The only problem I had with Airbender*'s casting was that everyone from the South Water Tribe looked more or less Eskimo but the main characters who were supposedly a part of that village had white skin. What a mutation!
To me it really does come down to the established background and image of the characters; Peter Parker was supposed to start off as a skinny, bespectacled white nerd who finds himself suddenly gaining really cool powers and learning how to use them for the good of society. Part of the classic Spider-Man appeal is that putting on the costume doesn’t transform Pete, it’s just Pete in costume (as opposed to Batman; Batman is the real deal, Bruce Wayne is the disguise). Now that backstory is so ingrained in me that I can summarize it despite not having read a Spider-Man comc since the mid-nineties. Changing the character to a black or Hispanic or Asian character better have an award-winning reason otherwise I’m going to have a major disconnect. It would be like recasting King Kong as a giant Meerkat; “What’s the big deal, still a mammal, right?” No, King Kong is a giant gorilla, period. Peter Parker is a skinny white nerd, Luke Cage is a big black guy, Wolverine is a hairy white Canadian, Sunfire is Japanese, Conan of Cimmeria is a tall muscular warrior with black hair and blue eyes, Professor X is a bald white guy in a wheelchair. I didn’t mind MCD as Kingpin, but I’m not ingrained with lots of Kingpin background and character like I am with the heroes.
On the other hand, if the character is more about a title than a person, like Green Lantern or Iron Man, you can introduce all sorts of variations on the character and get away with it.
Don’t care about Spider Man, and don’t know any of the backstory for the race change. But my instinctive response is that I don’t see a big problem with making Peter black. It’s putting a new twist on an old story, and I think the choice could challenge people’s assumptions that any non-white character always has to play the part of The Ethnic. Rather than, you know, experience the same kind of issues that a white Peter Parker would have.
As for Airbender, don’t know much about the show either, but I’ve been following the controversy. A lot of people have problems with not just the fact that most of the leads are white, but also the fact that most of the extras are not white. So you have a community of Water People, for instance, that look Inuit (IIRC)…except, strangely enough, the lead character of that tribe, who for some reason looks like they strolled out of Europe. The implicit message behind this casting decision is that it’s fine for Asians to be in movies like this as long as they play nameless, faceless bit parts, but the major roles must go to the Caucasians.
Also, the decision to actively recruit a white actorfor the role of the protagnonist rubbed a lot of people wrong too. So this wasn’t a case of a white actor earning the part simply because he was the best out of the many who competed. It’s clear that M. Night et al. had a vision from the start the kid would be white.
Perhaps this latter thing wouldn’t be as big of deal in isolation, but this coupled with almost all the extras being Asian, the heavy Asian cultural themes associated with the enterprise, the fact that the villan in the movie happens to be the one major actor of Asian ethnicity in the cast (whose brown skin is also in contrast to how the character is depicted in the source material), and the inarguable fact that Asians are underrepresented in American movies and whites people are overrepresented…well, it ain’t a surprise that there is a bruhaha over this.
I don’t think Spider Man and Airbender are really comparable here. Historically, “blackwashing” of characters has not been a problem in this country, and neither has “whiteface”.
I think it’s interesting that discussions of comic book characters changing race always mention Kingpin and Nick Fury, but nobody ever seems to bring up Catwoman. OK, the Halle Berry version had so much more to complain about other than race, but nobody seems to have minded Eartha Kitt. There’s even some sexual tension there between her and Batman, addressing the interracial relationship point Blaster Master brought up-- And that was in the sixties! Surely, if a character as significant as Catwoman could be changed from white to black, then Peter Parker could be now, four decades later?
My interpretation of the Water Tribe is that they’re generic “top of the world” people. When you get that far north throughout the world, there are a lot of areas where people vary visually to a semi-severe degree. Look at the members of Huun Huur Tu, a somewhat famous Tuvan throat singing group composed of members from the same region of Tuva. Between four men, you have a wide range of “looks” that teeter between “white” and “Asian” looks. The Sami people are also historically varied in what they look like. I can suspend a little disbelief for Sokka’s casting, but personally I think that the actress cast as Kitara was pretty far off the mark.
Saw the movie last night; after looking at the cast of characters, there’s a lot of ethnic variation within all the tribes, but visually nobody is that far melanistically from the other characters. Interestingly enough, the Fire Tribe members all seem to be folks from the Indian subcontinent and Arabic speaking regions, whereas the other tribes are more heavily mixed with indigenous peoples, Asians, and whites, with maybe one or two light-skinned African folks. Much like in the show, the universe of The Last Airbender is one of somewhat light-skinned people and is not intended to represent specific peoples in our own reality.
Unless the Avatar world is generically Asian, which IMO it is. Yes there are variations, but the Water Nation are basically Inuit, the Air Nomads are Tibetan, and the Earth and Fire Nations are basically Chinese. Note that China is a huge country containing multitudes of ethnicities. I think this largely explains the diverse look of people and also makes the Aang Gang’s ability to disguise itself believable. It is simply wrong to say that the various nations are not based on real-world locales.
As for the movie, if the racial whitewashing was uniform, this would have downplayed it. Instead all the villains are swarthy and everyone else is white, minus the Morpheus-esque Gyatso and a few other bit-parts. If the actors had looked like the cartoon, this also would have been acceptable by most. I saw the movie with nashitashii and Acid Lamp, and we agreed that Sokka, Yue, and Aang were spot-on. Katara… not so much. Lastly, not many people would have cared if the movie had actually been good, but alas this is not the case.
Spiderman can do whatever he wants. I’m still mad about Last Airbender sucking.
Background reading: Influences on the Avatar franchise | Avatar Wiki | Fandom
Race or role reversals can be very good if done right. Think of Othello as a white man with everyone else black. Or Peter Grimes where he’s as guilty as hell. Similarly, there are stories where the race really doesn’t matter, like The Magnificent Seven / The Seven Samurai.
Black Panther Were Actually White, Wha…Huh?
Seeing Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury did not jar me probably because I don’t have clear memory of what Fury looks like. All I can remember is he had an eye-patch and he wore some blue uniform. I’m not even sure if his hair is black or brown and I can’t remember if it was a military crew-cut or notl.
This.
Heimdall played by a black actor doesn’t bother me. One of the Marvel comics Asgardians, Hogun, looked like an Asian to me (his facial features looked asian to me and he dressed like a mongol warrior) and this led me to believe that in the Marvel Universe Odin also gathered slain warriors from other ethnicities including Asians and Africans. I might be wrong in my belief but having believed that for many years makes it easy for me to accept a dark-skinned Asgardian (in the Marvel Universe, that is).
Anybody remember the gag where Matt Murdock settles down to ‘watch’ the Daredevil movie with commentary, hears that the movie Kingpin is just like the regular one except black instead of white – and blurts out, wait, the Kingpin isn’t black?
I was going to mention this, but it would involve also admitting having seen the movie.
…
More seriously, as I’ve said before, a black Catwoman could work. If you got the right actress. If you got an okay actress and a really bad script? It won’t work and will be a complete laughingstock.
But mrrowl, that Eartha Kitt. So you got a range of things. Do it right, like Duncan, and it works. Do it wrong, like a black guy in Sherwood Forest, and it doesn’t. Generally, with a multi-million dollar movie, I wouldn’t.
As I recall, Nick Fury’s background was never delved into much, and he was deliberately made as non-specific as possible (which might be another reason switching to a black man worked). But originally he was Caucasian.
Heimdall wasn’t a dead warrior taken into Odin’s service - he’s a Norse God in his own right, and a very powerful one at that. In the Marvel Universe he actually stepped into Odin’s shoes for awhile and ran Asgard until Odin got back. But most of the audience probalby won’t be clued into that, and as long as the actor is good it should work.
No, but that’s absolutely hilarious. If the gag is a strip, I’d love to see it.
So was Thor, but, originally, wasn’t Thor a man who had the spirit of Thor inside him or something?
For the love of God people, the Avatar world is not generically Asian. The material cultures may be, but the actual social culture is not. And when I say “Asian”, I mean "pretty much everything from Japan to Siberia to China to Singapore, and then some things just stuck in because, and probably some Polynesian Islander, too. Calling it “:Asian” is incredibly ridiculous: it’d be like luping all of Europe and the Americas into the word “White”.
Oh waity, a lot of people do that, too. Well, it’s incredibly stupid, too, but less so than the way people talk about Avatar.
Moreover, you’re just not paying attention to the wide ethnic variability of characters if you’re insisting on calling them 'Asian". Aang is as pale as anybody, with large round eyes. Zuko is pretty Japanese, but paler than most. Katara is darker-skinned but still nothing like the Inuit or whatever, and has a very slim build. The northern water tribe doesn’t really look that much like them, either. And the Earthn Kingdom - geez - they’re all over the place.
Look, I don’t mind people casting Asians in the roles. But let’s not pretend the Avatar world has anything to do with earthly ethnicity. Moreover, even in the show, it was still ridiculous that the gAang could wander around the Fire Nation unnoticed (and a couple people who weren’t idiots did know right off).
I can only assume you are talking about my post without quoting it. Hmmm, ‘generically’ Asian was perhaps the wrong word, as indeed they can’t all be lumped together. ‘Generally’ would have probably been better.
There are wide variety of looks within those own ethnicities. And, in any case, it’s to be expected that the characters would not be be 1:1 for matches in all cases. I covered the rest of your paragraph in my post, which maybe it turns out you weren’t replying to after all.
Yeah, because the show mixed and mashed lots of things together, it’s totally stupid to pretend that the show’s main characters were Asian in some form. Oh wait, it’s not. You’re right about the cultures not being social matches, or even accurate physical matches. Still, the 4 Nations were based on various Asian countries, and the vast majority of the characters looked Asian in some form.
The bottom line for me is that nobody, or at least I’m not, was demanding an all-Asian cast, or that the actors completely matched the ethnic-influences tapped in the show. What people are complaining about is that somehow everyone but the bad guys became Caucasian.
But yeah, whatever.
I’m always surprised at people who see anime characters’ eyes and, since they’re not “slanted” or “squinty,” think they can’t be representative of asians but at the same time aren’t bothered by the fact that caucasians don’t have eyes as big and round as teacups.
Maybe it’s because they’re closer on the scale?
squinty -> less squinty -> big as teacups
Also, asians can be pale as hell.
Other. Black PP not okay, don’t know enough about Airbender to have any opinion on that.
To me Peter Parker’s an iconic character, and you don’t mess around with icons.
Airbender, meh, might as well tell me they’re changing the race of the guy that collects them all in Pokey-Man.
White people don’t give a shit about non-whites.
Chinese Luke Cage? Whitey says: A-OK!
So, in a thread with a lot of thoughtful discussion of the issues, you come in with this? Not cool. This is the Cafe Society, not the Pit – keep it civil, on-topic, and responsive to what other people are saying.
Thanks,
twickster, Cafe Society moderator