Re: Avatar: The Last Airbender Movie
Well this shouldn't imply that there aren't any talented ethnic actors, but how many talent actors of these specific races are the right age group and right for the part. I'd be willing to bet that directors would believe that to be a very small number and decide to have the parameters more open.
If this is going to be a movie based on an existing property, you'd think that keeping an open mind means assuming that there ARE actors of the right ethnicity and age group, rather than thinking that non-Asians be allowed to enter just cause it is believed that keeping the parameters flexible --- something I'd ordinarily endorse in world where Ralph Fiennes can play Polish men and Sandra Oh can play Japanese women --- because it puts an entry barrier against the Asians that could be cast.
What I'm saying is that this is not an accusation that white people are being valorized but that Asians, but that Asians who would be ideal for an explicitly non-white cast must now compete with whites when they really ought not have to do so.
This isn't
Memoirs of a Geisha, where marketing considerations permit the flexibility of Chinese playing Japanese in order to guarantee that an expensive arthouse picture draws ticket sales. It's a licensed property in which people have come to see Aang, Zuko, et al.
Additionally, I find it ludicrous to think that no other Asian actors exist that fit these requirements --- they could be supporting actors from other Hollywood films, or Asian-American indie pictures, or Asian-American faces from TV commercial spots or Asian-American models or Asian-Americans in the theater circuit.
There's a much larger Asian-American acting pool out there than this bit of casting suggests, and that includes performers skewing close to the right age group for this, and all this proves is how blind the casting producers have been in recognizing this.
Random said:
So just on average they would be more likely to have a white cast.
That's true. But that statistical fact should have already been thrown out of the casting process because they should be looking for Asian performers. By opening it to a broad race spectrum, they've skewed it in favor of these statistics, which is weird because it's a bunch of non-whites. It's like saying there are more straight actors in Hollywood so it's perfectly okay for gay actors to take a back seat to straight actors in playing gay roles.
