Sorry Sammi, but No. The land your ancestors took was not “useless for the purpose of the ‘natives’”. Those “natives” you refer to moved around. Just because they weren’t there when you arrived, doesnt mean it wasnt theirs or wasnt wanted or wasnt used. Those “natives” were mankinds early environmentalists: use the land for a while, move on to let it recover. Your take on history is analogous to a thief coming accross a house whose owners have gone to the coast for the summer and deciding that the house is now his because it is “useless for the purposes of the [owners]“. I think not.

There’s an ole African proverb that’s apposite to your take on African history. It says: “Until the lion tells its tale, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter…”
So yes, your history books may glorify your hunt, but be aware that they dont record the lions roar…

I declare the movie a failure as long as it has a single white actor in a leading role. This is equivalent as trying to cast Storm (from X-men) as a white woman. It requires changing the story. Since the mythology of the Avatar-universe is very obviously not European-based at all, inserting those of European descent into the main leads completely changes the story. Not only that, the point you brought up–brown people killing brown people–infuriates the ever-loving hell out of me.

You’d have to be eight different kinds of stupid to not realize the huge racist problems inherent in white-washing a story about non-white people and their cultures and then casting non-whites (doesn’t matter which non-whites, because the other is the the other, right?) only in major roles in which they are the villains. I wish I could say that this is rare, but it’s inherent in almost every major action movie.

It’s a total double-standard. If Hollywood was producing a movie about the French Revolution, they would not cast an obviously non-European person for the role of Louis XVI. They’d never ever do it, because it would obviously be historically inaccurate. But historical and cultural accuracy is only important for whites, right? No problem, let’s just cast mostly white people to play roles that are obviously not for white people. Otherwise, you’d have to cast those icky non-white people and pay them and see them be visible in Hollywood as real actors instead of disgusting caricature of non-white exotic backwardness!

Barf.

Gah. I’m just sick about this, and especially about the fact that it’s being directed by a PoC.

Dag!

Can I just add how much I hate hate hate the casting of PoC as villians in otherwise white worlds? Sci-fi & fantasy is so rife with this–and also more likely than many other genres to create Outright Evil villains and to kill them. (I’m not talking about Avatar the animated series here.)

As a non-white person living in NZ? Co-sign. And I’m sick to death of seeing Cliff Curtis being the interchangeable and apparently universal ‘everybrownman’. Because all brown people look the same. *eyeroll*

TheDeviantE wrote:
“One other thing I noticed in the casting of Africans as Earth Nation people: It’s totally a “captain planet” move. It reminds me so much of how Storm (in X-Men) and Kwame (in Captain Planet) are Africans and thus super de-duper in touch with nature. Oh and they’re brown and so is dirt it’s such a good coincidence! OMGEEZ.”

Ugh. But you’re right TheDeviantE. That’s totally what it is – Captain Planet for the 21st century, instead of it’s patronising brand of racist tokenism being left well behind in the 20th century where it belongs. Who on earth wants Avatar to be Captain Planet redux? *shudders*

I know that the creators are American, as are the voice actors (who used to jarr on me from time to time, save for Mako, though it never made any sense for Uncle Iroh to be the *only* one with his accent, while the others including his own relatives had these broad, Anglo-Ammerican accents…)

But visually, the ethnic and racial make-up of the Avatar world clearly doesn’t mirror North America’s so I don’t see what African Americans are doing in it, even as I appreciate that they get little representation (positive or negative) in Western fantasy. Is it really that hard to get Asian and Inuit leads for this?

And the fact that the leads will remain reliabley white is going to be all the more laughable when there is a riot of convenient ethnic ‘colour’ in the background. If everybody else is not white, then how (and why) the heck are they there? Is Toph (Earthbender) going to be the magical, (yet inexplicably) white girl in a sea of brown fellow Earthbenders? If so, are they going to try and pass her off as an albino?

How the heck is this even going to make any sense whatsoever? I love the illogical lengths people are willing to go to and the knots they are willing to twist their mind into in order to uphold racism.

Highlights High Five is a magazine for little kids and the characters in the recurring “Tex and Indi” stories recently magically became white with a new illustrator. My son was very upset by this and I emailed the publishers to express my concern. They emailed back to apologize and say that they were working with the new illustrator to address the problem, because the characters were supposed to be Hispanic, and that they wanted this to be clear to their readers. It was a bit more eloquent than that but – no excuses, no ducking the issue.

Okay, Avatar on…

I will not be seeing this horrible sham of a movie, and neither will anyone else I know. I hope someone gets organized boycotts and protests together!