Delicious LiveJournal Links for 6-28-2010

[andrewducker]

• Women freeze eggs to wait for 'Mr Right'
  I don't even _like_ frozen eggs
  (tags: women fertility)
• 'Exceptional' oil find made in North Sea
  So, time to declare independence?
  (tags: oil scotland)
• Decoding Microsoft’s Fantastic Passive-Agressive Numbers Post
  (tags: microsoft google apple business statistics 2010 numbers yahoo)
• Angry M. Night Shyamalan denies Airbender racism
  (tags: race racism movies media)

Comments

[innerbrat]

Oh dear lord.

"I'm Asian so I can't be racist!"

"It's a cartoon and the ethnicities weren't obvious!"

"Who cares if the culture is based on Asia?"

"I fought for the correction pronunciation!" (And yet... failed. I thought directors had the ability to tell actors how their characters' names are pronounced)

"I made it the most culturally diverse movie serie of all time!" - by changing 'eskimo' to white, compressing all the cultures that inspired the cartoon into 'Asian' and adding 'mixed' and 'darker' (than mixed?) as races.

"It's a CARTOON! A FICTITIOUS CARTOON!"

"Aang looked white to me!"

"Just because it's made in Japan doesn't mean the characters are Japanese!" (It's an American cartoon)

At this point I'm claiming Bingo and going back to ignoring that movie with every fibre of my being.

[andrewducker]

I pretty much figured that :->

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I got a Bingo too! Want to split our prize winnings by buying the DVD set and re-watching the whole series?

[innerbrat]

"They made this movie in which my sister and I are both white and Scandinavian."

"That's rough, buddy."

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

And then I had to try to keep from laughing hard enough to wake up my wife.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

I second your disgust and appreciate your rationally laid-out arguments. Here, here!

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Christ. Could we not just leave it there?

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

*raspberry* to M. Night Shyamalan. *raspberry*

The three leads are Asian and when the first casting call went out it was for Caucasians. They have Causacians playing Asians. Wrong.

I can see why Mr. Shyamalan feels the way he does, and perhaps he has to say what he is saying to keep his job.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Of course it's racist. Hollywood films are racist and much as he claims to be some kind of special maverick who lives by his own rules, he's not. When you constantly get obviously English or mainland European villains, that's racism too, the same as the way gay characters are stereotyped in hollywood films, or certain stereotypes of black people, or asians that crop up over and over.

That said, since the article says that the heroes are caucasian but the main character (or at least, the titular character) isn't caucasian, that'd suggest someone maybe didn't look too far.

[andrewducker]

Did you ever see this?

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Aside from the bottom four photos not being consistently lit (presumably a pretty conscious choice by whoever made that), I had been assuming the cartoon -was- some kind of anime. Hadn't realised it was an American show just co-opting a different culture. In an American film of an American TV show, made in Hollywood, why would you expect it to be packed with Asians? Hell, look at Mark Dacascos' career on the IMDb. The man's Hawaian, but look at the ethnicity of a lot of his characters.

Look at the action movies about someone white and box office worthy going to japan/china to have exciting adventures because having a japanese or chinese star might not make enough money.

By the way, if the character of Aang is meant to still be Asian, are you saying that someone who isn't Asian shouldn't/couldn't play someone Asian? If so, why?

The second transformers film was -offensively- racist. It was pretty much up there with a full-on minstrel show and jokes about fried chicken, but once the initial release was over, no one cared.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Oh, Zuko (apparently the villain) was actually meant to be white as well, FYI, but the original actor dropped out :-p

[andrewducker]

I heard a lot about the racism in transformers.

Google racebending and read about the original casting call.