Comments

1. vcious wrote:

   This phenomenon puts me off watching these movies utterly.

   Tangentially related, I recently had a friend recommend some German movies to me, among them from the late 50’s which had German (white) people acting as Indians. I looked at some of it on youtube and turned it off because I knew even if the portrayal of PoC wouldn’t annoy me, the orientalism would.

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 12:00 pm ¶

2. Iggles wrote:

   This is infuriating… Excellent post. Kudos on rounding up so many examples. It’s sickening that this is still happening today.

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 12:28 pm ¶

3. Celeste wrote:

   This just makes me angry. I’m not giving any movie that erases asian characters any money, ever.

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 12:40 pm ¶

4. Jha wrote:

   Those examples are mostly yellowface. Remember the brownface in Short Circuit?

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 1:04 pm ¶

5. atlasien wrote:

   It’s pretty depressing to note that the lower level of yellowface is positively correlated to the higher level of whiteification.

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 1:12 pm ¶

6. Piper wrote:

   This is infuriating, especially because I feel like it’s just a fraction of the list– especially in ‘big’ movies. The King And I (Yule Brynner was russian) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Mickey Rooney is white) also come to mind.

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 1:13 pm ¶

7. Alpha Asian wrote:

   They do this whitewashing with regards to history too. Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun are always portrayed as Caucasian in movies and history documentaries (?!) despite the fact they were Asian.

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 1:24 pm ¶

8. shail wrote:

   what about jake gyllenahall as the “prince of persia”?

   slap on some self tanner and he’s ready to be “persian”

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 1:30 pm ¶

9. octopod wrote:

   Wow, Ged is HELLA white in that trailer. Unfortunate. I always mentally had most of the people looking kind of Indonesian.

   …At least Ogion isn’t white?

   Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 1:49 pm ¶

10. J wrote:

    AUGH!

    As an actor of color – this. pisses. me. off.

    It makes me grateful I know how to write.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 1:54 pm ¶

11. Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:

    and a WHITE woman is playing an Indian princess in PRINCE OF PERSIA. Let’s not even go there with Jack Gyllenhaal.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 1:55 pm ¶

12. Nishani wrote:

    puh-LEASE. Dont get me started on this. I’m starting to become the embodiment of the angry black woman on these issues. Forget anything pre-1960s, let’s just do this THIS year!

    Avatar (already mentioned)
    Dragonball Z (this one really makes my eye twitch)
    The Prince of Persia (Jake Gyllenhaal)

    and the latest and my favorite…..
    Keanu Reeves as what? Rama, Indian God in the epic tale Hanuman.

    Forget writing campaigns…..Can we say boycott? anyone? anyone?

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 2:12 pm ¶

13. Nadra wrote:

    Yes, Piper, Mr. Yunioshi (played by Mickey Rooney) in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” comes to mind. The casting was a blemish on an otherwise enjoyable film. One of the filmmakers said that he regrets this casting decision even today. Well, he should!

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 2:46 pm ¶

14. blaqbird wrote:

    well apparently the two leads have become British in Prince of Persia…they have British accents which is totally mind-boggling to me. Let’s hope they have a good reason for this….like Jake Gyllenhaal really ISN’T the Prince of Persia….

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 3:44 pm ¶

15. Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:

    Rex Harrison, a white Englishman, played a Siamese king in ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM (1946). I have the film on DVD. It’s a good movie, but yeah…

    ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 4:07 pm ¶

16. Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:

    @Nadra:

    yeah, I love BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S but that Mickey Rooney casting always curls up my blood everytime he appears onscreen.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 4:08 pm ¶

17. deathblossom wrote:

    Keanu Reeves as what? Rama, Indian God in the epic tale Hanuman.

    Whaaaat? BS!

    As for POP, they just rubbed salt in the wound with Old Jake. If you’re really going to go for the whitest dude you can find, throw some grime on him, and tell him not to shave, at least get a BAMF! Ugh.

    The Weapon is especially ridiculous (C’mon now, ZHOU?) and I think it’s disgusting how recently, I feel they’re just trying to cover their ass by “adapting” the work (read: keeping it exactly the same except suspiciously devoid of color) or playing fast and loose with justifying their casting based on their supposed whiteness in the original medium. It’s just so blatantly offensive and ignorant, it fuels an urge to succumb to violence (for me, anyway…).

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 5:23 pm ¶

18. Danny wrote:

    Some of these movies aren’t good in general.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 5:31 pm ¶

19. Ilana wrote:

    I don’t know how to reach you guys, because it appears that the team@racialicious.com email address you have listed isn’t recognized. I’d really like to send an email, so please please please let me know how I can get in touch!

    Thank you!

    Mod Note – That’s correct. Double check the spelling, I’ve been receiving emails addressed to team all day long. If it still doesn’t work, send it to latoya@racialicious.com and I’ll forward it on. – LDP

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 6:52 pm ¶

20. Smugness wrote:

    I don’t wanna be “that guy”, but isn’t Goku an alien from outer space?

    I haven’t seen the movie, but it seems like it still belongs in the “Asians Fawning Over White Dude” genre of films (Forbidden Kingdom, The Lost Empire) .

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 7:06 pm ¶

21. Eurasian Sensation wrote:

    As an Indonesian myself, the one that actually pisses me off the most is Linda Hunt in “The Year of Living Dangerously”. The yellowface is bad enough, but I can’t believe they thought a white WOMAN was the best person to portray an Indonesian-Chinese MAN. Is that the sort of regard they have for Asian masculinity? That is seven shades of f*cked up right there.

    Oh, and that picture of the actor in “The Weapon” makes me want to slap the kid’s grinning face. It’s certainly a slap in the face to all the Asians out there. And it’s in 2009. You’d think folks would have moved past this by now. Is this what it means to be all post-racial now?

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 7:10 pm ¶

22. GüeraLola wrote:

    @ Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist
    That reminded me when I was 11 or 12 I was massive Audrey Hepburn fan(still a am but not as obsessed) and I would go regularly to the form and talk about the movies. One massive topic was the issue of yellow face in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s many were disgusted at Mr. Yunioshi character. I can’t find the link of the form but it was very interesting and very racialicious friendly. I love the movie but I always skip the Mr. Yunioshi scenes. I read that in the novella, Mr. Yunioshi was a reference of Asain-American relations in America during WWII.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 8:46 pm ¶

23. Jay wrote:

    I don’t wanna be “that guy”, but isn’t Goku an alien from outer space?

    So’s Superman. Does that mean he can be Asian now (Dean Cain notwithstanding ‘cuz like probably a handful of people know about his heritage)?

    Why does “alien from outer space” automatically have to be white anyway?

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 8:53 pm ¶

24. justinslot wrote:

    Just to put the shoe on the other foot here for a moment–did you guys notice Tadanobu Asano being cast as Hogun the Grim in that upcoming Thor movie? Yes–a Japanese guy is playing a minor (and fictional) Scandinavian deity.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 8:56 pm ¶

25. Cat wrote:

    I just watched The Usual Suspects this week for the first time (meh) but one thing that drove me crazy was that Pete Postlethwaite, a Brit, played a character named Kobayashi—and one with a horribly inconsistent accent at that! Ugh. Is this just fear of the unknown on Hollywood’s part? And they call themselves liberals…

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 9:16 pm ¶

26. Smugness wrote:

    @Jay

    I was making reference to the fact that he’s referred to as a Japanese in the article. I was just kinda being pedantic.

    It’s pretty messed up, though, that most of the principal cast is Asian but they decided Goku should be a white guy.

    Also, since people are bringing up Prince of Persia, I like how they pulled a “Last Airbender” and made Ben Kingsley the villain. Classy.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 9:22 pm ¶

27. InJM wrote:

    I had no idea there was a live action Earthsea thing. I saw the trainwreck that as Ghibli’s interpretation and they both look to suffer from the same problem.

    @Jay, #23
    Because he’s named after a monkey and a carrot? Heck, if he was a real alien, he probably wouldn’t even be humanoid.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 9:34 pm ¶

28. Orville wrote:

    I did hear that Dev Patel is one of the leads in the Last Airbender. Although, the controversy with Dev Patel’s character is he is playing a bad guy Prince Zuko.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 10:17 pm ¶

29. D.Z. wrote:

    You forgot to mention the SNL episode where a white guy played the Chinese PM. And that HBO special on the tsunami which focused on white British victims.

    Posted 03 Dec 2009 at 10:53 pm ¶

30. Jen wrote:

    Eurasian Sensation,

    In “The Year of Living Dangerously,” Billy Kwan is supposed to be at least half white. In both the movie and the book, Billy Kwan had a Chinese father and an Australian mother. This gave him a connection to the Guy Hamilton character because he felt that they were both between two worlds. In the book, Guy Hamilton had English and American parents, but for the movie, Mel Gibson’s character became half Australian and half American, like in real life. Linda Hunt actually points out to Mel Gibson that they have the same eye color.

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 1:07 am ¶

31. Kat wrote:

    Though I overall enjoyed the “Firefly” sci-fi TV series, was anyone else squigged out by how (in a universe where every other sentence has at least of fragment from a Mandarin phrasebook) the only Asian actors we saw were very sporadic extras?

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 2:02 am ¶

32. sandeep wrote:

    it seems like when it comes to race we’re really far behind in film. i’m actually surprised things are so bad so recent. my question is is there any tendency to rewrite non-asian roles as asian? it might just be that we’re jumping the gun. with there being so few asians in america perhaps there arent enough actors for the role. there’s only so many movies jon cho can do.

    but i have to admit it does look bad. its hard not to look at those charicatured roles. asian characters distinctly played by whites. perhaps by erasing the asian role altogether they save face. but when seen against the backdrop of the history you can see where its coming from. and its not a good place.

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 3:12 am ¶

33. Rose wrote:

    @Orville: I think the controversy is also that they gave Dev Patel the role of a fair skinned character who was a villain.

    @Smugness: Yeah he’s an alien but if it was an American show Goku would’ve been cast as a white guy. The show and manga are clearly modeled after Japan.

    Keanu Reeves is playing Rama? And Gary Oldman as Ravana??? Oh but of coooourse it’s ok because Aamir Khan and Shilpa Shetty are in it. WTF?? That feels like a defilement of the Ramayana and I’m not even Hindu >.O

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 3:22 am ¶

34. m. wrote:

    Anna May Wong was turned down for one of the lead roles in The Good Earth – don’t know which one because I neither read nor watched the royal POS – which says it all, considering how well-known she was by that time.

    I hate Breakfast At Tiffany’s without even seeing it. It has more to do with Audrey Hepburn and her plain jane ass than Mickey Rooney, actually. That adored-by-all, “day-dreamy” look she always has on her face nauseates me.

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 4:42 am ¶

35. Christie wrote:

    Interesting site with a lot of pictures of “colorface”:

    http://www.themakeupgallery.org.uk/racial/index.htm

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 6:42 am ¶

36. karak wrote:

    @smugness: Goku is an alien, but as for his racial appearance, he’s actually Chinese. Dragonball is based off of Journey to the West, and Goku is Son Goku, the Monkey King. The world he inhabits is theis weird mix of Japanese/Chinese culture and mythos.

    Arguably, his racial casting should be Chinese, followed by Japanese, for greatest levels of accuracy. Even Indian would have been better than white, being that Buddhism is, you know, an Indian religion and they’re going to India in Journey to the West.

    Also, that movie was terrible and my heart wept for what they did to Piccolo, my first anime love. Who should also have been Asian.

    I love Avatar deeply, and the fact that the main cast is white is depressing. They finally broke down and make Zuko Indian, but the actor didn’t shave his head, so blergh.

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 7:45 am ¶

37. PatrickInBeijing wrote:

    It’s not as if Hollywood had been casting Asian actors and actresses as Romeo and Juliet, or Hamlet, or Lincoln or Washington or any major white roles, then this happens.

    The context is one in which Asians are locked out of most roles (Asian males usually being especially locked out of romantic roles, despite a very few welcome recent exceptions).

    And of course, the objectification of Asian females….. yech… i don’t recognize the real people I teach.

    It is disgusting, should be complained about, theatres can be picketed if it gets that far (I’ve done a number of these and they may not change Hollywood, but they do have educational value), films boycotted (I haven’t seen many of those complained about).

    Part of the struggle is to 1) support POC-American film makers 2) support international films from developing countries.

    There are festivals (SF Asian International Film Festival is a good one)
    http://festival.asianamericanmedia.org/

    They showcase Asian films from around the world, including those made in the USA.

    Expecting white folks to do the “right” thing is unrealistic. I think it is important to fight for and build support for POC films inside the US.

    1) Most major cities have one or more “art” movie houses. Introduce yourself to the folks in charge and suggest they consider showing films by POC Americans and by developing world film makers.

    2) Educate yourself and become a local voice for such. Consider free lancing a film review to your local newspapers, radio or tv stations.

    3) Try to get local universities to run festivals of developing nations cinema.

    4) Try to move some into high schools, where appropriate.

    5) Look at your local cable access channels, can you get a show on them to talk about this. Dunno, but maybe.

    I think relying on the oppressor to change is the least realistic option, instead, fighting to develop and build alternative institutions is important.

    peace,

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 9:47 am ¶

38. Karen Wester Newton wrote:

    It’s all about the box office. In TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON, which is set in Okinawa, they had Japanese actors for all the parts except Sakini, the narrator, who was played by … Marlon Brando!

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049830/

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 12:11 pm ¶

39. pat wrote:

    m.; it was worse than that. Anna Mae Wong was cast in a chief supporting role in The Good Earth. But the studio decided that her authentic looks would draw adverse attention to the leads’ yellowface make-up, so the word came down that the ENTIRE cast had to be Caucasians in make-up, so that every-one would look consistent. (At least the Charlie Chan movies cast real Asians as Charlie’s sons.)
    I don’t have a problem for the most part with these old movies. Hollywood was what it was. If you want to sell a big expensive movie about Genghis Khan, you need a big name to star in it; and there were no big Asian stars in Hollywood at the time.
    I am much more appalled by the white-ification of roles today. they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Casting white actors while avoiding the stain of yellowface. And it’s not like the actors in 21 and Avatar are big names that will draw audiences to the theatres.
    The biggest irony however is that they aren’t doing this because of American audiences, but International. South American moviegoers wont go to see an Asian lead. Chinese audiences won’t go for an Arabic hero. etc. But everybody is used to White stars.

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 3:27 pm ¶

40. JL wrote:

    I love Get Smart, the ’60s TV show, but the character of Harry Hu makes me cringe every time. Between the yellowface and the horrible fake Chinese accent, I can barely watch his scenes – luckily he’s not in many episodes.

    Bringing up Keanu Reeves in this thread seems a bit out of place – he’s not (just) White. His father is Chinese and Native Hawaiian, and his mother is a White Englishwoman. There’s still an obvious problem with his playing Rama, but it’s not strictly white-ification.

    Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 4:36 pm ¶

41. Bianca wrote:

    Hm. More about DragonBall Z – I think I am going to be the bad person too….I don’t think this totally belongs here.

    I never really identified the characters in that show as Asian – (aside from Gohan’s momma) partially because one of them (Vegeta) was green, some were pink, some plain ol creatures, not to mention some of them had tails. Also, there was that issue of them transforming…..
    The Sayans (and half Sayans) -heroes and villains alike (Goku, Gohan, Tenks, and Vegeta) all became blue eyed and blond haired down to the eyebrows when they became Super Sayians. I am pretty sure when I was watching the series, for almost the whole end portion, the Gohan / GoTenks characters were blonde/blue almost all the time. They looked pretty white to me. I always raised an eyebrow about that, but that is how it was written..can we be mad that a blonde/blue is now playing him? Granted, he was half asian and half alien in the comics, but he sure favored the alien side. From the tail to the glowing hair…..

    I am not sure how the manga differs from the anime, but that’s just what I saw. I could just imagine if I drew a Black superhero that turned white when his powers came into effect LOL!

    Most of the other ones are gross. I am just being an anime dork above. My apologies.

    Posted 05 Dec 2009 at 4:12 am ¶

42. Wintermute wrote:

    @justinslot: So what? Maybe it’s time that characters be portrayed by other races sometimes-if The Last Airbender can have all of it’s POC characters be white, then the Thor movie can have an Asian play one of the Asgardians.

    In fact, I’d love to see more POC’s play traditional roles, starting with Zoe Saldana as Lois Lane in any future Superman movie directed by J.J. Abrams! (Gee, I wonder how white America will take that?)

    Posted 05 Dec 2009 at 6:58 am ¶

43. Jen wrote:

    @Jen (er, the other one, not me, obviously): Billy Kwan is a) still as you point out, biracial, and b) A MAN. How does casting a white woman possibly make that work?

    To be fair, the film was made while Soeharto was in power, and wasn’t even shot in Jakarta, for obvious reasons (I think it was filmed in either Manila or Bangkok), and sure, maybe they couldn’t find a biracial Indonesian dwarf to play the role. But surely they could have done better than a white female.

    Look, Hunt is great in the role, and I think she won an Oscar for it, but it seems astounding at the time that it didn’t occur to anyone that they might want to look for either a bloke or at least an ethnic Chinese-Malay woman to play the role, if they were that concerned about height (which I think is a crap excuse anyway).

    Secondly – seriously, you’re comparing Mel Gibson being American/Australian vs Guy being English/Australian and Billy being Chinese/Malay/Australian.

    Posted 05 Dec 2009 at 9:42 am ¶

44. Cindy wrote:

    You know, I took an excellent course on this at the University of Michigan, called “Asians in American Cinema”. We learned all about the trials that Asian-American actors have had to go through to make it in the business, and it’s really disheartening to see it’s still going on today. The entertainment business is finally allowing un-emasculated Asian male characters in primetime with roles such as Jin in Lost, but we still have a ways to go. It’s too bad that all these Asian roles are being rewritten for white actors, rather than being filled with Asian actors. There are a lot of us out here waiting for roles.

    Thank you for the great writeup.

    Posted 06 Dec 2009 at 12:39 am ¶

45. Callie wrote:

    You will have to beat me up because I thought the White woman who played the Asian male in “The Year of Living Dangerously” was fantastic! I didn’t know her gender until I looked up the character on the internet (just watched the movie recently).

    Posted 06 Dec 2009 at 1:16 am ¶

46. Ico wrote:

    To all those doubting the example of Dragonball, I’m just chiming in to echo Karak above. Western viewers are probably unfamiliar with the Chinese classic on which Dragonball is loosely based, but it’s *very* well known in Japan. Journey to the West, or “Saiyuki” (there have been other anime inspired by it–if you’re an anime buff, you’ve probably heard the name before) is one of the four great classics of Chinese literature. It tells the story of Son Goku, the monkey king, complete with cloud traveling and extending bo.

    So yes, Goku’s origins are Chinese. Obviously DBZ takes a huge departure from the classic story by making him an alien, but the design of the character is clearly inspired by Son Goku the monkey king (down to, as I pointed out, the cloud traveling and extending bo). Also, the black hair and dark eyes of *all* the Saiyans are pretty indicative of their race. So are their habits and style of dress (see Chichi’s clothes), the foods they eat (which they always eat with chopsticks, etc). So is the landscape they inhabit (which is drawn to resemble a fantasy-China).

    Bulma/Bloomers, on the other hand, is drawn as a foreigner with her fair hair and blue eyes. If Goku were white, he would look like Trunks.

    Posted 06 Dec 2009 at 9:55 pm ¶

47. Bagelsan wrote:

    I did hear that Dev Patel is one of the leads in the Last Airbender. Although, the controversy with Dev Patel’s character is he is playing a bad guy Prince Zuko.

    I find that the least controversial bit of casting, actually — Zuko is “bad” in that he is initially very angsty and pretty dickish, but very quickly he turns into the guy that every teenage fangirl most wants to boink/the classic heroic figure (seriously: stoic exiled prince-with-heart-of-gold with evil father who he has to try and overthrow to save the world? *Not* really a villain.)

    If they could have just followed up on that by casting *everyone* as a PoC like they should have then I would be perfectly content.

    Posted 07 Dec 2009 at 3:59 am ¶

48. Medusa wrote:

    m. – I don’t see the big fucking deal about Audrey Hepburn either. Maybe it’s because I’m not American, but I am entirely convinced that it’s because she’s white that America was so in love with her. There is no black, Latino, Asian, Native or any other kind of women known as an “iconic” American woman or a “classic beauty”, obviously because white people are the regular people and the rest of us are abnormal.

    Kat- Yeah, I was.

    Anyway, the whitewashing of Asian cast members disgust me as well. The idea that there aren’t enough Asian American actors is absolutely RIDICULOUS. I’ve heard it before, but it’s completely ridiculous, considering LA has a relatively high concentration of Asians, and in the specific example of 21, one of my friends seriously made that argument (the argument that I can’t name any Asian American actors who could have filled that role, therefor there are none.) Like they couldn’t just have cast an unknown Asian American instead of going to ENGLAND and finding an unknown white guy instead?

    Posted 07 Dec 2009 at 10:24 am ¶

49. m. wrote:

    @Medusa:
    Maybe it’s because I’m not American, but I am entirely convinced that it’s because she’s white that America was so in love with her.
    No, trust me; your not being from America does not affect the truthfulness in that statement. I realize that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, “it’s all subjective”, etc., but let’s get real: this phenomenon also applied to Jennifer Aniston, who also wasn’t particularly striking, yet in the ’90s it was OMG SHE’S SOOO PRETTY!!! all over the damn place.
    But most of the women I’ve considered “classic” beauties were “abnormal” (not white) like us. And the white actresses I’ve rooted for have been considered “bad” girls or threatening, somehow.

    So whatever to all that Audrey Hepburn noise.

    Posted 07 Dec 2009 at 1:04 pm ¶

50. Reiter wrote:

    There actually was an Asian in the role of Romeo in a retelling of Romeo and Juliet – Jet Li in Romeo must die. Granted, it’s a fast and loose interpretation of the classic (spliced in with gang warfare and martial arts), but there you have it. I was just disappointed that Jet Li’s character Han never got the chance to kiss Aaliyah’s character but reportedly it was due to Li’s discomfort doing any romantic scenes (I don’t recall him kissing anyone either in any of his Asian/period movies).

    The whitewashing of distinctly Asian roles just smacks of cultural appropriation. Our culture and martial arts are cool enough to use by white folks but the actual people are not (unless you’re a hawt objectified Asian female for the white male lead to rescue/bed, of course). If anything, actual Asian faces are reduced to villains or backdrop scenery to prop up the white leads.

    This is what irked me about shows like Firefly (which I did enjoy, admittedly – but the Chinese cultural theft for use by white folks on Joss Whedon’s part was just so freakin’ obvious) and makes me angry with Hollywood BS stunts like Last Airbender. Plus the kid they did find to play Aang has this creepy stare that puts me right off and flies in the face of Aang’s happy-go-lucky, always laughing/smiling character. And reimagining the Inuit characters as lily white Scandinavians or something is just as lazy and silly.

    The only few rays of hope are characters like Jin and Demitri Noh, and a sprinkling of a few other Asian faces in the media.

    Posted 07 Dec 2009 at 1:40 pm ¶

51. Ico wrote:

    Re: Dev Patel, this is another element of the casting that drives me crazy. Indian =/= East Asian. The people of the Fire Nation are clearly inspired by Chinese and Japanese culture, down to some of the names (Zhao) and accents (Iroh). Casting an Indian guy in the role does not make sense. It doesn’t make sense culturally, it doesn’t even make sense visually because Indians have very different features from East Asians.

    We are not a monolith. Nothing about Patel’s casting is right.

    Posted 07 Dec 2009 at 2:19 pm ¶

52. Reiter wrote:

    There actually was an Asian in the role of Romeo in a retelling of Romeo and Juliet – Jet Li in Romeo Must Die. Granted, it’s a fast and loose interpretation of the classic (spliced in with gang warfare and martial arts), but there you have it. I was just disappointed that Jet Li’s character Han never got the chance to kiss Aaliyah’s character but reportedly it was due to Li’s discomfort doing any romantic scenes (I don’t recall him kissing anyone either in any of his Asian/period movies).

    The whitewashing of distinctly Asian roles just smacks of cultural appropriation. Our culture and martial arts are cool enough to use by white folks but the actual people are not (unless you’re a hawt objectified Asian female for the white male lead to rescue/bed, of course). If anything, actual Asian faces are reduced to villains or backdrop scenery to prop up the white leads.

    This is what irked me about shows like Firefly (which I did enjoy, admittedly – but the Chinese cultural theft for use by white folks on Joss Whedon’s part was just so freakin’ obvious) and makes me angry with Hollywood BS stunts like Last Airbender. Plus the kid they did find to play Aang has this creepy stare that puts me right off and flies in the face of Aang’s happy-go-lucky, always laughing/smiling character. And reimagining the Inuit characters as lily white Scandinavians or something is just as lazy and silly.

    The only few rays of hope are characters like Jin and Demitri Noh, and a sprinkling of a few other Asian faces in the media.

    Posted 08 Dec 2009 at 2:48 am ¶

53. Sandra wrote:

    I really enjoyed “Avatar the last airbender” when it was on TV but I was very disappointed about the lack of asian casting. I am actually black british and I sick of hollywood pulling these kind of stunts !!!!!

    Posted 08 Dec 2009 at 9:28 pm ¶

54. Lavetta Cannon wrote:

    Even though I’m African-American, I get totally outraged whenever I see this going on -especially “Charlie Chan” movies. When I was a kid, I was so excited when I heard about these series until I saw it and the horrible make-up that Charlie himself had b/c he was WHITE and not ASIAN. I was like WTF?! I find it totally offensive…just my two cents…

    Posted 09 Dec 2009 at 2:40 am ¶

55. Bagelsan wrote:

    Ico: (I’m white so my opinion doesn’t carry a lot of weight re the casting, but) I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt on any non-white casting, in a way; the show played a bit fast and loose with East Asian culture anyways (mixing it up and sticking in Inuit and like 1 Indian-ish guy) so I don’t see a big problem with playing around with the ethnicity of the cast either. I just want more freaking PoC, even if they aren’t as perfectly accurate to the show as possible. Patel might have been a better Sokka than Zuko, though, he seems to smile too much to act so pissy. :p

    Posted 09 Dec 2009 at 4:14 am ¶

56. Gigi wrote:

    This disgusts and infuriates me, but I do want to point out that Buckaroo Banzai is bi-racial. His mother is white and his father is Japanese.

    This doesn’t excuse not casting a biracial actor, however.

    Posted 01 Jan 2010 at 10:49 pm ¶