When we collected demographic information in our supporter survey in Spring 2009, we also asked people to tell us–in three sentences or less–why they loved the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series and why they are protesting the discriminatory casting decisions of the film adaptation, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender.

Over a thousand supporters from fifty different countries wrote in with their thoughts.  We’ve shared some of them below grouped by theme, interspersed with some pictures from the series and photos of our supporters from WonderCon 2010. (Please note that some comments were edited for length and clarity. The quotes are cited using supporters’ self-reported age, gender ethnicity, and hometown.)

For people familiar with our cause and for our partners in advocacy, we hope these supporter statements will affirm your feelings and strengthen your resolve to fight discriminatory practices in Hollywood. For people unfamiliar with Racebending.com, we hope these statements will help you understand where we are coming from, and why we are protesting films like The Last Airbender.

Diversity Played a Huge Part in the Animated Series’ Appeal
People of Color Were Positively Affected by Representation in the Animated Series
Praise for Avatar’s Respect for its Cultural Roots
Skepticism Regarding the Film Adaptation’s Handling of Diversity
People of Color were Adversely Impacted by The Last Airbender’s Casting Decisions
The Production’s Handling of and Defense of the Casting of the Film
Impact on Actors of Color and their Communities
Offended by the Casting Decisions
Concerns from Parents About the Casting’s Message to Children
Thoughts from People Unfamiliar with the Franchise
Supporters’ Thoughts on Hollywood Responsibility and Making Change
Closing thoughts and Supporter Comment Text Cloud

Diversity Played a Huge Part in the Animated Series’ Appeal

Fans who wrote us shared that one of the major reasons they enjoyed the series was because of its diverse depiction of Pacific Rim characters and cultures.

The animated series was one of the very few American children’s television shows featuring heroes of color.

“I watched the original series and loved the characters because I could relate to them without them being from my background at all. I think that is a big point of the Avatar series, to introduce new cultures and worlds to people–kids especially– who knew nothing about them.”

a 17 year old Mexican and Caucasian young woman from California.

“I remember originally watching the show back in 2005. The school was in an Avatar craze.  One of the reasons why we liked the show so much was the fact the characters were Asian and Inuit. Usually main characters are white, which made Avatar that much more special. ”

a 16 year old white fan from Dallas, TX

“I always loved just how empowering the show was to all kinds of people and found it to be one of the few shows that set a good example for kids, from the way it depicted girls as equals to its use of non-white characters as heroes.”

a 21 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Michigan

“One of the most breathtaking elements of the original series was its respectful, holistic, whole-hearted investigation of other cultures and of the consequences of prejudice.”

a 22 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Kansas

“What I loved most about the characters were that they were witty, complex, and showed a whole range of human emotion… It proved that Asians were people, not caricatures.”

an 18 year old Eurasian woman from Los Angeles, CA

People of Color Were Positively Affected by Representation in the Animated Series

Many of the people who wrote in were people of color who had been positively affected by the representation of characters of color in the animated series. For many viewers in the audience, Avatar: The Last Airbender was the first time they had ever seen people who shared their ethnicity on TV, in a lead role and portrayed in a non-stereotyped manner.

“Katara was one of my favorite characters because she was culturally dark-skinned, and just awesome. Once I saw the [film] casting for her, I lost that self esteem.”

a 13 year old Filipina American from Baldwin Park, CA

“It was fantastic being able to spot things from my own ethnic background on the show, which is something that I hardly ever get to see.”

an 18 year old, who identifies as Korean, from Honolulu, HI

“Avatar really shows the beauty of Eastern Asian culture. It made me proud of my Asian heritage.”

a 17 year old half Chinese, half Caucasian young man from Calgary, Canada.

“I loved Avatar–the first thing I said when I saw it was ‘Look, there’s brown people on TV!’ I loved the cultural diversity of the show, and what it stood for.”

a 17 year old Native Maldivian young man from London, UK

“My kids and I were so amazed to see people who looked like us in this amazing show!”

a 39 year old Japanese American man from Oakland, CA

“Avatar was a show minorities could get excited about because, for once, we had minority leads!”

A 23 year old Guyanese American woman from Maryland

Praise for Avatar’s Respect for its Cultural Roots

Many of our supporters shared that they loved the animated series for its deep respect for its cultural roots, and that they were astounded that the production of the film adaptation seemed to lack that same understanding and respect.

Throughout the animated series, characters visited dozens of different locales inspired by real world cultures rarely depicted in American children’s television programming.

“What drew me in more than anything, was the attention to detail Mike and Bryan [the creators] put into the creation of the world…The best part was seeing the clothes and knowing I have them in my closet, and recognizing the martial arts as parts of forms I’ve learned myself.”

a 20 year old woman of Chinese descent from Vancouver, Canada

“I just fell in love with the creativity, attention to detail, and beauty put into the show along with the great respect the creators put into representing the Asian cultures well– rather then as some kind of kung-fu gimmick.”

a 23 year old Korean American woman from New York

“Avatar is one of the few shows that is very respectful of the cultures it represents, and when you take away the people that make up those cultures, you’re also taking away a huge part of the story. ”

26 year old Chinese American from San Francisco

“Paramount and those involved in the live-action movie blatantly ignored the effort and research put into the series. If they can’t respect it’s source material and what it gave to viewers, I can’t respect their choices for the direction the film is going.”

an 18 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Massachusetts

Skepticism Regarding the Film Adaptation’s Handling of Diversity

Two months after the initial cast of The Last Airbender was announced and after considerable fan outcry, the role of Prince Zuko, the film’s primary antagonist, was recast from a white actor to Indian-British actor Dev Patel. Subsequently, several actors of “Latino, Middle Eastern” descent were cast to play villains and conquering Fire Nation soldiers that are the antagonists in the film. The production also began casting “Asian and African” actors to play citizens of a country that has fallen victim to the Fire Nation. Because of these castings, M. Night Shyamalan has declared The Last Airbender “the most culturally diverse tent-pole movie ever made.”

Characters from the animated series and their depictions in the film adaptation.
Lead protagonists (played by white actors) are on the left; lead antagonists (played by actors of color) on the right.

“Casting people of color for minor roles merely serves to reinforce their mindset that minority actors and actresses will never be good enough for leading roles. The Avatar movie was a great opportunity for non-white actors to advance that was snatched away.”

a 19 year old Asian American woman from the northeastern United States

“I think the best actor should get the part, but after looking at who would play who, it just seems too coincidental that the best actors that tried out for the villains are people of color and the best for the heroes are white.”

a 22 year old man who identifies as white

“I hate how putting people of color in the background is used as an excuse for ‘diversity’ in the movie when the show already showed diversity stemming from many different Asian cultures.”

a 24 year old Black, African American, Cherokee and French Canadian woman from San Diego, CA

“The casting of white heroes saving an Asian community portrays us as helpless victims who depend upon white people.”

a 25 year old man of Chinese and Portuguese descent from Oakland, CA

“Throwing minorities a bone by sticking them in supporting roles–or the roles of villains–only emphasizes that the casting folks did not trust them with being able to carry a movie on their own.”

a 23 year old woman, who identifies as black, from California

“Using Indian culture as that of the aggressive, oppressive Fire Nation is greatly offensive. White actors freeing anybody from brown people is a throwback to the days of the “White Man’s Burden”–not to mention disrespectful to my people and my culture. I support Dev Patel and M. Night Shyamalan as talented Indian entertainers, but I personally take offense at the representations portrayed in the film.”

a 17 year old Indian American young man from Cincinnati, OH

People of Color were Adversely Impacted by The Last Airbender’s Casting Decisions

Many of our supporters are people of color. They shared how they, their families, and their communities were negatively impacted by the poor portrayal of people of color in Hollywood, and how the casting of The Last Airbender helped reinforce that hurt.

“The only strong Inuit-based characters I’ve ever found in animation or live action movies have been cast in the movie adaptation as Caucasian.”

an 18 year fan old of Inuit descent from Vancouver, Iqaluit, Canada

“We have very few movies with Asian characters as main characters–if there are Asian characters at all. White actors play in all movies, can’t they just let us star in the spotlight just once?”

a 13 year old Vietnamese American from Washington D.C.

“Growing up, I saw mostly Caucasian actors and actresses. I thought there was something wrong with me and wished to be Caucasian myself. I don’t want children today growing up thinking like I did.”

an 18 year old Japanese American woman from Torrance, CA

“Anyone who thinks this isn’t a big deal should think about the lack of minority heroes in children’s shows and be mailed a photo of my little cousin’s face when she saw a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, light-haired actress cast as Katara.”

an 18 year old Black American woman from Washington D.C.

“I have an adorable seven-year-old cousin, adopted from China at age two, who’s already starting to think to be a hero or a princess you have to be white.”

a 20 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Cincinnati, OH

Blue-eyed blondes are the minority in reality, but due to whitewashing I used to pray as a child that God would lighten my hair, skin and eyes until I realised there were more people in the world like me than in the media. I am appalled that the world’s diversity is constantly treated as the token minority.

a 35 year old woman who identifies as Aboriginal Australian and Italian Australian from rural Australia

“Asian children only ever see people like them relegated to the sidelines…To have this movie, taking place in an Asian setting, reinforcing the idea that only those who look white are the heroes, is simply cruel.”

a 21 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Massachusetts

“The creation of shows like Avatar give kids like my 10-year-old brother the role models I wasn’t able to have. What kind of message will it send to him that these characters are okay being Asian in a cartoon, but that they can’t be played by Asian actors in film?”

a 23 year old Asian American woman from Honolulu, HI

“I’m the proud elder cousin to two little half-Algonkin half-Inuit girls who never saw anyone who remotely resembled them doing anything more than “Being Indian on TV” before I introduced them to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Seeing the most recent publicity photos made me cry with the message it sent: white people can be anything – brown people are interchangeable.”

a 24 year old woman of French, Ashkenazi and Algonkin descent from Ontario, Canada

The Production’s Handling of and Defense of the Casting of the Film

Many of the people who wrote us cited the way the production has handled and defended the casting of the film as their primary cause for outrage. Jackson Rathbone, the actor cast to play an ethnically Inuit hero, Sokka, said: “I think it’s one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan. It’s one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit.” Casting director Dee Dee Ricketts made repeated cultural gaffes throughout the extras casting process, telling the press she was casting “authentic Asians” for background extras and that auditionees should come “dressed in some sort of ethnic traditional way” (ie: “if you’re Korean, wear a Kimono.”)

M. Night Shyamalan has declared The Last Airbender “the most culturally diverse tent-pole movie ever made” and claims that the characters in the animated series were racially “ambiguous.” At the same time, the production never acknowledged or responded to fans or community advocacy organizations when they expressed their concerns about the casting.

“Paramount professes that the characters in Avatar don’t have an ethnicity. We say that the character’s ethnicity and background is obvious and that Paramount should NOT ignorantly assume that all characters are white by default.”

a 21 year old Taiwanese American from Los Angeles, CA

“When I read the casting call and the ‘Caucasian or other’ bit, my jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe they actually phrased it like that.

a 30 year old woman from Calgary, Alberta

“I’m offended by whitewashing, racist casting decisions and the profoundly inappropriate statements by the film company and actors about the aforementioned racist casting decisions.”

a 20 year old woman from Vancouver, BC Canada

“Diversifying” by making Asian characters white is not diversity at all.”

a 27 year old Chinese American from Hsichu, Taiwan

“The people involved in the production who defend the casting can try to convince us all they want but as long as the problems and the racial bias are still there, there will never be equality.”

a 20 year old Chinese Canadian man from Toronto, Canada

“What truly angers me the most is the studio’s attempt to placate the community that is their supposed fanbase. They ignored the majority of our concerns and failed to make any effort to consult with groups or agencies that could assist them in not creating a doomed movie.

a 21 year old Black Caribbean American woman from Pittsburgh, PA

“Whether the discrimination against Asian actors was deliberate or inadvertent, the disingenuous excuses employed by the movie’s representatives showed that they did not plan to acknowledge or remedy the miscasting–a position that should be unacceptable.”

a 23 year African-American woman from Connecticut

Impact on Actors of Color and their Communities

Some of the people who wrote into the survey were aspiring performers or had family and friends who were interested in performing arts. To them, the discriminatory casting practices employed by the production of The Last Airbender reflected a widespread problem in Hollywood.

“The ironic thing is that I’m adopted. My parents are Irish and German and my first language is English. Yet, I will continuously have to fight to be recognized in theatre and casting just because I don’t look white?”

a 21 year old Korean American actress from Bainbridge Island, WA

“I have a cousin trying to make in the acting business and while I believe he’s a great actor, he’s been turned down many times for being “too ethnic.” Is this truly the world we should live in, a world where being in the “wrong” ethnic group means that you can’t get a job? A world where children have to get used to the thought that people who look like them are villains?”

an 18 year old woman who identifies as Native and Caribbean American from Staten Island, NY

“My stepsister’s trying to make it in the music industry. She’s an American citizen, she’s lived here since she was nine, she hasn’t got a shred of an accent, but she has to fight her ‘ethnic’ name and appearance with every promotional shoot and appearance. I don’t want the people I love to be treated as an Other.”

an 18 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Pismo, CA

“The casting is giving out the message that Asians are not good enough for Hollywood, and as a result a lot of audiences are going to start believing it too. It’s difficult to believe the multitude of Asian actors that do exist were considered inadequate next to the actors chosen. It’s downright absurd.”

a 22 year old British Indian woman from London, UK

“There are so few Asian American roles in entertainment to begin with. How can it be okay to take some of the few very obviously Asian roles and give them to white actors?”

a 23 year old Chinese American from Boston, MA

Offended by the Casting Decisions

Nearly all of the survey respondents wrote that they were offended by the casting decisions, to the point where they no longer had any interest in seeing the film adaptation. Many of the people who expressed offense identified as white or Caucasian; they explained that they felt pandered to by casting changes based on the assumption that white audiences are racist.

“I am not protesting because the main characters are white, but because fair means of casting were not used, and not enough effort went into looking for cast members of Asian descent.”

a 19 year old woman of Chinese descent from San Jose, CA

“I wasn’t expecting this film to top the show, but I didn’t expect to be offended by it, either.”

a 22 year old man of Iroquois and Caucasian descent from Novi, MI

“The racism shown in erasing people of color from a world where they were the norm, in service of making more white people the main characters, is disgusting.”

a 25 year old White and Jewish woman from San Francisco, CA

“The tone of a character’s skin is not about division or segregation- it represents origin, history, ancestry, cultural integrity and, ultimately, an indelible human identity. To misrepresent the culture of the characters in Avatar is to disrespect their story.”

a 26 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Salt Lake City, UT

“As a woman of color, I’ve been told–and I know other people from various ethnicities who’ve been told–that heroes need to be White or American audiences won’t accept them. Avatar: The Last Airbender put the lie to that, and casting all the protagonists with White actors reinforces that disgusting and untrue notion.”

a 33 year old woman, who identifies as black, from Boston, MA

I am surrounded–in my hometown of Hollywood, California– by Asians of every nationality. To ignore the hundreds of excellent Asian actors in this town is just incredibly insulting.

a 53 year old Polish Irish American woman from Hollywood, CA

“I find it offensive that Hollywood thinks I’m too stupid or xenophobic to enjoy a movie that stars actors who don’t have the same skin tone as I do.”

a 20 year old Caucasian man from Massachusetts

“Even if I wasn’t offended personally or on principle , I would be offended as an audience member that these casting decisions were made in an effort to make the film more profitable and “relatable” by banking on my presumed racism and ethnocentrism.”

a 19 year old woman of mixed ethnicity from Florida

“I find the casting decisions reprehensible, because there is no excuse for excluding PoC actors from lead roles in the film when the show is undeniably grounded in Asian and Inuit cultures.”

a 22 year old man, who identifies as white, from Brisbane, QLD, Australia

“I hate it when Hollywood assumes that viewers won’t come to see movies that star people of color, and gladly panders to the racists who won’t.”

a 19 year old woman, of European American descent, from Los Angeles, CA

It’s offensive to me, as a person of color, that a character who is written to be ethnic is being played by a White actor. It was even more offensive when they said that they didn’t want to prevent white actors from being in the movie to justify casting them in the lead roles, leaving the Asian people in the background. If the studio is worried about making money and using white actors to achieve that goal, then that is wrong.”

a 17 year old man, who identifies as African-Caucasian American, from Church Hill, MD

Concerns from Parents About the Casting’s Message to Children

We received several responses from parents concerned about what messages the “whitewashed” casting of Avatar: The Last Airbender would send to their children. The fact that casting discrimination had occurred in an adaptation of a children’s franchise was a matter of great concern to these parents.

“As a parent of a five year old half-Asian girl, I have to sit next to her while she watches Avatar and explain every little detail about Asian culture that she would question. How am I going to explain to her Aang, Katara or Sokka turning white for the movie?”

a 31 year old Russian and Asian woman from Los Angeles, CA

“My son loves this series and I find it a betrayal and a shameful, lousy, perverse idiocy that if he were to go watch it on the big screen–which, by the way, he won’t be doing unless it is recast–he would not be able to see his Asian heroes.”

a 33 year old woman of White Russian and Jewish descent from Munich, Germany

“I discovered Avatar with my 8-year old son. I was horrified to learn that the show was going to be whitewashed. I am using this as a cautionary tale with my son, but I know he will be upset to miss the movie when it comes out.”

a 38 year old Anglo man from Amherst, MA

“I’m the mom of two kids who love Avatar, and we own all the DVD sets and various other tie-in merchandise. My kids and I have together decided that we will neither see the movie nor buy any more products for this whitewashed version of an otherwise really great series!”

a 41 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Mobile, AL

“It would be irresponsible of me, as a parent, to let my son see this movie as it is being cast. Yes it is for children, and no, they may not notice or care now, but they will look back with disappointment that we–the adults–couldn’t do it right when it would have been so simple to do so.”

a 29 year old Caucasian woman from Washington, D.C

“My seven year old daughter and I were originally looking forward to this movie. But the whitewashing of the cast sickens me, and as a parent, I have no desire to expose my daughter to such a blatant example of Hollywood’s racial prejudice.”

a 25 year old White American woman from Springfield, MO

“Avatar is a show I have used to point out to my son that not all heroes and good guys are white or always guys for that matter, and I won’t take him to see a movie that doesn’t illustrate that, too.”

a 42 year old Caucasian woman, from Akron, OH

Thoughts from People Unfamiliar with the Franchise

Although the majority of people who contacted us for the survey were huge fans of the animated series, we also received thoughts from people unfamiliar with the franchise. Some readers had never heard of Avatar: The Last Airbender until they learned about the casting discrimination in the film adaptation, but they still wanted to show their support. Concern about the casting decisions has transcended fandom; it is a concern of the greater international community.

“I’ve never watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I’ve seen hundreds of pictures and read what people had to say about it, and I wish something like this existed for my culture. To see it get whitewashed like that is very sad and scary to me.”

a 20 year old Egyptian woman from Cairo, Egypt

“I was unaware of Avatar: The Last Airbender before I heard about the casting issues. When I read about the casting, saw the animation-actor picture comparisons, and watched some of the show I was horrified.”

a 22 year old white New Zealander from Auckland, New Zealand

“I have never watched this show or knew it existed, but after reading about the cause I felt I had to send in a letter and sign the petition. As a Latina woman I know what’s it’s like growing up thinking that there are certain things you can and can not do because of your race. Discrimination against one of us, makes it easier to discriminate against all of us.”

a 23 year old Dominican and Jewish woman from East Brunswick, NJ

Supporters’ Thoughts on Hollywood Responsibility and Making Change

Although Racebending.com supporters are disappointed by the casting decisions made by The Last Airbender, we hope that our efforts to speak out against these casting practices will help Hollywood recognize that they are in a position to prevent the discriminatory impact their casting decisions have perpetrated. Our readers expressed hope that public outcry will will result in meaningful change.

“The saddest part is that the ones creating this movie have the resources and money to support movements in diversity. The Last Airbender is a such a great opportunity for this. Yet these producers are abusing this opportunity to support diversity, and are turning it into something quite the opposite.”

a 21 year old woman, who identifies as white, from Atlanta, GA

“I sincerely hope that, even if they don’t change their minds on the casting of this film, it’ll at least set a precedent once they realize the public won’t put up with these things.”

a 21 year old woman of Jamaican descent from Miami, FL

“This isn’t an issue about pitting one ‘race’ against others, and it isn’t about complaining for the sake of stirring up conflict. It is a reaction to the long-held tradition of marginalizing people in American popular culture, and it’s about time that positive change be made.”

a 21 year old Southeast Asian and Chinese American woman from Los Angeles, CA

“The only way we can ever have racial equality is if we make racism in all its forms visible and confront it when we see it, every time we see it. ”

23 year old Nigerian Canadian woman from Ontario, Canada

Closing Thoughts

Racebending.com would like to thank the hundreds of supporters who sent us their reason for why they are protesting the movie. Although we could not share every single comment we received here on the site, we took everyone’s comments and placed them into a tag cloud at wordle.net to calculate word frequency.

We hope that as supporters of our website and of fair and equal casting in Hollywood, you will continue to make your voices be heard! Thanks again for all of your encouragement and comments.

]]> http://www.racebending.com/v3/press/racebending-com-supporters-speak/feed/ 4 http://www.racebending.com/v3/press/ebert-takes-on-another-airbender-question/ http://www.racebending.com/v3/press/ebert-takes-on-another-airbender-question/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:13:50 +0000 Marissa http://www.racebending.com/v3/?p=4245 Ebert: "If I’d been making “The Last Airbender,” I would probably have decided the story was so well- known to my core audience that it would be a distraction to cast those roles with white actors. I’m guessing, but I suspect the American group most under-represented in modern Hollywood is young Asian-American males."]]>

Update: On June 30th, Ebert issued his most damning missive against The Last Airbender yet on twitter.com, flat out calling the film’s casting practices “racist.”

ebertchicago: The best writing I’ve seen on the racist casting of “The Last Airbender.” Devastating. http://j.mp/bz5zbI

–

Ebert linked an article written by Vietnamese American blogger Q. Le, “Facepainting”, to his 170,000 followers. This message was retweeted by over 100 people and became the top search result on twitter when people searched for Last Airbender.

In his June 9th, 2010 Answer Man Column, American film critic Roger Ebert answered another fan question about the casting of The Last Airbender and the practice of “racebending” and “whitewashing” in general.

Ebert had previously answered a question about The Last Airbender in December 2009, where he called the casting decisions “wrong.”

From the June 9th column:

Q. A friend and I got in a discussion over whether it is racist to have race be a criteria while casting a role. My friend was of the opinion that the best actor should get the role. I felt that if the part was written for, say, a young African-American male, the audition pool should be limited to young African-American males. This discussion specifically focused on the movie “The Last Airbender,” which is based on an American-made animated show called “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”

Two of the characters in the show were not white, yet their movie counterparts will be white. I felt that the movie casting choice was not true to the source material while my friend thought the casting choice (from a racial perspective) was irrelevant. Is casting white actors into non-white roles a form of racism/whitewashing? Would the opposite also be racist? Or should the best actor, regardless of race or any other physical consideration, be chosen?
Colleen Stone, Woodbury, Minn.

A. It was racist in the days when minority actors just plain couldn’t get work in anything but stereotyped roles. The situation has improved. If I’d been making “The Last Airbender,” I would probably have decided the story was so well- known to my core audience that it would be a distraction to cast those roles with white actors. I’m guessing, but I suspect the American group most under-represented in modern Hollywood is young Asian-American males.

Characters from the animated series and their depictions in the film adaptation. The lead protagonists are played by white actors while the lead antagonists are played by actors of color.

Some of the most underrepresented groups in Hollywood today include women (particularly women over 50), people with a disability, and yes, people of color.

In October 2009, while Paramount was casting The Last Airbender, the Screen Actor’s Guild released statistics showing that only 3.8% of film and television roles went to actors of Asian Pacific descent, and only 0.3% to actors of Native American descent.

And when actors of Asian Pacific and Amerindian are cast in film and television, they are rarely the first-billed lead or central character. UCLA Law Professor Russell Robinson found that only 1.8% of lead roles are cast with an actor of Asian Pacific descent, and less than 1% of lead roles are cast with an actor of Native American descent.

Television series like Trauma (2009) starring Cliff Curtis and films like Ninja Assassin (2009) starring Rain are few and far between.

Harold and Kumar is possibly the only recent mainstream film franchise to feature Asian American actors, playing Asian American characters, in lead roles.

These statistics also don’t differentiate between Asians from abroad and Asian Americans. When the opportunity arises for a studio to cast a character of Asian Pacific descent, the studio often selects an actor from overseas–such as the casting of Jay Chou as Kato in The Green Hornet–limiting Asian American actors’ opportunities further. The most famous actors of Asian descent–like Jackie Chan and Jet Li–continue to be from abroad while Asian American actors struggle to find any work at home. And aside from the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series, very few mainstream movies and television series have featured circumpolar indigenous people like the Inuit.

The “racebending” of The Last Airbender was a missed opportunity for Americans of Asian Pacific, Amerindian, and Circumpolar Indigenous descent to star in a tentpole summer film. But more than simply a “missed opportunity,” the production’s decisions also had a discriminatory impact, reinforcing that in Hollywood, people of color can play secondary roles in films – but white actors are preferred for heroic leads, even if the characters were created to be ethnically Asian and Inuit in a fantasy world representative of the cultures of the Pacific Rim.

Click here to download the press release in .pdf format.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Mike Le mike@racebending.com

FAN GROUP CONDEMNS RACIAL BIAS IN CASTING OF “THE LAST AIRBENDER”

Racebending.com alleges discrimination against actors of color in Paramount Pictures’ movie adaptation of Asian-based TV series.

LOS ANGELES, CA — Thousands of fans are protesting M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender”, blasting the Paramount Pictures film for its racial bias in selecting white actors to portray characters of color.

Racebending.com, a grassroots organization comprised of fans of the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” franchise, began mobilizing immediately after principal casting was announced. Only white actors were cast in the lead protagonist roles, a decision Racebending.com alleges is rooted in Hollywood’s historical bias against casting actors of color in lead roles.

“American actors of color rarely get to play the hero, if ever,” said Marissa Lee, one of the protest’s co-founders.  “We’re really disappointed.  Paramount felt that white actors were better suited to play heroes of color than hardworking, underrepresented actors who are actually of Asian or Inuit descent.”

Comprised of thousands of supporters from over 50 countries worldwide, Racebending.com continues to monitor the production of the film to hold Paramount Pictures accountable. The burgeoning fan movement has been invited to present at academic conferences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, and hosted its own table at WonderCon 2010 in April.

“Racebending is more than just a protest group,” said Loraine Sammy, another co-founder of the fan protest.  “It also provides a safe space for people to challenge privilege and discrimination in the media industry, in pop culture, and within their own communities.”

August 2008 casting sheets for the film’s heroic leading characters read, “Caucasian or any other ethnicity,” even though the original animated series was widely advertised by Nickelodeon as set in an “Asian fantasy world.”

“It was like a job advertisement straight out of the sixties,” said Catherine Bugayong, Racebending.com’s Northwest coordinator.  “And they got what they asked for. They made it very clear that white actors were preferable to anyone else, regardless of talent.”

Immediately after the casting announcement, thousands of outraged fans mobilized to protest through a letter writing campaign, petition, and protests. The production has since cast actors of color, but only in villainous, supporting, and background roles. Paramount ignored all letters from the public but responded to a letter sent from the Media Action Network for Asian Americans.  A letter from the producers stated that the setting would be diverse.

“Even if there are actors of color in secondary roles, that’s still a glass ceiling,” Lee said.  “The main characters were originally people of color.  In this movie, actors of color should have been the leads, not scenery.”

Racebending.com articles point out that Paramount Pictures released over 100 films between 2000 and 2010. None have featured Asian American or Inuit  actors as the leading man or woman.

“The ‘Airbender’ franchise is the only franchise Paramount has with Asian- and Inuit-leading heroes,” Lee said.  “If Paramount wasn’t willing to cast actors of color to play the heroes in something as obvious as ‘Airbender,’ then when are they going to cast actors of color as leads?”

In April 2009 through August 2009, Racebending.com surveyed our supporters on our livejournal community and via facebook. In just three days we received more than 400 responses. Here are the results taken from over 1,200 responses.

We’ve put the statistical data from the survey below. To read some of the most memorable survey responses, please click here!

Age of Racebending.com Supporters

Age ranges of the survey respondents ranged from 6 years old to 59 years old, spanning five decades.

Children under age 13 are not allowed to provide identifying information on the internet. As the survey was conducted on social networking sites, Racebending.com was unable to legally survey people under 13 unless their survey information was provided by parents or older siblings. Children under age 13 are underrepresented in this survey.

The survey asked for the ages of our supporters.
The mean (average) age of our respondents was: 22
The standard deviation was: 7.14
The median age of our respondents was: 20

Gender of Racebending.com Supporters

We asked our supporters to self-identify their gender, as they felt comfortable. Responses to this question were emphasized as optional.

Ethnicity of Racebending.com Supporters

We asked our supporters to self-identify their ethnicity, as they felt comfortable. Responses to this question were emphasized as optional.

This pie chart illustrates the ethnicities of our supporters with no overlap, categorizing everyone who reported a mixed ethnicity in one group (as is common in demographic surveys.)

We found that 15.3% of Racebending.com supporters from the United States and around the world are of mixed ethnicity. This number is particularly striking given the United States Census found that in 2000 only 2.4% of the American population was of mixed ethnicity.

The “mixed ethnicity” grouping in that graph is very vague, though, and does not reflect the true diversity of the respondents. We took all respondents’ reported single, dual, triple, ethnicities and ran the numbers again by partial or whole descent. These percentages do not add up to 100% because they include mixed ethnicity overlap.

Amerindian
5.3% of our supporters had Amerindian heritage. Many supporters wrote that they were of Native American, Cherokee, First Nations, or Inuit, descent.

Asian
29.26% of our supporters said they were of some or all Asian descent.
23% of the supporters were of East Asian (ie: Chinese Australian, Korean, Japanese American, Taiwanese, etc.)
2.15% were of South Asian descent, (ie: South Asian, Indian, Pakistani American, Sri Lankan, etc.)
9.61% were of Southeast Asian descent -(ie: Vietnamese American, Filipino, Indonesian, Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese Australian, Javanese, Malay, etc.)
0.45% identified as ethnically Pacific Islander.

Black
We categorized people of African, African American, and Afro-Carribean descent into this category and found that 11.76% of our supporters identified from groups such as Black American, African American, African, Congolese, Nigerian, Black British, Jamaican, Sudanese, Black Guyanese, and Afro-Carribean.

Latino
We grouped the 6.55% of respondents who identified as ethnically or part South American, Hispanic, Latino/a, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Brazilian and similar ethnic heritages as Latino.

Middle Eastern
1.08% of our supporters were of Middle Eastern descent, including identities such as Palestinian American, Egyptian, Iranian American, Israeli, and Arab American.

White
60% of our supporters identified as all or partially white or Caucasian.

It is very interesting and important to note that Asian Americans (and Asians internationally) were not the only people offended by the casting of The Last Airbender! 7 out of 10 Racebending.com supporters are NOT of Asian descent. People from many different ethnic groups felt strongly opposed to the film’s casting decisions.

Racebending.com Supporters by Country

We received survey responses from over 50 countries around the world:

Here is a map of the States and Countries where Racebending.com supporters live, based on our survey respondents and also fans of our Facebook page. Don’t see your country or state on the map? Email us to be included!

American Racebending.com Supporters by State

We heard from supporters from 47 States and Washington D.C. (If you’re from South Dakota, Wyoming, or Arkansas, drop us a line!)

Cities with the highest number of survey respondents included: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, San Diego, San Jose, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Portland, Miami, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Salt Lake City.

Closing Thoughts

As recommended by the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, this survey would be important for us to prove to the world that this issue concerns everyone–not simply a cause taken by Asian Americans, young people, Avatar fans or any other single minority group. As much as statistics ‘pigeonhole’ us, it can also help show how diverse we are.

One of the respondents to the open survey left these insights, which we also hope you will keep in mind:

“I don’t think you need to answer the people who are asking about the demographics of this group.This isn’t about just standing up for Asian Americans; it is a simple fact that this group consists of people who are mobilizing against a system that is unjust and unfair.  There is no need for an answer to a question that brings no intelligent insight to a system with social bias. It’s a matter of right or wrong, and the demographics should not take away from the matter at hand.”

The survey was anonymous and asked for age, and hometown, with an optional request to also enter ethnicity, gender and reason for supporting the movement. Respondents opted to complete the survey and are representative of our supporters from our livejournal and facebook online communities. We were touched by the outpouring of support and the number of people willing to disclose information about themselves in order to prove that this is an issue that touches many different people from many different communities.

Thank you for supporting Racebending.com and our efforts to protest the discriminatory impact of The Last Airbender.

• General Questions
• Specific Questions Related to The Last Airbender
• Questions About Hollywood Casting

General Questions

What is Racebending.com?
Racebending.com is an online community founded by fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Since our formation in 2008, we are now a grassroots organization dedicated to encouraging equal opportunities in Hollywood. To learn more, visit our Who We Are page.

How do I contact Racebending.com?
If you’re a member of the press, please visit our Press Page.
If you’re a reader, you can contact us using the information here, but please read through the FAQ first.

What does the term ‘racebending’ refer to and what does it mean?
The word “racebending” is a portmanteau coined by one of our co-founders. It’s a play on words that refers to the “airbending” and other elemental bending in the Avatar: The Last Airbender series.

The practice we’ve dubbed “racebending” on this site refers to situations where A) A movie studio/publisher, etc. has changed the ethnicity of a character B) with a resultant discriminatory impact on an underrepresented cultural community and actors from that community (reinforcement of glass ceilings, loss of opportunity, etc.)

What is Colorism?
We reference the term “colorism” frequently on the website. Colorism is a form of discrimination in which people are accorded differing social and economic treatment based on skin color. Colorism occurs across the world and can occur within an ethnic group or between different ethnic groups. In most entertainment industries–including Hollywood–lighter skin tone is given preferential treatment and darker skin tone is considered less desirable. Oftentimes, heroes are cast with lighter skin and villains are cast with darker skin.

Would Racebending.com rather have movie studios cast the best actor for the role or the actor who looks like or has the same ethnicity as the character?
Acting talent and ethnicity are not mutually exclusive–nor is acting ability some sort of innate racial trait. Any cultural or ethnic community in the United States will contain talented actors, so a movie studio should never argue that they had to choose between casting a talented white actor to play a character of color or an actor of color with terrible skills. There are equally talented actors of color, and they deserve the chance to represent their communities.

Why are people upset about The Last Airbender?
Our four minute video series breaks the issues down succinctly. We encourage people new to this site to check it out!

What is Racebending.com doing about the casting/cultural competency of The Last Airbender?
Our efforts include directly contacting Paramount and the production, speaking out and drawing awareness towards the production’s discriminatory casting practices (to the media, on university campuses, etc.) and connecting concerned fans to other media watchdog organizations. We are encouraging people to boycott the movie, so as not to financially reward the studio for discriminatory decisions.

What does Racebending.com do about other movies/books/etc. that “racebend”?
Racebending.com has expanded to monitor other situations where ‘racebending’ has occurred. We inform our members about the situation and occasionally take direct action. For example, we launched an email campaign when David Henrie was cast to play a Chinese American lead character in The Weapon. If you feel there is an issue in an upcoming movie that we should address, please contact us with more information.

How did Racebending.com get its start?
Racebending.com got its start through our sister site, Aang Aint White, a livejournal started by some anonymous folks (some with professional ties to the franchise) immediately after the principal cast was announced in December 2008. When the protest began to pick up steam, it became clear that a blog wouldn’t be enough, so we expanded to a livejournal community and eventually to our website, Racebending.com.

Are supporters of Racebending.com fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender? Can you guys still be fans if you’re critical of the movie?
Although we have received plenty of outside support, many of our supporters are fans of the Avatar: The Last Airbender series.

As fans of the original television show, we still hold the highest level of respect for the animated series and its culturally nuanced depiction of an Asian/Inuit fantasy world. The cast and setting were virtually unique in American media as a celebration of people and culture of Asian descent. For American children, it was an opportunity to witness heroes and heroines of color – an opportunity that enriched all of us, regardless of ethnicity.

We wanted to support The Last Airbender film, but we cannot in good conscience support a production that reinforces glass ceilings by systematically excluding people of color from heroic lead roles.

Are you just a small group of vocal fans angry about changes in the movie?
We comprised of several thousand supporters in 50 countries around the world. Although most of us are fans of the animated series, our supporters also identify as students, parents, advocates, academics, and professionals. Our primary concern is the bigger picture–The Last Airbender is just one example in a long history of Hollywood discrimination. For many of us, seeing this kind of discrimination associated with our favorite series is what spurred us into taking action.

Racebending.com has represented the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom at Wondercon 2010. We have also presented at several universities, including MIT, UPenn, UCLA, and USC. We are also being studied by academics from MIT and USC as an example of social media and advocacy.

Specific Questions Related to The Last Airbender

Why is Racebending.com making such a big deal out of the casting in a movie?
There are several articles on our website outlining why Racebending.com is drawing attention to the cultural competency practices of The Last Airbender. Our primary concerns regarding The Last Airbender are:

• The outdated and discriminatory practice of casting white actors to depict Asian/Inuit characters.
• Casting calls indicating a preference for white actors for leads; people of color for villains, secondary characters, and background extras.
• Culturally ignorant language used by members of the production (e.g. “If you’re a Korean, wear a kimono” and “I definitely need a tan”)
• The colorist implications of featuring a villainous nation with dark-skinned actors and heroic nations led by white heroes who liberate the “Asian and African” nation.
• Cultural appropriation of Pacific Rim cultures and the franchise’s core Asian concepts, despite a glass ceiling blocking off Asian American (or Native American) actors from playing lead protagonists.

Why is Racebending.com so concerned over just a kid’s movie?
The fact that The Last Airbender is being pushed as a family film despite its cultural competency and discrimination problems is exactly why we are concerned. The Last Airbender is a microcosm of how readily present discriminative attitudes are in society–even in children’s entertainment. We are concerned that these casting practices will be presented to children of all ethnicities as something acceptable, normal, and not a big deal at all. Some of our interviews with academics cover the impact these casting decisions might have on children in greater detail.

How do the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender feel about the casting or Racebending.com?
The creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender have said nothing publicly about the casting other than Bryan Konietzko’s declaration on his MySpace, where he wrote: “I have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CASTING WHATSOEVER for the feature film.” Other people who have worked on the show, including a director, artists, and cultural consultants, have publicly expressed disappointment about the casting.

Are the characters in the Avatar setting ethnically Asian/Inuit?
The Avatar: The Last Airbender series was established by the creators and Nickelodeon as set in a “fantastical Asian world.” The Intellectual Property Bible affirms that the world of the series is and should be authentically Asian, and cultural consultants were hired to ensure the depiction of the world and characters would be respectful. People who have worked on the original series have also affirmed that the characters were ethnically Asian/Inuit.

The default physical appearance for all characters in live-action fantasy worlds is not and should not always and only be anglo-saxon, western European facial features and coloring–particularly not in a series like Avatar: The Last Airbender, which featured ethnically Asian Pacific /Inuit characters and Pacific Rim cultures.

If the characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender are Asian, why don’t they have slanty eyes, yellow skin, or accents?
In traditional Western Animation, Asian characters are often depicted with stereotypical features. Avatar: The Last Airbender employs a style of anime from Korea that does not use those stereotypical markers. In addition, the voice direction of A:TLA was advised not to use stereotypical Asian accents to depict the characters. Depicting Asian characters with a stereotypical accent is an old Hollywood practice that generally no longer occurs in modern productions with Asian and Asian American characters (eg. Disney’s Mulan, Jake Long: American Dragon.)

Are the characters of Sokka and Katara White, Inuit, or Asian?
The characters from the Water Tribe are largely inspired by circumpolar indigenous cultures, with some influences from Asian and Pacific Islander indigenous groups. On a DVD commentary, the animated series creators noted that even Katara’s “hair-loopies’ hairstyle (not used in the film) is even an authentic Inuit hairstyle.

Circumpolar indigenous people hail from from Canada, Russia, Alaska, and Greenland. There are many Asian circumpolar indigenous people (from the Chukchi Peninsula), but not all circumpolar indigenous people are Asian.

Some of our readers have asked “if it really makes sense” for Water Tribe characters have darker skin than the other characters, even though they live in a cold climate. The real life explanation for why circumpolar dwelling people such as the Inuit have darker skin is explained by Vitamin D consumption, melanin adaptation, and UV light exposure. It is perfectly “realistic” for Sokka and Katara to have darker skin.

Some characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender have blue/grey/green eyes. How can they be people of color?
The creators of the series gave the characters eye colors corresponding to their “elements.” Airbenders have grey eyes, Earthbenders have green eyes, Waterbenders have blue eyes, and Firebenders have orange eyes.

That being said, people who are white do not have an exclusive monopoly on blue eye color. Many people of color also have blue/green/grey eyes. And one potentially “Caucasian trait” does not invalidate a person’s Asian Pacific / Inuit traits or cultural identity.

What issue does Racebending.com have with the actors in The Last Airbender, especially the white child actors?
Our issue is not with the actors selected, but with the production, which did not think children of color were suitable to play in a movie based on their own cultures. We will, however, hold adult actors accountable for culturally insensitive statements, such as Jackson Rathbone’s assertion that he would get “a tan” to play Sokka, a person of color.

What are Racebending.com’s thoughts on the original voice actors for Avatar: The Last Airbender?
While it is important to cast people of color to represent characters of color in all mediums, we are willing to give voice acting a freer pass. The voice actors are not a complete representation of the characters, as they only perform the characters’ voices. The voice actor for Appa, Dee Bradley Baker, isn’t really a bison, and Ash Ketchum from Pokemon and Bart Simpson from The Simpsons are voiced by middle-aged women. However, when characters in animation are depicted as people of color, we encourage studios to cast voice actors from those communities.

Why has Racebending.com labeled the character of Prince Zuko as the “enemy”?
For the purposes of the first season of the animated series and the film, Zuko is the primary antagonist of the main character, Aang. In the film, actors of color have been cast but only in antagonistic and ancillary roles, and this is a glass ceiling. In fact, the feature film markets Zuko as a villain.

Were the selected actors for the roles in The Last Airbender the best actors for the job?
By writing “Caucasian or any other ethnicity” on the casting sides for the lead roles, the production made their preference for Caucasian actors to play PoC clear from the beginning. (Normally when ethnicity is left open-ended, casting sides read “Any Ethnicity.”)

Jackson Rathbone and Jesse McCartney (the production’s first selection for Zuko) may be considered great thespians, but there are equally talented actors of color. When the production says these actors are “the best for the role” they are also reinforcing an appropriative glass ceiling. We believe Hollywood could have cast this film without reinforcing the glass ceiling, using equally talented actors of color. If in Hollywood, actors who are white are considered “the best” to represent people of color, then where does that leave actors of color?

70% of speaking roles in Hollywood go to male actors. 82% of lead roles in Hollywood go to actors who are white. This is not because they were always casting for the best actor and the best actor always happens to be white and male. This is because of discriminatory bias and not because women and people of color cannot act.

Why is Racebending.com advocating for actors of Asian descent to play the characters in the film if that would mean they would be playing a stereotype (martial artists)?
Casting actors who are white to play characters of color does not protect people of color from discrimination or stereotypes. We also believe the Avatar: The Last Airbender series took the proper steps to avoid being stereotypical, (eg: cultural consultants)–unlike the film adaptation.

Does the fact that M. Night Shyamalan is South Asian American impact Racebending.com’s position on his film at all?
Racebending.com believes that anyone is capable of making decisions with a discriminatory impact, regardless of their ethnicity, talent, and experiences–and regardless of their intentions. Our focus is on addressing that impact.

M. Night Shyamalan recently said that the film will be “the most diverse tentpole movie ever.” What is Racebending.com’s position on this diversity?
Racebending.com and other advocacy groups argue that there is a difference between diversity and equal representation and that this difference must be acknowledged.

Having a diverse palette of villains and extras is nothing new–Hollywood has upheld this glass ceiling for ages. The three heroic protagonist lead roles were still reserved for white actors. M. Night Shyamalan’s claim of diversity also does not address the production’s repeated culturally incompetent gaffes, including specifically casting for white actors to play the leads, cultural appropriation, and stereotyping (eg: Koreans come in Kimonos.)

The production has not acknowledged full impact of its actions. While actors of color are present in the film, they are not treated equally. Similar to a restaurant or store that employs people of color in the back room but places people who are white in the storefront, this production’s “diversity” is indicative of a glass ceiling. Glass ceilings with backfilled diversity are not indicative of true diversity.

What does Racebending.com think about Frank Marshall’s recent claim that the production of The Last Airbender did not create nor intend to use the “Caucasian or any other ethnicity” language?
We are very skeptical of this claim. Marshall told UGO.com that the “Caucasian or any other ethnicity” language was “not written nor distributed by the production, or the studio, but by a local extra casting entity that did not consult with either.” Yet, when this casting language was released to Breakdown Services, it came from the office Gail Levin, then-chief of Paramount Features Casting. The “Caucasian or any other ethnicity” breakdown was the most widely distributed casting language for th film’s lead roles.

The “Caucasian or any other ethnicity” language was used on several official casting websites, including the thelastairbendercasting.com site owned by Paramount and on Breakdown Services/Actor’s Access [source].

At Racebending.com we’re more concerned about the language–and the impact of the language– the production did use, rather than the language they meant to use. The production’s concrete actions had a discriminatory impact[learn more here.]

Does Racebending.com think the people involved in the production of The Last Airbender are racist? Does Racebending.com think fans of The Last Airbender movie are racist?
No. We are not in a position to judge whether any individual–unaffiliated with the casting or not–is personally racist.

What Racebending.com can assess is the production of The Last Airbender’s cultural competency and the discriminatory or disparate impact of the production’s decisions. A film production need not have discriminatory intent or be “racist” in order to make decisions with a discriminatory impact.

In the case of The Last Airbender, the production’s decisions–whether deliberate or inadvertant–have reinforced glass ceilings in Hollywood. The idea that Hollywood casts films with a glass ceiling is well established and has been studied extensively both in academia and by professional organizations including the Screen Actor’s Guild.

Similarly, we are not in a position to judge whether any individual fan is racist and going to see the movie is a personal choice. So many people who loved the series don’t realize that when they are supporting the live action movie, they are also indirectly supporting discrimination. Our goal is to raise awareness and inform fans that they can boycott the movie if they do not wish to financially reward the production for making decisions that have resulted in discrimination. We hope that one day, fans and media consumers will not have to choose between supporting a franchise and taking a stand against discrimination.

Questions about Hollywood Casting

How does Racebending.com feel about ‘colorblind casting’?
Racebending.com absolutely supports casting a role without considering an actor’s ethnicity, with a few caveats.

One is that ‘colorblindness’ should not be a free pass to ignore race, ethnicity, or culture altogether. A system that does not recognize race will also become unable to recognize when race-based discrimination does occur. And, given that in American society–and particularly in Hollywood–the default color is white, organizations like the Media Action Network for Asian Americans have found that when the ethnicity of a character is not listed in a casting call, old habits die hard and actors who are white may be preferenced anyway. Colorblindness should not be used as an excuse to ignore disparities or discrimination in Hollywood.

Another caveat is the double standard. This occurs when studios cast characters of color in a “colorblind” manner, but do not cast characters who are white in a “colorblind” manner. In this situation, studios select actors who are white to play characters of color (usually the lead) but actors of color are rarely selected to play characters who are white.

Lastly, it is important for studios to recognize that actors of color and actors from other underrepresented groups represent their communities. Nothing is stopping Hollywood from casting an abled-bodied actor to portray a person in a wheelchair, a male actor to portray a female character, and a white actor to portray a person of color–but there is a great distinction between an actor portraying a character, and an actor representing for an already underrepresented community. It would certainly behoove movie studios to take representation into consideration when casting for roles where the character’s identity as a member of an underrepresented group factors into the portrayal.

Is Racebending.com saying that white people can’t play Asians/Inuits? Isn’t that reverse racism? Shouldn’t actors be able to play any role?
Casting characters of color with white actors sends the message that white people are more qualified to represent people of color than people of color themselves.

“Reverse racism” isn’t endemic in Hollywood right now; quite the opposite. There are actors of color actors equally as talented as the white actors selected to play the roles in The Last Airbender–except Ringer, Peltz, and Rathbone have other lead roles (white leading characters) open to them and actors of color do not. 82% of lead roles in Hollywood go to white actors. Less than 2% of lead roles go to Asian actors and less than 1% go to Native American actors.

Asian American actors should have the same opportunities to play Asian characters as white actors have to play white characters. The same applies for Native American actors.

Does Racebending.com believe that only people from a certain group should be able to play characters from that group? For example, what does Racebending.com feel about British actors playing Italian characters?
Again, we’re examining double standards applied to actors of color in Hollywood. Advocate Helen Zia wrote: “To further suggest that Equity advocates the narrow-minded view that Jews can only play Jews, or Italians can only play Italians, or any similar casting that is drawn strictly along racial or ethnic lines, totally distorts the issue. Jews have always been able to play Italians, Italians have always been able to play Jews, and both have always been able to play Asian. Asian actors, however, almost never have the opportunity to play either Jews or Italians and continue to struggle even to play themselves.”

In addition to not seeing these movies, why launch letter writing movements, protests, and the website?
Racebending.com believes that it is important for media consumers to put studios that discriminate on notice. We are vocally protesting and pointing out that the kinds of casting practices used by The Last Airbender and other films are embarrassing, discriminative, and inappropriate. We hope to show the film industry that consumers will no longer stand for discriminative casting and that these practices are no longer financially viable.

What if casting decisions are driven not by racial discrimination but by financial motivations? Perhaps moviegoers would not see a movie without white actors?
It is certainly patronizing if Hollywood believes that most viewers are so intolerant and narrow-minded that they must need a white viewpoint in the story in order to ‘get it’. American audiences have happily embraced films like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Slumdog Millionaire, and they also fell in love with Avatar: The Last Airbender even though all of the characters were people of color.

By casting The Last Airbender the way they have, Paramount has lost revenue from minority families excited by the prospect of a kids movie where their ethnicity is represented, people pleased that casting was done in a culturally competent manner, and all the fans who are boycotting the film now. Financially-driven discrimination is still discrimination, and would be unacceptable in any other industry.

• 2002 to mid-2008: Origin of the Series
• August 2008: Casting Heroes: “Caucasian or Any Other Ethnicity”
• December 2008: The Protest Gets Organized
• January 2009: Extras and Villains Wanted, Seeking Actors of Color
• February 2009: Advocacy Groups Become Involved
• Summer 2009: Former A:TLA staff members speak out!
• Fall 2009: Paramount’s film The Goods Outrages the Asian American Community
• Racebending.com Hits the Road
• The Casting Controversy Draws Increased Media Attention

Origin of the Series

2002

Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko begin early concept work on Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Nickelodeon wanted to make a “legends & lore” type of show with a kid hero. That’s a genre we are very interested in, but we wanted to create a mythology that was based on Eastern culture, rather than Western culture.

Although “Avatar” isn’t based on a specific Asian myth, we were inspired by Asian mythology, as well as Kung Fu, Yoga, and Eastern Philosophy. We were also inspired by Anime in general. We wanted to create a story that inspired people’s imaginations and that had elements of comedy, drama, and action.”

-Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, Creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender

February, 2005
The animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender – marketed by Nickelodeon’s Marjorie Cohn as set in a “fantastical Asian world ” – premieres to critical acclaim. It soon earns a place as one of the most popular children’s shows on television, earning high ratings and garnering fans of all ages and backgrounds.
(source)

Caucasian or Any Other Ethnicity

August, 2008

The Protest Gets Organized

December 11, 2008

A grassroots movement launches the “Saving the World with Postage” campaign, urging the public to write letters to producers Kennedy & Marshall at Paramount Pictures, and Shyamalan at his company, Blinding Edge Studios.

Over 200 letters are ignored and returned to sender. Campaign organizers are given out-of-date and conflicting contact information by Paramount employees, but fans continue to send in letters to the Kennedy/Marshall Company. This fan movement eventually shifts into Racebending.com, the full site gets it’s launch in February 2009.

There is no response.

December, 2008
A Facebook group for anyone protesting the white-washed casting of The Last Airbender is created. There are now 4,700 members.

January, 2009
Asian American artist Derek Kirk Kim creates a petition of industry professionals who plan to boycott the film.

What if someone made a ‘fantasy’ movie in which the entire world was built around African culture? Everyone is wearing ancient African clothes, African hats, eating traditional African food, writing in an African language, living in African homes, all encompassed in an African landscape…but everyone is white.”

- Derek Kirk Kim, author of Same Difference and Other Stories
(source, photo courtesy of Aaron Albert)

Shortly after, award-winning Avatar: The Last Airbender director Giancarlo Volpe applauds Mr. Kim’s message:

This blog entry sums up my feelings exactly. Thank you, Derek Kirk Kim for spelling out the situation so eloquently. ”

-Giancarlo Volpe, Avatar: The Last Airbender director
(source, photo courtesy of Kenji Yamaguchi)

Extras and Villains Wanted, Seeking Actors of Color

January 24, 2009
First Open Casting Call for background extras held in Philadelphia. Flier reads: “dress in the traditional costume of your family’s ethnic background.”

At the cast call, casting director Deedee Ricketts recommended extras emphasize their own culture.

We want you to dress in traditional cultural ethnic attire,” she said. “If you’re Korean, wear a kimono.”
(source)

One middle-aged black woman, clad in a denim jacket and black slacks, raised her hand. “Are you at a disadvantage if you didn’t wear a costume?” she asked, evidently concerned about her “non-ethnic” outfit.

“Absolutely not!” Ricketts reassured her. “It doesn’t mean you’re at a disadvantage if you didn’t come in a big African thing. But guys, even if you came with a scarf today, put it over your head so you’ll look like a Ukrainian villager or whatever.”
For more on the casting, click here.
(source)

February 7, 2009

Advocacy Groups Become Involved

February 11, 2009

March 25th, 2009
After several weeks of being given the run-around, MANAA finally hears back from Paramount. Unfortunately, by this point, filming has already begun, making changing the cast substantially more difficult. In a letter signed simply “The Producers” The letter argues that the cast is “ethnically diverse and inclusive” and goes on to list the ethnicities and country of upbringing of actors playing antagonist and secondary characters. According to the letter, “The four nations represented in the film reflect not one community, but the world’s citizens.” The letter does not address MANAA’s concerns regarding a casting bias or that the lead roles were changed from Asian/Inuit to white.

March 28th, 2009
Zazzle.com inexplicably shuts down the Racebending.com t-shirt store despite fair use protections.

April 1st, 2009
Frank Marshall, one of the producers, returns from Greenland and opens a twitter account. His first tweet:

Good to be back in civilization…”

Angry members of the public immediately begin tweeting him regarding the cast. In response, Marshall tweets:

The casting is complete and we did not discriminate against anyone.”
- Frank Marshall, Executive Producer, The Last Airbender

April 9th, 2009
MANAA responds, again requesting a meeting to “discuss the casting and depiction of cultures in the movie.” MANAA writes:

MANAA is a strong supporter of studios’ efforts to increase diversity, but it is absurd to use that as an excuse to make a project more white and to say the original concept wasn’t diverse enough when the cultures of the four Asian [and Inuit] nations clearly were.”

Paramount does not respond, and MANAA’s repeated attempts to contact Paramount regarding The Last Airbender and The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard are also rebuffed.

April 24th, 2009
Racebending.com begins to poll supporters for demographics including gender, age, and hometown. Responses begin flooding in from all over the world…over 500 in just one day! To this day, Racebending.com still receives approximately three responses a day.

Former A:TLA staff members Speak Out

June 2009
Sifu Kisu, martial arts consultant on the animated series, begins to engage fans in the debate regarding the casting, through various forums on the internet as well as at San Diego Comic Con.

Now I’m hearing people are so surprised that a Caucasian kid was cast as the Asian lead? SHOCKING NEWS!! Kinda like the Kung Fu TV Series when David Carradine beat out Bruce Lee for the lead. I mean goodness we all know David Carradine was by far superior in the martial arts compared to Bruce Lee, go figure.
- Sifu Kisu, martial arts consultant, Avatar: The Last Airbender

June 9th, 2009
Paramount broadcasts on The Last Airbender fan sites that it has cast Korean American actor Isaac Jin Solstein, age 13. Despite their emphasis on this casting fans are quick to point out that Solstein has been cast as “Earthbending Boy”– a character so minor it does not even have a name. An experienced young martial artist and Asian American actor, Solstein could just as easily have played one of the main characters…

July 3rd, 2009
Professor S.L. Lee, series calligrapher and cultural consultant, is interviewed on San Francisco radio station 94.1KPFA.

Since the 1960s, there [have been] a lot of immigrants from Asia. There shouldn’t be any problem of selecting from a very wide arena of candidates, to cast this film. I was very puzzled by why there are absolutely no Asian [actors]–other than South Asians as one of the evil characters. I feel that this is totally off the theme of the original TV show. The reason why this TV show is now a syndicated show is because of the idea of having different ethnicities involved, and so I think that should be the same with the movie.”
– Professor S. L. Lee, cultural consultant to Avatar: The Last Airbender

July 23rd-26th, 2009
At San Diego Comic Con 2009, members of the Racebending.com Los Angeles Street team hand out fliers, pins, t-shirts, and collect petition signatures. They even get to meet the series creators and see the newest Comic Con Avatar: The Last Airbender fan poster.

An older version of Aang (the last Airbender) as depicted by co-creator Bryan Konietzko for a poster shared with fans at the San Diego Comic Con after the casting controversy.

The Street Team interviews several Comic Con celebrities opposed to the casting, including Jerry Holkins (Tycho) of Penny Arcade, Sandeep Parikh of The Guild, Gene Yang, writer of National Book Award finalist American Born Chinese, and Keith Chow, editor of comics anthology Secret Identities.

July 29th, 2009
Professor S.L. Lee, series calligrapher, announces that Chinese calligraphy–a cultural element so ingrained in the animated series it was included in the series logo–will not be used in the feature film.

July 31, 2009
Dao Le, Animatic Editor of the Avatar: The Last Airbender original animated series, speaks out:

It’s been a huge disappointment to hear about the casting for Avatar’s live-action movie. The show was heavily influenced by Asian culture, some of the characters were even modeled after Asian members of the crew.

But now, with the pre-dominantly white cast, it feels like all the Asian/Eastern influences, origins, what have you, were just a backdrop for these characters.

[...] I always believed they were Asian, or even mixed Asian. And that belief added a little extra pride in working on such a great show. The appreciation Mike & Bryan had for Asian culture, the interest it generated in the fans, gave me greater appreciation for my own culture.”
-Dao Le, Animatic Editor for Avatar: The Last Airbender

Paramount’s film The Goods Outrages the Asian American Community

August 14th, 2009
Paramount Pictures releases The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, which features a scene that incenses the Asian American community. The scene in question depicts the beating of an Asian-American man by car salesmen, evoking memories in the community to the real-life murder of Vincent Chin by Detroit auto workers. After a protest in front of Paramount Studios–a joint effort by several Asian-American groups, including the JACL, MANAA, and Racebending.com–Paramount pulled all advertising material for the film using the scene in question and agreed to meet with leaders in the Asian-American community to foster continuing dialogue on the issue.

On behalf of the studio, I want to extend our sincerest apologies to the Japanese American Citizens League and the greater Asian American community for the racially demeaning language used in the scenes depicted in the film.”
- Adam Goodman, President of Paramount Pictures

September 5th-7th,2009 A viral video criticizing the casting of The Last Airbender – unaffiliated with Racebending.com – runs on Dragon*ConTV throughout the weekend of the Dragon*Con convention. The video is played multiple times throughout the weekend before panels and at participating hotels.

October 2009
Racebending.com comes into the possession of a few pages from the Avatar: The Last Airbender’s “Intellectual Property Bible,” the guiding document members of the animated series’ production used to create the show. The Bible reiterates that the world of Avatar was always intended to be representative of the cultures of the Pacific Rim.

This is an ancient, fantastical Asian environment, primarily Chinese.”
- The A:TLA IP Bible

November 14th, 2009
At a meeting with Paramount Pictures regarding the depictions of Asian Americans in The Goods, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans brings up the casting controversy over The Last Airbender. The President of Paramount Pictures, Adam Goodman, is made fully aware of the public’s problems with the casting. Goodman promises to let the Asian American advocates at the meeting see a screening of the film well before before its release. Goodman tells MANAA that in all his years in the business, he has never seen such outcry over the casting of a character.

Racebending.com Hits the Road

November 21st, 2009
Racebending.com staff member Loraine Sammy is a panelist at the Futures of Entertainment Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT.) The protest against the casting of The Last Airbender is now being studied in academia as an example of social change in transmedia.

December 24th, 2009
In his December 23rd, 2009 “Answer Man” column, venerated film critic Roger Ebert publicly condemns the casting of The Last Airbender film as “wrong.”

The original series Avatar: The Last Airbender was highly regarded and popular for three seasons on Nickelodeon. Its fans take it for granted that its heroes are Asian. Why would Paramount and Shyamalan go out of their way to offend these fans? There are many young Asian actors capable of playing the parts.”
- Roger Ebert, film critic

January 8, 2010
Dark Horse Comics announces the publication of Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Art of the Animated Series, a hardcover book set to release on June 2nd. The book jacket reads:

[Avatar: The Last Airbender is] beautifully executed, a stunning masterpiece of animated storytelling that harmonizes Western influences with aesthetic inspiration drawn from a diverse array of cultures, including those of China, Japan, India, and the Inuit.

January 28, 2010
The Los Angeles Times interviews M. Night Shyamalan. No mention of the casting controversy, but the article again describes Avatar: The Last Airbender as a “fusion of Eastern philosophies and martial arts” and explains that Shyamalan was drawn to its Buddhist philosophies. The character of Aang is a “pre-teen, martial-arts version of the Dalai Lama” and Dev Patel is playing “the evil Prince Zuko.”

February 4, 2010
Paramount debuts the Super Bowl Trailer for the film and holds the first few screenings for test audiences.

March 6, 2010
Racebending.com presents two workshops at the East Coast Asian American Student Union Conference to a packed house of students at the University of Pennsylvania.

March 11, 2010
M. Night Shyamalan shills The Last Airbender at the Upfronts. He also flies in fan sites and web journalists to New York City, has a Q&A breakfast with them, and hosts them at the Tribeca Grand Hotel.

March 15, 2010
Facebook shuts down the “People Against Racebending: Protest of the Cast of The Last Airbender Movie” Facebook group without warning for being “hateful, threatening, or obscene.” Jeff Yang of the San Francisco Chronicle launches a new group demanding that the Facebook group be restored. The group of supporters swells to over 500 supporters in 24 hours, including support from authors Maxine Hong Kingston, Derek Kirk Kim and Tak Toyoshima. After supporters send Facebook messages, the group is restored the next day at 8pm.

The Casting Controversy Draws Increased Media Attention

March 24, 2010
Paramount releases the full length trailer for The Last Airbender.

March 30, 2010
M. Night Shyamalan is interviewed by UGO.com and calls the film “the most culturally diverse tent-pole in history.” He is dismissive of what he calls “ironic” complaints about the casting and says that the diversity of the cast is “more than [fans] could have expected.”

It is revealed that Paramount reneged on its promise to give the fan sites and online journalists a video of the meeting to post publicly with their readers. Instead, the fan sites cobble together a transcript from their notes and recordings that day.io9.com also posts its transcript of the March 11th interview with M. Night Shyamalan and other fan sites follow suit.

The Media Action Network for Asian Americans blogs in response that “M. Night Shyamalan misses the point.” Several other websites, including the Los Angeles Times – Hero Complex, Racialicious, SlashFilm, ScreenCrave, etc. also take note.

Racebending.com responds with an email directly to the President of Paramount Pictures, Adam Goodman. The letter points out that M. Night Shyamalan misconstrued and was dismissive of public concerns, and requests a meeting between Paramount, the production of The Last Airbender, Racebending.com, and other advocacy groups.

April 1st, 2010

UGO.com interviews Racebending.com staffer Michael Le..

April 2nd-April 4th, 2010

Racebending.com hosts an exhibitor table among other fan tables at WonderCon 2010 in San Francisco, CA. Over a thousand people visit the booth and over 500 people participate in an online photo petition on the last two days of the convention.

On the same weekend at AnimeBoston in Boston, MA, fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender present on the film adaptation during the A:TLA panel.

April 7th, 2010

Los Angeles Times Comments Blog notes the fan dissent over the controversial casting of The Last Airbender.

April 8th, 2010

Producer Frank Marshall responds to the Michael Le interview on UGO.com by blaming what he agrees is “poorly worded and offensive” casting language “Caucasian or any other ethnicity” on “a local extra casting entity” that did not consult with the production or studio. (This, despite the fact that the language was used on the official Paramount thelastairbendercasting.com website and the casting language was for the LEAD characters and not extras.)

April 21st, 2010
Backstage Magzine, one of the most prominent actor/casting/trade magzines in Hollywood, publishes the first article on the controversy to include interviews from all sides of the argument: Airbent Out of Shape

April 28th, 2010
Racebending.com presents with MANAA at Cal Poly Pomona.

May 2nd, 2010
The Los Angeles Times publishes an article on the controversy, On the set: Casting of ‘Last Airbender’ stirs controversy. The article only provides quotes and information from the production, no advocacy groups were contacted.

May 11th, 2010
SciFiWire publishes two dueling editorials asking this question: Does Last Airbender Discriminate?

Racebending.com co-founder Marissa Lee argues:

“If not in a franchise like The Last Airbender, then what other opportunities do actors of Asian and Inuit descent currently have to star in Hollywood blockbusters?

Ian Spelling of SciFiWire argues:

“Was it truly Shyamalan’s duty to do what no one else has been willing or able to do?”

May 25th-May 28th, 2010

Several media outlets cover the casting controversies behind Prince of Persia and The Last Airbender. Articles about the controversy, with direct quotes from Racebending.com, are published by CBC Canada, The Los Angeles Times, The UK Daily Telegraph, The Associated Press and over 50 other media outlets. Racebending.com is also interviewed on the BBC World News Update.

July 1, 2010
Release date of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender.

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This week, Facebook removing the Racebending.com group with allegations of promoting “hateful, threatening, or obscene” material. Following massive public outcry – including messages to Facebook staff, articles written around the web, and a new group dedicated to the restoration of the previous one – Facebook has restored the group, with even less warning than was given before it was taken down.

• Racebending.com and their “Racist” Crusade for Diversity – Kevin of the USC Student Coalition for Asian Pacific Empowerment
• why did facebook ban the racebending group?- Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man
• Racebending Integration – by Hal Duncan of Notes from the Geek Show
• Racebending Facebook Group Deleted – Carolyn Lee of Remodel Minority
• Asian Activism Banned by Major Corporations – Edward Hong of The HanSarang Movement (video)
• Facebook Deletes Racebending Group – Seeking Avalon
• Facebook bans Racebending – James of Alpha Asian
• Asian Activism Banned by Major Corporations – Edward Hong for APAs for Progress
• Heavy Competition for Racebending.com Facebook Ban – by Michael Le via Racialicious

If you notice any names or sites conspicuously absent from the above list, please contact us and we will rectify the omission immediately. We did our best to chronicle every posting that remarked on our plight, but things have moved very fast in the last few days, and it’s very possible we may have missed something.

Even after all this, it remains unclear why Racebending.com was removed and implicated as “hateful, threatening, or obscene.”

Especially considering the groups that remain untouched on Facebook – groups decrying Islam, comparing President Obama to Osama bin Laden, making light of sexual assault – it’s questionable why a group about race in American media was removed. Perhaps the dialogue taking place among its six thousand members about where Americans of color fit into the national landscape was considered especially dangerous – especially incendiary, especially worthy of silence and censorship.

Regardless of Facebook’s intentions, the attempt to censor and silence has had the opposite effect: the community is speaking up. We’re louder than ever. And we’re not going away.

Thank you all, once again. In addition to the group, you can connect with us on our Facebook page, Twitter, and LiveJournal.

Earlier today, the Facebook group People Against Racebending: Protest of the Cast of The Last Airbender Movie was removed by Facebook. The group has been around since the early days of the protest (Dec. 2008) and as of last week had almost 6,000 members. A cached version of the group can be seen here.

This is the email we received today:

From: Facebook (generic notification email)
Date: Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 12:38 PM
Subject: Facebook Warning
To: (personal email redacted)

Hello,

The group “People Against Racebending: Protest of the Cast of The Last Airbender Movie” has been removed because it violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, groups that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down groups that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page at http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=wgroups.

The Facebook Team

One of our staff members contacted the Facebook team with the following:

To whom it may concern:

I am one of the administrators of the group “People Against Racebending: Protest the Cast of The Last Airbender Movie.” Today I was contacted that the group has been removed because it violated the Facebook Terms of Use. I am writing to request that Facebook further clarify why our group was removed.

I had not received any warnings prior to the complete erasure of the group today even though the FAQ indicates that administrators will receive warnings when inappropriate content is posted. After thoroughly reviewing the Facebook Terms of Use, I am unclear as to how our group violated the terms.

The group is one of many protest groups on Facebook. It does not advocate anything “hateful, threatening or obscene”, it is simply advocating for greater diversity in movies and pointing out a glass ceiling in casting in one or two specific films. We are not “attacking any individual or group, nor are we advertising a product or service.”

When we googled the message we received to see other groups Facebook has banned, we found that other groups deleted for violating the terms of use included White Supremacist groups (Stormfront), anti-white groups (eg: “Kill the Whites”) anti-Zionist, and anti-Islam groups openly employing profanity and hate speech to further their agendas.

In advocating for fair representation in media, our group has always striven for the opposite by fighting discrimination. Other facebook groups similar in purpose to “People Against Racebending: Protest the Cast of The Last Airbender Movie” exist without any repercussions, such as Boycott Transformers 2 and Boycott Dragonball.

Recently, the group has been harassed by trolls, and has received “hateful, threatening or obscene” posts about Asian Americans, or about the protest, on the wall. Administrators have tried to monitor these attacks diligently and Facebook users who have repeatedly posted inflammatory language on our group have been banned. We hope that Facebook did not misconstrue the hate speech left on our wall by the people harassing us, as a product of our supporters.

Facebook’s FAQ writes that “Any content that is obscene, violent, malicious or otherwise offensive will be removed.” We have no idea as to how the entirety of our Facebook group could be considered to meet this criteria, particularly given the precedence of similar discrimination-in-movies protest groups on Facebook.

Please explain why our group is removed and outline any steps we can take to see it restored.

Sincerely,

Marissa Lee
racebending.com

As of this writing, we are still awaiting a response from the Facebook team.

We are getting closer to the release of the movie and we need the support of the greater community now more than ever. This is a setback, but we will continue to spread the word about how The Last Airbender created a glass ceiling when it erased the ethnicities of its Asian and Inuit characters and cast white actors to play lead characters of color.

If you and/or your friends were members of the Facebook group (or even if you weren’t), please stay in touch with us by joining our Facebook Fan Page or our LiveJournal Community. You can also follow us on Twitter or sign up for our newsletter.

We will share whatever we learn with the Racebending community and let you know if there are any steps we can take to restore the group.

EDIT: We’re still trying to figure out the best way to contact Facebook. YOU can start by going to Facebook’s Groups Suggestion page and asking them to look into why we were deleted.

Asian American Advocacy Groups, Fans Condemn Racial Bias in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Whitewashed” Casting of “The Last Airbender”

Los Angeles–Thousands of fans and two prominent Asian American advocacy groups are protesting Paramount Pictures’ upcoming “The Last Airbender,” accusing the production of racial bias in selecting white actors to portray ethnically Asian characters.

The movie-a live action adaptation of the hit animated television series “Avatar: The Last Airbender”-is part of a franchise widely advertised by Nickelodeon as set in a “fantastical Asian world” and is set for release in July of 2010.

Even though all of the series’ characters were ethnically Asian or Inuit/Yupik, casting sheets for the leads indicated a preference for white actors-and ultimately, they were chosen for the top four starring roles. The part of the villainous Prince Zuko went to Jesse McCartney. After dropping out, he was replaced by “Slumdog Millionaire’s” Dev Patel. Consequently, in a Eurocentric twist, actors of color have been relegated to villain, supporting, and background roles.

Immediately after the initial casting announcement in December, thousands of outraged fans mobilized to protest through a letter writing campaign, petition, and website, www.racebending.com [1]. Fan protest efforts were featured in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE and THE WASHINGTON POST.

“We’re mortified that the film is turning this story we loved and respected into just another symbol of Hollywood discrimination,” Marissa Lee, one of the fans protesting the casting, said. “That’s why we decided to speak out and fight back. These ignorant casting decisions have compromised the integrity of the original series.”

On February 11, The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), the only organization solely dedicated to monitoring the media and its depiction and coverage of Asian Americans, sent a letter to Paramount President John Lesher, executive producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, director M. Night Shyamalan, and producer Sam Mercer, requesting a meeting to discuss the casting controversy before filming began in early March.

On March 25-over a month and a half later-and after shooting commenced, MANAA received a letter signed by “the producers,” attempting to justify the selection of white actors to portray characters of color. The letter claimed that the film has “a large and ethnically diverse cast that represents many different heritages and cultures from all corners of the globe.”

Although they claim the setting will be diverse, the producers ignored concerns regarding a glass ceiling reserving the three primary heroic roles for white actors. Paramount’s letter, available on MANAA’s website, www.manaa.org [2], fails to answer the organization’s charges of discrimination, racial bias, cultural appropriation, imperialism, and the production’s use of culturally ignorant language to justify the film’s casting practices.

Guy Aoki, founding President of MANAA, says, “It’s outrageous that the producers are using their supposed concern for ‘diversity’ as an excuse to make an Asian story more white. Conversely, does this mean that in the future, the producers will take a story featuring only white people and make a movie with the top four stars all initially being persons of color?”

“Like other studios, Paramount erroneously believes that white audiences won’t pay money to see a film that’s ‘too Asian.’ Unfortunately, we saw this happen last year with “21″ and recently with “Dragonball: Evolution.” The different cultures of the four Asian nations were unique enough in the original “Avatar” series. Fans expected to see Asian actors play those parts in the movie. Ironically, most of the outraged fans threatening to boycott the film are white, black, and Latino.

In February, East West Players, the longest-running Asian American theatre organization in the country, founded by late “Avatar” actor Makoto “Mako” Iwamatsu, also wrote a letter expressing its concerns.

When graphic novelist Derek Kirk Kim sent the producers a petition from industry professionals, signatories included one of the “Avatar” series’ award-winning directors, Giancarlo Volpe.

Korean American comedian Margaret Cho lashed out at the decision on her blog.

“Why is it better to have white actors play the roles of Asians?” Cho wrote. “I don’t understand. Because it sells more tickets? I am not white and I have had no trouble selling tickets. Maybe the powers that be should ask me what to do. I would tell them ‘The Last Airbender’ is the last straw to a lot of people:”

On his Twitter, producer Frank Marshall continues to deny the production has discriminated by giving opportunities for actors of color to white performers. After a series of twitters back and forth between angry fans and himself, Marshall made his final comment on the subject last week saying, “The casting is complete and we did not discriminate against anyone,” defensively adding, “I am done talking about it.”

Paramount Pictures casts white actors as Asian Characters in children’s film

The Last Airbenderis set to release July 2010. And the tagline should read: In an Asian world, only three white heroes can save the world.

The film, a live-action adaptation of the hit animated television series AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, is part of a franchise widely advertised in 2005 by Nickelodeon executives as set in a “fantastical Asian world.” Despite the show’s overt use of elements from Asian cultures and concepts—including Asian religions and martial arts—initial casting calls indicated a preference for Caucasian actors, and ultimately only Caucasian actors were cast in the lead protagonist roles. Conversely, all casting sheets for background roles and non-speaking extras have requested actors of specific East Asian, Asian, Hispanic and Middle Eastern nationalities.

Fans were outraged by the December 9th, 2008 casting announcement and immediately mobilized, writing over two hundred letters protesting the ‘whitewashing’ of the movie to producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, and director M. Night Shyamalan. Although the production has since cast actor Dev Patel (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) as antagonist ‘Prince Zuko,’ minority actors have again been relegated to supporting and villain roles. The cast of THE LAST AIRBENDER does not reflect the cultural diversity of the source material and instead evokes the infamous and archaic Hollywood practice of “yellowface,” where white actors are ‘made
up’ to play Asian characters.

In addition to “yellowface”, Paramount Pictures’ casting of THE LAST AIRBENDER perpetuates the Hollywood stereotype to portray the heroes as white and the villains as darker-skinned. In the animated series, the Inuit-based nation (Water Tribe) and Tibetan-based nation (Air Nomads) are the heroes. In the movie, both the Water Tribe and Air Nomads will be completely white-washed and populated with white actors. Conversely, the genocidal, evil Fire Nation will be entirely populated with darker-skinned actors, who actively oppress and destroy all other Nations.

The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) and the East West Players have both taken action to discuss and work with Paramount Pictures. Also, a variety of newspapers and online magazines have since reported on this issue, questioning Paramount Pictures for their racial bias when casting roles for this children’s film.

Paramount is trying to put a bandaid on this problem by casting Asian actors in minor, background and villainous roles, in a world that will still be saved by three white heroes. For fans, now is the time to tell them that that isn’t good enough.

The pre-production window is closing. This valid concern must be taken into journalistic consideration. With more attention from media sources, we hope to show Paramount that their audience — no matter what their own race may be — won’t support this project as it stands.