M. Night Shmuckalan is officially full of fail.
Quoting from this site -
http://www.cinematical.com/2010/06/28/shyamalan-rants-about-airbender-and-racism/For those suffering from tl;dr syndrome, basically he claims he casted color-blind... Except all the heroes are white, the one bad nation is full of darkies, and nobody's black (which doesn't make sense if you're oh-so-friggin' color blind).Indie Movies Online has shared a very long rant from the filmmaker at a recent round table, where he slaps the racist label back on the detractors. Shyamalan boils much of the controversy down to people not understanding the progression of the series: "when we get to the second movie (hopefully), since its based in the Earth Kingdom, suddenly the movie will seem entirely politically correct Asian, and the accusers will feel like they won. YOU DID NOT WIN! YOU DID NOT WIN!" To the director, this feature is the "most culturally diverse movie series of all time," and he describes how he came to cast the nations:
"There are four nations, and I had to eventually make a decision about what nationality each of them are. What happened was, Noah Ringer walked in the door – and there was no other human being on the planet that could play Aang except for this kid. To me, he felt mixed race with an Asian quality to him. I made all the Air nomads mixed race – some of them are Hispanic, some of them are Korean. Every monk you see in a flashback, in that world, are all mixed race because they're nomadic. I felt that really worked as a culture. OK, so that's one-quarter of our world population. The second group is the Fire Nation; when Dev was cast as Zuko, I said, OK, I have to cast an Uncle Iroh that looks like his uncle. We're going to go from Indian/Persian to Mediterranean, all that group with all its darker colors including Italians.
Moving on to the third group, which is the Earth kingdom (which is the biggest kingdom in this fictional world): I liked a bunch of the people who happened to be Japanese, Korean, Philippine, so I decided to make the Earth kingdom Asians. Now we're at three-quarters of the world. Now I have the brother and sister left. If you don't have an edict of "don't put white people in the movie" then the Water tribe can be European/Caucasian. So that's how it ended up. So now we're at one-half of the population of the movie which is not white."
He later continues: "I had complete say in casting. So if you need to point the racist finger, point it at me, and if it doesn't stick, then be quiet." He doesn't, unfortunately, discuss the extras casting call, and the attitudes that went along with that, which producer Frank Marshall blamed on the local casting company. But he does play his own race card: "You're coming at me, the one Asian filmmaker who has the right to cast anybody I want, and I'm casting this entire movie in this color blind way where everyone is represented."
First of all, if the Water Nation is supposed to be white, why is everyone else in their village but the main characters freakin' Asian? The two heroes and their white granny live with a bunch of Eskimos? FTW. Why did he bother with Asian extras if he wanted them all Nordic and shit? Since he didn't do this, I don't frickin' believe him.
Second, where the fuck did he get it in his head that he had to make a decision on what nationality people were? It was already made! There is as much room for Scarlett Johansen in the Avatar:TLA world as there is for Bill Duke and the freakin' cast of Jersey Shore. There is not a single black guy or blonde person or Snooki in the damn cartoon.
Everybody's Asian! They use real Asian martial arts, wear Asian clothing, use predominantly Asian architecture, write and read in Chinese calligraphy, eat Asian food (I don't even think they
have forks in their world), and echo the sentiments of Asian spirituality and lore. The main dude went to the Spirit World and met a dragon and panda. How Asian can you get? Did it really have to be beaten into Shymalangaga's head?
Third, M. Night's an asshat. He wants a finger? He's got a finger.
