signal boost: why I will not be seeing the Avatar live-action movie

[coraa]

For more, see: http://www.racebending.com

Whitewashing: not a pretty thing.

(For another example, see Ain't That A Shame, Justine Larbalestier's post about how one of her books, with an African American protagonist, was published with a cover depicting that character as white. Note that this was over her protest; authors don't get much say on book covers.)

In happier news, coffeeandink is hosting the Book Re-Covery Program, a repository for fan-created alternative/reimagined covers for books -- "Covers with people of color on them. Covers with cool but not stereotypical designs. Covers that demonstrate the diversity and richness that's already inside the text, or that reimagine white texts as more diverse, male-dominated texts as more feminist." I'm watching with interest, and may try my hand at a few, even though I'm not very good with graphics.

Comments

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know -- haven't heard -- how the original creators of Avatar feel about it; the movie is being done by M. Night Shyamalan, who didn't have anything to do with the original cartoon to the best of my knowledge. I wouldn't suspect that the original series creators are thrilled, as apparently all the interesting cultural flavor is being drained out of the movie (in addition to whitening all the good-guy protagonists, they've done things like get rid of the original series calligrapher and replace the accurate Chinese calligraphy from the original series with nonsense symbols), but I haven't heard anything. (I have heard almost entirely good things about the original tv series, and it's on my list of things to seek out and watch more of.)

Larbalestier gets big points in my book for speaking out and saying that she didn't like what her publisher did with the cover -- a potential risk for her; if they decide she's a troublemaker they might not pick up her next book.

Bleh.

[thegreatgonz.livejournal.com]

I keep hearing good things as well. If only we could manage to get together often enough, I'd love to watch it as a group.