unusualmusic_lj_archive

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.

Vanity Fair still believes that brown skin is ugly.

via:kali921

Vanity Fair Not Down With Brown

Freida [Pinto from Slumdog Millionaire] resplendent and au naturel:





Freida as she appears in Vanity Fair:

See, I've been trying valiantly to ignore the current clusterfuck of doom that is once again enveloping teh LJ re: certain white authors' clumsy, ahistorical, racially promblematic and downright headdesk inducing handling of minorities and their legends in their sf/historical/ whatever the hell they might be writing about.

Naturally, as has happened in the majority of these cases, the author and her friends have rallied around in self defense. They are manning the barricades and are shooting missiles of condescension: "Oh, you are not smart enough to read the text properly!!!" "you need to have gone to university to be able to understand the writers intent!!!" (Really? For a fucking fantasy fiction novel????) or "oh well some people [that is, the critiquers] are not smart at all you know, lets just ignore their petty concerns". They have been unleashing truly astonishing bombs of self-pity, pique, and anger at the unmitigated GALL of these troublesome POC daring to ask that they be properly portrayed, "HOW DARE YOU CALL ME RACIST!!! TAKE THAT BACK!!!


There are those who are counseling surrender."Oh please don't upset us well-meaning white people, with your emotion, it is so unseemly and discomfiting." "Oh, how do you expect people to listen to you when you are so emotional! Your tone, your tone!!!" There are those who are screaming huffily, "Well, if we are doing it wrong, YOU need to tell us what to do!!!" (Never mind the fact that various articles have been written and re-written about this same goddamn problem over the two years that I have been on LJ and in any case, when links are proffered, refusal to read and engage constructively is rampant, and all we have is a bunch of white people acting the outraged, racist fools on various people's journals. And, of course, there is the inevitable push to portray the victims of their stereotypes, aggression, racism and downright ignorant attitudes as the actual problems. So the people who are pointing out that the toxic effects of their literary pollution is having a dire effect on POC readers mental health, well, they are abusers. reverse racists. whiners. these angry poc hordes are attacking the white people who were doing them a favour by even mentioning them in their precious writing oh my god how ungrateful, the bitches and trolls!!!!!!!!!

I cannot believe that every fucking couple of months the same fucking bullshit pops up again and again and no-one seems to be learning from it. Minorities still portrayed as sub-human and/or in thrall to white protagonists. Minorities still barbarians, whites civilized saviours. Minority cultures evil, whites' teh greatest thing since sliced bread. Minority cultures distorted and mangled so as to heighten the "exotic" quotient of the story, carefully set out medieval halls and forests populated with white magical beings ... And of course, when there is a minority hero, if he/she isn't over sexual and/or barbaric, she/he is practically a white person in blackface. Thinks white, acts white and must be separated from those barbaric uncivilized other. I am so fucking sick and tired of this shit that I could fucking puke. And you know what is completely spirit draining? The fact that in the next couple months, the same motherfucking shit will happen all over a-fucking-gain. A post-racial society my ass! I am just at the point where my patience for this shit is gone.

ROUNDUP ONE


ROUNDUP TWO

Some of the entries that hit the spot for me.


UNICORNS, or a list of Asian, First Nation and seasoned with 1 or 2 White actors who could have been used to play the Avatar characters

Fear of a Black Fantasy Planet

ojouchan was particularly upset yesterday. She's worried about our children, who will be brown, and who will look to the few characters who look like them, then wonder why they get changed to look like the people who don't. She's worried about her niece, who recently told her momma, "My favorite color is going to be brown, because that's what color my skin is, and nobody likes it." She's only four. I'm worried too, but it's still not as real for me yet.

But that's why I find it utterly heartwrenching that M. Night Shyamalan, who decided or at the very least signed off on the idea that all of these beautiful characters of color are better off being all-white, was initially drawn to the project because his Indian-American daughters loved the show so much they wanted to dress up as Katara.

Angry Asian Man: A break-up, of sorts.

What does this casting choice say to me, the angry Asian man? It says that every time somebody speaks more slowly and loudly to me because they assume that English isn't my first tongue, they're right to do so, because I'm not normal. It says that when my freshman year roommate thought that the delivery guy calling with my order was my dad, I shouldn't have been offended, because the guy sounded Chinese on the phone, so how was he supposed to know, right?

Debunking the Arguments and what else you can do

But so-and-so character has pale skin, big eyes and light eyes! Those are Caucasian features! Therefore he could be white!
FACT ONE: Not all Asians have dark skin
FACT TWO: Not all Asians have small ickle tiny eyes
FACT THREE: Not all Asians have dark eyes
FACT FOUR: Many Asian children have giant melon eyes. BECAUSE THEY'RE CHILDREN.
FACT FIVE: Asian people have many many differing facial features too! Just like Caucasian facial features! Zowie! Zoinks! Zounds!

They are all dressed in blatantly Asian-style clothes and follow many Asian-influenced precepts. I don't know how many times I can say this. So just once, just this once just accept the possibility that a kid dressed in Tibetan monks clothing who subscribes to a Buddhist-type religion should therefore be Asian. Yes, pale skin, big eyes and all.

DO something about it!

I love Avatar, and have for a long time. But I'm pretty disappointed about this casting decision, and I know I'm not alone in that. This post is about what we can do.

Petitions are largely pointless. Emails are easily ignored. What we need to do is send real, paper letters to Paramount Pictures -- specifically, the two produces, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall -- telling them why we're offended by their casting choices and what we want them to do about it.

Below is a guide for how to make your letter as effective as possible and where to send it once you're done.MORE


EDIT:RACEFAIL BINGO CARDS!!!


HERE and HERE

Via: Shakesville

JC Penny doesn't "do" black hair

Brenda McElmore went to JC Penny's to get her hair dyed black and was denied service.

According to KTLA, McElmore was told, "We don't do African-American hair." She was then directed to elsewhere for hairstyling needs. For McELmore it triggered a time of growing up under Jim Crow laws, wherein blacks were routinely denied services based on the colour of our skin. She has since filed suit against JC Penny. The company responded by sending the following letter.

"Let me apologize again for the customer service experience you had in our store. As we discussed, our salon receptionist felt that we did not have the technical proficiency... to perform the service you required. She may not however have expressed this to you in a way that was not offensive. For this I again apologize. Because customer service is ... so important to our company, we would rather not attempt the service if we cannot perform it as required."

Isn't that beautiful lawyer speak for your hair is too nappy and untamable to deal with. The woman wasn't asking for a hair treatment, or a hair style that was specifically Afrocentric, she was asking for a damn dye job. If the salon does not have someone there that can colour hair, then they are not a hair salon.
You know on second thought, even if she was asking for a perm, corn rows, or a weave, why should she not have been able to walk into a hair salon and expect them to be able to cater to her needs. Hair care is one of the few industries that continues to be divided by race. One look at the magazines in the waiting area will let you know if you are in the right place or not.

This continues largely because black hair is deemed to difficult to deal with. Somehow the white hairdressers cannot be proficiently trained to deal with the high maintenance needs of a black woman....oh no their delicate hands can only deal with the silky locks of white people. In all of the years I have been going to salons, I have only ever been to one that catered to both white and black women alike. The segregation is so normalized that black hair care even has its own aisle at Walmart and Shoppers Drug mart.
MORE

Racialicious looks at the Samurai Girl Miniseries on ABC

Based on a series of popular young adult novels, the show stars Jamie Chung as a 19-year-old Japanese girl named Heaven who discovers that the wealthy businessman who adopted her as an infant is really the head of the Yakuza(!) and responsible for murdering her beloved brother. She breaks from her family and begins training to become a samurai, and with the help of a group of new American friends, sets out to take down her father’s evil empire.

Naturally, since its a good guess that the books were written by mostly whites

The book series was developed by editors at Alloy Entertainment, which also produced "Gossip Girl." After the initial idea was passed around after an in-house brainstorming meeting about seven years ago, they assigned a group of writers to complete the project. ("Carrie Asai" is a collective pseudonym, similar to "Carolyn Keene" of the "Nancy Drew" series.)

It follows that there will be stereotypes and inaccuracies galore.

Naturally, the miniseries amplifies these... problems.

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth asking again: why must every other Asian-related Hollywood project involve secret samurais and ninjas and yakuza clans? Not that there’s anything wrong with a good samurai/ninja/yakuza story… but this ain’t it.

...

But when your show is called Samurai Girl, you eventually want to see your hero become said Samurai Girl. So Heaven must learn the secret, ancient ways of the samurai, training under the wise tutelage of her sensei… a white dude. Huh? Oh, I see. Like, um, The Last Samurai.

It’s worth noting in the book series, this sensei character is actually a Japanese guy, Hiro Uyemoto, described on the book website as “Heaven’s crush-worthy samurai mentor.” I was told by someone who read an early draft of the pilot script that this character was indeed an Asian guy. Looks like that minor detail got changed somewhere along the way… Funny how that happens. [me stepping in for a moment:I suppose the calculation was that white people are unable to relate to stories that have two Asian leads. Funny how everyone else can empathize with two white leads. Or more, I mean, Star Wars? Lord of the Rings?]

Heaven also conveniently picks up some nice white, American friends to round out her crew. Yay! So let’s see. Good conveniently Caucasian friends, white samurai sensei… Bad mob boss dad, evil yakuza henchmen, douchebag Japanese fiance left at the altar. Hmmm.

And this, ladies and gents, along with the stupider and stupider plots, is why I have almost stopped watching television and movies.

IS China Really worse than other OLympic Hosts?

I can totally agree that China has an awful human rights records; that what is happening in Tibet is horrible; that Beijing (and many other parts of China) are staggeringly polluted.
But here’s the thing: what Olympic host country hasn’t done terrible things that they should be held to account for? Hell, it’s often the chance to host the Olympics that motivates state violence. So why is China the only one getting called out?
Seriously, I’m not just crying wolf. In December ‘07, European organisation the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions released the report “Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights.”


...


An ‘07 article in the Guardian discusses the report in more detail, stating that

In every city it examined, the Olympic games - accidentally or deliberately - have become a catalyst for mass evictions and impoverishment…The games have become a licence for land grabs…
Barcelona’s Olympics, in 1992…[were] used to cleanse the city. Roma communities were evicted and dispersed. The council produced a plan to “clean the streets of beggars, prostitutes, street sellers and swindlers” and “annoying passers-by”. Some 400 poor and homeless people were subjected to “control and supervision”.

We hear the same story in the US.

Even before the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta was one of the most segregated cities in the US. But the games gave the clique of white developers who ran them the excuse to engineer a new ethnic cleansing programme. Without any democratic process they demolished large housing projects (whose inhabitants were mostly African-American) and replaced them with shiny middle-class homes; about 30,000 families were evicted. They issued “quality of life ordinances”, which criminalised people who begged or slept rough. The police were given pre-printed arrest citations bearing the words “African-American, Male, Homeless”…In the year before the games they arrested 9,000 homeless people.

More

Funny how we ignore things based on which country does them, don't you think?

Trans-Racialization in “21″

by guest contributor Jenn Fang, originally published at Reappropriate

Six MIT students band together to hoodwink Las Vegas casinos for millions.

It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie — and it is. But before Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishbourne were cast in 21, Ben Mezrich wrote a non-fiction book called Bringing Down the House, upon which the film is based. In that book, Mezrich documents the infamous MIT Blackjack team, which was led by Asian American — not White — students.

Although referred to by pseudonyms in the book, it was later revealed that the main characters of Bringing Down the House – Kevin Lewis and Jason Fisher — are former real-life MIT students Jeff Ma and Mike Aponte who are both Asian American men. Jeff Ma has since gone on to start a company based on fantasy sports, while Mike Aponte remains a professional Blackjack player.

Mezrich has criticized the casting of 21, and argued that it plays into fears of the marketability of an all-Asian cast.

During the talk, Mezrich mentioned the stereotypical Hollywood casting process — though most of the actual blackjack team was composed of Asian males, a studio executive involved in the casting process said that most of the film’s actors would be white, with perhaps an Asian female. Even as Asian actors are entering more mainstream films, such as “Better Luck Tomorrow” and the upcoming “Memoirs of a Geisha,” these stereotypes still exist, Mezrich said.

Mezrich notes that the Asian American identities of these students was critical to the MIT Blackjack team’s strategy. According to Wikipedia:

In the book, Mezrich explicitly states that a young Caucasian betting large amounts of money stands out, while a young Asian or other minority would be less conspicuous.

Perhaps in response to criticisms that 21 was “White-washing” the story, the filmmaker also cast Asian American actors Lisa Lapira and Aaron Yoo in the movie, but they remain secondary characters, distantly-removed from the story of the White male and female protagonists. The casting of Sturgess and Bosworth remains a damning assertion that Asian American faces are simply not “American”-enough to carry a big-budget film like 21. And though the story of the MIT Blackjack team centres on the Asian American identity of the team members, the movie loses its opportunity to explore this reappropriation of stereotypes by real-life Asian American men who used society’s perception of them — for better or for worse — to steal millions from Las Vegas casinos. Instead of exploring this interesting (and arguably empowering) story of racial identity, the movie becomes yet-another “boy-meets-girl” trifle with Asian American characters existing only as props to further a story about White protagonists.
Rest here