Fear of a Black (Fantasy) Planet

[tablesaw]

No time for a list of things just yet.

The casting for the live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender has been announced. See if you can spot a problem:





It's not an isolated event.

Between the many movies about POC that feature a primary white protagonist (Dances with Wolves, Last Samurai, Last of the Mohicans, Forbidden Kingdom) [see also "Wiscon 31: What These People Need Is a Honky"—TS], to white washing (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Wizard of Earthsea, Prince of Persia), it's really more than simply "White people will only see movies with white people".

If that were the real reason, why even have stories set in POC cultures, or whitewash POC characters- why not just make all white stories to begin with or remake POC stories minus the cultural trappings(Resevoir Dogs, The Ring, etc.)?

The revelation caused some shock among the Ojousaw household because of, you know, the racism. ojouchan was particularly upset yesterday. She's worried about our children, who will be brown, and who will look to the few characters who look like them, then wonder why they get changed to look like the people who don't. She's worried about her niece, who recently told her momma, "My favorite color is going to be brown, because that's what color my skin is, and nobody likes it." She's only four. I'm worried too, but it's still not as real for me yet.

But that's why I find it utterly heartwrenching that M. Night Shyamalan, who decided or at the very least signed off on the idea that all of these beautiful characters of color are better off being all-white, was initially drawn to the project because his Indian-American daughters loved the show so much they wanted to dress up as Katara.

---

There's been more outrage than wanky defensiveness, thankfully. I haven't heard the "I'm sure they're the best actors" argument yet, for example. There's also the argument that because the series is set in a fantasy world, there isn't actually any intersection between race and skin color as it exists in our world (ergo, somehow, everyone should be white), an argument also used in the Earthsea adaptations. But the one that's just hovering on the horizon (possibly forestalled because there are, as yet, no pictures of the actor playing Aang) is that some or all of the characters are white anyway. There've been a lot of discussion on this before too, like Naamenblog's essay "Anime/Manga Characters =/= White."

I had a huge disconnect recently when I heard someone on the street say to a friend that one of my favorite shows, Avatar: The Last Airbender, was great but why were all the characters white? My head jerked around so quick I almost got whiplash. I didn't understand how she could see those characters as white and before I could find a way to insert myself into their conversation and question her about this they were gone. It’s something I couldn't help but think about though.

His post was in response to a marvelous one by Yeloson (again) that is no longer available.

On the other hand, this essay just fell into my lap, "The Face of the Other" or "Do Manga Characters Look White?"

Interestingly, in a manga in which Chinese or European characters are the majority, such as a story set in China or Europe, majority characters are generally drawn exactly as Japanese characters would be drawn in a manga set in Japan, without any racial stereotyping at all. In the context of such a story, the Chinese or European characters are not Other, and markings of Otherness would be superfluous. The artist would make the foreign setting obvious through names, clothing, customs, architecture, and "props," rather than burdening every character with stereotyped racial features, which would limit her ability to distinguish characters from each other, and would also make it difficult for readers to identify with protagonists. Furthermore, if a Japanese character appears in such a story, she will usually be marked visually as Japanese, although usually only by black hair and eyes. (Readers are often expected to identify with such characters, and more exaggerated markings would interfere with that identification.)

Racial markings in manga, therefore, are generally relative. By contrast, an American comic book set in Japan or China would most likely portray every character with stereotyped racial signifiers (and probably with contrived accents, as well). It may be that Westerners, accustomed to non-relative, standardized racial markers, are baffled by the Japanese system of relative signification, in which a single artist may portray a Chinese character one way in one story (set in Japan), and very differently in another (set in China).

---

As a side note, "The Face of the Other" was linked in an article on Racialicious about videogames, specifically the Xbox release of Black College Football: The Xperience. I'm not really a fan of sports videogames. But:

BCFx will also come with support for the Rock Band drum set to tap into the popularity of drumlines at HBCU football games. The game will ship with 35 songs and 65 musical cadences.

Which is probably the most awesome videogame news I've heard recently.

Comments

(frozen comment)

[thefreak.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was one of those, "They don't look Asian" people. But then, I have never seen an episode of the show (though I have a rabid fan friend). So I didn't know that one of them was supposedly Inuit...?

Also, as I told Jo, the only manga I ever bother reading/watching are ones where they look like they are, say, Japanese. Looking at all those pictures posted on /film, all I saw was a bunch of white kids with blue eyes and tans. Maybe M. Night based all his casting on just those pictures and didn't bother reading anything about the story.

I don't mean anything offensive, just that it's what I see when I look at their choice of character shots.

(frozen comment)

[sparkymonster.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_the_Last_Airbender

Loathe as I am to use wikipedia as a source for shit, check the map of the nation/world



Check the writing used on that map.

Or Zuko, one of the leads


Check out what he's wearing.

"Explicitly stated influences include Chinese art and history, Japanese anime, Hinduism (India), Taoism (China), Buddhism (India),[26] and Yoga (India).[27] The production staff employs a cultural consultant, Edwin Zane, to review scripts."

"Calligraphy

Traditional East Asian calligraphy styles are used for nearly all the writing in the show. For each instance of calligraphy, an appropriate style is used, ranging from seal script (more archaic) to clerical script.[28] The show employs calligrapher Siu-Leung Lee as a consultant and translator.[27]"

(frozen comment)

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

The Water Tribe kids (the ones in blue up there) also remain significantly and consistently darker than the rest of the cast (except for one Guru Patik, who was designed as a South Asian), one the show. You can't tell this from the pictures at all. They have blue eyes because of the whole water deal. (Earth-green eyes, Fire-gold eyes, etc.) And... they live in igloos.

Also, the animators took a great deal of care with character profiles -- nose and jaw shape, etc., especially in the second season.

There were also some Aztecs. It was lovely. :-)

(frozen comment) Troll Shutdown: Why This Thread Has Been Frozen.

[tablesaw]

Shenanigans have been called, and a warning to "STFU, GTFU" has been given in private. thefreak has privately admitted to me and to others that his actions in this post have been calculated to stir up controversy so that he can "having fun watching them freak the hell out over my clearly apathetic response to all this." This is trolling, I will not tolerate it in my journal, and I am shutting it down publicly.

While I think there is some other worthwhile discussion in this thread, I'm still closing it down wholesale. TF, if you're actually interested in talking about race, chill the fuck out and start again later. In a different post.

[tanyahp.livejournal.com]

The "industry" is incredibly biased. Okay, racist. There's very little accountability, they want to "sell" to whomever they perceive to be the "primary target audience" and this usually excludes everyone who is not white (it's stupid, considering that whites will, with luck, no longer be the majority in my state and in many other states in ten or twenty years, but...well, it sucks for the nonce and will continue to suck until we break down the racism in Hollywood.) imo. I am also a big Avatar fan, as is my sister, so this comes as a blow. But after they utterly destroyed LeGuin's Earthsea, I have no more faith in the system to adhere to a vision other than that resembling the worldview of a neo-nazi.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

To be fair, you should be a little clearer when you say "they" destroyed Earthsea, insofar as that wasn't Hollywood, that was the SciFi Channel. And because it bears repeating:

Somebody asked Whedon at a convention whether he had talked to the Sci-Fi network. This was just after Sci-Fi had cancelled the incomparable Farscape while retaining that show with the real-life “psychic” - not a fictional show about a psychic but an actual con artist playing his cruel hoax for a studio audience - and other, similarly un-sci-fi fare. Whedon responded that he had called the Sci-Fi Network about Firefly but they had told him it was too science-fictiony for them.

By no means am I saying that Hollywood, or "the system" isn't racist; just that SciFi utterly screwing up a science fiction vision isn't really evidence of it.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Let me throw an idea out there, not because I believe it necessarily but just to see if it floats.

Japanese animators aren't trying to make their characters look Japanese, any more than American animators are trying to make their characters look Caucasian. Japanese animators are trying to make their characters look neutral, which they (and their immediate audience) read as "Japanese". Therefore, an American looking at anime will see neutral-looking characters, characters intended to look neutral, and will therefore read them as "Caucasian", i.e. their own personal default. There's nothing per se wrong with that: in fact, to read the characters as "other/foreign" would be to add something to them that their creators didn't intend.

Now, there are flaws in this argument. I think the biggest is the acceptance of the assumption that Americans should see neutral as "Caucasian". And one might wonder why Shama Shmal Shayma M. Night wouldn't see "neutral" as "Indian".

But if the argument holds, it makes some of the attitudes towards manga less racist. I mean, I've got to be honest: I look at the top pair of pictures and think, "Wow, that's not a bad resemblance." But if a resident of Tokyo thought the same thing about a pairing of Aquaman and Ken Watanabe, that would also be fairly sensible.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I think this is exactly right - as an anime/manga fan, I've learned some of the signifiers for "this is actually a Caucasian character" (blue eyes, larger eyes etc. - yellow or (in b&w manga) un-inked hair often just means bleached or brown hair).

That said, IIUC Avatar is an American production and, to me, these characters are definitely drawn to be non-WASPs.

[bossymarmalade.livejournal.com]

The argument doesn't hold because by and large, it does not work reciprocally. "Neutral" usually translates to "white"; this is why casting sheets will specify "all races" for some characters and make no racialized distinction on others, because those are understood as the "default" of white. Whereas actors of colour, even when auditioning for parts that are *meant* to be ethnically diverse, are often dismissed as looking "too ethnic".

And one might wonder why Shama Shmal Shayma M. Night wouldn't see "neutral" as "Indian".

Because he lives in the Western world, and the message that we get every day is that Indian is NOT the default. (Also, your thing with not knowing how to spell his name is really uncalled for and really kind of horribly ironic in a post about how neutral=/=white.)

Tangentially related -- I was just listening to commentary for an episode of the Simpsons where one of the writers casually said, "On this show, all of the Asians are white and all of the regular families are yellow." Which kind of sums it up for me, because yeah, the message is that if you're not white you're not "regular".

[tablesaw]

Beyond the "white is the default" problem in America, your argument forgets cases where the Japanese artists intend for the audience to read their characters as both neutral/non-othered and Japanese. Neither is more important than the other. (Also, Thorn is directly responding to a perspective that not only interprets manga/anime characters as Western and White, but believes that the Japanese artists are drawing characters with the intention of having them perceived as Western and White, often as a launching pad to psychologically evaluate Japanese artists or Japanese culture at large.)

This can sometimes be a problem for people from a different society with privilege. For example, no matter how much I consciously know that the most of the people Earthsea (and a vast majority of the characters in the story) are Not White, when I'm reading the stories, unless the text points it out, I keep slipping back into assuming that all of the characters are white. No matter how often I catch myself doing it, it still happens.

Fantasy settings can be tricky because relative markers aren't as helpful in indicating race/color/ethnicity/whathaveyou. Because the text of Earthsea rarely gives me either visual markers or relative markers that I can associate with the real world, I resort to the unexamined default more often. When I see pictures of the miniseries, I am continually confronted with the visual markers (literally the bodies of the actors) that contradict what I know to be true about the characters. But in the text, with no such challenge, I slip. And while LeGuin clearly wanted her characters to be neutral, she also very deliberately wanted them to be non-white. ("My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start.")

On the Naamenblog post, Trigun is brought up as an example where things get confusing. It has a fantastic/speculative setting, neutral characters, and the relative markers of the world are taken from the mythology of the American West. Similarly, if great care has been taken to conceal the origin of the art, it's obviously much harder for a viewer to get any clue to the original artist's intention. These, I believe, are the types of case that you're thinking of.

What's interesting to me about Avatar is that, to use Thorn's terminology, it uses both light visual and heavy relative marking for its characters. This makes sense because it's being drawn designed by Western artists/storytellers for a Western audience, but uses anime/manga as its model. It has a heterogeneous population, so there are light visual markings to differentiate different groups, but it also uses extensive relative markings, particularly regarding things that are universal to all groups (see some of the stuff sparkymonster posted above).

And when it comes to Western audiences interpreting the characters, there are people who see both the visual and the relative markings ("nobody is White/European"), people who see the visual markers ("Katara and Zuko aren't White/European . . . ) but not the relative markers (". . . but Aang is"), and people who see neither ("they're all White/European").

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

Therefore, an American looking at anime will see neutral-looking characters, characters intended to look neutral, and will therefore read them as "Caucasian", i.e. their own personal default.

Um, neutral? Really? Because all americans see caucasian as their own personal default? Really?

[trishalynn.livejournal.com]

A comment I made elsewhere is that they didn't do too bad of a job with the Water tribe kids... if they put them in brownface.

And then I started to see red.

[tobu-ishi.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* Fun fact: When white characters show up in Japanese settings in anime, they are often given exaggeratedly 'white' features to differentiate them from the neutral Asian cast.

I actually found myself mildly offended by the illustrations in my Japanese-published language textbook last year--all the Japanese people were drawn in a simple, attractive, neutral style, while all the white people were alarming caricatures with giant prow noses, masses of fluffy hair, and buggy round eyes...

...then I remembered that that's what racial minorities in the States have to deal with every day, and felt rather sheepish. :/

[lonely-lycanth.livejournal.com]

I agree, with exceptions. One has to take into account the specific manga in question. Fullmetal Alchemist, for example, does have clearly defined race distinctions. The country of Amestris is clearly set in an alternate Western Europe, and their names are (in some cases poor renderings of) mostly German names. The Xingese characters are clearly Asian. The Ishbalites are also clearly Middle Eastern, or at least sort of. But then, in this case, racial and philosophical differences figure heavily into the plot.

I agree though, that for the most part a person looking at a neutral character will probably default to his own identification, unless, like Shyamalan, they have grown up with a media that clearly presents the standard as something else.

[ali-wildgoose.livejournal.com]

Some folks are trying to do something about it:

http://aang-aint-white.livejournal.com/646.html

In case it's of interest :)

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that casting is just . . . no.

Someone on my flist just posted about this, with a link to someone else's preferred cast (http://misora.livejournal.com/82141.html).

[queen-elvis.livejournal.com]

IME as someone on the fringes of the manga publishing industry, manga artists draw non-Japanese people the same as Japanese people (except different hair colors) with one huge exception: black people. The black people I've seen in manga had exaggerated huge lips and generally looked different. I found it kind of shocking.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

This is why I loved "Cowboy Bebop" -- they made the blacks look normal. (Manga can also have some pretty unpleasant caricatures of Southeast Asians, at times. Not always.)

[tinhorn2.livejournal.com]

I wonder.

How much discussion would the film be getting if an ethnicity-appropriate cast had been announced? And how much is it getting now?

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

How much discussion would the film be getting if an ethnicity-appropriate cast had been announced?

Plenty.

[thedan.livejournal.com]

You guys are all missing the real issue here. ROCK BAND DRUMLINE FTW.

[tablesaw]

SRSLY!

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

I'm so over this foolishness, I swear.

*goes back to watch leverage*

[tablesaw]

I'm so over this foolishness, I swear.

*goes back to watch leverage*

When ojouchan and I first heard about the casting, this was our response too. Unfortunately, that's when we discovered that the DVR hadn't tapes the newest episode.

(frozen comment) Which of those characters

[lifeofreilly.livejournal.com]

Which of those characters is drawn to look ethnically Japanese or Inuit?

They don't appear to be going off model, as it were. I watched the first two seasons of AirBender and with the exception of the Iroh, none of the main characters looked like their supposed races.

The only models that were drawn as what I would consider "ethnic" (you know, IMHO) are side players, background characters or supporting characters.

Now- this is also a fictitious world with no real *anything*. It's not even Japanese translated to english. The It's from Burbank.


Given these three things: the drawings of the main characters don't look ethnic, it's made up world and it was made in America- how is this some kind of travesty?

(frozen comment) Re: Which of those characters

[tablesaw]

Given these three things: the drawings of the main characters don't look ethnic, it's made up world and it was made in America- how is this some kind of travesty?

Your first "given" is not accepted as a given, and there have been several answers to your question in this page of comments, in the pages linked on this page, and in the roundup of links that I just posted.

[drelfina.livejournal.com]

I'm here because I saw a bit about the casting from a friend's LJ, and while I was resistant to watching Avatar (because just how GOOD can they get an Asian based fantasy without it somehow turning into The Empire Series by Raymond E. Feist? And that's a bit of hypocrisy there because I'm not that good an Asian writer myself and all my writing is in English...), I knew that it was heavily influenced by Asian cultures (Do Inuit count as Asian? how odd that everything that is non-White gets counted as Asian, unless it's Black.) and I'm utterly offended by the casting of all white characters.

I am reminded of the time when I watched Forbidden Kingdom - two of my favourite martial arts actors, and I'd read reviews where they said that they were so glad to be working together because they were so experienced in martial arts (Technically Jackie Chan's not trained in Martial arts like Jet Li, but for film they're on the same level) and I was looking forward to more martial arts.

Imagine my utter shock when they cast a white boy as the main character. Imagine my utter non-shock when the people in mystical China suddenly stopped talking Chinese. I just zoned out when the girl, Sparrow (AAaaaand it's WRONG. her name is 燕子, which means swallow, and yet she's called Golden Sparrow in English? 麻雀 and 燕子 are two very different birds!) turned out to love the White Boy! Oh boy!

When I ranted about this to a friend, she just shrugged and said that hey, it's an American movie, so of course they'd put a white guy there. because that's the demographic they're appealling to. Asian girls are of COURSE going to fall for the white boy, after he's learnt all the mystical Chinese martial art bullshit and is a genius at them. And she mentioned that hey, America is the main target demographic for these Hollywood movies, they make more money on opening week than in the world viewings, so... I should expect it?

Whether she was joking or not, the privilege just hurt.

I'm utterly unsurprised that all the main characters for Avatar are casted as white. Clearly there is an utter dearth of talented Asian actors. Ever. They don't even exist. Nevermind that each and every one of the characters in Avatar code as Asian to me. Clearly the fact that they don't have sallow looking skin and slanted tiny eyes means that they aren't Asian. Never mind the huge variety of cultures. Never mind all that.

(If they ever made a live action movie of Naruto, I'll kill something. I've had friends tell me that characters there code white to them. Why? because they have blond hair. Blue eyes. ROUND blue eyes. Never mind the names. Never mind that outside of the very anachronastic dressing of the ninja, the 'civilian' people are dressed in fairly traditional Japanese garb. Never mind that they're speaking Japanese and was made for a Japanese audience. The artist clearly had them as Caucasians. Clearly. No one ever notices the pink hair.)

[drelfina.livejournal.com]

(never mind that 'appealling to the target American demographic' means White Male. Sometimes white Female. All those Asians, born and raised in America for generations, those Blacks born and raised in America, everyone, they don't count. Because they're not White and therefore aren't American.)

[meatymarah.livejournal.com]

Not gonna lie: as much as I love anime/manga/Avatar, I have always sorta seen how the characters can look more caucasian than asian.

And when I found out that the cast for Avatar was going to be white, I wasn't really all that suprised; I figured they needed to make it marketable to standard america because FOR SOME REASON paramount would never figure out that the avatar fanbase is HUGE LIEK WOAH (Also, gonna be honest here, but I legit was pumped to audition for Toph and/or Azula, since I could pass as them if the cast was all-white)

HOWEVER, what i did not approve of was the fact that the probable cast right now looks NOTHING like the characters! And I'm not talking specific race here; if they cast a hispanic person as Sokka or Kataara and gave them blue contacts, you know what? I'd be cool with that. It sounds sorta shallow, but if an Inuit wasn't cast, I could probably get over it

but casting JASPER and MO-FLIPPIN JESSE MCCARTNEY is not cool; you shouldn't pick a cast that is more mainstream just so you can get your movie to be popular! THATS BULL. Plus, I seriously doubt Jesse McCarntey's martial art abilities.

And in the end, all I really want is great acting, cool special affects, and fight sequences that will melt my face off....

........and maybe if the movie actually CONTINUED the series I'd be happy, too *grumble*

[(Anonymous)]

I've seen about, maybe ten episodes of Avatar on the whole due to the fact that my brother is a big fan; I never liked Brian Koneitzko or Di Martino enough for the project because it seemed like they were trying to capitalize on "Asian-flavor" (you know what I mean; packaged orientalism.) About all I loved of the show was Hakoda and Bato's designs, the evil princess, and Mako, who brought his usual humor and warmth to the voice acting.

The thing that surprises me the most about the horrid mockery that is this movie is the fact that, while they might be only as dark as say, Beyonce or Leona Lewis, the water benders are the children of two very traditionally native looking people! (Their clothing, on the other hand, but let's just pretend it's a fantasy world, blah blah blah.) There is no getting around Hakoda's appearance, and you certainly can't just pretend these guys are Asian Yupiks. At the very least, would it have been hard for these idiots to tap Q'oriana Kilcher to play Katara? (I.e., the girl from The New World, which, for all of its faults, had a native American? She might have been South American, but still...)

It's messed up enough to pretend that the East Asians in the show aren't Asian, but really. If someone is medium-skinned and their father looks Inuit, and their culture is Inuit, is it really so hard to consider a Native American child for a role? (Even a Mexican-American kid who would likely have native ancestry as often as not? Even a South Asian kid; someone with the right skin tone at least! Just as long as they had the right skin tone? I mean, that's what they supposedly care about, right? Because they seem to care muck-all about the cultures that were loosely but distinctly portrayed in this series...)

Sometimes it's hard not to think this thing is stabbing forward as a complicated April Fools joke. (The joke is on them. They are the fools. With as much money as Paramount has lost in recent years...I hope this finishes them.)