In an interesting turn of events, Jesse McCartney is no longer going to portray Prince Zuko in the Avatar movie. Zuko will now be played by Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire).
While this is better casting, including a non-white person in the previously all-white main cast, it also brings up another issue for me. The cast is now like this: the good guys are all white, and the bad guy is brown. *hand smacks forehead*
Why does it have to be such an uphill battle to cast non-white people in this movie? I have to say I’m rather disappointed in the Avatar creators, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, for letting this happen. M. Night Shyamalan, who is directing the live-action movies, you should know better than this.
What does this say to non-white kids out there, looking to the Avatar show as example of diversity? Your cartoon has Asian characters, but sorry, in reality, heroes must be white?
What you’re basically talking about is affirmative action, which is as wrong as traditional racism. Any time you discriminate against (or for) people based on their race, that’s racism. I think that the best people should be picked for the role, regardless of what race they’re from. It doesn’t matter if you end up with a distribution such that all the good guys are white and the bad guy is brown, because race is (or should be) irrelevant.
As for the non-white kids out there, they shouldn’t be looking anywhere for diversity. Diversity, which is a function of race, should be a non-issue. If they grow up looking for diversity everywhere, they’re going to have affirmative action built-in when they grow up, and will be naturally biased towards (for example) hiring people to maintain diversity rather than hiring people based on merit.
While I generally agree with what you’re saying, I’m actually not talking about affirmative action. In this case, we have characters that have already been defined. (I talk about the Avatar: The Last Airbender world as being Asian-inspired in my previous post.)
Would you cast a Chinese actress as Lt. Uhura in the new Star Trek movie, simply because the Chinese actress was a better actor than a black actress?
I know I’m treading on thin ice since you’re a huge Star Trek fan, but yes, I would have no problem with casting a Chinese actress as Lt. Uhura. If Lt. Uhura’s being black was actually relevant to the plot, then probably not. But it isn’t, so the race of actress portraying the character doesn’t matter.
I’ve never seen the Avatar cartoon, but I made the assumption that the asian-ness of the characters wasn’t central to the plot and that the same story could be portrayed with non asian-characters.
And anyhow, my initial comment was more directed at “The cast is now like this: the good guys are all white, and the bad guy is brown.” That statement has nothing to do with the asian-ness (or lack thereof) of the actors :)
lol, we could go in circles with this argument.
With Star Trek, no, Uhura’s race wasn’t really relevant to the plot, much like her gender wasn’t really relevant either. My point is that there is a history to this character. She was an African woman portrayed by a black actress in the original series, so I expect her to be played by a black woman in the new movie (and not, say, by a white man). Her race DOES matter. It’s about being true to the original character/actress.
I do admit it is more subjective with Avatar. It’s a cartoon, set in a fictional world… but that world is inspired by Asian and Native American culture. The people of this world use Asian martial arts, weapons, clothes, food, etc., and they write in Chinese characters. No, I can’t really say, “character X must be played by a Chinese actor”, since there is no “China” in the Avatar world. However, one can see that the Avatar world has a very Asian theme.
Here is a beautiful presentation of the show in imagery:
http://aang-aint-white.livejournal.com/1007.html
I’m not against having some characters played by white actors, but to me, having an all-white cast really kills the Asian style of the show. It just ISN’T the same story if it lacks the Asian vibe.