Baraka_Guru

Fans claim a Hollywood whitewash - thestar.com

So what do you think? The Last Airbender is a story that draws heavily on Japanese and Chinese culture (Asian), while the Prince of Persia is set in the Persian Empire, yet the lead roles (and some major roles) are played by whites.

Do you see this as a problem?

While I don't see why an actor cannot portray characters of a nationality or ethnicity other than their own, I think this can be taken too far. I think it's also a problem when you overlook a wide array of actors that would have matched the ethnicity in question.

The loaded question: Do you think the big cats in Hollywood are reluctant to cast lead actors of Asian or Middle-Eastern descent?

It could be a matter of actor talent/public image/popularity preference vs. availability, etc., but I think it's an issue worth considering.

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Wes Mantooth

I think they possibly are reluctant to, but the question is why? I was thinking perhaps its something along the lines of casting white people to cash in on using actors people feel "comfortable" with or using somebody they feel is more marketable...but does that really make sense in this day and age when we consider how many of our prominent entertainers aren't white. That might have made sense in 1950 but today it seems oddly out of place.

I don't know, I can't really think of any good reason to do that other then maybe the studio pressuring them to use certain up and coming actors. Strange.

EDIT: The more I think about it the more I do wonder if the folks in charge feel a good looking white boy is more marketable and will make them more money, if that's the case then yes it's a huge problem.

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Martian

Point of interest: Penny Arcade covered this almost a year ago.

Since I know nothing about the source material, that's the only relevant addition I have for this thread.

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Xerxys

First of all, I'm a huge fan of Oded Fehr and I think he would have been excellent in the role as the Prince of Persia. But that's just the problem right there. He isn't very prominent and it takes a prominent A-list actor to make a good A-list movie.

Cases like that of Gabourey Sidibe are very rare. No risks could have been taken in the creation of a movie such as the Prince of Persia which is based on an already set arena.

It's not personal, just business.

snowy

Oooh, Oded Fehr would have been awesome. He's fucking HOT. Way hotter than Jake Gyllenhaal.

Claiming that the Last Airbender is whitewashing by casting a white actor in the lead is baloney, because the original cartoon (Avatar) was created by two white guys; it just happens to draw cultural references from a variety of Asian cultures. You might notice that in the cartoon itself none of the main characters look particularly Asian. Aang actually looks like one of the creators, who is of Italian descent. As I see it, the original cartoon was made by a couple of cultural fanboys.

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Jetée

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.

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Cynthetiq

I don't care if he's white or asian. M. Night, just stop with the utterly crap movies.

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warrrreagl

Baraka G, I love this question. It's a great one. My theater background reminds me of a basic tenet of theater, and that is "there is no skin color on stage." You're not supposed to ever consider skin color when casting a character, unless the script specifically calls for it.

However, my business sense agrees with what's been said earlier - audiences will be more likely to part with the money in their wallets for a star they know rather than an unknown in a blockbuster.

I'd bet that agents follow the same procedure - if they represent a non-white client, they would be more savvy to push that client into artistic low-budget dramas or comedies and hope their talent could build them an audience that would turn into a huge fan base.

I think Denzell Washington followed the exact same career guidance by shaking up audiences when he landed the coveted role of Gray Grantham in The Pelican Brief. I would bet that almost everyone who read John Grisham's book pictured his character as white, but the director was smart enough to take a chance on Denzell and it worked.

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Jove

I was disappointed when I found out Jake Gyllenhall was playing the Prince because of his ethnicity, but I have to watch the film before I can say if the film was terrible due to that reason.

And hopefully The Last Airbender will be a decent film, but M Night's film have steadily decline in quality over the years. Some are decent while others are not.