When Is Color-Blind Casting Okay And When Is It Not?
It seems like The Last Airbender has at least 99 problems -- excruciatingly bad 3D, thuddingly clumsy dialogue, sub-Jake Lloydian acting and more -- but should the color of its cast really be one of them? When io9 proffered Community actor Donald Glover as a possible new Spider-Man, the internet seized on it as its new favorite meme. Sure, Glover is black while Peter Parker in the movies, TV shows and comic books has always been white, but Glover is hilarious, as Spidey should be, and could have easily played the part. So why was this move lauded while Airbender has been met with protests and picket lines?
This is an honest question, not some Glenn Beckian prelude to a "poor put-upon white folks" rant. I saw The Last Airbender last night, and while it was just as awful as you might have heard, the color of the leads didn't really bother me in the least. Looking at the original cartoon characters, I suppose they look somewhat "Asian," but I'm not sure if Asia as we know it even exists in the world of Airbender.
I don't know whether the film is supposed to take place on an alien planet, in the distant future or in some Tolkienesque fantasy world, but wherever it was, the presence of giant flying 'n swimming Swiffer duster, some monkey-looking creature that seems like it should be She-Ra's best friend, and a pond filled with God-Koi seem to suggest that it's a world unlike ours today. So I can accept the fact that the four tribes of this strange world are a virtual United Colors of Benetton ad, with the fire, earth, air and water tribes each sporting plenty of multicultural members.
It was, I'm sure, a shock to the devoted fans to see some of their beloved heroes cast in a way that they were not prepared for, just as I'm sure some fans weren't initially ready for a black Kingpin in Daredevil, a black Nick Fury in Iron Man or a black James West in Wild, Wild West. But all three actors worked out very well; Daredevil and Wild, Wild West both had their problems as movies, but casting a white actor wouldn't have solved them.
Like I said, this is an honest question I'm grappling with myself. I'm half-Latin and I always liked seeing someone who looked more like me, or my sisters or my mother pop up on the screen. But I do think that it's somewhat unfair to espouse the benefits of color-blind casting one day, and demand fidelity to the source material the next. The part should go to the actor that can best fulfill the role, and if the director says it's these four, I think there's no reason to not take him at his word. M. Night Shyamalan treated the world and its culture reverently enough -- there were certainly no Rooney-level "Miss Go-Righree!" abominations -- that I think any charges of full-on racism is unfounded. The worst that might be said is that 'ol Manoj was a little tone-deaf in regard to how his casting would play with fans of the original Avatar.
It's a complicated issue and there are strong feelings on both sides, but I think no matter what our race, creed, nationality or sex we can all agree on one thing: The Last Airbender is one shitty movie.
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Here's the thing. Airbender was drawn in something of a Japanese anime style, but not as far as I know by actual Japanese animators. Jump back fifty years - Astro Boy was drawn by Japanese animators, and a guy named Walt in America decided he liked Astro's look so much that he rounded the triangles into circles and called him Mickey. And that's where we get our Disney style American animation - inspired by Japanese work, but performed by Western hands.
Airbender is something of the same thing, although obviously different on many levels including that the sense of plagiarism Walt summoned up is absent here through creativity on the part of the writers and designers and such - but basically, still Western animators INSPIRED by Eastern animation and concept styles.
Add to that the many Eastern influences that Airbender draws from - Dragonball and the like, and I'm avoiding listing the hundreds of other arguable influences in style and concept (these concepts were bounced through years of fiction from the west to the east - Gygax invents role-playing, the East turns it on its head, Square re-invents role-playing, and Blizzard and the like turn it back on its head, and so on) - and I should mention all of the religious and ancient cultural-tinged elements Airbender draws from going back through Shaolin and Shinto and all -- - -
- and what I think you have in the end is an AMALGAMATE. Westerners and Easterners met in concept, and this thing was created to be greater than the sum of its parts. And so Western animators used vaguely Asian skin-tone colors for the cartoons, but maybe Western hair or eye colors and other such compromises - my question to you who think there is racial unfairness here is, HOW CAN YOU TELL?
I think choosing people who it's hard to nail down as being this or that is a limit in casting, because most people are not vague in appearance like the cartoon's skin colors were painted - and so the tradeoff is, do I want to cast based on the actors' skills, or based on how close his skin tone is to the original picture and the interpretations that the artistic ambiguity led the various viewers to develop? I think to do the second is not even Fandom, but Clique-ie-ness. Frasier once got called "the whitest show on television" and they deserved it because they had gone out of their way to defy the reality around them to create a certain appearance. Well it works both ways. I grew up on Spiderman and it's going to be very hard for me to imagine the spidey cowl coming off to reveal a fro, but if the dude is the better actor, I'm all for it - THE POINT OF EQUALITY is that WE'RE SUPPOSED TO STOP THINKING OF EVERYTHING IN TERMS OF RACE. If we don't, we'll all seesaw back and forth forever, and that's really the same problem we all had in the beginning, All Animals Equal but Some More Equal Than Others.
Also, like a painting or a song, a movie is a piece of art, and there's supposed to be some level of ARTISTIC LICENSE. Meaning we don't spend our entire art-consuming experience telling everybody what WE would have done if only WE had painted the painting, but we didn't. That's beyond pretentious, it's selfish. In my aspiring-to-be-humble opinion.
Please forgive me if I've been negative at all or overstated my opinion. luck and life.
pssst, he KNOWS that! which is why he mentions it!!!
"use his name in vain"? Wait, so Glen BeKKK is now divine to racists??? how low can you go.
How can anyone be "half-Latin"?? Talk about idiotic political-correctness carried to the nth degree! "Latin" refers to a person's ancestral LANGUAGE, not to race. "Latins" are CAUCASIAN, in any event. So, Dixon, which "Latin" culture do you claim to be "half" of? Italian? Spanish? Portugese? Pig?
I don't think anyone is talking about sacrificing acting ability just because someone isn't caucasian/latino/indian/asian. If you saw the movie, you would see that these 'actors' are of B-level talent. Many critic's even make fun of the ability of the child actors, as they could have come from any high school play. I'm talking about worse actors than those in the Twighlight movies.
People are more upset that not only did this Indian Director not give a flip about whether these caucasian's had any charisma,or could deliver the lines seriously. Even Aang, the magical avatar, looked like a kid that was just picked out of a yellow-belt martial arts cast. Maybe it would be different if these guys could were more of the mold of that 'sixth sense kid.' At least he made the movie somewhat realistic, and not a load of BULL****.
***Twilight*** (not illiterate.)
You have your history backwards on anime and Disney. Disney animation influenced Osamu Tezuka, who in turn influenced a huge portion of manga and anime. Mickey Mouse came out in 1928, the year Tezuka was born--more than twenty years before Astro Boy saw print, and more than thirty years before he was animated.
Where were all of you when Jake Gyllenhaal was cast as "The Prince of Persia"?
I Walk The Line: You really do "think" some very "funny" things. It might be worthwhile "recognising" that your "persecution complex" is based on an "alternative reality".
Sure, racism sucks. Anti-white, anti-black, anti-"whatever" (as you might put it). But the notion that it is the Anglo races of the world who are "really" "suffering" now, because of the "yoke" of "political correctness", is so astoundingly ignorant as to "beggar" "belief".
I know, I know, I shouldn't bother replying, "it's not going to make what I have written less truthfull". Indeed, how could anything?
our entire household is a fan of the series.
we don't see anything wrong with changing the skin color of the actors/characters as long as they still look the same (facial features).
and based on the photos above, they look ok to us. they have the same "characteristics".
the problem is you people make such a fuss over race and skin color, which actually makes YOU the racists. and since you can't tell if the cartoon series are asians or westerners, the director has artistic freedom to cast the characters. unlike spider-man, the comics show he really is a WHITE dude. unless stan lee comes out with a NEW spider-man.
the only complaints we should be making is on whether the cast can act and bring the characters to life on the big screen, costumes, production values, etc. NOT the skin COLOR.
nice one 🙂
This is absolutely rediculas actors are awefull,and they even don't even look like cartoon characters at all, chick should be super pretty hawaii bit thai she's super ugly white they could at least made them all go to tan beds, beaches or something like that 2 make em look more alike, zuko is fucking turkish dude, this could't get more ugly... Even i would fit beter in dat film cuz i always tan, avatar that kid can't even hold his staff would out shaking his knees and hands could say much more but i say The end
You're talking about a remake. Remakes need to keep a semblance of the original. And in the original, McGarrat and Dano *were* white guys living in Honolulu. Changing it would be like changing the theme song — it's too integral to the identity to be changed.
Besides, what a lot of people still don't get is that Hawaii 5-0 for its time *was* progressive. Native hawaiians, asians, first nations, etc. were rarely shown, and not in regular leads. 5-0 had them for over a decade. This continues the tradition. [Compare it to Magnum PI and you'll find more Asians there.]
But in the end, Honolulu is still an American city with American cops, and this being a procedural will still emphasize the cop portion more than the racial makeup of the city.
Funny how you say this: the only complaints we should be making is on whether the cast can act and bring the characters to life on the big screen, costumes, production values, etc. NOT the skin COLOR.
Right after saying this: the director has artistic freedom to cast the characters. unlike spider-man, the comics show he really is a WHITE dude.
So you don't have a problem with a colored character being casted as by a white actor, but you do have a problem with a white character being cast by a person of color. Interesting. In your own words, why should it matter as long as the actor can bring the character to life on the big screen? I think what you really meant to say is the director can cast whoever he likes as long as he keeps the white characters white, but the colored characters... well those are up for grabs.
Those actors cast look nothing like the characters from the cartoon. Those two look like the would have to sleep in a tanning bed for over 48 hours to have the same "characteristics".
the problem is you people make such a fuss over race and skin color, which actually makes YOU the racists.
So by your own logic if you would make a fuss over the *race and skin color* of Spiderman if he were to be cast by a colored person I think that makes you...wait for it...wait for it...A RACIST. Go ahead and reflect on that for a moment.
The ridiculous part of this argument is that there is the assumption of knowledge about race of the characters in the general public. There isn't. Airbender is a kids cartoon on a cable station that is not marketed to adults; in fact, the promotion of the movie focused on Shyamalan and action — not the identity of the property.
Whereas Spider-Man is known to us worldwide as the white and nerdish Peter Parker. Making a movie of that property, you need to identify with the public image of Spider-Man and to change it would just frighten too many of the paying audience. It could be the best Spider-Man movie ever, but you change that and the feeling going is that nothing is sacred… and sacred it what we expect to see.
Sure, Daredevil got away with it. But then again, Robbie Coltrane was the original actor thought about and he was too busy. There ain't too many large guys able to play the role, and the film backed around it by focusing on Kingpin's actions, which were spot on.
Wild Wild West went the other way and bombed ridiculously. Anyone who had seen the original series knows that James T. West isn't Mr. Cool walking, he's cool because he's a trained agent that just happens to be dashingly handsome with the ladies. Similarly, the film's devotion to style than substance gave us an Artemis Gordon that was newly eccentric and Dr. Loveless that was quite mad, which is too far a departure than what we expected to see.
(The black Nick Fury has already been explained here by others.)
I think that if you're going to be willing to cast a different race in the role — and there are numerous successes as well as failures, both in film and in television — then you have to consider what the expectations are of the role and how to deal with them. Cast to the character vs their appearance is the only way to go, which is what they seem to have decided to do here.
Cast the wrong way and audiences will stand against you.
Personally, I'd have no problems about casting this film either way so long as the kids can act. I'm sick of kids who are cast for race and act to everyone of the racial stereotypes expected of them, thinking that's what makes the audiences come to them. If Hollywood wants to get out of the race question, then it needs to seriously think about focusing again on stories for all audiences and not films/characters for specific audiences.
Dixon, just couldn't get by without finding a way to BASH GLEN BECK in this article, could you ? Not Left Wing by any chance, are you ?
Cleopatra was the descendent of a Greek father and a Nubian mother. Most likely she looked more like Thandie Newton than Elizabeth Taylor.
The ridiculous part of this argument is that there is the assumption of knowledge about race of the characters in the general public
So what you're getting at is since the general public doesn't know about this cartoon casting white actors shouldn't be that big of a deal since know one knows them? Hmmmmm.
Cast to the character vs their appearance is the only way to go, which is what they seem to have decided to do here.
Again another person lamenting how casting should go by the actor's abilities and not their appearance EXCEPT when were talking about a white character.
James Bond's *character* involve him being a spy who is an international ladies man his *appearance* is white, but something tells me that if they decided to place a colored man in the role you wouldn't like it.
Any argument anyone can come up with why white fiction character's should stay white would but fictional colored characters should get a free pass will be B.S. and racist.
In all honesty I wouldn't want to see a non-white Peter Parker or James Bond, but I know it's only because I've been conditioned this way by society, I also know these feelings and any reason I would give to support it are B.S. That doesn't make it right but at least I'm wise enough to know when the feelings I have are not right.
That is an assumption made by one historian in 1990, and it conflicts with the bulk of other scholarly research on the topic.
Nothing new. Shakespeare's Othello is sub-titled The Moor Of Venice. Last person to play him as a Moor was Olivier in the movie. You can't do it nowadays because affirmative action demands Othello be seen as and played by someone of sub-Sahara African descent. But at the time Shakespeare wrote the play, a Moor, ie someone from North Africa, would have had far greater resonance. The Barbary Coast pirates were raiding the West Coasts of England and Ireland for slaves (yes, really). The Moors were still clinging on in Spain. So there was a very precise culture clash portrayed within the play that an Elizabethan audience would have easily understood. . .not the more simplistic racism which tends to be shown today. The real Othello, by the way, was a Serbian mercenary who ended up running Cyprus
I saw this movie last night and was a little disappointed due to some casting and certain acting not being so great, but otherwise, I thought the movie was good. In the end, I’m just happy that Ang was cast properly. Everyone got the feel of their character and that was good, with the exception of Sakka. He’s suppose to be funny and his lines weren’t delivered that way. All that stuff is pretty ambiguous to the overall quality of the film though, because I thought the film was awesome. Great job everyone!
I think it's pretty obvious from context and common usage that Latin here means Latin American.
I don't think the casting was racist, and I don't really care. What I do care about is these actors are UGLY. The cartoon kids are WAY cuter than the nitwits they cast for this movie. THAT is what they fucked up during casting.
they tried to be PC but you can't be all things to all people especially as everyone is soooo sensitive.
Okay, what is happening here? Where are the new Movieline posts? Why are there no new Movieline posts, yet so many comments to this one? WHAT IS HAPPENING?
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