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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 of the leads, and of the three we've seen pictures of their all--you guessed it--white. (Odds don’t look good on number four, but we don’t know yet.)
There have been a lot of great posts about this, particularly in response to arguments that this kind of casting is fine since it's not really Asia, or in anime style makes everyone look white, or it's just fantasy, or that's the way Hollywood works, or it's just a movie so caring about it makes you a shallow liberal, or these kids were obviously just the best actors in the world for it, or there's not enough non-white actors to do it...suffice to say, I disagree with these arguments and urge anybody who wants to to check out![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aang_aint_white and consider writing a letter of protest if you feel strongly enough. No, the letters might not have any effect on the actual movie, but letting people know we would have liked the movie to not be cast all-white will have more effect than doing nothing, right? That's how these things change.
Which is what it made me think about how things change. Right before this news came out I happened to see Tropic Thunder, which of course features Robert Downey Jr. playing an actor playing a character using blackface. Next to the actual black man played by actual black man Brandon T. Jackson, Downey's character comes across as flat and unrealistic. His black character, that is--when he's playing the Australian white guy underneath he's more like a human being. It's not that Osirus (the black character) doesn't have emotions, it's that the stereotype laid on top of them is so flat and shallow it doesn’t let them come through. ( Which brings me to Charlie Chan. )
There have been a lot of great posts about this, particularly in response to arguments that this kind of casting is fine since it's not really Asia, or in anime style makes everyone look white, or it's just fantasy, or that's the way Hollywood works, or it's just a movie so caring about it makes you a shallow liberal, or these kids were obviously just the best actors in the world for it, or there's not enough non-white actors to do it...suffice to say, I disagree with these arguments and urge anybody who wants to to check out
aang_aint_white and consider writing a letter of protest if you feel strongly enough. No, the letters might not have any effect on the actual movie, but letting people know we would have liked the movie to not be cast all-white will have more effect than doing nothing, right? That's how these things change.Which is what it made me think about how things change. Right before this news came out I happened to see Tropic Thunder, which of course features Robert Downey Jr. playing an actor playing a character using blackface. Next to the actual black man played by actual black man Brandon T. Jackson, Downey's character comes across as flat and unrealistic. His black character, that is--when he's playing the Australian white guy underneath he's more like a human being. It's not that Osirus (the black character) doesn't have emotions, it's that the stereotype laid on top of them is so flat and shallow it doesn’t let them come through. ( Which brings me to Charlie Chan. )
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