About Avatar: The Last Airbender

[james_davis_nicoll]

Over in soc.history.what-if, Doug M. says I have to point out that while the /world/ of Avatar is very Asian influenced (and in a charmingly syncretic way...love that Balinese monkey chant), the ethnicity of the characters is quite deliberately blurred. Ang has pale skin, brown eyes, and vaguely Caucasian features; Saka and Kitara have olive skin, vaguely Asian features, and blue eyes. Zuko and the other Fire Nation characters tend to look Northeast Asian, but their eyes are usually orange, red or gold. In fact, this was one of the fun aspects of the series; the various "tribes" were to some extent racially distinct, but in ways that didn't map to here-and-now ethnic groups.

I have not seen Avatar but the above makes me want to track it down. I don't see any particular reason why the particular constellations of associated features in humans in secondary worlds would occur as they do in our world [1] if the histories of the worlds are distinct (and assuming we're not talking about a world crafted by some Dull God too uncreative to avoid blatant ethnological plagiarism).



1: A special stabbity-stabbity to all those authors who have secondary worlds with nations and ethnicities unlike our world's except for the gypsies, who apparently spring up like mushrooms everywhere even in worlds where their historical roots do not exist.

Comments

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, "anime" is the Japanese word for "cartoons" (and for that matter, "manga" is the word for comics of all sorts). So I would say that looking at your hypothetical animator's Disney homage, a Japanese person would say "anime."

Then again, that same person would say "anime" for Disney and WB products as well.

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

I find it ironic that there are please for ethnic authenticity in a movie adaptation of a series that itself was originally created as a simulation of anime. Cue Baudrillard. The Avatar series is itself an instance of Orientalism to begin with, so in that sense the all-white casting of leads in the movie adaptation is being true to form.

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[sunshaker.livejournal.com]

Is a sparkling wine made with the correct grapes in the traditional way champagne even if it isn't made in France?

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[affreca.livejournal.com]

It is an interesting question. I can't think of any American cartoons that use a lot of anime conventions, but there are American manga that are homages to Japanese manga (major difference is which direction to read from).

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[t-guy.livejournal.com]

No, it's Champanoise (IIRR the spelling).

I suspect that the definitions of 'anime' and 'manga' are not so region-specific.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I *read* those links -- that's where I got the smiley face point /from/. Honestly.

There are young characters with epicanthic folds. (Including, oddly enough, one of Aang's airbending playmates.)

Zuko-- even eliding eye color the characters are still ethnically blurry. Fire Nation have black hair, may have epicanthic folds or not, and show a wide range of facial features -- Zuko looks vaguely NE Asian but (for instance) Admiral Bad Guy from Season One does not. Similarly, even without blue eyes, the Water Tribe aren't just Inuit -- Katara with brown eyes would look French or Spanish; give Magic Moon Princess dark hair and eyes and she'd look like Romy Schneider. On the other hand, Sour Old Water Master looks like a blue-eyed Fu Manchu.

Also, not to belabor the point, but why does "overriden for world-building purposes" take eye color off the board? All Fire Nation have black hair. That's probably another aesthetic worldbuilding choice; should we ignore that too, and try to guess what Zuko would look like blonde?


Doug M.

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

methode champagnoise. Except apparently in Europe, where it has to be called other things. In Czech Repuiblic apparently it is called Sekt (accordign to my kid who is living there).

[kate_nepveu]

I'm sorry but I do not have sufficient patience or time to continue this conversation.

Animoid?

[(Anonymous)]

Mangadian?


Doug M.

I don't know your tastes

[(Anonymous)]

in animated TV series well enough.

But if you liked, say, Samurai Jack? Or (in another direction) Justice League Unlimited? Good chance you'll enjoy this.


Doug M.

[(Anonymous)]

That's fine. Thank you for your time.


Doug M.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Even if the ethnicity is blurred, it's mostly blurred Asian. Especially with the culture/clothing. And the audience perceptions are generally Asian.

The prospective cast? Not blurred at all. It's not like they got some dark skinned French Mercedes to play Katara. They got Clark Kent playing Sokka.

A friend notes that there aren't many natural roles for Asian-American actors. Here we have a whole *series* and instead they Aryan Nation the leads.

Big/round eyes, epicanthic folds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicanthic_folds
http://cedarseed.deviantart.com/art/Guide-to-Human-Types-part-1-32046017
http://danbooru.donmai.us/data/6c8119998e1c18b9a67a4215afc9dc92.jpg

Aang's own eyes seem to vary between "vague fold" and "eyeballs so big there is no room for the brain".

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that from seeing the initial pictures I was dismissive of Avatar as some Yu-Gi-Oh or Dragonball clone, until someone who's opinon I trust forced me to sit down and watch the first episode. And then I was hooked.

Avatar, is literally, not only one of the best animated fantasy series I've ever seen, it's one of the best fantasy series I've ever seen in any media. Not only is the world building and plotting excellent, the character design, personalities and development is top notch. The series goes from somewhat light-hearted in the beginning, and becomes more and more series as the stakes are raised and the characters mature- and yet there is still a large dose of humor. One sign of the care involved in the series is that early on I had several questions raised about the home of two of the characters...which were answered in grim detail in the third season. Avatar also has one of my favorite villains; one who not only considers himself the hero of the story, has an excellent motivation to be doing what he's doing, and also really WOULD be the hero, if he didn't keep making the "wrong" decisions for all the best reasons.

The bottom line is this is a well crafted product, which has stretched the notion of what an American animated series is capable of, just as much, if not more so than Batman: the Animated Series did back in its day.

So my recommendation? Go on Amazon, and just grab the first season collection. It's well worth the price.

[avram]

What I'm seeing here is the intersection of Scott McCloud's "mask" theory of cartoon representation with the notion of the unmarked state.

Le Guin on the Earthsea casting seems relevant

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

http://www.slate.com/id/2111107/

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

I dismissed the show based on the title. Airbender? What kind of a silly word is that? (I also completely dismissed TiVo recording The Big O for me. Yeah, I like TV aimed at women, but a title like that makes me dubious. Then, I noticed it was on Cartoon Network not Lifetime/Oxygen/WE. So I sampled an episode and initially dismissed it for another reason. Me, have kneejerk reactions? Impossible!)

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[armb.livejournal.com]

Germans also use Sekt, but not specifically for méthode champenoise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkling_wine#Sekt

But yes, AIUI it's now covered by one of the Protected Food Names schemes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9thode_champenoise#Traditional_method

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[armb.livejournal.com]

> except for the gypsies, who apparently spring up like mushrooms

Does this also cover gypsies with explicit dimension hopping magic? (I don't have an example in mind.)

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

No, because they'd have a possible causal connection to our world. I mean secondary worlds with no connection to ours that have gypsies anyway.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Except that plain dots or circles for eyes were not a typical unmarked state in Japanese cartooning until the 1920s, under the influence of American cartoons like Life with Father, the creepy Jiggs and Maggie one. Before that, eyes were usually cariactured by curved lines, an eyebrow-iris/lid combination, or actually drawing out the damn things, cartoonists staying closer to a print tradition longer in Japan than elsewhere.

Sloppy work by a professional academic. Also, I note that he dances around the question of Japanese cartoon representations of Africans (and 'Melanesians' etc).

As for Shati's LJ post, it greatly overestimates that depiction's universality as a face, as well as the historical development of the smiley face as "unmarked". I suspect a cartoonist from an east Asian artistic tradition two hundred years ago would view the picture in the post as some sort of skull. Ruskin once saw a similar drawing, IMS from a medieval manuscript, and denounced it as ridiculously programmatic.

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[(Anonymous)]

Even worse, "Methode traditionelle".

"Methode Champenoise" is verboten because it sounds too much like "Champagne".

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[soon_lee]

That was me.

Jack Vance

[(Anonymous)]

Often had gypsies, though always under other names. They were, without exception, bad news.

Vance had half a dozen or so 'slots' like that -- "brutal mounted steppe nomads" was another.


Doug M.

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

The animated Teen Titans deliberately borrowed a number of anime-style visual gags, to mixed effect.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

This.

My only caveat is that it is still a kids' show on some level, so even though it pushes the seriousness boundary of American kids' programming much farther than it usually goes, it still glosses over some things that wouldn't be glossed over if they had made the same show intended for an entirely adult audience. There's nothing wrong with that, of course; but the fact that it was more adult than most kid-oriented programming sometimes gave me expectations that were not fulfilled.

But it really is a good show.