More Airbender...

[nwhiker]

I read this review of The Last Airbender on the Seattle Times website, and ended up writing the author because of this:

At least Shyamalan cast the film well.

Ummm... No!

So I wrote him, and figured I'd post my letter here:

Hi Tom,

I saw your review of 'The Last Airbender' on the Seattle Times
website, and was pretty disappointed to read this:

| At least Shyamalan cast the film well

Cast the film well? He used a majority WHITE cast to portray characters in an Asian or strongly Asian inspired world, and that's called good casting? Zuko was supposed to be White too, but after protests he changed the once-villain to an Indian.

This is not good casting. This is white-washing.

People have said it better than I can: check out a few of these
sites:
http://www.racebending.com
and
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/the-last-airbender-primer/

The fact that the villains and extras were all other-than-White tells me that they knew they were dealing with a story set in an Asian type culture, but the allure of White actors was... just too much.

My spouse, children, and I all enjoyed the cartoon series, but we won't be going to see the movie. My children are disappointed, but there are a few stands worth taking :) and to me, this one most certainly is. There was no reason for an -essentially- all White cast beyond... racism perhaps.

Comments

[quiznitediva.livejournal.com]

I know that you aren't wild about Facebook but there are quite a few "Boycott the Last Airbender" groups who would love to see this letter. I am all for not going but Ned doesn't think that it's fair of me to keep Spike from seeing it. Whether I can convince him that Spike will learn a valuable lesson about respect and humanity by not going to the film remains to be seen.