Delivering Justice on Heaven's Behalf

Maybe you should talk to RZA of the Wu Tang Clan:

Let's be clear; we're adults.

The show might have been for kids, but it's adults making it.

Excuses that somehow you're unclear about the ethnic factor of the show is as ridiculous as someone "accidentally" stabbing someone 89 times because their hand slipped.

You spoke with the creators, you read the series style bible, you know the research behind it. There is no confusion where the calligraphy comes from, there is no question where the architecture is from, there is no unclarity where Mantis Fist, Bagua, or Tai Chi originates from. To claim otherwise means you are mentally functioning so low as to be unable to drive a car, much less be put in charge of deciding what to do with multi-million dollar productions.

You make movies, you know everything from casting to the very font on the end credits is a conscious choice of design; you don't "accidentally" cast people. You consciously choose actors to fit appearances all the time. That's why Lord of the Rings didn't look like a multi-cultural Kumbayah Festival. Otherwise, at least for US produced movies, we should only see 66% of the leads being white. Obviously, that's not true.

And now, you're being called on it. You're being called on your cowardice- the fact that, 2010, you're still afraid.

You're afraid of desegregation.

A mentality that there's limited roles for us, and God forbid, we make something that achieves mainstream popularity- that you have to whitewash it. See: Jazz. Rock & Roll. Yoga. Tai Chi. It's only good as long as we're not involved, right?

No, the worst part is that you're giving us these bullshit excuses. If you just did what you do, you would have ONLY been consigned to being labeled racist, ignorant and feeding it to the children, like so many other movies before.

But these excuses of "ironic", "color blind", etc.?

That's terrible. You're acknowledging you know something is fucked up, you're continuing ahead AND you're trying to defend it.

Don't bother defending it. After all, it's Confederate History Month. We get the message. You've decided who matters, who you make movies for. They'll come, you don't need any excuses, you don't need to feel shame, after all, you've decided the demographic you want.

We'll continue to fight the self hate you keep feeding us. We'll keep talking about how you don't even let us have fictional heroes.

After all, the choice to continue in the long Hollywood tradition of white supremacy is yours; we're just reminding you that it's not anything else.

Reading up on the first reviews on some roughs of Avatar the Last Airbender movie, and aside from the not too great reviews of the acting, this stood out to me:

The action scenes work pretty well, but only one really stood out for me at this time, which takes place in an ancient airbender temple and had some nice set pieces. Plus it was fun to watch Noah Ringer’s double (a woman with a shaved head) performing the fight scenes – they hadn’t gotten around to doing a face replacement yet.

I do remember when they first started talking about casting, they were talking about how much training they were giving the actors, and how impressive their movement had gotten.

But I'm sure it's all because it's SO IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND ASIAN ACTORS WHO DO MARTIAL ARTS:

(skip to 6:30 for the beatdown)



Seriously, when I'm stupid rich, I'm going to make a movie about hockey filled with anyone but white people, because it's so fucking hard to find white actors. (Huh, a Thai hockey movie with Tony Jaa would be kinda awesome. Though skate blades and Muay Thai kicks would make it really, really bloody...)

(ETA: Also, they screened it at Arizona? Really?)