Quote:
Originally Posted by snowy
As I see it, the original cartoon was made by a couple of cultural fanboys.
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The way I actually understood it, those "two white guys" actually spent nearly a decade in pre-production and historical analysis on how to make their "Western anime" a televised reality. One of those guys actually minored in Asian studies, and the other is, in fact, some sort of degree in Gung Fu (or something or other), so I doubt they just started the series on a whim becuase they had a passing interest in expanded Chinese folklore. If you take the guys who actually had the initial premise and idea to make this show happen out of the equation, and look at the staff credits for any one episode of the series, you'll notice most of the animation/writing/production is done either in Canada or Hong Kong, then shipped to LA for revision/finalizing (not to mention that at least half of the production staff actually seem to be genuinely Asian).
That's beside the point, though. So is this entire premise of whitewashing with this "Avatar" film, too, I think. I believe I read this article's exact premise nearly a half-year ago on gizmodo or io9, and snowy is right (about the characters not looking too particularly Asian). Although the series was meant to just draw on comparisons of the rival and feuding nations, (as it once was in the Old Chinese Kingdom) the characters are just placemarked cultural references, and are not to be taken at heart that they are Asian, Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, or what have you. The style on which the series is based obviously has some very overt depictions and scenery that lend this to be some sort of forgotten Chinese epic, now being told to 8-13-year-old kids, but in the way they were drawn, being not quite sure if this nation belonged to this real country or not, it was done so on purpose. I'm not sure of the term I'm looking for here (not "androgynous") but the "vague" racial and societal features seen in a kids' cartoon are not to be taken as canonical of any one cultural influence, (save for Chinese) but as an amalgam.
There was also something about Shyamalan addressing this particular concern, and stating my summary above in just two sentences instead, but I don't really take to heart anything that M. Night states about the "direction" of his films.