Yellowface is the New Blackface*** 
I read a blog post on Floating World the other day and I meant to share it with you people, but then I didn’t because I was busy. And that’s the story of how that happened.
::ahem::
M. Night’s Shyamalan’s new movie apparently not only sucks — go here for a damn good review by Pajiba author Brian Prisco and, hello, 8% on Rotten Tomatoes — but perpetuates Hollywood’s serious race problem. What’s the problem? Too many white folks getting jobs that should be going to colored folks.
This issue was presented brilliantly in Tropic Thunder; Bob Downey, Jr. is a white American playing a white Australian playing a black American. He’s the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude. (It cracks me up that there are people who didn’t understand this brilliant bit of satire and accused Ben Stiller of being racist. People are asshats.)
In The Last Airbender (a movie based upon Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is a Nickelodeon series about… you know… Asian stuff), white actors portray all of the main characters (or almost all — admittedly, I have not seen the film, nor do I plan to because fuck you, Lady in the Water and The Happening) who, in the television series, are obviously of Asian and South Asian heritage. Aaaaaaaand, the bad guys are portrayed by brown people. Duhvs.
I don’t know anything about this series, so I’m going to shut my yapper. I am, however, going to give you a snippet of Q. Le’s article, “Face Painting,” and then encourage you to read the entire post. It’s long, but it’s well worth reading:
“As some of you may know, Paramount commissioned (in)famous director M. Night Shyamalan to adapt the popular Nickelodian series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” into a movie trilogy. The TV series revolves a fantastical, Hayao Miyazaki-inspired universe that deals with individuals capable of controlling and manipulating (aka “bending”) one or several of the earth’s elements – Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire – and how the main protagonist, Aang, the Last Airbender, is destined to bring back balance when the Fire nation’s imperialistic and war-mongering desires get out of hand. The movie is slated for release July 1st this year, and its production has led to a lot of controversy specifically with regards to its casting.
Though I’m not a particular fan of the show (nor do I dislike it) and am simply neutral overall, I feel that it is necessary to state for several reasons why I will not support this movie for professional, philosophical and personal reasons.
…
In her paper “Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener’s Tale,” Camara Phyllis Jones (MD, MPH, and PhD) postulates that there are three levels of racism: internalized, personally-mediated, and institutionalized.
Internalized racism is how one personally feels about race and its meaning, though they may not necessarily act out on these underlying and internalized assumptions it most definitely affects them at the subconscious level (eg. “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.” – Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye).
Personally-mediated racism maintains social-structural barriers, the result of assumptions held by people or a community (eg. “This town was so much better before those goddamn ___ moved in. It’s their fault the town’s economy has gone down so much”).
Lastly, institutionalized racism is racism at the highest infrastructural level, in which policy is dictated by racial assumptions and discrimination (eg. South Africa’s long history of Apartheid in which black South Africans were politically and legally segregated from whites, spearheaded by the South African Nationalist Party from 1948 to 1994).
Herein this last level of racism lies Paramount Studio’s greatest offense of reinforcing institutionalized racism within the Hollywood business.
By openly preferring Caucasian actors over Asian actors in an open casting call, Paramount demonstrated their innate racist assumptions – that a no name White actor was more capable of increasing box office numbers and (perhaps) “acting” than an equivalent Asian actor regardless of the Eastern-based characters in the series. Additionally, by casting Asian actors as secondary or supporting characters, Paramount clearly wished to create an “authentically diverse” universe, one that is distinctly Eastern and non-Western in its roots.
This assumption is wrong, unfounded and offensive on so many levels. Who is to say a Asian American boy is less articulate in English and capable in acting prowess than a Caucasian boy? Pixar casted Japanese-American Jordan Nagai to voice act Korean-American inspired Russell in their 2009 film “UP,” and it was arguably one of the most commercially and critically acclaimed successes of the year. Obviously this assumption can’t be the case, especially considering the success of other Asian American cinema such as “Better Luck Tomorrow” in 2002 and “The Joy Luck Club” in 1993.
And who is to say Asian actors in distinctly Asian narratives are any less capable of drawing in American audiences? Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in 2000 opened the gateways to a Hollywood flood of Hong Kong and Asian cinema that had been established by star Asian actor predecessors such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. These legacies proved that American audiences do enjoy Asian cinema, and though they were heavily based on martial arts lore they were nonetheless marketable and a great potential for Hollywood to spread out and include more Asian actors in their films.
Perhaps the greatest offense that the “heroic” characters are portrayed by lily White actors while the “villainous” characters are portrayed dark-skinned Indian actors in lieu of the fact that all the characters have distinctly Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian and Inuit characteristics regardless of their “good” or “badness.”
This purports my conceit that Paramount blatantly reinforces racism at the institutional level, driven by innately racist assumptions and an ethnocentric desire to bundle Eastern culture – rich in history and human stories – into a big old Yellowface bowtie. Make it as pretty and shiny and “Asian-y” as you want – in the end, this movie is racist and a disrespectful slap in the face of the Eastern heritage it so wishes to profit off of. The studios underlying assumption about marketability and acting capability of White over Asian actors is insulting, and to claim that their production is “diverse” because they cast Asians as secondary and supporting characters ignores the bigger issue at hand – the starring, main Asian characters are portrayed by White actors instead of Asian actors.”
Okay, now go read the entire post. Shoo!
[via Floating World]
***I have a shit ton of Asian friends, and I often remark to them, “I guess Asian is the new Black.” I don’t know why. I’m really fucking weird.
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Angelina Jolie is playing Sokka? Didn’t she learn from the backlash of playing Marieane Pearl?
Glad you posted this issue. I used to watch this cartoon and when I heard it was being made into a movie I was kind of excited, because it’s an awesome cartoon. Then I saw who the actors were, I was like WTF? Why are white people in this movie? Does Hollywood think we’re that dumb? And of course the only dark skinned person that’s hired is playing the bad guy. I mean, really Hollywood, you couldn’t find ANY Asian actors to play these roles? I mean really. Way to fuck it up.
Is it just me or is the white kid playing Aang odd looking, like, has a creepy look to him sort of odd?
He has a vacant, future serial killer look to him
Jolie, Jasper, whatever.
I’ve been reading all the hubbub about Jolie playing Cleopatra, and I’m sorry, internets, but that’s much ado about nothing.
While Shamalangadingdong’s movie does beg a powerful question, the interwebs rage over the casting of Cleopatra just annoys me.
Why? Because bitch was Greek. Specifically, she was Macedonian, from Ptolemy’s line. She may have had olive skin, but come on, people. If you’re going to seize on a rant about Hollywood’s inability to cast movies accurately, that’s not the one.
But I digress.
The actual genders and races of what the elements represent are in Rodney St.Michael’s book, Sync My World: Thief’s Honor GA SK. (myconnected.webs.com)
Air = Yellow “race” = Males = Scholars.
Water = Small Browns = Females = Shamans.
Earth = Blacks = Lesbian = Social Ubuntu Business Class.
Fire = Whites = Gays = Military, Militant Business Class.
Ether or Metal = Big Browns = Bisexuals = Working Class, Bi-military
(females & bis go together like Katara & Sokka or brown females and males).
Therefore Aang should be Chinese.
Katara should be a Malay like a Filipina.
The Earth Kingdom should be African.
Zuko should be White like Hitler, Alexander the Gay or Gen. Arthur McArthur.
The Fire Nation’s army should be like the fiery Sacred Band of Thebes (an ancient elite gay army that Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell troops would be envious of) or the Sturmabteilung, the much-feared homosexual stormtroopers of Hitler.
And the Slumdog Millionaire (casted as Zuko) should be Sokka.
This film is just as messed up as the movie Angels and Demons. The branding of the priests were incorrect.
But anyway, from the guy who gave you the Sixth Sense, which did not portray childhood schizophrenia accurately or anywhere near the real world, what do you expect?
Bisexuals love horror and terror. They also scam people, just like the Wizard of Oz. The old Oz film which is also about the Elements is understandably all-white because they were ignorant back then. People have higher standards now, and realism is a must.
But M.Night, the Wizard of South Asia also has lessons for everyone after conning them:
1) Clearly, when people don’t play roles that fit them, everything is messed up. (e.g. “male” clergy in what should be a female realm, forbidding gays in the military which is their territory)
2) Whites are not fit to play the leading roles of Air and Water in the world scene. Leave that to the ASEAN+3 (China, Japan, Korea and South East Asia).
3) Arabs are not necessarily the greatest evil in the world. Occasionally, they float like Ether to the ranks of Water. It is fiery whites that fit the role of Lucifer or Satan.
4) By acquiring objective reviews from leading critics, they have agreed themselves that these are all factual objective realities.
Thus, the Wizard, even if he is a con man, is also an accidental pseudo teacher. Partly, it’s called sunyata or “emptiness.”