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M Night Shyamalan in his own words on The Last Airbender race controversy
Earlier this year, casting announcements for M Night Shyamalan’s filmic adaptation of the popular cartoon The Last Airbender sparked a storm of controversy. Our US correspondent Kimberly Gadette interviewed the director, who gave an in-depth (and impassioned) response to his detractors. We’ve also got the latest clip from the film, below.
Media pundits have suggested that M Night Shyamalan changed the race of key characters in The Last Airbender and/or gave Asian roles to Caucasian actors. You can read the full-length interview here but this excerpt is Shyamalan’s answer to a question posed by another interviewer in the same session. Is his response reasonable? A little demented? Frazzled to the point of exhaustion?
Q: There's been a lot of controversy regarding the casting and how all the heroes are being portrayed by Caucasian actors, while all the villains are all being portrayed by non-Caucasians. How do you respond to those who are saying that The Last Airbender is racist?
M Night Shyamalan: ‘Well, you caught me. I'm the face of racism. I'm always surprised at the level of misunderstanding, the sensitivities that exist. As an Asian-American, it bothers me when people take all of their passion and rightful indignation about the subject and then misplace it. Here's the reality: first of all, the Uncle Iroh character is the Yoda character in the movie, and it would be like saying that Yoda was a villain. So he's Persian.
And Dev Patel is the actual hero of the series, and he's Indian, OK? The whole point of the movie is that there isn't any bad or good. The irony is that I'm playing on the exact prejudices that the people who are claiming I'm racist are doing. They immediately assume that everyone with dark skin is a villain. That was an incredibly racist assumption which as it turns out is completely incorrect.
There are four nations, and I had to eventually make a decision about what nationality each of them are. What happened was, Noah Ringer walked in the door – and there was no other human being on the planet that could play Aang except for this kid. To me, he felt mixed race with an Asian quality to him. I made all the Air nomads mixed race – some of them are Hispanic, some of them are Korean. Every monk you see in a flashback, in that world, are all mixed race because they're nomadic. I felt that really worked as a culture. OK, so that's one-quarter of our world population. The second group is the Fire Nation; when Dev was cast as Zuko, I said, OK, I have to cast an Uncle Iroh that looks like his uncle. We're going to go from Indian/Persian to Mediterranean, all that group with all its darker colors including Italians.
So now we're at one-half of the population of the movie which is not white.
Moving on to the third group, which is the Earth kingdom (which is the biggest kingdom in this fictional world): I liked a bunch of the people who happened to be Japanese, Korean, Philippine, so I decided to make the Earth kingdom Asians. Now we're at three-quarters of the world. Now I have the brother and sister left. If you don't have an edict of "don't put white people in the movie" then the Water tribe can be European/Caucasian. So that's how it ended up.
Here's the irony of the conversation: The Last Airbender is the most culturally diverse movie series of all time. I'm not talking about maybe one Jedi, maybe one person of a different color – no one's even close. That's a great pride to me. The irony of this statement enrages me to the point of ... not even the accusation, but the misplacement of it. You're coming at me, the one Asian filmmaker who has the right to cast anybody I want, and I'm casting this entire movie in this color blind way where everyone is represented. I even had one section of the Earth kingdom as African American, which obviously isn't in the show, but I wanted to represent them, too!
And I fought like crazy to have the pronunciation of the names to go back to the Asian pronunciation. So you say "Ahng" instead of "Aaang" because it's correct. It's not "I-rack," it's "ee-Rock." I'm literally fighting for all this. And who's getting blamed? ME! This is incredible. And so it's infuriating, this stigmatization, that the first word about the most culturally-diverse movie of all time is this accusation. And here's the irony of it, this has nothing to do with the studio system. I had complete say in casting. So if you need to point the racist finger, point it at me, and if it doesn't stick, then be quiet.
Whenever we're on set, it's crazy, I love it. We're in our cafeteria, it looks like the United Nations in there! And you're not supposed to be thinking about this because it's so diverse. And again, this is what really frustrates me, when we get to the second movie (hopefully), since its based in the Earth Kingdom, suddenly the movie will seem entirely politically correct Asian, and the accusers will feel like they won. YOU DID NOT WIN! YOU DID NOT WIN! That's not what happened, you were wrong. As you can tell, it's a frustrating thing. Look at the movie poster with Dev Patel in it. I'm not understanding ... he's not politically correct?
I could go on for half an hour on that subject ... in the end it's like that saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
At the basis of this, a fascinating thing, it didn't even occur to me until the first mention of this came up: The art form of Anime in and of itself is what's causing the confusion. The Anime artists intentionally put ambiguous features on the characters so that you see who you want to see in it. It's part of the art form. My daughter looks identical to Katara; I saw my family in that series when I was watching it, I saw them in the faces. I'm sure that every household feels the same way in that they see their own families in them. It's a fascinating thing about how people perceive it. If there's an issue with why Anime does not put particularly specific Asian features from the PC Asian types that people think should be there ... take it up with Anime animators. It has nothing to do with me.’
And there you have it. We'd be very interested in your comments.
A new clip from The Last Airbender has been released via Facebook. It provides the first glimpse of Aang’s pet lemur, Momo. Fans of the Nickelodeon cartoon will be pleased to see how similar to the anime incarnations both Momo and Appa are, as well as noticing familiar scenes (for example, Katara’s less than perfect water-bending backfiring on her brother, Sokka). With any luck the entire film will stay as true to the cartoon series as the clips and trailers indicate. Watch it now.
The interview excerpt was edited and condensed. You can read the full interview with M Night Shyamalan here.
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It's nice to have a full explanation of Shyamalan's intentions, but it doesn't change the results. The Asian and Inuit characters from the cartoon have largely been replaced with Caucasians. And what ethnic actors are present are all villains and background characters. Oh yes, Zuko and Iroh eventually do switch sides, but they're major antagonists for our heroes for the majority of the series. If Shyamalan doesn't see the problem with what he's done here, this movie is in serious trouble.
And anime characters aren't ambiguous. They're just not the exagerrated caricatures of Asian people we see all too often in Western animation.
It's like everything M. Night just said fell completely on deaf ears. Read the interview again. *He is an Asian-American. Yes, India counts as Asia. 3/4ths of the nations in this film are not white.* What is the "problem" with what he's done here? Far as I can tell, he's given the two most interesting characters in the whole series (Zuko and Iroh) to non-whites, and the more flat characters (Katara, Sokka, and Aang to a lesser extent) to whites. Who cares what side they begin on? It's not "eventually," either. Iroh is the most spiritually awakened, and, yes, *good* character in the *entire* show and I'm including Aang here. Zuko is far more multi-faceted and complex and interesting than Aang. They're not major antagonists for the "majority" of the series. Zuko is maybe a "major" antagonist for the first half of Book One. After that, we are given insight into his history and we realize that he is not a "bad guy." He's actually a good guy, in a bad situation. Then in Book Two he's on the run, and for the first half of Book Three he has no contact whatsoever with the "heroes," after which he joins them for good. And I never considered Iroh to be a "major antagonist" at all. Because he's not. Never was.
M. Night has finally expressed what he feels about this whole "controversy" you broken-record racebenders have cooked up: He's hurt and angered by it. He's also perfectly aware of it, he hasn't lost his mind, and there's no "problem" that needs to be fixed. Asians (I assume you mean *east* Asians, because India is most definitely a part of Asia) get the entire Earth Kingdom, as well as blacks *who weren't in the show at all, where is the racism in that??* and Inuits populate the Southern Water Tribe--minus Sokka and Katara who are descended from the *Northern* Water Tribe, you may recall. Unless, of course, it's as I suspected, and half you racebenders actually haven't seen the show at all and just use this film to further your own agenda.
If M. Night Shyamalan wasn't a minority himself, the racist argument might hold a *tiny* bit more merit. As it is, though, it falls way short of meaning anything. Go cry in a corner for a while, it'll make you feel better. Then go see the damn movie; it's going to be a good one.
Wow. Really, on the entire planet, not one other person could portray Aang? He suggests that Ringer "looked" "mixed", yet doesn't confirm it, and in any case it's simply rationalization of something that has obvious racial connotations. He cast a white actor to play an Asian role. It's as simple as that and cannot be excused in any way.
I just love his line of thinking: "If you don't have an edict of "don't put white people in the movie" then the Water tribe can be European/Caucasian. So that's how it ended up." Oh, of course! If everyone else is a minority, than logic dictates that the heroes be European, right?
He should feel the heat. This just proves he's been bothered by this and that the movement is affecting the film in some way. The fact that he takes full responsibility and demands that if anyone should be called a racist, it should be him, really speaks a lot. He thinks he's being ironic, but really he's being an apologist.
The thing is, many of the protesters are also of Asian descent. So it's not a case of us declaring out-of-hand that Shyamalan is a "racist" without any thought to what it means to protest whitewashing, particularly when a brown director is involved. And I certainly don't appreciate being told to "be quiet" because I object to his casting of the principal characters as white (has Shyamalan forgotten that he originally cast ALL of them as white?).
"Diversity" does not mean legions of nameless, voiceless people of colour being led and saved by white people. You can fill the background up with people of all ethnicities and colours, but without their faces also being the ones doing heroic things and being the focus of the narrative -- which they WERE in the cartoon (which isn't anime) -- they are basically set dressing.
For what it's worth, I'm Indian, just like Dev Patel, just like Shyamalan. And seeing the constant misrepresentation of my concerns by the people involved in this movie is not inclining me to "be quiet" one bit.
"YOU DID NOT WIN!"?
Judging from the way the heroic brown girl has been erased from this movie, no, it's pretty clear that I haven't won. I've lost. And that's what I'm angry about.
Dude, with all of your heart, do you really think there is an asian actor out there who will represent aang, i don't think so. He has to look like Aang and SPEAK like Aang. In the series, i never thought of Aang as an asian. Do you really think Aang looked like an Asian (by Asian, you racists only consider the yellow (oriental) race). I never though Aang was asian, i thought he was white and the Katara and Sokka being Indian or Phillopinoes. Alright
Stop being so dumb and racist......This movie IS really GOING to be diverse and IT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME....
"They immediately assume that everyone with dark skin is a villain."
No, we point out that the antagonists of the movie are now dark-skinned, and the protagonists are light-skinned. He even admits this just a little bit later:
"We're going to go from Indian/Persian to Mediterranean, all that group with all its darker colors including Italians."
He has admitted that he cast the villains of the series as dark-skinned, and then has the gall to protest when people point that out?
"If you don't have an edict of "don't put white people in the movie" then the Water tribe can be European/Caucasian."
Given that there weren't white people in the original series, I fail to see why there should have been in the movie adaptation. The Water Tribe is based on Inuit cultures, and the makers of the movie knew this when they went out of their way to get Inuit extras, make Inuit sets, and hire people to recreate authentic Inuit weapons. But when it comes to casting, they pretend that it's okay to cast white main characters? That's ridiculous.
"The Last Airbender is the most culturally diverse movie series of all time. ... I'm casting this entire movie in this color blind way where everyone is represented."
All the main protagonists are white. The main antagonists are all dark-skinned. How is this diverse? How are Asians and Native Americans represented? As background characters, extras, and villains? That's not good enough.
"And I fought like crazy to have the pronunciation of the names to go back to the Asian pronunciation."
So first you insist that they're "ambiguous", you cast non-Asians in the roles, and then you want to make a claim to Asian authenticity? You cannot have it both ways. Either the characters are Asian, in which case making their names Asian and trying to make them more authentic would make sense, or they're "ambiguous" and you cast white, Indian, Persian, etc. actors. Saying that you care about making the names authentically Asian while saying that the characters themselves aren't Asian is just being duplicitous and two-faced. Not to mention insulting when you say you want authentic Asian pronunciation, but not authentic Asian actors.
"I had complete say in casting. So if you need to point the racist finger, point it at me"
And yet he whines when people do blame him.
"The art form of Anime in and of itself is what's causing the confusion. The Anime artists intentionally put ambiguous features on the characters so that you see who you want to see in it. It's part of the art form. "
Even if we accept that as true, that would not mean that the characters are therefore racially ambiguous and you can simply make up whatever race you want for them. It means you would have to look at the context of the anime/manga for what race they are. And guess what? The entire culture of Avatar was Asian and Native American, and so were the characters. Therefore, the actors who played them should have been Asian and Native American, as well.
Besides all that, what's so ambiguous about dark-skinned siblings who wear anoraks and live in igloos?
Learn to read. I'm Indian and therefore Asian. Don't use racist terminology like "yellow" and "Oriental" if you want to be taken seriously. Also, you clearly don't understand that many Asians can speak perfect English. Nor have you seen the Avatar artbook if you can't see how Aang could be Asian.
"Dumb and racist" might want to be words you apply to yourself.
Learn to read. I'm Indian and therefore Asian. Don't use racist terminology like "yellow" and "Oriental" if you want to be taken seriously. Also, you clearly don't understand that many Asians can speak perfect English. Nor have you seen the Avatar artbook if you can't see how Aang could be Asian.
"Dumb and racist" might want to be words you apply to yourself.
"He has to look like Aang and SPEAK like Aang."
I find your emphasis on "SPEAK like Aang" baffling. Are you saying that you think Asians cannot speak English? That they cannot have an American accent? And yet you consider us racist?
"Do you really think Aang looked like an Asian (by Asian, you racists only consider the yellow (oriental) race)."
Yes, he did. And no, we don't only consider East Asians to be Asian. By the way, using the terms "yellow race" and "oriental" are pretty darn offensive.
"I never though Aang was asian, i thought he was white"
He's a reincarnating Tibetan monk.
It's discouraging to me that M Night Shyamalan can simply say, "Now I have the brother and sister left. If you don't have an edict of "don't put white people in the movie" then the Water tribe can be European/Caucasian. So that's how it ended up." It makes me believe that he totally disregarded the cartoon series to begin with. These are the main characters and he's saying "that's how it ended up"? Really?
To me, this is "whitewashing". It's a bit offensive to take a wonderful show and downgrade it to this. How unfortunate.
I doubt Shyamalan is the one totally responsible here. Obviously, there are other factors. But it's unfair.