Racefail
This is why I won't be seeing Avatar the Last Airbender opening weekend, and quite possibly not at all.
This is why it matters for kids, for adults, for *anyone* to see themselves in stories. And I don't mean as nameless creatures with no agency, or as a nation of genocidal warmongers. And there are overlaps with the racefail; there's the character Teo, whose father builds him a wheelchair after he becomes disabled, who's also been removed from the movie (to make place for a traitorous Asian character). There's the elders like GranGran, who has been reduced from a competent and vital woman to a faint ancient-wisdom shadow. There's Suki and the strong female Kyoshi Warriors, cut from the movie without even a credit.
We're the scary people on the screen, and we're the scary people in life -- even to a child who's at least partly one of us. Don't ever tell me that it's just a movie. These are the stories that tell people who we are.
In late addition: Roger Ebert's review is golden.
This post is not up for discussion.
This is why it matters for kids, for adults, for *anyone* to see themselves in stories. And I don't mean as nameless creatures with no agency, or as a nation of genocidal warmongers. And there are overlaps with the racefail; there's the character Teo, whose father builds him a wheelchair after he becomes disabled, who's also been removed from the movie (to make place for a traitorous Asian character). There's the elders like GranGran, who has been reduced from a competent and vital woman to a faint ancient-wisdom shadow. There's Suki and the strong female Kyoshi Warriors, cut from the movie without even a credit.
We're the scary people on the screen, and we're the scary people in life -- even to a child who's at least partly one of us. Don't ever tell me that it's just a movie. These are the stories that tell people who we are.
In late addition: Roger Ebert's review is golden.
This post is not up for discussion.