Imagine this: Someone is making a movie that is based on your favorite animation series based on medieval Viking life. It’s a fantasy world, but everyone there looks like a Scandinavian, they speak in medieval Scandinavian languages, dress like medieval Scandinavians, eat Scandinavian food, live in Scandinavian houses, play Scandinavian music… you get the idea.
Now, you go check out the trailer for the movie, and you find that the entire cast for the movie is African. You realise that you’re going to have an African cast re-enacting medieval Viking life. Imagine you’re Swedish. You realise that you have to pretend the African actors are actually the Scandinavian people in your favorite animation series.
But maybe it’s ok. After all, when they shot movie versions Beowulf and Sigfried, they used African actors. The director tells you that the actor is important, not the race. Maybe there aren’t Scandinavian actors suitable for the role. One of the African actors say publicly that he thinks he’ll need to bleach his hair to look like Scandinavian.
Asian-themed Animation (Also, Avatar: The Last Airbender animation shots page.):
Inuits look like this (From Atanarjuat, a movie I highly recommend):
Avatar: The Last Airbender movie looks like this:
The only dark skin I see here is an Indian playing the (surprise!) bad guy.
It’s ok according Jackson Rathbone, who is going to play Sokka (an Inuit), one of main characters of the series. He says:
“I think it’s one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan,” he said of the transformation he’ll go through to look more like Sokka. “It’s one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit.”
What? How incredibly offensive. Seems like we’re still in the blackface and yellowface era.
