Shanghai Knights was part of the orientalist trend, though - white guys like Asian chicks; Asian = gongfu; Asians don't speak English. I did like Kevin Tong's The Maid.
But yeah. It reeeally pisses me off to see other commenters elsewhere saying they read the animated characters as white. Nowai.
1) "Oh, but they look white." No, they look Asian, in an anime-influenced style. White is not default.
2) "Oh, but they sound white." No, they sound American - given that they used a US voice cast, everyone who's been in the US for long enough would sound American (heck, a lot of English-speaking Singaporeans sound American, so much so that I could barely understand British/Australian TV shows at first). American is not equivalent to white.
3) "Oh, but it's based on Asian culture, the actors don't have to be any particular race." Even if the latter point is true, why is white the casting default? And considering how heavily LotR, for example, was "based" on on Anglo-Saxon culture, transplanting it into the Indian subcontinent would never have worked; but making the Avatar world white will work?
I'm soooo sorry for ranting here too (no real need for preaching to the choir! ;)), but I find it so aggravating that a lot of people cut-and-paste their own background onto this show. I mean, I doubt you'd find any Asian viewer who saw the characters as anything but Asian (or Inuit, for the Water Tribe; I'm not sure, being Chinese, but me and my friend who is Indian considered them to definitely be South Asian, though Inuit viewers doubtless think the other way. Not white, in any case).
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-14 05:31 am (UTC)Shanghai Knights was part of the orientalist trend, though - white guys like Asian chicks; Asian = gongfu; Asians don't speak English. I did like Kevin Tong's The Maid.
But yeah. It reeeally pisses me off to see other commenters elsewhere saying they read the animated characters as white. Nowai.
1) "Oh, but they look white."
No, they look Asian, in an anime-influenced style. White is not default.
2) "Oh, but they sound white."
No, they sound American - given that they used a US voice cast, everyone who's been in the US for long enough would sound American (heck, a lot of English-speaking Singaporeans sound American, so much so that I could barely understand British/Australian TV shows at first). American is not equivalent to white.
3) "Oh, but it's based on Asian culture, the actors don't have to be any particular race."
Even if the latter point is true, why is white the casting default? And considering how heavily LotR, for example, was "based" on on Anglo-Saxon culture, transplanting it into the Indian subcontinent would never have worked; but making the Avatar world white will work?
I'm soooo sorry for ranting here too (no real need for preaching to the choir! ;)), but I find it so aggravating that a lot of people cut-and-paste their own background onto this show. I mean, I doubt you'd find any Asian viewer who saw the characters as anything but Asian (or Inuit, for the Water Tribe; I'm not sure, being Chinese, but me and my friend who is Indian considered them to definitely be South Asian, though Inuit viewers doubtless think the other way. Not white, in any case).
/rant