All white Avatar, like all white Earthsea, is just a bad idea

[rymenhild]

Via innerbrat: There's a letter-writing campaign aimed at convincing the producers of The Last Airbender film to change their projected casting. (The rumored cast is all white. The characters of the original TV show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, are very much not.)

I just took a half hour of what should have been dissertation time to write a letter for the campaign.

Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall
c/o Paramount Pictures Corporation
5555 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038

December 11, 2008

Dear Ms. Kennedy and Mr. Marshall:

I understand you are the producers of The Last Airbender, the upcoming film based on the creative, thoughtful, well-written and very carefully designed animated TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender. When you chose to produce the film, you must have understood that the source material had the potential to become a successful movie.

I really enjoyed the animated series Avatar. I watched the first two seasons as reruns on Nicktoons and on DVD rental and I purchased the third season. I am considering purchasing the first and second seasons so that I can watch them over again. I’m not the only person I know who loves Avatar and is willing to pay for it. Avatar is very popular among my group of friends. We’re mostly single women in our twenties (give or take a few years), highly educated and with enough disposable income to buy DVDs and collectible items, watch movies in theaters and go to media conventions. We sit around, in person or in Internet chatrooms, and talk about how much we enjoy seeing Toph grumble and Sokka come up with clever ideas. We discuss the ways in which Aang’s culture resembles the cultures of Tibet, and the Inuit elements in Sokka and Katara’s homeland.

We’re thrilled by the way that the girls of Avatar are just as strong, just as powerful, just as interesting as the boys. We adore the animators’ decision to create a multiracial, multicultural world. We love having heroes who look Asian, Inuit, non-European, and who belong to cultures that have more in common with Asian cultures than with European ones.

Avatar teaches us to look beyond Eurocentric models of heroism and Eurocentric modes of narrative. If I ever have children, once they grow old enough, I’ll certainly show them Avatar, because the lessons of the series are lessons I want them to know. I want my children to learn that whatever their gender, their color, their religion, they can achieve whatever they choose to achieve. I want them to learn to value what they can learn from different cultures – their own cultures, their friends’ cultures, even the cultures of the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom, even the culture of the Fire Nation.

That’s why I’m upset, and why many of my friends are upset, by the Last Airbender casting recently leaked on the Internet. We wouldn’t object to one or two white characters in the main cast. However, making all the protagonists white loses something very important from the original Avatar. If the actors and actresses are all of European descent, I am going to boycott the movie, and I’m not going to be the only one. I beg you, as the producers of The Last Airbender, to reconsider your decisions and choose non-white actors and actresses. Respect the amazing sources you’re working with, and respect your audience.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
[rymenhild]

Comments

[gramarye1971]

Very, very well said. And many thanks for providing the postal information -- I can certainly spare a stamp for this.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh great - did they learn nothing from Earthsea?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Apparently not.

[just-ruth.livejournal.com]

Well said indeed! This version of the Avatar sounds almost as absurd as the attempt to make a movie of "the Dark Is Rising" and have all the leads be American. . .

Which is very sad.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

It isn't that bad yet. We haven't heard that the plot's going to be massacred; we just know about the actors.

So far, that is.

[just-ruth.livejournal.com]

"Wait," she said with dark cynicism. "Wait."

[genarti]

Oh, very well said.

Given this casting, I have very few hopes for the script to be true to the spirit of the series either, but I'll still do my part and write in, and hope. Because an all-white cast is a travesty.