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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Old blog archive: 05 August 2002

Holy crap, it’s August. ^^;;

Thinking about redoing this…not sure yet, we’ll see. This definitely isn’t my top priority, since I seem to so rarely update it anyway…I did watch Dark Water this weekend (The Game Players of Undaar) for something like the first time in a few months or so–on a TV, at least; DarkWaterFan had the episodes up, but due to bandwidth issues they’re down–DWF, my friend Andy, and I all intend to start rotating the episodes on a biweekly basis or so.

I hope we can get that started soon, though, because life’s getting a bit hectic…this is my last week of work till January, and I’m in Boston next week (*dances* my summer vacation! I’ve been stuck in town ALL SUMMER), and the week after that classes start…I’ve got a violin audition for the Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra the Monday after I get back from Boston, I’ve got to move into my dorm, provided somebody cancels their housing because I’m NUMBER FREAKING ONE on the waiting list…holy crap, where did the last hour go?! I thought it was 11, not 12! Oh well…but…yeah, really busy till the start of the semester, and then Dragon*Con in August (no costuming this year–no time to make costumes this summer or to redo the Tula one–i.e., make the pink darker and get lighter material for the sash and stuff like that), with online friends coming in conveniently for my 21st birthday, which is the day before the con starts…anyway. :o)

More Dark Water related stuff for this…let’s see. Oh yeah. *grin* Saw this on CNN’s website Friday. ;o) Dark Water…oooohh… *smacks self* I’ll shut up now.

I’ve still got more site updates to put up–all the scans from the HB stuff Leo Agosta gave me…I did scan them, but I don’t know if I have them with me or not–maybe I should go through my disks today (I save all this stuff to disk and bring it in to work, so I’ve got a bunch of disks with random this-or-that in my purse :P), and if they’re there maybe I can thumbnail ’em and get ’em up? That’d be nice…plus, there’s even more fanart waiting to go up. I like this. *grins*

Oh oh oh! And I continued BOTH my fanfics! The problem is that the disk I have at work corrupted Desperate Times 6–I’ve got the original at home, though–and when I tried uploading Fun With Fangirls 2, FanFiction.net messed up. I’ll just put them up here at some point…maybe this week?

*goes to start sifting through a bunch of disks now* Wish me luck. ;o)