Racebending.com has received two statements from two staff members who worked on the original animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Here’s the first of the two. Earlier this month, Professor S.L. Lee spoke out against racebending on San Francisco’s 94.1 KPFA radio. Lee’s statement today confirms fan speculation that Chinese calligraphy has been cut from The Last Airbender and will be replaced with a gibberish language.
I just received words from the movie producers. They are not going to use Chinese calligraphy at all, replacing it with unreadable symbols. I won’t be participating in the movie.
It is not only a disappointment on the cast. They are removing all the successful elements of the original TV series. I think that would keep a lot of Asian audience away.
I am disappointed to learn that the Avatar movie has removed the successful cultural elements of the original Avatar TV series. Whether this is a right decision will be seen in the box office.
- Professor Siu-Leung Lee, cultural consultant, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Fans familiar with the series know that traditional Chinese calligraphy was an important part of not only the show’s aesthetic, but also it’s plot development and world building.
Lee also said:
“Chinese calligraphy is not only appreciated by Chinese, it is also a language understood by many East Asian countries. Quite a few of them are intensifying an effort to learn the language. Its aesthetics have influenced many western artists, including Picasso and Matisse.”
East Asian Calligraphy is a significant component of the animated series’s pan-Asian fantasy world. Because it was not made up squiggles, but an actual language that could be dissected at length, it brought a lot of verismilitude and believability to the world of the Four Nations. Given the ubiquity and spread of Hanzi in Ancient Asia, it made a lot of sense to make traditional Chinese the universal language of the Avatar world.
In addition to being in the series title/logo and the ending card of the last episode, “The End”, Chinese calligraphy is also used liberally to depict aspects of the Avatar world. This includes writing signs, wanted posters, books, ancient artifacts, and other plot devices that call for the depiction of a writing system.
[source: Avatar Wiki
The art of Chinese calligraphy itself is given it’s due in Season 3, when Master Piandao teaches Sokka that the dexterity involved in mastering calligraphy can be applied to other tasks, like swordfighting.
Piandao: When you write your name, you stamp the paper with your identity. You must learn to use your sword to stamp your identity on a battlefield. Remember, you cannot take back a stroke of the brush, or a stroke of the sword.
Replacing a real, eons-old written language with made up squiggles erases a lot of the franchise’s identity. Using generic, fantasy-fare un-decipherables wipes out lot of the culture and authenticity from The Last Airbender–and that will be hard for them to take back.
You can discuss this new development at the racebending livejournal community.
Ugh… seriously?
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.
That’s just sad. I really HOPE it’s just a rumor, but I highly doubt it.
… WHAT?
That’s just stupid. I mean, half the stuff they would need chinese characters for – signs in buildings, wanted posters, etc. – can be copied directly from the series. If they’re worried about the audience being confused (which they shouldn’t be – seven year olds watched the show without issue), then they can add sub-titles for them.
Arg. Will not watch. This movie is destroying the carefully constructed, beautiful world of my favourite series.
Are you stinkin’ kidding me? What the heck?! What could their logic possibly be, for I can see no reason for it…all I can see is stupidity, racism, and destruction of, as Rachael put it so well, “the carefully constructed, beautiful world” of Avatar!
Isn’t it obvious??! Doing away with the Chinese script in favor of some totally made-up one would be the next logical step in this illogical cast of a movie! In the animated series, the whole word is Asian based and its people asian so having Chinese script makes sense. But in this live action version most about half of the world (two nations– Air Nomads and Water Tribes) are white and the other half (Earth kingdom– blacks and east asians, Fire Nation– South Asian?) not white. The heroes of the story are all white and thus having an obviously Asian script would make no sense. It reminds me of the scifi series Firefly which did employ Chinese script yet there were NO Asians let alone Chinese at all present so what was the point?!
No! I hate Paramount!!!
To the point about Firefly, China was supposed to represent the ubiquitous corporate power, alongside India and the USA. In other words, English was on its way out as the most common spoken language. The crew themselves were remnants of backwater Americans. So, the question would be why the Alliance(super power) didn’t consist of more Asian actors.
^ Perhaps the same reason why this ALL Asian based story is depicted in the big screen by mainly whites!
LOL I just got a look at the made-up written language for the movie and the letters are obviously based on the Cyrillic alphabet of eastern Europe! Obviously, the producers felt the need to Europeanize the fantasy world in more than just the peopling. Such a damn shame!
Very, very sad and frustrating. During the whole show, chinese writing is used throughout. It is part of the world. The fact that it is overglossed with “nonsense” writing is just plain stupid. I am really hating this film, this director and this studio. I need to pay attention everytime I see paramount attached to any film in the future. Rumours had it the studio is not doing good financially and I can see why. So many missed opportunities.
Well, knowing that Dr. Lee is a strong advocate of the 1421 China Discovered America BS, the idea that American Indian civilizations could not have arisen without the help of outsiders, namely Chinese in this case and runs a website called Asiawind where a lot of his supporters just love to play around with those whacked out theories, I probably should care less what “Dr.” Lee has to say on the matter. If he thinks this is whitewashing then what his “scholarly” endeavors have been doing is nothing short of yellow washing Amerindian history.
http://www.asianpacificpost.com/portal2/ff8080810c22f24f010c25dd86b10001.do.html
“They were so backward they did not even have a language of their own”? The Cherokee? Are you kidding me? And this guy is supposed to be some sort of advocate of cultural awareness and sensitivity?
^ What I find even worse than the fact that they replaced the Chinese script with a make-believe one is that even this make-believe script is European based that is Cyrillic! It’s as if the producers weren’t satisfied with europeanizing the actual people, they make adjustments with other cultural aspects as well! I swear, they should have not even bothered to make a live-action version of ‘Avatar the Last Airbender’ but come with their own fantasy adventure movie that is European based! I mean what is the point?!
KC, we certainly aren’t in agreement with Dr. Lee with other issues unrelated to The Last Airbender and no one is trying to say he is an “advocate of cultural awareness and sensitivity.” A great number of people are opposed to the casting of the movie for a number of different, intensely personal reasons.
All we can say is that even if he does in fact hold these beliefs (which we certainly do not agree with) or a condescending attitude towards Amerindians (which would be very disappointing and inappropriate, to say the least) it still would not invalidate the core argument in this discussion: That Paramount to removing the East Asian language elements of TLA is just more evidence of the culturally insensitive way they are handling this movie.
^ The Admin is correct, KC. Even if Dr. Lee did say such an absurd and ridiculous thing about Indigenous Americans (‘Amerindian’ still has the word ‘Indian’) it still does not change the main topic at hand which is the purposeful white-washing and eradication of the Asian identity of the ‘Last Airbender’ movie! If Dr. Lee is indeed a proponent of such anti-indigenous American cultural views, then he is just as bad as the white racist, and of course cultural chauvinism is not something unique to those of European descent or Chinese.