The ‘Racebending’ Casting Controversy
The controversy has been brewing ever since the cast was announced for M. Night Shyamalan’s adaptation of the hit Nickelodeon show, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” – and as the movie’s release gets closer, you can likely expect to hear a lot more about the film’s purported “racebending.”
Leading the activism charge: the Racebending.com website. By way of introduction, here is timeline they provide of the series and the movie (including its casting), and following are some excerpts from a recent explanatory letter the activists sent to the President of Paramount Pictures:
Avatar: The Last Airbender featured characters of color, and the film adaptation was an opportunity for Paramount to develop leading talent from Asian American and Inuit American communities—groups the Screen Actors Guild has acknowledged as underrepresented, particularly in leading and heroic roles. Only 1.8% of lead roles in Hollywood go to actors of Asian descent and less than 1% of lead roles go to actors of Native American descent. Yet, Airbender lead casting breakdowns worded as “Wanted: Caucasian or any other ethnicity” failed to provide adequate outreach to communities of color during lead casting. And the production’s specification of “Caucasian” and the initial casting of all four leads with white actors further reinforced Paramount’s failure to extend the rare opportunity to be a lead heroic character to minority actors. The casting of The Last Airbender exemplifies the “glass ceiling” that pervades Hollywood casting.
Of course, that’s one side to the story. Io9.com offers Shyamalan’s view, in this interview:
When we were casting, I was like, “I don’t care who walks through my door, whoever is best for the part. I’m going to figure it out like a chessgame.” Ideally we separate the nations ethnically — ideally. I didn’t know how or what it was going to be. And it was so fluid. For example if you found a great brother, [but] he didn’t go with my favorite Katara, then we couldn’t use him. Theoretical things like that. There was an Ang that we really loved, but he was like 5’10.” There’s all kinds of issues that come to the table physically. And I had a board of all the people that I was considering, the seven or eight. There was, at one time, a Chinese Sokka and Katara, and they were over here. One of them was a better actor than the other, and so I was gathering my pros and cons. I was without an agenda, and just letting it come to the table. Noah is a photo double from the cartoon. He is spot on. I didn’t know their backgrounds, and to me Noah had a slightly mixed quality to him. So I cast the Airbenders as all mixed-race. So when you see the monks, they are all mixed. And it kind of goes with the nomadic culture and the idea that over the years, all nationalities came together.
Whatever you may say about the process, it’s clear just by his answers that Shyamalan’s had a well-thought-out rationale for how he casted the film. The film news site UGO.com seemed to pick up on this as well, saying essentially as much in their “primer” to understanding the controversy:
Racebending.com argues that Katara and Sokka are clearly of Inuit heritage, and Aang, who can certainly pass for “mixed race” by his physical appearance, is nevertheless a clear depiction of Asian culture. Shyamalan argues that his film is the most culturally diverse tent-pole ever made, and that his casting decisions were based on a) finding the best performers and b) maneuvering appropriate races to the different “nations” on the Airbender mythos. […] What makes this controversy so fascinating is that it isn’t, if you’ll forgive the expression, a clear expression of black and white. Avatar: The Last Airbender, created by two Caucasians, was a show that borrowed heavily from all sorts of world cultures and philosophies. M. Night Shyamalan is one of the most successful directors of color working in Hollywood. There is dismay that the only characters of color in The Last Airbender are villains, but should the film continue through the full story arc we’ll meet other heroes of other races (and some of our original baddies will be redeemed.) What’s clear is that the characters of Aang, Katara and Sokka mean a lot to a lot of people. Heck, they mean a lot to me and I am not a member of an underrepresented minority in film. To many, The Last Airbender is a missed opportunity, to others, despite protestations to the contrary, it is a simple business decision on how to cast for a multimillion dollar movie.
Obviously it’s a touchy subject to some, and you can bet there will be opinions flying about it. Me? I have none (or at least none that I’m sharing). I’m a huge fan of the cartoon series, but also respect the process filmmakers have to go through to get things on screen. And yes, I’m sure there’s an ideal out there that all involved with the film would have loved. But as Jordan Hoffman, of UGO, noted: there’s nothing black and white about any of this.
A final, tangentially related bit: Media guru Henry Jenkins has an excellent look at how fan Lorraine Sammy came to become a fan activist and help run Racebender.com.