Recently, a wonderful show called Avatar: The Last Airbender ended its three year run on Nickelodeon. The show tells the story of the 12-year-old Avatar, the one person who can end the bloody 100-year war that has ravaged the world, as he struggles to learn the skills and powers necessary to defeat the Fire Lord before the summer. The show follows him and a few friends as they travel across their war-torn world.

This show breaks conventions of children's cartoons in many ways, but the most notable break from tradition came in the heavy influence of foreign culture. Nearly all of the Architecture seen throughout the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation is Eastern Asian, the Water Tribes are Inuit, and the Air Nomads are Tibetan. The kids eat with chopsticks, write in Chinese, wear clothes from various Asian and Inuit cultures. Aang is a monk who follows traditions heavily influenced by Tibetan Buddhism.

I have to say, I never minded that the show doesn't feature many white people (if any,) and given its popularity, it seems no one else did either. Which is why I am very offended that the lead rolls in the live-action movie have been cast with white actors. Not only that, but the casting calls specifically expressed a preference for white actors.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

So let's see, the only way it will appeal to everyone is if the heroes of the show are white. Anything else, and the show will only appeal to a niche market? Those minorities can relate to white people's lives, but a white person cannot relate to a minority in a lead role?

Well, after literally minutes and minutes of research, I have determined the following facts:

1. I am white.
2. I loved the show in spite of this (though admittedly it took me a while to realize Aang was Tibetan)
3. The United States is 80% white and only 4.4% Asian.
4. The show was still the most popular animated series in its age demographic (under 14).

So what gives? According to Hyphen Magazine, Hollywood has a long history of "whitewashing" movies. I guess this shouldn't surprise me, but all the same, it still is pretty disgusting (John Wayne as Genghis Khan?) The thing that gets me is why they would do it for this movie, of all choices. The TV show never suffered for it's lack of white people, (apparently children don't care if their idol is a different race,) so why do we suddenly need to reestablish white folk as the heroes?

There has been audible outcry over Paramount's not-so-subtle racism in the casting decisions. Of course, instead of doing the right thing by apologizing and recasting the lead roles, they make two more mistakes. First, when the actor playing Zuko (Jesse McCartney) dropped out, they recast him with Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire). So now we have three white heroes and one brown villain. Which is not symbolic of anything whatsoever:

versus

Next they decide to cast minorities as the extras:

As much as we'd like to believe that they're actually casting 'authentic Asians' - as opposed to fake Asian? - in the movie, this recent Casting Call has only led us to realize one thing: Paramount Pictures intends to cast according to the races of the lead roles. Therefore:

• The Fire Nation (genocidal villains) will be brown/SE Asian.
• The Earth Nation (indecisive, saved by white heroes) will be East Asian
• The Air Nomads (peace-loving, oppressed saviour) will be Caucasian
• The Water Tribe (whitewashed, brave heroes) will be Caucasians

So now we have three white heroes liberating the helpless minorities from the dark-skinned villains. Hmm...

I have absolutely no interest in seeing this film when it comes out, despite my love of the series. Since it appears Paramount Pictures will not be changing their minds on this, the best thing people can do is to increase awareness of this issue, and hopefully there will be enough of a controversy that this film will suffer financially when it comes out. Maybe they might learn something.

For more information on this controversy, check out racebending.com, which discusses the controversy in much more detail than I can.

Also, on a more positive note, a guest poster at Shakesville has written a series of posts analyzing the series from a feminist perspective. Check them out: parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5