White Washing

[Jun-Dai Bates-Kobashigawa]

This reminds me a lot of the controversy around casting a white actor to
play Ged in the TV Earthsea adaptation (Goro Miyazaki's Ged is also very
caucasion-looking), though in that case Ged's dark skin was a matter of
great importance to LeGuin, whereas I'm not sure how much of a similar
'point' is being made by DiMartin and Konietzko.

Given that Hollywood's idea of the widest possible audience and the lowest
common denominator is a white male hero, the move makes sense.  TV can be
niche-targeted, but big-budget films can't be, and unless your hero is
Jackie Chan, Jet Li, or one of a handful of established-in-the-US martial
arts actors, then casting an Asian or Asian American as your hero qualifies
as niche targeting, since white people will have a bit of a barrier
identifying with the character (a barrier that Asian Americans, African
Americans, women, etc., are less likely to have regarding white
protagonists).  I am kind of surprised that they chose to make all three
heroes white.  That and choosing an Indian for the bad guy makes it seem
like they *want* protest websites and letter-writing campaigns.

It's unfortunate, but the trend seems to be getting worse rather than
better, despite the slightly increased awareness of Asian films in the
mainstream (Miyazaki, anime in general, Crouching Tiger, etc., and, if it
counts, Slumdog).

How many Japanese American movie actors can you name?  (that's probably why
John Cho gets to be Sulu)


Yours,
  Jun-Dai


On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Nornes, Mark <amnornes at umich.edu> wrote:

>  There has been some discussion over the years of Asian characters being
> played by Caucasians in American remakes. Here’s another one for the mill,
> from an article in the new Flow:
>
> "Fan Protests, Cultural Authenticity, and the Adaptation of Avatar: The
> Last Airbender" by Patricia Nelson (*http://flowtv.org/?p=4215*) A
> consideration of the fan backlash surrounding Paramount?s choice to cast
> white actors as Asian characters.
>
> Markus
>
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