Someone on TCJ talks about the Avatar casting.

[snarp]

The post includes a variation upon the phrase "I don't care whether they're black, white, or purple." Always a good sign!

Unrelatedly, it's alarming when you put down some thing you're reading, go back to it a couple days later, and upon googling discover that one of the people discussed therein has died in the interim. Specifically, Shio Sato died on the 4th, and I was reading this interview with Keiko Takemiya.

Comments

[pseudo_tsuga]

The article uses FANART to illustrate their point and calls big eyes Western-looking. Have you seen shoujo eyes? No one looks like that in real life. /personal pet peeve I loved your response to it, especially to the "but where would we get the actors?" question.

[gloss]

Thank you for commenting on that article. I am too busy GRRRRRing.

[la_vie_noire]

Seriously. I'm glad you commented. I would have been.. let's say, a lot less nice.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Noooo, I won't even look. In good news, Racebending.com had a cool table at Wondercon. I got a wristband.

I heard about Shio Sato from @moyo on Twitter. Sad!

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

It took me a minute to realize that you were being sarcastic in your first order of business.


That being said, you're response was made of win.*

*Rather, your response was made of win. But perhaps you are, too.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Hollywood, of course, requires major bank to get a story to the screens and cinemas across the U.S. and the world. And major bank means promised returns. Caucasian leads are virtually a necessity to guarantee that a film isn’t a flop in the hinterlands of the US—and overseas.

wat

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Okay, an actual response -- and we'd know this because? Hollywood hasn't made any big films with non-caucasian leads, so how the fuck can we tell? Are we just supposed to take this on faith?

But hey, maybe they're right. After all, the distinctly non-white cast of the original Avatar was terrible for its popularity. The series was a total flop and it's a good thing Hollywood is around to rescue it from the drudge pile by fixing those pesky little character design mistakes!

[snarp]

I think the better counter-argument is to wave around a large picture of Will Smith.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. Sorry -- I'm really not just a big movie buff, and I'm not good at thinking of movies and actors unless prompted for them.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Argh, the more I read the article, the more it makes me faceplant.

"I find it remarkable that the Asian race is even at issue today when Hollywood adapts anime into live-action blockbusters."

Now, I'm not usually one to quibble about the precise definition of whether a western-created work of art can allowably be called "anime" or not. There are some conversations in which it can be put into a category with Japanese anime and still be meaningful.

But using a western cartoon as an example of hollywood's fantastic multicultural acceptance of asian culture? FAILTASM.