In January 2007, Paramount Pictures took on the task of making this immensly popular television show into a live action movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
As the movie went into casting, some problems arose in the form of racism and ignorance as the four main heroic characters were filled by white American actors, not the Asian's they had been created to represent. What made it even worse was even after the white actors were cast, casting directors decided to make all of the vilianous characters (aka the bad guys) Asian, Inuit, or of South East Asian descent.
The created an uproar among Avatar fans as they watched their favorite characters from the show get made from their original concepts into Caucasian look-alikes with no background or reason for being there.
As of now there are hundreds of petitions and thousands of letters being sent to both Paramount and the director of the film asking/pleading them to re-evaluate their casting.
My question is, why does Hollywood find that replacing characters of color or ethnicity with Caucasian-Americans is better? I would have thought America was past the "Yellowfacing" side of Hollywood, especially since these are the same people that may have voted the first black president into office.
Why are all Asians evil? Can't there be ONE good role for someone not only of Asian ethnicity but of any other ethnicity in American movies?
This situation just proves that racism is still around in America and will be for quite a time to come.
4 comments:
This is quite the unusual paradox. I believe we talked about this in some length before class one day. It is really quite odd how Caucasian people are continually put into roles not set to be played by them. This happens quite frequently when a book or comic is then made into a t.v. show or movie.
All I can say is... "What the F***" I mean seriously, why ARE they casting white people in clearly (beloved) Asian roles? This is so annoying because I LOVE that show (hehe) and I don’t think I will (or want to) see the movie now. It really bothers me that these RICH white (Hollywood over-lords) constantly parade around their racist bulls***. Those actors need to be replaced ASAP… I mean come on; they seriously couldn’t find actors that at least LOOKED Asian??
Hey! I dont have siblings and I still watch the show! lol The only character that the white casting bothers me with is Ang. He is the only hero I feel needs to be Asian. This is true about "whitewashing" and making Asian people out to be the bad guys. It happens way too often. It's a little weird to me though that there are four nations in this world and they are all Asian. If a cartoon came out and it was inhabited by only whites, then we would have a problem.
They definitely should keep the heroes Asian so that way when Caucasians kids watch the show, they won't get as confused by the Hindu concepts. If the characters are white, they might think Hinduism is an acceptable religion for them, but if they're Asian, it helps the white children put them in the "other" category and when they encounter the Hindu concepts, they'll just react by thinking, oh, that's something that Asians do.
So clearly casting white people as the heroes is an attempt to convert the youth of America to Hinduism.
(BTW, you can't convert to Hinduism, you're either born into or not, so their plan will fail.)
Seriously, they probably just figure white people will be more likely to watch it if it has white people they can identify with in it.
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