I ask for your help in something you could care less about.

[taiganwolf]

Please bare with me, silly as it seems on the surface I do think this is important.

I am a fan of the Nickelodeon television series Avatar:The Last Airbender. Probably few of you are. For those who have never heard of it, it is a fantasy story telling of a world at war and a young hero, the latest in a series of incarnated "Avatars" tasked to keep

Comments

Hmm

[lethargarian]

I can't tell if it's offensive or if it doesn't matter because race isn't important to me.

Re: Hmm

[taiganwolf]

I suggest you read Derek Kim's blog that I linked to. He makes the point more eloquently and forcefully than I could.

[ironpoet]

imagine if someone had made a “fantasy” movie in which the entire world was built around African culture. Everyone is wearing ancient African clothes, African hats, eating traditional African food, writing in an African language, living in African homes, all encompassed in an African landscape...
...but everyone is white.
How offensive, insulting, and disrespectful would that be toward Africans and African Americans?

Well, actually, they already kinda did that.
Ursula Leguin on the Sci-Fi channel miniseries "Earthsea"

It was, indeed, pretty offensive. Thanks for posting this!

[taiganwolf]

Yipes. Hadn't heard about that.

I was thinking that you could say the same thing about "The Lion King." But if you're going to talk about not casting culture-specific voice actors, then "Avatar" is just as guilty.