Racebending

Regardless of other issues, Asian-americans (or really Asian people in general) are horrifically under-represented in any form of US entertainment and that's pretty shameful.

[insert pretension here]

"If there's a hole, it's a man's job to thrust into it!" — Ryoma Nagare, New Getter Robo

The racebending movement says that they want equality in casting, and complain about white heroes vs. dark-skinned villains.

Even though this is not happening, do they actually want the opposite to happen? It's not about what is happening in this day and age, it's about what the racebending movement's goal is. As if they want revenge against white actors in lead roles.

How would you cast TLA? (I haven't watched it, but I want to see it because it was a bad adaptation)

I also want to know what Zach Tyler Eisen thinks of the phrase, "Aang ain't white."

However, I do believe that the casting call for every part should've read: "Any ethnicity". Not "Caucasian or any other ethnicity."

edited 27th May '12 3:28:47 PM by Pipcard

Point by point response:

• It's not happening as frequently, but it does still happen.

• It would be nice to see the occasional movie where the cast were minorities and all the villains were white and this wasn't the entire plot of the movie or show.

• I've not seen it either, but ideally, you'd want to get people from the actual cultures the nations in the show are based off. Inuits for the Southern Water Tribe, Japanese for Fire Nation, Chinese for Earth Kingdom, etc, etc. Not "Two white kids and a bunch of Asians" for the SWT, and changing the Fire nation to India.

• Edit: Also, yes, the VA for Aang is white, but the actual character is not. It's a Fantasy Counterpart Culture kind of thing.

edited 27th May '12 8:48:29 PM by Wulf

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

...I don't think that was the problem with the movie. The problem with the movie, not to put too fine a point on it, was that the movie sucked.

It shouldn't make any difference what the ethnicity of any group was. Now, since it's based of a cartoon, they should have made the characters look something like they did in that. But it's not that important.

What they failed to do was make the characters and Fantasy Counterpart Culture interesting. It still would have sucked if everyone was played by the race the character's cultures were based on.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Well I think it was more that, they racebended on the idea that they were trying to hire the best actors regardless of race and the movie sucked, thus leaving only two possibilities:

• They hired white actors even though there were better non-white actors
• They sucked at hiring

Probably more the latter than the former, but it does make the racebending more insulting.

I remember hearing that, at least when it came to casting Katara, the actress got the role in part because she was friends with Shyamalan's daughters.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

How would you cast TLA?

Simple solution. Use actors that reflect 100% accurately the ethnicity of the cartoon characters.

That would make absolutely zero difference on the quality of the movie. Also, what exactly is the ethnicity of any given Earthbender? Or Aang, for that matter? I guess it's a Tibetan milieu, but he doesn't look it.

edited 31st May '12 5:00:33 AM by DomaDoma

Hail Martin Septim!

You'rer right concerning the quality of the movie.

Overall it had a China feel to it, but the people had variaties. Sandbenders, for example.

I'm baaaaaaack

Yep, the various nations tended to be clearly linked with certain ethnicities.

Water Tribe = Inuit. Air Nomads = Tibetan. Fire Nation = Japanese. Earth Kingdom = Chinese.

Seriously, though, non-intuitive racial casting isn't the problem. The problem is that non-white actors tend to get shafted by Hollywood, with most of them being relegated to play secondary characters or villains, whilst movies with, say, a black guy as a main character suddenly metamorphose into being about the fact that they've got a black guy as the main character.

That's why 'racebending' is a big deal - it's one of the clearest examples of white actors being favoured over non-white ones, and whilst getting rid of it wouldn't make TLA a good movie, it would still remove one of the (many) problems with it.

What's precedent ever done for us?

The worst casting decision was made when hiring the director. After that, it all went downhill. The thing stank. On several levels. The Racebending is just one of the most morally and ethically dubious layers of stink in it.

No Koizilla? Not ATLAB, folks.

On the plus-side: at least it did give us the term "racebending". It describes the condition better than a full sentence describing the various ways Hollywood manages to bend over backwards to enable RaceLifting.

To be honest, I'm still not sure how they came to the decision that M. Night was their guy to direct that film in the first place. How you look at ''Avatar: The Last Airbender" and think "we need the 'what a tweeest!' guy; it has to be him!" is simply beyond me.

"Can ye fathom the ocean, dark and deep, where the mighty waves and the grandeur sweep?"

I don't think it's anyone's point that the racebending necessarily affects the quality of the movie. Although I'd argue that it kind of contributes to the shittiness of the movie in that it breaks my Willing Suspensionof Disbelief with these white characters shoved into this clearly Asia-based world. But the biggest issue with the racebending is just that it's racist and insulting.

edited 31st May '12 1:15:10 PM by Pingu

Will Smith has stopped being a "black guy" for a while now. Same for Denzel Washington. They're more their characters than their personas. Even the latest Men In Black was mostly bereft of Uncle Tomfoolery.

That's, like, three examples, though.

What's precedent ever done for us?

They're improving. Luckily after Black Dynamite no one would dare make a Blaxploitation again.

edited 31st May '12 3:39:20 PM by MarkThis

Which just leaves the serious Oscar Bait issue movies about the lead's unbearable blackness of being. Regrettably, there's still more than a fair share of those.

I'm not saying that racial issues are inherently a bad thing to make films about, mind you - the problem arises when nearly all the movies with a non-white lead are about racial issues, with disproportionately few being about, say, a crusading lawyer or a shellshocked army veteran who just happens to be played by a black guy.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Phoenix Wright as a black man? Why am I having trouble with the concept...

I want my black Jack McCoy, now. It just exudes awesomeness to me, for some reason.

edited 31st May '12 4:31:29 PM by DerelictVessel

"Can ye fathom the ocean, dark and deep, where the mighty waves and the grandeur sweep?"

I would actually love Will Smith as an Ace Attorney character, but I'd think he'd be closer of Miles Edgeworth territory. Will Smith is generally very self assured and cool, and Phoenix... Is a Hot-Blooded But Monkey.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

Jay isn't really self-assured or cool, and Phoenix isn't Hot Booded outside of the court: he's a First-Person Smartass.

Why is this shocking? We live in a country where Asians can't go anywhere at all without everyone harrassing them going "ching chang chong" and making slanty eyes and physically assaulting them, and this happens 24/7 90 times a day, so why is this a surprise? This is nothing new to me. As an Asian person I get this nearly all day, every day and I have come to expect it.

Being unsurprising don't make it right, though.

What's precedent ever done for us?