Avatar casting and Charlie Chan--way tl;dr

[sistermagpie]

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

Comments

[franzeska]

I love the Charlie Chan movies. There are some interesting interviews with Keye Luke floating around (though I'll bet you've read them already). You're right that the kids were totally the best part.

I'm not familiar with Airbender, but I really can't understand why we can have Kristin Kreuk as Lana Lang* but these clowns can't find a bankable Asian or part Asian actor for this movie. Just find somebody that the stupider white audience members will think is white and everyone will be happy... Ok, happier at least.

* Not that I object to the casting in general, but I thought it was more than usually implausible that she'd be the grown up version of the child actress they had as young Lana or the product of the two dead-after-one-scene parents. They could have just made one of Lana's parents Chinese or something, but I guess that was too scary.

[sistermagpie]

I should track down more interviews with Keye Luke. I so love him in those movies. There's just no way there's not plenty of Asian or part-Asian actors who could do these roles, I'm sure. It's funny that this makes me think of the "making of" feature I saw for the movie Rabbit Proof Fence. They needed Aboriginal children and just went and did a casting call for just them--and found fantastic kids.

[franzeska]

Yes, god. I can understand there being some logistical difficulties in getting enough experienced actors of a particular ethnicity that's traditionally been shut out of good movie/tv roles (though logistical difficulties =/= it's impossible), but we're talking about auditioning random kids with no experience at all! I find it hard to believe that there aren't a bajillion Asian kids in the US who'd kill for a chance to be in this movie. Plenty of them are probably even good at martial arts and/or acting.

[belmanoir]

lana's mother IS chinese, i'm pretty sure. i don't remember what they did in the pilot, but we see photos of lana's mother with lana's biological father in later eps and she's definitely asian. of course that doesn't explain how in one ep there's a flashback to lana's great-aunt getting it on with jor-el and she looks just like lana, but...

[greysquirrel]

I never expected much from the Avatar movie, since I already figured they would change it to fit whatever the studio, or whoever thinks is popular, and what the audience will want to see and not want to see. It's weird because in so many ways, I think Hollywood tries to say oh, we're not racist or anything, but when you question their decisions, it really does seem like they are, or at least think the people who go to the movies are. Martial arts is pretty popular among boys and girls, I can't imagine not being able to find one in the millions of kids who learn it that wasn't white and could fit into the roles. Besides, kids and adults liked the story as it was, why try change to change something that obviously worked

[sistermagpie]

I agree. And really, I think that's why it's good to have people actually question it instead of just going along with it as if there couldn't be anything racist going on unless you literally have white men in a room saying "No brown people on our screens!" It's not really like that, it's just a lot of assumptions and "this is what we're used to" and justifications after the fact--like none of these kids are box office draws so there's no way they're needed to pull people in that way, and they just really don't seem like any of them are such great actors it would be a tragedy not to cast them. The kid playing Aang basically a kid who's good at karate so there's no way that's a big factor. Somebody even commented that hey, they've seen plenty of movies with bad white actors in the leads. A non-white one wouldn't be that much of a shock!

[dumbledore11214]

Racist? Of course not!!!! We just want to see white kids playing asian kids, but we are NOT racist, like at all. Sigh.