Racebending.com

UGO.com interviews Racebending.com press contact Michael Le. Since posting their exclusive interview with M. Night Shyamalan on the film’s divisive casting decisions, UGO.com has been covering ‘racebending’ in The Last Airbender and other movies, even creating a special Racebending “tag” for related articles on their website.

Interview with the Racebender
A discussion with the spokesperson for Racebending.com about M. Night Shyamalan’s Airbender adaptation.
by Jordan Hoffman

We continue our conversation concerning the controversial nature of M. Night Shyamalan’s casting choices in The Last Airbender. While the effects and cinematography look terrific, there is no denying many with a deep attachment to these characters have been hurt. We spoke with Michael Le, media liason for Racebending.com and hit him with as many “devil’s advocate” questions we could.

6. Background and Goals

Michael Le: Some people on LiveJournal came together on the initial casting announcement, and at the time all four principles [sic] were white, including Zuko, he was cast as Jesse McCartney, and the fan reaction was incredibly negative, so this group of people got together and they mailed over 200 letters to Paramount and the production company, basically voicing their concerns, saying “Hey, you’re still in pre-production, and we as fans are telling you we feel very passionately that you should give Asian-American actors and Inuit-American Actors or Native American actors an opportunity to at least audition, and preferentially be cast in the spirit of the characters.” And what happened was Paramount sent all the letters back un-opened, which was a little unfortunate. That aside, from there this began to evolve into this larger fan movement, not just around Airbender, but on media as a whole, and how people of color in the United States are portrayed, how Americans of color experience a glass ceiling in casting for film, and so this became Racebending.com

Jordan Hoffman: By the “glass ceiling,” you mean that Asian actors can be the sidekick, like Toph will be in the second and third film, but they can’t be the lead like Aang and Sokka and Katara.

Michael Le: Right, it’s extremely rare for an American of color to be cast in a lead role. Granted there’ve been huge strides, especially in the last 15 years, but even 15 years ago, 1995, Samuel L. Jackson remarked that it was very unusual for Hollywood to think to cast a black leading man or a black actor, and of course now we know that Samuel L. Jackson has, if you look at his historical run, he is the highest box office cumulative earner for modern film.

Jordan Hoffman: Is your group looking to simply raise awareness, or are you calling for an active boycott of the film?

Michael Le: We really want to raise awareness. . .we understand why the history of race in this country is complex and especially in modern times, it’s become almost taboo to discuss. So that’s important for us, to raise that awareness. Second, what we want to say is that if you look at the film’s production practices, it’s difficult to support that morally and ethically. And the response of someone who truly believes in equality and fairness and equal opportunity, the logical response is boycott.

5. Any Irony Here?

Jordan Hoffman: Do you find that there is sort of a great irony in that the animated show was created by two white guys, and the movie is being directed by probably the most successful director of color in Hollywood? And is there anything to the argument that Shyamalan gets a pass because he’s of Indian descent?

Michael Le: There are two parts to that question, and I guess I’ll address the first one, which is the Caucasian creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. We have enormous respect for the work that the original creators did. We actually got to meet them on a couple of occasions, informally, not as part of Racebending, just as fans. They’re great guys, they did an amazing job, and they were incredibly respectful to the source material. They knew that they wanted to do something different, not just draw from the same Western sources that Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter would draw from. They really had the whole Eastern influence and Eastern root to the series, and they went out of their way to do that. They hired a cultural consultant, they had authentic Chinese calligraphy on the show, they showed that they loved and respected the material, and Americans responded to that. Americans of ALL color responded to that. A Caucasian-American could look at it and say “hey, this is something unusual, this is something that clearly the creators had a lot of passion for, and this is beautiful, and we wanna respect that.” And of course for Americans of color, especially for children of color, it was this beautiful chance to see themselves portrayed visually in the series as heroes, even if not all of the voice actors were Asian American. So I would say that it’s more complex than saying it was created by these two Caucasian Americans as though they didn’t have respect for the source material, as if they didn’t have respect for Asian culture.

Jordan Hoffman: There was no whiff of minstrelsy on their part, they did their homework. So what about the argument that this is M. Night Shyamalan, he’s one of the most famous Indian-Americans, probably, in the country, and he wants to make his movie, and he’s gonna do what he’s gonna do. Do you feel that the offense is lessened if it had been Steven Spielberg, or Peter Jackson? In this case, it’s M. Night Shyamalan, at least he’s “one of us,” so to speak?

Michael Le: M. Night Shyamalan is South Asian American. He is, as you said, perhaps one of the most successful, if not THE most successful directors of color in Hollywood at the moment. But I don’t think that changes what the production did. I feel like there’s been a lot of focus on M. Night, and what his intentions are, what his background is, et cetera. And I think that that’s an important conversation to have, but the more important conversation is about what concrete actions did the production take, and where did that lead us? So if you start way back at the beginning, and you look at the cast calls for the principle actors…this is a matter of public record, for some reason a lot of people doubt us on this, but you can look it up, and Paramount admits it freely, that this happened, the casting calls read Caucasian or any other ethnicity.

4. The Smoking Gun?

Jordan Hoffman: I read about this on your site, that the casting calls for the leads said “Caucasians and Other Ethnicities.” I hear that and I think, “okay, they are looking at Caucasians, and they are looking at other races, too.” That’s in sync with how Shyamalan claims he simply cast the best actors he could find. Is it too much to hang someone on how a casting notice is written?

Michael Le: Let’s look at what another casting call might look like. Look at the show Heroes, which often does specify based on the needs of the character. If the character is, for example, in Japan, and he’s a business owner, he needs to be fluent in Japanese or Native. Then they say okay, we’re gonna need Asian-American actors for this role, preferably Japanese, and it’ll say that in the casting call. Now in another case, where the ethnicity of the character isn’t as obvious or important or maybe a little more open to interpretation, they’ll put “all ethnicities welcome.” And you’ll find that there is a world of difference between saying “all ethnicities welcome” and “Caucasian or any other.”

Jordan Hoffman: Well, but why? Why bother to put in “all other races welcome” in addition to Caucasian if they didn’t mean it?

Michael Le: Let me turn that question around. Why would you specify Caucasian, if you wanted to accept everybody? It’s almost like four legs are good, but two legs are a little more good. . .I don’t wanna talk about intentions, because it’s impossible for me to go back and prove the motive behind these actions. What I can tell you is that this casting call was released, and something like this requires a lot of oversight on several layers before it goes out. So, at some point, you look at it and say “okay, so this went out.” What this means is that however this phrase came into being, then everyone in the casting process saw it, so, you’re talking about potential applicants who maybe felt a little discouraged from reading this description, and saying to themselves “well, I don’t match their preference, so maybe I wont go travel the six hours to the audition site, and I might otherwise if it said ‘all ethnicities’ or something else.” And then you think about the casting assistants, who look at it and say “well, it says this, and so it looks like our preference is this.” This could be someone who had nothing to do with the original wording choice, but is looking at it and thinking “okay, I wanna do what the studio wants, and this looks like their directive.” It’s context.

3. But It’s A Cartoon!

Jordan Hoffman: There’s another argument that says the show upon which this is based well, the calligraphy may be Chinese, much of Aang’s background may have its roots in Chinese culture, other parts of his origin is reminiscent of the Dalai Lama, but…it’s not India, it’s not China. It’s the Air Nation, which is made up, and it’s a cartoon, so therefore you cant get too hung up on the specifics. The Water Tribe? What do they look like? I don’t know, they’re make-believe, so you can make them look like what you want them to look like.

Michael Le: Look at that question and what it’s asking, then it’s implicitly saying “I personally see ambiguity in the race of your characters.” And from that, the default is white. So it becomes that it should be white, as opposed to “hey, these characters are steeped in Asian culture, they’re deeply rooted in Asian culture, they read and write in Chinese, eat with chopsticks, they dress as Asians do, their architecture is very Chinese and Japanese-influenced, the creators went out of their way to create something that just reeks of Asian influence, so why not have them be Asian?” And that’s the reverse of that question, where you step back and think “is this about the characters being ambiguous and therefore they’re white, or hey, these characters, they’re so Asian, all these traits about them are Asian.” Even the name Aang, if you translate that from Chinese, it means “soaring wind,” and that’s how careful the creators were in rooting these characters in Asian culture.

2. It’s Nothin’ Personal, It’s Just Business

Jordan Hoffman: You can either take Shyamalan at his word, and he said he cast the best actors for the role then moved the ethnicities of the “nations” around as if a chessboard, or you can be more perhaps cynical, or perhaps more wise, and say there’s money involved. God knows what this movie cost, maybe close to 200 million, and they have to look at how to market this thing. And they know that the major market is the United States, and perhaps there are some audiences, parents that are less likely to take their kids to see a movie with unknown Asian actors than with white kids. Now, is that right? I don’t think it is. Is that even true that parents would think that? Who knows, considering the cartoon is certainly very very successful. Which answer would you prefer, just to speak hypothetically, or does it not really matter to you at all?

Micahel Le: We hear this a lot, that if we were to step back and say “alright, you know? You’re right. America is not post-racial. But given that, these companies have to look at their bottom line.” And what I would say to respond to that is that one, I believe the American public, and American consumers, American families and parents and children, are more ready for actors of color to lead the way than Hollywood believes. The single most popular box office draw right now is Will Smith, who has had something like eight consecutive box office hits, which is unprecedented. Number two is…who are they marketing towards? And the assumption is “oh, we need to market to straight white males.” So a lot of movies are geared toward male audiences, I would say in fact that the majority of movies are geared toward male audiences, with perhaps a second thought to female audiences. But a recent study actually shows that women purchase more movie tickets than men do. So we have to look at it, step back and say “is Hollywood looking at its bottom line, or is it holding onto these biases, that come from maybe before the end of segregation even.” This thought process goes “we have always cast white actors, it’s safe and we’ve been doing this for about 100 years now, with white actors, and we know that it’ll work for us.” And any time you put an actor of color or a female lead on the screen, all of a sudden that individual film’s failure or success is seen as an indication of the failure or success of Americans of color or women in film. Which is not a standard applied to say, a white male lead in a film.

1. The Water Nation and Yellowface

Jordan Hoffman: I’m no expert in Inuit culture, but I’ve been led to believe that the Water Tribe is drawn from actual Inuit folk-lore and culture. There is that now controversial shot from the trailer, where it appears that the background actors are of Inuit or Native American descent, but the characters playing Sokka and Katara, who are Caucasian, are there as if they’re their stepping forward as leaders. That’s a striking image. But I think that what Shyamalan will say is that within the tribes, there are people who look different, much like in life. I mean, I live in New York City, you walk around, everybody looks different, so you go to the Water Tribe and there are some people who may have more Inuit-looking features, and more European features. That’s an explanation he’ll give, but you still come back to the glass ceiling arguement.

Michael Le: To look at the context again, lets go back to say…the 1920s. In the 1920s who was the most popular film detective at the time? The character was Charlie Chan, and he was popular for a couple decades, actually. Always a great box-office draw, Charlie Chan was of course played by a white actor in yellowface. That character, Charlie Chan, is actually inspired by an actual Asian-American living in Hawaii, a couple of asian-american detectives living in Hawaii. I think everyone could agree that that was really wrong, because of this acquisition of culture, acquisition of identity, mis-representation of what it means to be Asian or Asian-American on film, controlled by people who aren’t Asian-Americans with this incredibly offensive make-up. That’s the 1920s, and you can proceed on into the decades and you see that yellow-face. . .it doesn’t drop off that sharply. It kind of slowly fades away to the ’60s and ’80s, and as recently as a few years ago you can still see occasional examples of yellow face in popular film. But what became more acceptable is to say, in the ’90s, you had Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and that was a perfect example of how American attitudes changed, because in the 1970s David Carradine originally appeared in yellow face as the title character, but when the series was revived as a spin-off in the early ’90s, that was no longer as okay so they just put him on the screen with an Asian name, and everyone treated him as if he were Asian even if there were no make-up. And you move on, and it eventually became not okay to do that, to have a white actor on the screen portraying himself as Asian when he’s clearly not. So makeup became not okay around the ’80s, then having a white actor just pretending to be Asian with no make-up became not okay around the ’90s. And in the 2000s, the newest trend is like, okay, people are upset if we use make-up, people are upset if we put them up without makeup, so lets just change them from being Asian to white.

Jordan Hoffman: Are there examples other than The Last Airbender of this happening?

Michael Le: If you’ve ever seen 30 Days of Night, Josh Hartnett’s character was originally Inuit, and they changed his name to sound Caucasian, so he just became a Caucasian character. If you look at 21, the card counting movie with the MIT students, all of those characters, the vast majority of them were originally Asian, Kevin Spacey’s character the professor was originally Asian as well. If you look at Dragonball, which a lot of people would say “oh, Goku [played by Justin Chatwin in the film] is an alien,” but he’s basically the Japanese version of Superman. He’s this little baby, he crashes down in this spaceship, and he’s raised by the local population, and passes as native to that population.