Diversity and Representation in Media

"There is no Tibet in Ba Sing Se"

Inuits are Asians?

I always thought that the Water Tribes also drew influences from the East Asian looking steppe peoples who live in Siberia, Central Asia, and Mongolia.

They always seemed pretty blatantly Inuit-based to me. Just like the Airbenders were pretty clearly based off of Buddhist Monks, The Earth Kingdom is Mainland China and Korea-based, and The Fire Nation is Imperial Era Expansionist Japan (and the Legend of Korra version based off of Post-World War II Japan).

The Inuits/Yupiks sorta crossed over from Asia on the frozen Bering Strait around 14,000 years ago, so they're somewhat related to the Tungusic/Altaic peoples of Siberia. They can apply for Asian status once they start putting their sewing kits in biscuit tins.

If we're talking about steppe peoples, then Tibet had centuries of cultural inter-diffusion with Mongolia as well - in fact, the "dalai" in "Dalai Lama" came from the Mongolian word for "ocean", signifying the supposed depth of his wisdom. I'm bringing this up because there's not exactly a great abundance of Tibetan screen talent out there, so the show might have to do with actors from Mongolic or South Asian Himalayan ethnic groups at best.

Then, given that I am a Native Hispanic, this means that I am Asian too!!

Edited by KazuyaProta on Oct 16th 2018 at 9:05:10 AM

Well, do you have a drawer somewhere full of plastic grocery bags neatly folded into triangles? If so, then welcome aboard.

My Hispanic family actually does store bags in drawers. It's California, plastic bags are a rare resource around here.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Oct 16th 2018 at 7:13:47 AM

Actually. Yeah, we have bags for bags

I guess that I am a Sun Warrior descendent.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Oct 16th 2018 at 9:16:21 AM

I went to California for an internship. Had to stay a whole summer. Imagine my surprise when I realized I had to either bring my own bags or buy some.

Boy, that first trip to Target and back was awwwkwaaaaaaaard.

Edited by erazor0707 on Oct 16th 2018 at 7:23:31 AM

I guess it would probably help to point out that as one of the various Arctic cultures the Inuit have strong connections to ethnicities more readily identifiable as contemporarily Asian, such as the Siberian tribes, who also have ties to Mongolic and other such Central Asian peoples who also see representation in Avatar.

If not Tibetans, I can see them using North Indian and Nepali actors since there is also a lot of cultural overlap to be had there.

Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 16th 2018 at 11:09:06 AM

Has there been a Pacific Islander-themed culture in the Avatar-verse yet? They'd certainly make an excellent tropical foil to the Arctic themes of the Water Tribes. Hell, just make them a splinter clan of the Water Tribes who exiled themselves due to political differences a la the Puritans.

The closest we have is the Foggy Swamp Tribe, which struck me as a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to the indigenous Dayak/Iban people of Borneo. Bryke are still calling the shots, so they'll have the creative freedom to add more.

I always saw them as Rednecks to be honest.

Thought. Now I realize that The peruvian idea of redneck is somewhat different from the American one.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Oct 16th 2018 at 10:27:18 AM

They also took cues from Cajun/Mississippi delta culture, I believe.

Earth kingdom also has bits of Vietnamese culture too. "Ba Sing Se" is a Vietnamese name, isn't it?

No.

To be honest, I don't really see much overt Vietnamese influence in Avatar. Maybe some background outfits or the like, but if there's anything, it's fairly minor.

EDIT: Our own page says that the Foggy Swamp Tribe is based off of Vietnamese tribal cultures, which... maybe? Honestly I don't really remember the tribe that well and I can't find any citation there.

Edited by Larkmarn on Oct 17th 2018 at 9:58:56 AM

They had a clearly Indian-inspired Guru character as well. And maybe I'm stretching here, but the Sand Benders might have been Middle Eastern-inspired.

Honestly, I would not worry too much about the accuracy of a fantasy setting. This is a project with Asian-Americans in the foreground, so it would make sense to cast Asian-Americans, maybe also Canadians, of all parts of East and Southeast Asia regardless what we may think of the four nations (maybe we could make an exception for the Water Tribe and its Inuit roots). The only thing I liked about the film adaptation was the inclusion of Indian people.

If you really want to nitpick, you could say that the world of Avatar suffers from Interchangeable Asian Cultures. It is also very anachronistic with its aesthetics, I mean the Tang Dynasty which influenced the Fire Nation and the Qing Dynasty which the capital of the Earth Kingdom was modelled after were approximately 700 years apart from another.

But I do not think this mix of Asian cultures is something bad, on the contrary, I think that it is a statement of the richness and the depths of this region that a whole world can be filled by these people alone just like the Medieval European Fantasy, which is just as interchangeable and anachronistic if you look closely.

Random thought.

Have to admit I haven't read her much of her writings yet (although I've liked essays she's written), but there's a fantasy/science fiction author of Vietnamese ancestry, Aliette de Bodard, and she's mentioned how Vietnamese elements she's used in her Space Opera series are often assumed by readers and reviewers to be Chinese inspired. IIRC specifically what Westerners call "Ancestor Worship". I think due to a combination of Small Reference Pools and cultural exchange/shared traditions and cultural background between China and Vietnam.

Similarly, she has a book about a Gender Flipped Sherlock Holmes in the Space Opera setting, and the book also takes inspiration from a kind of Vietnamese proto-detective story. And while I'm familiar with this kind of thing with Chinese stories about Judges Dee and Bao, I had never heard of Vietnam having some same kind of tradition.

So, that's a long way of saying that it makes a lot of sense that were there Vietnamese references in ATLA (honestly, I'm kind of skeptical) they would read as Chinese to much of the audience, and/or some Chinese elements could very easily be understood as Vietnamese to someone belonging to/familiar with that culture.

Ba Sing Se is not a Vietnamese name. It's not even a Sino-Vietnamese name.

The Foggy Swamp Tribe is... eh. Maybe they are references to ancient coastline/riverside Vietnamese, but most tribal Vietnamese these days are mountainous.

The only overtly Vietnamese character I know is Tuyen, a.k.a. that girl Meelo hits on.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Oct 17th 2018 at 9:21:25 AM

Aliette de Bodard is great. I just read a short story by her this week, a retelling of Tấm Cám where the sisters have a much more caring relationship. It’s noticeable towards the beginning that she’s making an effort to signal that the story takes place in Vietnam, through identifiably regional names. Her short is in the collection A Thousand Beginnings and Endings.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Oct 17th 2018 at 9:40:12 AM

Ba Sing Se is Chinese-sounding, but doesn't mean anything in Chinese.

Given that we actually see how the city's name is written in the show (永固城, pronounced Yong Gu Cheng) and the real life pronunciation of the characters doesn't resemble Ba Sing Se, I can only assume it's a fictional Chinese dialect that diverges greatly from real world ones. Especially since a character remarks that the city is not called "Na Sing Se" which he says means "easily penetrated city", a hint at what their language is actually like in the Avatar world.

Edited by Alycus on Oct 17th 2018 at 9:51:59 AM

@Tuckerscreator- Thanks for the reply and recs. I had forgotten about that collection too. Meaning to check it out.

Not sure if I brought it up here before (if so, apologies) but I found it really interesting that in the audiobooks of her Obsidian & Blood series, about an Aztech priest and The Exotic Detective, the narrator/main character and other characters have plummy British accents. As opposed to say some kind of Mexican or "Native American" accent (yeah, I know this isn't a very accurate way of phrasing that).

Although in a sense, I guess it's arguably whitewashing, I thought it was a clever and well-done choice because it furthers the books' avoidance of the exoticized and Always Chaotic Evil stereotyping of the Aztecs. Trying to think how to best phrase this, but British accents kind of equal "fantasy setting" and even though the stories are obviously not Medieval European Fantasy, by using The Queen's Nahuatl, it makes the MC and others feel like something "homey" and "familiar".

Reminds me of how in Sky Coyote, Kage Baker has Native Americans speak in contemporary "Californian English" as a deliberate aversion/subversion of the stereotypical You No Take Candle speech associated with Native Americans.

Not to mention that short of having someone with Indigenous Mesoamerican ancestry narrating, there really isn't an "accurate" accent for the characters.

Edited by Hodor2 on Oct 17th 2018 at 12:05:26 PM

I wonder how both latinos and asians are represented in western science fiction honestly. Like, there was a case where a cineast rejected a mexican actress because "A Mexican is space? Don't be ridiculous".

Edited by KazuyaProta on Oct 17th 2018 at 1:03:48 PM