Dariane Nabor

One of the leaders of the Racebending movement published a post looking back on the past year since the casting for ‘The Last Airbender’ film was announced. She asks some reflection questions to the readers. Here are my answers…

What did you initially think of the casting?

When I first learned about the casting of ‘The Last Airbender’ film, I hadn’t seen a single episode of the Nickelodeon animated series it was based on.  Someone just told me that the series was heavily influenced by Asian culture, that the characters themselves had Asian or Inuit background and the live action adaptation casted Caucasian actors in all the lead roles.  My first impression was, “Oh God, it’s another ‘21.’“  It was just a movie to me, a movie that I would not see.  I didn’t think much beyond that until I learned about how prevalent this practice has been in Hollywood for years and years, and it is very different from how other characters and actors of color are treated.*

Any insights gained since then?

With Racebending, I feel like I’m learning something new everyday. Since I found out about the casting, I started regularly attending meetings with the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, helped lead (with my boyfriend) efforts to spread awareness at San Diego Comic-Con, revamp the Racebending website, protest outside of Paramount studios and more. I’ve attended more events centered around issues affecting the broader Asian American community.

My experience with Racebending has put me on a crash course in networking, event organizing, video creation and editing, web design.  In all this, I’ve learned that people have so many varying opinions, even those who support a single cause. I’ve learned that it’s foolish to live under the illusion that we are living in a post-racial world–many people believe in it, and usually those are the people who are privileged enough to not experience prejudice. I’ve learned that media is a very very powerful tool that those at the top don’t often realize the kind of power (and responsibility) they have to the viewing public. Money is the bottom line.

What has discussing the casting with friends been like?

Most people I talk to agree that ‘whitewashing’ a film is so pervasive in Hollywood, and that the casting of ‘The Last Airbender’ is unfortunate. Most people I talk to say that they will not watch the film. Most people I talk to are socially conscious and are understanding. And most people I talk to are busy working on issues like access to higher education, immigration, justice for Filipino veterans, poverty, etc. They’re not about to jump on this movement full force because there are other (more important) issues facing their communities.

What are you looking forward to for racebending.com next year?

Widespread and mainstream attention.  This movement is the biggest of its kind with an incredibly diverse group of supporters. I want to see big things. I want to make big things happen. Most of all, I want people to understand that even though we’re focusing most of our efforts on this single film, that it is only merely a single example of decades of fetishizing Asian culture through whitewashing, yellowfacing, stereotyping, and systematically barring Asian and Asian-American roles from Asian and Asian-American actors.

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* From Derek Kirk Kim’s blog:

“Or let me draw a closer parallel—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? How much more offensive would it be if only the heroes were white and all the villians and background characters were African American?”