Forgive me in advance for not being too knowledgeable about the background of the two films that I’m about to discuss, I never got around to showing more than a mild interest in either of the titles, mostly due to my attention being held elsewhere.
The movies I’m talking about are Avatar: The Last AirBender and The Hunger Games. Now I have seen Avatar, and I do plan to see the Hunger Games at some point, but keep in mind that I never really watched the Avatar Nickelodeon series, nor have I read the books that the Hunger Games were developed from.
I remember going to see Avatar with my friends in theaters, with them obviously being bigger fans of the source material than I was. The movie turned out to be pretty terrible for a multitude of reasons that I won’t include here, but one of the things I remembered hearing from them while watching it, as well as reading about it before the movie came out, was that the ethnicity of most of the main characters was completely wrong.
Like I said, I haven’t really gotten into the series, so I don’t know who was supposed to be what ethnicity, but I do know for sure that Aang was supposed to be Asian. So upon seeing that Aang was being played by a boy who was clearly Caucasian, I can see why a majority of fans were upset and had even built up a notable protest of the film based off the ethnicity of the cast alone.
Fast forward to the Hunger Games, and now I’m hearing that some fans(who are clearly racist) are upset because certain characters ended up not being what they(the fans) perceived them to be, which was Caucasian, despite the source material strongly suggesting otherwise. You can read about this here.
Now I’m an up and coming African American actor(and I use the phrase “up and coming” very loosely) and though I’ve only been involved in the film/tv/commercial side of the industry for a short time, there are some things that I’ve noticed to be true.
One of these things is the severe lack of casting opportunities for minorities as a whole. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that I’ve personally seen four times as many casting opportunities for Caucasian actors then I’ve seen for any other race. I also look at how the industry is presented to us in the media, and this lack of opportunity seems to ring true throughout the whole industry.
George Lucas made a statement about how hard it was to get his film, Red Tails, distributed because certain people felt that a film with an almost entirely black cast would not be as well received worldwide. If you were to take a sweeping glance of all the actors present for events like this years’ Academy Awards or the Golden Globes, you could probably pick out the entire cast of The Help, if you know what I mean. I don’t think that the industry as a whole is necessarily racist, or racist at all, but the severe lack of racial diversity is highly disturbing.
I remember growing up in the 90’s and seeing a very culturally diverse television and film industry. For every Full House there was a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in films, you could rattle of the names of star actors of various ethnic backgrounds. There was Jackie Chan, Antonio Banderas, Almost Any of the Wayans brothers, etc etc. There was so much happening in the industry to at least attempt to show various walks of life.
Nowadays, Jackie Chan is doing V8 commercials and kids movies, Antonio Banderas most notable work in the past five years is doing voice work as Puss in the Shrek franchise, and can anyone name me a highly successful film in the past five years with an African American lead actor whose name isn’t Will Smith or Denzel Washington?
It bothers me a lot when I look around and see what looks like regression in a country that prides itself on equality. Why is it that an Asian actor has to almost always be involved in a martial arts film (whenever studios actually decide to make one)to land a lead role? Why is it that the “in demand” Hispanic actors seem to switch out every few years? I haven’t seen Eva Mendes as much as I used to though Sofia Vergara seems to pop up everywhere. Can they both not be everywhere at once? Why does it seem like being in a Tyler Perry production is the only way I’ll see multiple African American actors on the screen at once?
I think when situations like with Avatar or Hunger Games arise, one of the positives that come from it is that more people’s eyes are being opened to the bigger situation at hand. The elimination of color and diversity from the industry is unnecessary, unwanted, and seems to only be supported by people whose support that I would hope these studios who green-light films would not want.
My hope is that those who become aware will also be or inspire the ones who do something about it. I would hate see this decline move any further and in doing so, stop anybody from any walk of life from achieving their dreams.
