What I Wish

There's been more racist and failing casting in Avatar: The White Washing. Karen Healey has mocking commentary on it. No doubt Aang Ain't White has or will have news as well.

But commentary doesn't help and isn't listened to and protests haven't worked and sending snail mail has resulted in mail being sent back. And M. Night Shaylaman seems to have sold his soul and his daughter's racial pride in order to have Hollywood pretend to respect him (You're BROWN Night. Pretense is all it is).

What I Wish we could do, is organize a viewing of the original series all over the nation, on the movie's opening day. I know this is just a dream, I have no idea how such a thing would be organized and I have no way of knowing if my tentative idea of 'via one's local public library' would even work, because not everyone's library system is the same.

But, I wish we could still have an alternate place for fans to go;somewhere free, with food, possibly food from the series - definitely tea. I wish that fans gathered in each other's homes, or at the library, or by someone's plain back wall, where another someone has set up a projector and we all watched the real Avatar and not this sham of 'WHITE HEROES SAVE WHITELANDIA FROM EVIL BROWN HORDES'. With some 'ethnics' in the background, with their Korean Kimonoes (Fail!Trademark, Deedee Rickets, Casting)

But the truth is, I know that's not going to happen. I know that if the Movie Execs, really believed that what they were doing would cause them financial harm - they'd stop doing it. They might not see black, white, red or yellow, but they sure as hell see green.

And green is hundreds to thousands of white tweens and teens and adults going to a movie to see white heroes in Asian Dressing, saving the world from evil brown folks. AGAIN. Just like always in fact. Because white is brighter and better and the default and why even go into it all over again. Avatar is Non White Fantasy as in Non White Futurism & Fantasy. And the movie industry is making it SF&F - > WHITE DREAMS O POWER. And we've seen just how loudly WHITE DREAMS O POWER will shout and scream and fart to drown out any other perspectives.

We've seen how pointing out the racism can threaten people's livelihoods.

We've seen and heard how 'multicultural fantasy' just doesn't sell. Or how 'If white fantasy sells, then the industry will make white fantasy because the industry wants to make money'.

WE HAVE SEEN THIS BULLSHIT

And I'm so effling tired of it. So effing tired.

I am tired and it's not even four months into the year yet. I am tired of white people apparently thinking post colonial means 'Post America's War For Independence'. I am tired of willful ignorance. I am tired of white liberals who don't want to admit they bathe and wank off to white privilege, to a world catered to them, and that fighting for social justice to them, is an entertaining hobby; something they do when they have time, energy, full health, not so many other articles to read online, blah blah blah.

I am tired of people who don't get why this is painful and important. I am tired of people claiming not to understand why it's wrong to have a story created about NWP/POC, specifically ASIAN PEOPLES, being co-opted by white actors into a white morality play on the evils of being BROWN, but maybe you'll rise above your DARKNESS if the right white people reach out to you.... I'm tired of THAT BULLSHIT OLD STORY.

I guess when it comes to movies, however, I have some years left to wait for other people to be just as tired and just as angry and just as willing to walk away from an industry that does not respect those who are not white.

Cause I don't think I'm going to get my wish that enough people simply will not go to see this film, and it will flop hugely, putting a nail in the coffin of M.Night's career and any other adaptation into whiteness of POC/NWP's stories.

And not because there are PoC/NWP who'll support it. But because there are just too many white people, willingly blind to what's going on, who won't see anything wrong with all the PoC being on the side of the narrative's aggressors.

Still, it's a nice wish - True Fans Holding A Series Marathon, in rejection of the pale, withered, overused thing that will slither out of the movie studio.

ETA:PS - if anyone wants to comment and tell me in essence, how I'm becoming Malcolm X, but going backwards from Mecca to Blue Eyed Devils? Yes, I already know.

ETA2: (March 25th) My ETA above is about my inability to see allies anymore unless I see their blood spilled and mingling with mine. It's come to my attention that some people feel Malcolm X post Mecca was some kind of fluffy bunny. Educate yourself - buy the book and read it.