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

[anonymous]

I've seen about, maybe ten episodes of Avatar on the whole due to the fact that my brother is a big fan; I never liked Brian Koneitzko or Di Martino enough for the project because it seemed like they were trying to capitalize on "Asian-flavor" (you know what I mean; packaged orientalism.) About all I loved of the show was Hakoda and Bato's designs, the evil princess, and Mako, who brought his usual humor and warmth to the voice acting.

The thing that surprises me the most about the horrid mockery that is this movie is the fact that, while they might be only as dark as say, Beyonce or Leona Lewis, the water benders are the children of two very traditionally native looking people! (Their clothing, on the other hand, but let's just pretend it's a fantasy world, blah blah blah.) There is no getting around Hakoda's appearance, and you certainly can't just pretend these guys are Asian Yupiks. At the very least, would it have been hard for these idiots to tap Q'oriana Kilcher to play Katara? (I.e., the girl from The New World, which, for all of its faults, had a native American? She might have been South American, but still...)

It's messed up enough to pretend that the East Asians in the show aren't Asian, but really. If someone is medium-skinned and their father looks Inuit, and their culture is Inuit, is it really so hard to consider a Native American child for a role? (Even a Mexican-American kid who would likely have native ancestry as often as not? Even a South Asian kid; someone with the right skin tone at least! Just as long as they had the right skin tone? I mean, that's what they supposedly care about, right? Because they seem to care muck-all about the cultures that were loosely but distinctly portrayed in this series...)

Sometimes it's hard not to think this thing is stabbing forward as a complicated April Fools joke. (The joke is on them. They are the fools. With as much money as Paramount has lost in recent years...I hope this finishes them.)