Hey, Whitefolk! Paramount Thinks You're Racist

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Oh, boy—The Last Airbender comes out tomorrow!

Now I can properly boycott it!

I have a lot of issues with this movie—everything from “the effects look cheesy” to “why the hell are they making a movie trilogy out of a perfectly good TV show?”*—but I’d have been willing to go to it anyway.

Except for, y’know, the whole casting fiasco. That shit is not cool.

These are big damn issues, and I can’t really hope to cover them all. I want social change, justice, and respect for people who aren’t getting it—all very damn good, but to me ultimately abstract, reasons. However, I do have one self-centered and petty reason that's a lot closer to home, too, aside from all the Greater Good and the reasons posted in that link above:

I am simply insulted that they’d assume that I, a white woman, am so afraid of anybody who isn’t blazingly white that I would never deign to buy a ticket to a movie with such people in the leading roles.

Basically, in amidst all the much more problematic dismissals of people of color, they are also handing out insults to the very audience they do acknowledge exists: "Hey, there, white people! We're going to assume you'd be much too threatened to even consider a movie with Asian protagonists! Don't worry, we're siding with this imagined caricature of your racist ass on this one! Don't you feel better now?"

Not to mention the assumption that even if I am annoyed, I'd go see it anyway for pretty effects.

I think it’s terribly ironic that their cynical attempt to ensure that I spend money on this is the very reason I refuse to do so.

Anyway, I’m sticking with the cartoon, which may I remind you is one of the best TV shows ever made. In fact, I think I’ll watch some tomorrow—just out of pure spite. Fuck you, Paramount.


*Yes, I know: money.

Comments

[bluetara2020.livejournal.com]

As a friend pointed out when I ranted a bit on my own journal: Ebert gave this half a star. He gave Gigli 2 and half stars.

My response was thus: damn. Just how epic is the fail when you're beaten by Gigli? By two stars?

It's not happy knowing that you're a petty and vindictive creature but in the case of me and Paramount (or for that matter me and M. Night Shyamalan - everything he's done is overrated. Not necessarily bad (-cough-early works-cough-) But overrated.) I'm ok with that.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Man, Ebert's review was a SMACKDOWN. Ebert is not always right, but when he's right, by god he is RIGHT.

[bluetara2020.livejournal.com]

Critics get paid for their opinion. Granted, it's an informed opinion but still.

I read his review and at the end of it I wanted to both cringe and apologize that, because of his job, he had to see it. Maybe offer him a nice cup of tea and to run out and find him a movie that doesn't suck.

And it was a smackdown, no question. It brought to mind images of the bad guy wrestlers rubbing their hands together - you know it's bad and that it is going to hurt

[van.livejournal.com]

You know, I've got the first season somewhere around here. I never got past the first episode for some reason (well, because I opted to watch the first episode of Avatar and the first episode of Blake's 7 to decide which to watch and got sucked into Blake's 7 at the time), so maybe in "celebration" of the new movie, I should watch the cartoon.

What's funny to me is that . . . the cartoon is enormously popular and sucessful and the kids (and teens and adults) who watched it had no problem with the cartoons looking brown. Why change that? It seems to me like the movie has taken everything that was awesome about the cartoon and removed it. No wonder it sucks.

[sriti.livejournal.com]

I LOVED the cartoon series! I just watched it recently, and then heard that a movie was coming out. Let me tell you, I was so impressed with the cartoon, that I just know that the movies aren't going to be anything compared to it. I won't be watching the movie either, not because of the casting though, but simply because I don't want to ruin the image of how freakin' AWESOME the cartoon is.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

The cartoon is magnificent, isn't it? Let us focus on that!

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Well, we all know what a commercial flop "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was, and there was nary a white person in sight!

In other news, Cracked.com, my favorite online source for questionable news, points out that Shymalan's break away hit, "Sixth Sense", is actually the plot of an episode of Nick's "Are You Afraid of the Dark?". The article, on f'ed up sources for pop culture items, recommends he goes back to watching Nick as any of his later movies suck.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

The one lesson he learned from that success, which he'll cinderblock at your head forever after, was "PUT A TWIST IN IT. PLOT BE DAMNED."

Screw you, M. Night Shalalalala.

Also, this situation reminds me of the "21" movie, except there wasn't a catchy word like "racebending" for it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I loved my sister's comment here: "Maybe he thinks the white people ARE the twist!"

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I admit, I rather liked the Sixth Sense, but I am willing to believe it was derived from something. (Enough so that a book I found on How To Survive A Horror Movie has a litmus test for you to try to see if you are really dead. I believe the suggestion was to take your pants off somewhere public.)

[westrider.livejournal.com]

As Warren Ellis pointed out a little while back, Bruce Willis has actually had a really strange, and quite interesting, film Career. Sixth Sense, 12 Monkeys, 5th Element (hey, I see a pattern here), a few others that aren't coming to mind right now, he's done plenty of stuff that's way off the "Die Hard" image that many people seem to have of him.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

5th Element isn't that far off of the Die Hard image, though. He plays a working shlub who's actually a hardcore ass-kicker. That's pure John McClane.

On the other hand, he was also in Pulp Fiction.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Willis himself wasn't so different, now that you mention it, but for some reason, the context of the rest of the movie gives it a very different feel to me.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I think you'll enjoy io9's review, entitled M. Night Shyamalan Finally Made a Comedy. Some choice excerpts:

This is the part where I would insert a quick plot synopsis of the film, but it's really unnecessary - Shyamalan has boiled every epic heroic story of the past 20 years down to its most basic, primal soup-y essence, so he can spray it all over the audience, in a kind of Hero's-Journey bukkake. You will be finding chunks of Joseph Campbell's calcified spooge behind your ears for three days after watching this film, no matter how many times you bathe.

---

I think everybody who has criticized Shyamalan for casting white actors as Asian characters in this film should admit they were wrong. Clearly, Shyamalan tried to cast Asians, but he just couldn't find any whose performances were lifeless enough.

---

Later in the film, Katara says my favorite line ever, "We need to show them that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in their beliefs." It's as if Shyamalan had a cue card that he was planning to turn into an actual bit of dialog, but he forgot.

And way more. I'm finding it hard to resist copypasting the whole damn thing.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

There are plenty of bad movies that know they're bad — but TLA is the first bad movie that knows that you are bad. You deserve your full share of the blame for this movie's existence. Airbender doesn't just poke fun at its entire genre, with its hyperactive mix of randomness and blandness - it actually MST3Ks its audience.

Oh, man, AWESOME.

Her review of Transformers 2 (Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie) is still the best, though. ("It will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever ...") It was the bright spot of that dark time.

My hands-down favorite pull-quote from Rotten Tomatoes, though, is from Keith Phipps of AV Club: Where to start with this one? How about this: If any movie ever warranted a class-action lawsuit against the filmmakers, it’s The Last Airbender.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

drat, you beat me to it!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

"Do we have to make Doctor Manhattan blue? How are people going to relate to that?"

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

And yeah, I thought the days when David Carradine replaced Bruce Lee in Kung Fu were decades behind us, but apparently I was mistaken.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Apparently the thing's at 6% over at Rotten Tomatoes. I don't think I've ever heard of a movie hitting a single-digit approval rating there. Even Catwoman got 10%.

There are also comments comparing the film unfavourably to the work of Uwe Boll.

Then there's that absolutely brilliant io9 Review.

At this point it's looking like, as much as for the racism, people should be boycotting this simply because it's a fucking terrible movie.