folklorefanatic

Despite the mediocre reception and critical reviews of several recent videogame-turned-movie-franchise ventures, Paramount Pictures decided to upgrade the incredibly popular Nickelodeon show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, into a live-action film. M. Night Shyamalan (of recent bombs like The Happening and Signs, the guy who went from a one-trick pony with The Sixth Sense to a one-trick pony with lots of corporate funding) is set to direct. Entertainment Weekly leaked the cast of the movie, and GUESS WHAT? ALL FOUR LEADS ARE WHITE AS <strike>SPARKLY VAMPIRES</strike> MR. STAY-PUFF. To add insult to injury, the casting directors picked Jesse “Beautiful Soul” McCartney (of Disney fame) to play to Zuko, who is the fantasy equivalent of an emo!goth warrior anti-hero.

Given that all four principals are clearly portrayed as representative of various East Asian cultures, and that the leads have the physical characteristics of each of their respective kingdoms, Paramount is set to make a movie off of a storyline that had no white people in it, especially not as the leads, using…white people as the leads.

 I’m so…tired of this ind of idiocy, so I’ll instead point you to a post in metafandom that has several links to articles discussing this in a more coherent way than I could do at this point.

Originally published at The Multiracial Muse. You can comment here or there.