DO NOT WANT

[cherry]

Cast (OF FAIL) for M Night Shyamalan's Avatar Movie

For the love of whatever deity you hold dear, this is made of more kind of fail than I can articulate. Luckily, rawles has done so for all of us.

Watch out for comments in the casting article -- there appear to be people trying to out-fail Shyamalan. Although, given where his credibility's been sitting after the last few 'movies,' it's possible that it's just him sitting there are valiantly defending himself against the uppity critics.

Comments

[elynross.livejournal.com]

*cries*

I did faintly hope it was going to be one of his good ones.

It's sadly funny to read the comments and play a kind of race bingo with them.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

Oh god. Did you see the 'Actually, Jesse McCartney's hair isn't naturally blonde, so it's totally okay' one? And the fantasy world crap?

I don't understand how they managed to whitewash the entire cast. Even the random kid they picked at a karate contest. I was all full of a springy, cheerful sort of hope, but I shall not be paying to see this. I wonder if M Night has actually seen the show, or if he was just told there were kids with arrows and scars on their foreheads, and they flew around on a water buffalo.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I did, omg. And the "they aren't asian! It's a different world! And they don't LOOK asian!" *cries*

He apparently discovered the show through his kids, who loved it. I... I just dunno. Maybe he tells himself it's colorblind casting, without realizing the problems, but... man.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

There's colourblind casting, and then there's 'replacing clearly Asian/Inuit characters with a bunch of white folks.' I just don't know why no one at the studio has pointed out his epic fail.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

Well, I think that for Hollywood, "colorblind casting" means that clearly it doesn't matter what the original races are, or the statistical representation of non-white races overall in movies, you pick the "best" person! And strangely the best people keep turning up white.

So the studios aren't the people in general who are going to say much of anything about race issues, I don't think. BAH.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'd always thought/assumed 'colourblind casting' to be for characters without a defined ethnicity -- cases where it was just the default assumption was, for some reason, white.

My ignorance, let me show you it. :( Of course, I also just learned that the 'one drop' rule was something people were serious about. It's contradictory reasoning. By that logic, anyone who has a single drop of Caucasian blood is white. I DON"T GET SOME PEOPLE.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

When I've seen it tossed around (usually as a defense of some casting), it seems to be saying the same thing people say (as I myself once said) when they say they're racially "colorblind," that they "don't see color," and yet have all these unquestioned assumptions and participate in aspects of white privilege without seeing it, operating as if white was the default. So that saying they don't pay any attention to race, they're "colorblind" when they cast, strangely ends up with mostly white casts, PoCs cast in secondary and/or stereotypical roles, and seldom as primary leads.

And re the one drop thing I KNOW. It doesn't go both ways, because the white is the PURE race!!! One drop, you're IMPURE. I've thought about this a lot, and it's baffling and upsetting. I suppose it's along the same lines as you drop any color into white, it's no longer pure white, but man. It's an exclusionary concept, rather than an inclusive one. Doesn't matter what you look like visually, how/where you were raised, any of it, and led/leads to the whole concept of passing.

The show that looked into the geneology of a variety of well-known black folks had one woman that never knew that her father was half-black, because he'd passed his whole life, and I don't know that his wife (both deceased) had even known. I don't remember how she came up, but the whole issue was just fascinating.

In conclusion: I think I'm pretty ignorant, and that bothers me

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

I am incredibly confused by people who treat race as a discrete variable. Pigment variation, in virtually any biological assessment, can only be treated as a phenotype of continuous expression. Culture could be argued to be semi continuous, but the idea of any sort of sharp dichotomy is fundamentally confusing to me.

Is that just my privilege talking? A fundamentally inappropriate attempt to apply scientific logic to a cultural phenomena? I feel like I'm speaking out of my ass, but on the most basic of levels, I don't understand.

So that saying they don't pay any attention to race, they're "colorblind" when they cast, strangely ends up with mostly white casts, PoCs cast in secondary and/or stereotypical roles, and seldom as primary leads.

Sometimes, I really kind of hate being a person, you know? People suck.

In other news, there was an interesting conversation at one of my places of work the other day, about over representation of minorities in local ads. Local TV, papers, university releases, that sort of thing. I've worked for university advancement/recruitment on campus, and it's not really something I'd noticed -- if there's a poster with four people, one of them tends to be white. It's not the case for all our promo material, but what got me thinking was the fact that I didn't noticed. At all. I should have noticed it as something that was good, right? Or at least notice?

I was looking at the ads on my bus the other day, and it was a decent breakdown. 28 people, of whom 11 were identifiably Caucasian, 8 looked to be of Native American decent, 7 were of various minorities, and 2 were of indeterminate ethnicity.

I really don't notice most of the time, and that bothers me, because I hate the colourblindness excuse. I'm starting to think that it's linked to the prosopagnosia, though, because it's only lately that I've been realizing how many ways that effects my life.

Basically: I have a mild form of facial blindness. It occurs most commonly with head injuries or autism spectrum, but sometimes crops up with ADHD. Basically, the facial recognition software in my brain doesn't work properly. Faces aren't distinct to me -- it takes repeated exposure before I recognize someone. If I see them outside of a situation where I expect them, or if they change a feature I use to recognize them (such as an extreme hair cut), I often won't recognize them. If my uncles, who I have seen on a regular basis, shaved off their beards, I would probably not know who they were. If I see someone from the side, or with their hair back, I often have to stare and think really hard before I figure out if I actually know them. It's really fucking awkward.

[raucousraven.livejournal.com]

SO. FAIL. GAH.

I am ...incoherent about this right now. How is it that the creators of a kids' show get it, and nobody else seems to?!

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

They whitewashed the entire cast! Including the kid they picked randomly at a karate tournament! FAIL.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhbwah? Shyamalan? Really?

I didn't know I could be this baffled.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

To clarify: I'd already heard about the race thing, and I think it's retarded. Though not especially more retarded than usual for Hollywood (the most liberal racists in the world? Could be!).

Their reasoning behind that kind of thing is what gets me. It's not, "Eww, black people!" or anything. It's, "Well, I don't know if people would want to watch a movie with a black lead who doesn't earn less than $10 million per gig."

But really. Shyamalan? Really?

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

It's, "Well, I don't know if people would want to watch a movie with a black lead who doesn't earn less than $10 million per gig."

That's a much more... genteel thing to say, but I find it almost as offensive in its subversiveness. "Well, we're not racist, but as for everyone else..."

But really. Shyamalan? Really?

Apparently, his kids really liked this show? I don't know -- I wasn't terribly enthused to begin with, given his recent output, but the idea of them managing to whitewash the entire cast, while maintaining a world fundamentally (and fairly respectfully) drawn from Asian and Inuit culture and history is offensive to me. I kind of want to cry.

Also, I'm afraid that the horror that this movie is going to be will prevent people from giving what I think of a brilliant series a fair chance. :(

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

It is an extraordinarily lame thing for them to go by. It's also a benchmark they've been using for decades. :P Freaking Hollywood.

Yeah, I...that's part of what astounded me about the casting choices. Shyamalan struck me as a guy who might, y'know, pay attention to the cultural aspects. It does not inspire me with any kind of confidence that this movie might be good.