanyahp]

The "industry" is incredibly biased. Okay, racist. There's very little accountability, they want to "sell" to whomever they perceive to be the "primary target audience" and this usually excludes everyone who is not white (it's stupid, considering that whites will, with luck, no longer be the majority in my state and in many other states in ten or twenty years, but...well, it sucks for the nonce and will continue to suck until we break down the racism in Hollywood.) imo. I am also a big Avatar fan, as is my sister, so this comes as a blow. But after they utterly destroyed LeGuin's Earthsea, I have no more faith in the system to adhere to a vision other than that resembling the worldview of a neo-nazi.

[tahnan]

To be fair, you should be a little clearer when you say "they" destroyed Earthsea, insofar as that wasn't Hollywood, that was the SciFi Channel. And because it bears repeating:

Somebody asked Whedon at a convention whether he had talked to the Sci-Fi network. This was just after Sci-Fi had cancelled the incomparable Farscape while retaining that show with the real-life “psychic” - not a fictional show about a psychic but an actual con artist playing his cruel hoax for a studio audience - and other, similarly un-sci-fi fare. Whedon responded that he had called the Sci-Fi Network about Firefly but they had told him it was too science-fictiony for them.

By no means am I saying that Hollywood, or "the system" isn't racist; just that SciFi utterly screwing up a science fiction vision isn't really evidence of it.

[cramerica]

I remember being distressed about the SciFi Earthsea rendition, and reading LeGuin's take on it. Especially her quote:

"I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does."

Unfortunately, then and now, I think this describes my initial take on the subject much of the time.

I hadn't seen that Joss Whedon quote, though-- thanks for repost.

[tablesaw]

By no means am I saying that Hollywood, or "the system" isn't racist; just that SciFi utterly screwing up a science fiction vision isn't really evidence of it.
I honestly am unable to get a coherent understanding of what you're trying to say in this statement.

[tahnan]

Let me throw an idea out there, not because I believe it necessarily but just to see if it floats.

Japanese animators aren't trying to make their characters look Japanese, any more than American animators are trying to make their characters look Caucasian. Japanese animators are trying to make their characters look neutral, which they (and their immediate audience) read as "Japanese". Therefore, an American looking at anime will see neutral-looking characters, characters intended to look neutral, and will therefore read them as "Caucasian", i.e. their own personal default. There's nothing per se wrong with that: in fact, to read the characters as "other/foreign" would be to add something to them that their creators didn't intend.

Now, there are flaws in this argument. I think the biggest is the acceptance of the assumption that Americans should see neutral as "Caucasian". And one might wonder why Shama Shmal Shayma M. Night wouldn't see "neutral" as "Indian

[rikchik]

I think this is exactly right - as an anime/manga fan, I've learned some of the signifiers for "this is actually a Caucasian character" (blue eyes, larger eyes etc. - yellow or (in b&w manga) un-inked hair often just means bleached or brown hair).

That said, IIUC Avatar is an American production and, to me, these characters are definitely drawn to be non-WASPs.

[tahnan]

OK, so the fact that this is an American production company puts a twist on it that...um, I actually get lost in a Hofstadter-like strange-loop feedback. If they're drawn to be non-WASPs, but they're created by Americans and, perhaps even more relevantly, voiced by the likes of Tyler, Baker, Whitman, De Sena, Mark Hamill...

Again, I get dizzy. Also, I've never seen the show, so I'm not really in a position to judge.

[tsubaki_ny]

They did have an astounding number of Asian-American and black voice actors on the show, though. Mako, Dante Basco (and one of his brothers), Daniel Dae Kiim, Phil LaMarr, George Takei, Jennie Kwan, Serena Williams (!), Sab Shimono, Takayo Fischer, George Chung, Kevin Michael Richardson... some others

[ali_wildgoose]

Some folks are trying to do something about it:

http://aang-aint-white.livejournal.com/646.html

In case it's of interest :)

[allthelivesofme]

Yeah, that casting is just . . . no.

Someone on my flist just posted about this, with a link to someone else's preferred cast.