Racebending: Casting Stones at Hollywood Casting Practices

Hard to say. They had varying levels of comprehensibility and different angles of attack. If it's one person doing this all, he/she is good. But it's also possible that they're a bunch of people pissed off that someone could even suggest that racism exists anymore in America. We'll never know...

That can be said about various films like Starship Troopers, 21, Bulletproof Monk, Prince of Persia, but we can make an impact on future projects: Akira, The Weapon, Bleach, Deathnote.
We may not be able to make changes to this Shyamalan film, but the fans who care and groups like racebending.com are ensuring that the spotlight is being drawn to the Hollywood systemic racist practices.

Apart from the special effect, I don't think you'll be missing much.
The fight choreographer#s last job was in Indiana Jones and no experience with Chinese martial arts.
Both PAtel and Ringer have knowledge of TaeKWonDo, so it won't equal anything from Hong Kong Cinema.

It's not the Avatar you know anymore. Shyamalan is even changing the names. Its now Ong and Eroh. I'm not kidding. He's eliminated all comedic aspects, early reviews say that the only comedic insert is a strange foot massage scene that doesn't go over well and you have to deal with the racial dynamic changes. It's up to you how you decide to spend your money, and I wouldn't want to influence you but I know as a fan of the original I'm not going to attend.

The Passion of the Christ forwent the old Hollywood yarn that if you use the actual language or cast actual actors from the region in the Christ Story that no one would see it. It was a movie that proved audiances wanted cultural authenticity and that it lent credence to the actors efforts. I loved it for hearing Aramaic, Hewbrew, Latin, and Greek as it would have been heard in the context of the story. It was an amazing artistic achievement in that it didn't comprimise the story for the sake of dumbing it down for a western audiance. It didn't condescend to believers for a buck and while its hardly a perfect film it's not one that would rebuke our efforts.

No offense but Jewish people were not the target demographic of a picture called the Passion of the Christ. It was mainly catering to Christian groups. In this case the demographic and target mistep is that more children of color are expected to be born this year than children who are not of color and this is intended to be a trilogy of films catering to the youth demographic over as long as a decade. By alienating people of color and playing to old colorist stereotypes they are not only alienating the fans of the original series while diminishing its ability to apeal to markets outside of the U.S. as the animation did but alsoa wide swathe of the ethnic makeup of the country is becoming offended by the practices it highlights are are likely to treat this film with great disdain. While I don't like to simply boil things down to demographics or ethnic politics it's shooting themselves in the foot and limiting the appeal of the film. It is quite possible that this could be a very different tone of protests that will mainly be reflected in wallets and not picket signs.

The Passion was independently produced not a hundred million dollar pluss summer effects movie. Nor did the Passion have Super Bowl comercials or a marketing budget in the high millions. Airbender needs to make around 150 million dollars in America alone for the studio to approve a sequel. Likely it will need to produce far more than that mark for Paramount to choose to move forward. The Passion only needed to make 30 million to cover everything and make a profit. It also didn't need to justify a sequel let alone two.

There is a blog response against this mess. The mess is racism in hollywood casting for Avatar, and the blog is called Racebending. Check it out.

Ditto! What is going on? This guy does nothing to further the discussion. He just rants and raves nonsense. If he's gone, let him be gone and be done with it. He serves no real good service.

It's just getting stranger and stranger. It seems like this person is still commenting, but is removed. His profile does not exist, and the link goes to nothing...

Even better, you're more like Uncle Ruckus then. You are one truely vexing oxymoron.

Why am I not surprised that when it comes to white actors in white roles, JohnAdams considers those to be "race specific." When it comes to non-white roles, they're not race specific. One wonders if JohnAdams has even seen Avatar...

Yes!!

Hey bucko, do you have anything better to do than to troll the comments section of this article?

Minorities can't act? You're so white, I can tell. It oozes out of every word you put on the page.

Minorities can act, and the hundreds of countries with film industries can attest to that. Maybe it's not that they can't act, but that you don't want to look at anything that's not white.

Same here!

Don't you love how obviously ignorant and pretentious the director has to be? Sounds like the right kind of personality to lift this movement to the spotlight.

movie reviewers are not journalists...

Voted up!!

Voted up!!

The entire existence of "Racebending.com" is tell the folks who may not see it, that it is offensive and egregious. This was a huge opportunity to cast actors of color in a movie that was based on roles that revolved around their culture. It is cultural insensitivity to not let them represent it and to say that someone else can represent it better is in no way, respectful. It's actually downright oppressive.

while that may be true in some cases, there is no evidence of that in Avatar.

Casting is done on two principles, performance + Equity/equitabilty. and many times budget comes into play.

I think its disrespectfull to the craft of the artist who portray the rolls (regardless of race) to tell them that they arent good enough to play that roll becasue they arent of a certain race. And frankly thats a racist attitude. No one demands blind actors play blind rolls or gay actors play in gay rolls race should be no different.

Even if you don't think that the actors must be Asian, don't you think it's still racist that all the protagonists are white? Yes, other races should be allowed to participate in Asian culture, but to the extent that Caucasians hog the spotlight as the main heroes and not even one Asian has a major heroic role, in a movie based on a story set in an Asian world full of Asian clothing, buildings, and food, where the written language is Chinese? It's pretty much saying, "We're willing to pay tribute to the culture(s), just not the actual people behind the culture(s)."

It's also strange that, in a casting selection where acting ability was supposedly the primary concern, Paramount rejected their own Brandon Soo Hoo, who had both martial arts skills and acting experience from working with the studio previously, in favor of newcomer Noah Ringer, who had to be sent to acting school.

But you DONT have too.. Daniel Day Lewis played native american in last of the mohicans.

Yes, and that is wrong.

Oscars have been given to a Caucasian Woman playing an Asian Woman, Luise Rainer the Good Earth 1937. An Oscar went to a Caucasian Woman who played an Asian Male, Linda Hunt, The Year of Living Dangerously 1983. There has never been an Asian woman nominated for a best actress or best supporting actress category. Just some food for thought if you thought yellowface was something that's in Hollywood's distant past or that because it received industry accolades it's a practice that wasn't exclusionary. It is a given in todays society that blackface was a terrible and even racist tactic used by Hollywood to exclude and even insult black actors. But blackface did earn Hollywood accolades. Seven films with blackface were given academy award nominations. Eight if you include Robert Downey jr. in Tropic Thunder where he was nominated for best supporting actor in 2008.

first time i agree with you i loved this series.

Perfect!

Paul Mooney is so awesome!

Too funny. We could start a list of possible movie names and actors to play the part.

if your a racist bigot all the time, why are you on current?

He based on Sam Jackson, after Sam had already been cast to play the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Also, Marvel movies have been using traditional Marvel Universe stories as source materials, not the Ultimate Universe.

one. a british comedy has a pass with race because britain a really low black community

two. chris rock is not hollywood he is chris rock and there for re-does alot of movies with a black cast he is chris rock

three. you are uncomfortably ignorant

Its called a Black comedy in Britain, right? So why not cast a Black cast?

It's not so much a question of racism as it is cultural insensitivity and the demographics of Hollywood. If Asians and Native American actors aren't even allowed to portray historical or mythical figures of their own race than it closes avenues for more traditional roles and advances a belief among the community that acting isn't a career that can be realistically pursued. It follows an overtly racist practice of Yellowface and Brownface which for some reason were considered more culturally acceptable than Blackface and continued into the late 1980's and even today in comedic roles. The net message of these casting practices has been exclusionary and it simply doesn't mesch with the demographics of either Hollywood or America.

Without researching internal casting practices beyond this article, I can only form conclusions based on actual movies. From the movies, casting doesn't seem overtly racist. In most cases, I would like to believe they cast the most talented actor regardless of race. As for why the studio preferred Caucasian people for the roles, may hint at racism, but I think it is more of the Asian Indian director's visionary choice. Shyamalan was already set on casting Nicole Peltz before auditions. To me this whole things seems like another case of finding racism were it isn't.

You could be right and all studios and directors in Hollywood are racist, but it just seems far-fetched to me. It is hard to believe that as an non-Caucasian person himself, Shyamalan would be intentionally racist in his casting.

If Nikola Peltz was chosen before the auditions than the dynamic was set as Caucasian before a single person had auditioned for the movie and that does mean that the auditions weren't held in good faith and that people of color were not given fair consideration.

I agree, but just because a directors vision is to cast white people as part of the films aesthetic, does not mean racism. A directors number one goal is to have a film meet his vision, not to be PC. The same is true for any artist. If the creator's of the original cartoon are happy with it, which they seem to be, I don't see why there is such an uproar.

That would be my take. +^d

The creators are barred from responding by contract. However the director Giancarlo Volpe did comment and is vehemently opposed to the films casting. In response to the criticisms of the casting the creators posted an original piece of art with Aang and Momo reflecting his enthicity.

The series creators did explicitly state the ethnic origins of their characters. It's part of the series bible, and the treatments and promotions Nickelodeon created for the show. They had even hired cultural consultants to ensure that the content for the show wasn't inadvertently offensive.

Even Roger Ebert took offense to the casting in his answerman segment.
"My Answer: Wrong. The original series Avatar: The Last Airbender was highly regarded and popular for three seasons on Nickelodeon. Its fans take it for granted that its heroes are Asian. Why would Paramount and Shyamalan go out of their way to offend these fans? There are many young Asian actors capable of playing the parts."

Seeing a white kid taking part in Asian culture and adhering to Eastern philosophy more likely would make a white kid think hey I can be a part of and study Eastern traditions too. If it was an all Asian cast white kids may feel alienated and think that those cultures are not for them, but rather remnants of an inferior culture. Overall won't the movie encourage diversity?

Sometimes, it seems that no matter what a movie does it will be portrayed as racist. Take Disney's princess and the frog, Tiana character was originally supposed to be a slave, which would have been historically and culturally accurate, but people cried racism and she was changed to a waitress.

Some people are just too sensitive to race issues. The only thing it results in is studios going out of their way to ensure their movies are not offensive, often times at the cost of the story. Just take the movie for what it is and avoid race politics is my advice.

As it stands with whites recieving 69 percent of all roles and Asians one percent that is moot. Because its people of color feeling excluded more than 69 percent of the time. White children aren't suffering for heroes on television or cinema. Let alone examples aimed towards children, They have the Karate Kid, Three Ninjas, Forbiden kindgom, etc. There are dozens of films where a white lead takes part in an Asian cultural setting while relegating the characters of Asian persuasion to the background. This would have been the first wide release film for Paramount of 2010 to feature an Asian lead and very likely the only one. Now there are none. If the dynamic were reversed you would also reserve the right to point out the factual nature of that dynamic.