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So last month, Jesse McCartney withdrew from the Avatar cast and was replaced by Dev Patel, of Slumdog Millionaire fame.

aang_aint_whiteably points out the fuckery involved in that decision:

• Their choice of Patel specifically -- the only young, male, Asian actor currently in the public spotlight -- displays a "one size fits all" approach to casting. Patel is Indian, whereas Zuko's culture puts him much closer to Chinese. This is not unlike equating Britain with Italy, and has angered and insulted many of our supporters.

• Assuming the rest of the Fire Nation is cast in kind, we're now presented with a world in which a race of dark-skinned South Asians are the villains. While Prince Zuko is later redeemed, in this first film Zuko is still very much the "bad guy," who will be chasing and threatening three white heroes.

Naturally. Cause all Asians are interchangeable don'cha know, just like all blacks look alike!!!

To compound the insult, comes this new article in the Washington Post featuring the arrogant little prick of a casting director DeeDee Ricketts. And both article and Ms. Ricketts have managed to send my blood pressure into the stratosphere.

Lets start with this sentence:

"Smile!" calls the boy's father, who was born in Ulan Bator.

"No, he shouldn't smile," a casting assistant tells him. "They don't like people to smile because it's not how you really look."

*blink* *blink* What do you MEAN that's not how you usually look? Mongolian people don't smile? Mongolian warriors don't smile? What the hell is wrong with you people? How in the hell in 2009 do we still have to have to be dealing with this type of ignorance, bullshit and stereotyping? In the name of heaven and earth, get the hell off the "inscrutable Asian" BS already!!! But hey. Thats just one sentence. Maybe the rest of teh article will be good enough so that I can ignore that. After all, my blood pressure...

And then we get to our reporter pulling this choice bit of nonsense...
What do members of the Earth Kingdom look like? Like they're from Mongolia. Or Cambodia or Laos. Something like that. Exotically Asian, at least.

What the fuck is that about? Would it have KILLED yon reporter, to contact the creators of the series and found out precisely where the guys are supposed to be from? The demographics of Cambodia, Mongolia and Laos are NOT interchangeable, you proudly ignorant asshole! What did you do, pick up a map of Asia and grab countries at fucking random? To make matters worse, a look at the Wiki for the Earth kingdom points out that the culture is apparently based on Qing Dynasty China! (Which goes right back to the moviemakers and their shenanigans, but I can't even take that on cause when do Mongolians ever get to BE in movies?) I mean, seriously? And what is UP with this continual insistence that Asians are ohmigod exotic? As compared to what? You white people? Is it so hard for you all to do some research so that the mystery and unusualness gets cleared away? (And don' tell me that they are not native. Piles of white people are not native to America and never get tagged with the "exotic" appellation. To say nothing of the history of this country re: whites and American Indians.) So not only are the Mongolians Asian, which is considered mysteriously different enough, they are "exotically Asian". Jesus fuck. No wonder the little boy is not supposed to smile. All the stereotypes about Asians must apply to Mongolians with double the force now, after all.

But wait! There's more:"I think it's one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan," Rathbone told MTV.com, presumably just before his publicist sat him down for a chat about political correctness. "It's one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit." Ah, "political correctness". Such a nice trivializing word. Just the word for a reporter to use so as to get in a nice, snarky turn of phrase in her article. Cause see, the utter insult, teh offensiveness, the complete rage-inducing scale of this comment, can be so derailed, can be so nicely de-intensified, by sweeping it under the rug of "political correctness". The fact that the casting directors decided that Inuits are not god enough to play themselves, that only some white guy would do. And said white guy thinking that, oh well, its ONLY a matter of changing his hairstyle and getting a tan. I mean, can you see this? The complete erasure of the character? The total scale of the disrespect that these people have for the source material and the people in question that they are representing? Do they even think that Inuits are fucking human? At all? All that an Inuit is, history, culture, being, reduced to a hairstyle and a tan. And complaints about such cultural supremacy, such casual contempt, dismissed as political correctness. Snarkily. How fucking funny.

And then of course, we have got Ms.Ricketts:

"When you take a beloved story that has a fan base, you'll never be able to make everyone happy," says Ricketts, the casting director, who was not involved with the casting of principal roles. "There's been some talk that we're casting authentic Asians as a response to the backlash, which is totally wrong because our world is multi-ethnic and the 'Avatar' world will be multi-ethnic."

1. Authentic Asians. Authentic Asians. Dev Patel, perfectly good Indian actor, has been hired to play Prince Zuko. Whose Fire Nation:

The Fire Nation is located near the planet's equator in the western hemisphere and comprises an archipelago of volcanic islands, drawing its inspiration from countries like China, Iceland, and Indonesia, as well as the many volcanic Pacific islands.
...

While all the names of people and places in the Avatar series clearly have Chinese influence, the Fire Nation seems most similar to it. Women wear their hair in various updos, usually simple and elegant in style and noblewomen often sport long, sharp, well-manicured nails. Men have various hairstyles; those of importance and higher class wear a traditional bun or top-knot accompanied by a hairpiece. Fashion in the Fire Nation mimics traditional Chinese elements as well. Layers of various colors, coats, and traditional pieces of armor are common elements in their style, as in Chinese traditional clothing. Citizens and rulers of the Fire Nation wear colors ranging from black, to brown, to various reds, very often accented by gold lining or jewelry. Skin complexion is usually fair or pale, however sparingly ranges to tan and darker brown. Those from the Fire Nation have golden, amber or light gray-blue eyes.

Obviously all Asians are interchangeable after all. White people just have so much trouble telling them apart!!!

2. Yes, Avatar is multi ethnic. BUT THAT MULTI ETHNICITY DOES NOT INCLUDE WHITES. AT ALL. ANYWHERE. And it CANNOT include whites, because NONE OF THE CULTURES DEPICTED ARE WHITE CULTURES. ANYWHERE. But what you are doing, is sending the Asians, Inuits and the other ethnicities represented in the cartoon are NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO BE THE HEROES IN THEIR OWN FUCKING FILM. They can only be EVIL and ANONYMOUS EXTRAS. Your casting of white people e is predicated on the absurd, racist assumption that only white people can be heroes and good people, and POC can only be evil or the victims of other POC people whose asses need to be saved by white people. You are saying that only white people are good enough to tell stories, even if the story IS NOT ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE AT ALL. You are insulting, culturally appropriating, fuck it you are STEALING the cultures, and stories and bedecking yourselves in them, and negatively stereotyping the ACTUAL POC TO WHOM THESE BELONG. And you are fucking up the entire premise of the fucking series in the first place, while you are doing so.

bossymarmalade puts it even more bluntly:

I am not -- I would guess that most of the people protesting Avatar whitewashing are not -- primarily unhappy that they are ruining "a beloved story".

I am unhappy that they are DEMONIZING MY ETHNICITY. I am unhappy that they have cast white people in the heroic roles and Asians as the flavourful background. I am unhappy that the story is now about the peaceful white Air & Water Tribes who are the targets of genocide at the hands of the warlike brown Fire Nation.

That's the reason for unhappiness, DeeDee Ricketts. And you should know how much you've contributed to it, because every time you open your mouth you say something even more ignorant and hurtful. Every time the people behind this movie try to scramble to cover their tracks, they make it even *worse*. "Our world is multi-ethnic and the Avatar world will be multi-ethnic"? Yes, but apparently with the same silencing racism, the same use of Asian culture as set-dressing and Asian people as oddities, and the added bonus of making white people both martyred victim and brave, wise hero.

3. Look at this link again ladies and gentlemen.

Not content with changing all the heroes to white and thereby reinforcing the colonialist impression the POC are incapable of ruling themselves and must be ruled by white people...

Here is the BREAKING CASTING NEWS we found out:

We have figured out HOW they are casting this film and what M. Night means by diversity.

We talked to many of the actors auditioning inside and this is what they told them. The reason why they were hiring extras is NOT to throw Asians in the background. Well, it's mostly that, but there is an more evil plot behind it all.

They were looking for Earth Nation people. The casting director inside said that they are casting around the race of the actors they have chosen, so this is how the tribes will break down:

Water Tribe = White People

Fire Nation = Indian People

Earth Nation = "Asian" People

Which if rumors are correct, the final puzzle piece is:

Air Nation = White People

Oh. God. So now, two of the tribes needed to be whitefied? WHAT THE FUCK FOR? I mean, its established that Hollyowood has no goddamn ethics in properly telling stories and representing POC so it must be the money. They think that white people are the primary audience and wont go see a movie which has so much brown people in there and no whites. The horror! But the question I have to ask is... didn't the show get popular without the white people in there? So why is it that it would become necessarily unpopular in the age of anime, which is gobbled up by tons of whites and featured mostly nonwhite people therein? And seriously? Why the hell did you all pick up the story if you thought that an absence of white people would hurt your bottom line? Why couldn't you just LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE? Why in the HELL did you have be hellbent on destroying the damn thing entirely in pursuit of your racism and cash?

All I have to say is this. I will buy the original cartoon series. I will never, ever, EVER watch your abomination of a movie. Neither will any of my family. Or my friends. Fuck you people to hell.