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Post by Tilly on Oct 6, 2010 17:15:25 GMT -5
The movie takes the cartoon's attempts at reffing actual existing culture and getting it right, and turns it into more the sanitized "ooh look Asia!!" version that isn't helping visibility—it's just turning all of Eastern Asia into pretty things to mine for cool. That's nothing new or progressive :p. I'm white, yes. But autism and queer and trans issues get their own flavors of stop-whining-you're-just-trying-to-be-hurt bullcrap, and I am SO TIRED of the way people react to this movie. And I just...can't brain about it any longer. If you want to actually learn about this stuff, it's there on Google. Try Tim Wise or something if you're allergic to hearing about racism from people personally experiencing it themselves (though he's good to read anyway). Or, instead of being open to how this stuff makes people feel—which might make you uncomfortable—go on being dismissive and insisting it's all just people exaggertating. Have fun getting away from that crap, because you can. (go away, smiley! Also I forgot the word queer :p.)
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Post by KAndrw on Oct 6, 2010 18:03:26 GMT -5
I stand ready to be convinced. Roll on the thought experiment.
Find me two established asian-american actors to play Katara and Sokka. They have to be convincing as siblings, and at least one should be A-list to ensure the film's popularity. Ideally, the boy who plays Sokka should have a legion of female fans to help broaden the appeal.
I'll accept as a given that a suitable replacement for Aang can be found. There's bound to be tons of young asian-americans who could do at least as good a job as Noah Wyle.
I'd like to keep Dev Patel as Zuko. I think he did a great job of capturing that mean-cos-I'm-hurting vibe, and he needs lots of cool roles.
I assume that there's no objection to keeping the supporting cast multi-ethnic, or is anybody actually claiming that the movie should take place in a world where nobody is non-asian?
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Post by Tilly on Oct 6, 2010 20:11:22 GMT -5
Avatar had an established fanbase and universe already, and thus more chance to give new actors a start. Your proposal is a catch-22: if the actors hired for Major Blockbuster Yay projects are white, with few exceptions, and they're the ones that get the mainstream marketing...guess who ends up popular? It lets people in charge hide behind "but it won't sell!" forever, and I'm tired of that excuse.
And no, they're not calling for all-Asian, considering the water tribe's origins. It'd be a nice change, though, from all the fantasy where the entire world is white european (except maybe some of the bad guys, or suspiciously humanoid and also dark-skinned monsters WHAT UNFORTUNATE IMPLICATIONS?) :p.
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Post by KAndrw on Oct 7, 2010 3:11:45 GMT -5
Very few actors can cast in leading roles straight off the bat, though teen actors are most regularly the exception. Most have to work their way up by starting with secondary roles and/or TV roles. Rachel McAdams, Craig Robinson and John Cho are good examples. One of the biggest problems I would imagine facing non-white actors in America is that the breadth and quality of supporting roles available to them is limited, creating a stumbling block to entry to the industry. It's why I think the protests against Airbender were counterproductive. Airbender was a film where more than half he supporting cast was non-white, and was therefore a vehicle for a lot of non-white actors to have a chance at a speaking role to help establish them. The backlash against the film will perhaps serve as a warning to directors, but the outcome will not be desirable - directors will learn that making a film set in a world where everbody is a bit asian is not possible because the star pool won't support what people insist on for a teen-oriented blockbuster. The established fanbase helps a lot when trying to cast unknowns, but I don't think it would have been enough in this case. Avatar had done well as a cartoon, but it was no Harry Potter. I would have liked to have been proven wrong though. Yeah, it's a catch-22, but it's one that rises from an underlying issue that doesn't get solved by incentivising directors to stick to safe projects where nobody will say boo about the core cast being white (like, say, Harry Potter). The US movie industry definitely has a lot of learn about representational casting, and they would do well to copy New Zealand. But at least they're casting Cliff Curtis for every 'generically ethnic' role under the sun It's a real shame, because I thought it was a well put-together film. The acting didn't strike me as bad, and I really liked how different martial arts were used for the different bending styles - it added a degree of difference that was less visible in the cartoon (at least halfway through season one). I just hope that a second film gets made, and the mostly non-white supporting actors get a chance to expand their repertoires. Edit - my least favourite criticisms of the movie go like this: what was with the pronunciations!? Even the way they said "Avatar" was weird. I can understand Shyamalan wanting to make it his own movie, but how can a self-proclaimed fan of the series do something like change the pronunciations of the main characters' names!Crazy - the movie gets criticised for modifying the pronunciations of names and loanwords to better respect the languages they come from?
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