On race and animation

Happy New Year!

I’m taking a break from working on grad school applications (the first two are due Monday, the rest in February) to post; with any luck I can manage a website update sometime in late February or early in the spring (yikes…). I guess I didn’t have a chance to post again before 2008 ended, but that’s all right. I hope this year brings good things for all of you, and I just want to state again how grateful I am for your continued support and encouragement of this site and of me.

Anyway, moving on–there was some news (not PoDW-related, but animation-related) within the last couple of months that I wanted to bring up here. It’s a bit old now, and I didn’t really think a whole lot about it at the time, but I’ve been reading a bit about it today, and the more I think about it, the more upset it makes me.

M. Night Shyamalan is creating a trilogy of films based on Avatar: The Last Airbender. (This isn’t the problem, FYI.) I don’t know about you all, but I think this is one of the most finely crafted animated series to make it big in many years. A big part of its appeal to me was the attention to detail the creators have paid to ensuring that the Avatar universe is heavily Asian-inspired and completely faithful to the cultures it draws from. The characters’ ethnicities and clothing, the architecture, the food and drink, and the overall philosophy is rooted very heavily in Asian, Inuit, and South American traditions and styles with a twist of steampunk thrown in (the Fire Nation’s naval technology). Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino were very heavily inspired by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, and they spent years on world-building, working with people from the cultures they were trying to convey to ensure authenticity, and employed a multi-ethnic cast and crew to make this refreshingly diverse universe as solid and true as possible.

And it was fantastic: the characters are obviously internationally inspired, and they don’t play into stereotypes, the way Asian or minority characters tend to in so many TV shows and films. The characters in Avatar are normal human beings, and have attracted the attention of fans all over the world because of what a breath of fresh air it is to see the diversity that exists in our world portrayed so warmly and respectfully. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the show and trying to identify all the different world cultures they incorporated into each new episode, and they treated every single one with the utmost respect. As a 1.5-generation Indian myself (I was born in India and grew up in the US), I became really nervous when they introduced Guru Pathik, but I really had nothing to worry about–his character was solid and wonderful, and not at all an Apu-like caricature, which is how Indians have almost always been portrayed for many years in the media.

This does have a PoDW tie, actually, because the cast of PoDW is completely multi-ethnic, not just in skin color but in facial structure, accents, clothing, and more. And while the world is quite fantasy-heavy and plays with pirate legends and references, there are some undeniable ties to various countries and cultures in the designs of the characters and locales. Many of the people I’ve talked to through this site, and many of the comments I’ve seen on other sites, have pointed this out as something very positive and refreshing.

Anyway, about a month ago, the casting for Shyamalan’s Avatar films was announced–and the main characters are all white.

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