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.

[thefreak]

I assume they *passed* for white because people *looking* at them were unaware or ignorant.

[delux_vivens]

now that's just crazytalk. I mean, yeah, sure, I've met green eyed pale skinned south asians but they must have been unicorns.

[bossymarmalade]

They were! Oriental mystique is why they groove on virgins, TRUEFAX.

[thefreak]

Some people were saying that Zuko looks like a white boy.
Perhaps they'd be surprised that, to me, an Asian American from Texas, the image seems to be of... *gasp* an East Asian or a Latino guy.

Your "default" detector is based on what you know. White Americans are trained to see everything as "white" unless explicitly stated otherwise.

[tsubaki_ny]

The Water Tribe kids (the ones in blue up there) also remain significantly and consistently darker than the rest of the cast (except for one Guru Patik, who was designed as a South Asian), one the show. You can't tell this from the pictures at all. They have blue eyes because of the whole water deal. (Earth-green eyes, Fire-gold eyes, etc.) And... they live in igloos.

Also, the animators took a great deal of care with character profiles -- nose and jaw shape, etc., especially in the second season.

There were also some Aztecs. It was lovely. :-)

Troll Shutdown: Why This Thread Has Been Frozen.

[tablesaw]

Shenanigans have been called, and a warning to "STFU, GTFU" has been given in private. thefreak has privately admitted to me and to others that his actions in this post have been calculated to stir up controversy so that he can "having fun watching them freak the hell out over my clearly apathetic response to all this." This is trolling, I will not tolerate it in my journal, and I am shutting it down publicly.

While I think there is some other worthwhile discussion in this thread, I'm still closing it down wholesale. TF, if you're actually interested in talking about race, chill the fuck out and start again later. In a different post.