Race and Movies: Don’t need to be Asian to play an Asian

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender. Probably not a lot – it is, after all, a children’s show.

But Avatar is a really interesting show. It takes place in a made-up world. It really is – it deals with imperialism, environmentalism, genocide, death, family, religion, spirituality, abuse and a bunch of other very serious issues that most 8-10 year olds in America don’t think too much about. Frankly, I love this show. I love the characters (who develop and change) and the show is definitely feminist, with kick-butt women all over the freaking place, despite having a boy as the protagonist.

But what I really want to talk about is the live-action movie coming out in 2010, based on the TV series. 

You see, everyone in the cartoon is Asian. The culture and societies of the people in this show are based off of China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Inuit Alaska and I think I have even seen hints of Philippine culture, but I’m not as familiar with it. Everyone is either Eastern Asian or Inuit (but called differently in the show). The main character is clearly a Tibetan Buddhist. 

However, the live-action movie has casted 3 out of 4 of the main characters with white people. And the fourth person is Indian while his character was Eastern Asian in the cartoon version. 

Jackson Rathbone, Jasper Hale of Twilight, is playing an Inuit-like character. He is white. When this was brought to his attention, how very white he is and how very not-white the character is, he said:

“I think it’s one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan.” 

It didn’t work. 

This enrages me. Why would they cast white people into Asian roles? Do they think people won’t want to watch a cast of Asian people? Could they really not find any “good” Asian actors? (Hard to believe, when they originally had Jesse McCartney in the cast.) 

Frankly, this is disgusting. For such a groundbreaking cartoon, they really fucked over the movie. After all the research and effort that the creators put into making this show as authentic and realistic as possible, it gets taken up by M. Night Shyamalan and all that work gets thrown out the window. 

Fuck this.