![]() While this muddied the waters (people asking us "Are you happy now?" and "You can't say it's racist anymore!" as if tokenism should be enough to put us back in our place), it didn't change the situation. This is very similar to our stance when Prince Zuko was recast as Dev Patel. The argument that there was a minority in the film playing one of the any whitewashed minority role.so we should shut up and sit down-why should we when so many characters were still whitewashed? When the film perpetrated so many racial stereotypes-depicting black and Inuit communities as helpless victims, depicting Asians as villains, idiots, traitors and massage ladies? Minorities are not interchangeable, and further tokenism in film is not our goal. still stands by our opinion that Aang was Asian. There are many films that have actors of colour who play the roles of sidekick or bad guy or Extraneous Person #253. Our concern goes beyond just "presentness" of minorities. Our efforts were never just about hiring minorities. What this says to me is that a) Ringer is racially 'ambiguous' enough to play Aang (or as Shyamalan says, has "an Asian quality"-whatever that means-which apparently should be good enough) and, b) therefore race in A:TLA is unimportant/irrelevant, and anyone can play anyone. In short: why were we, the movie-going public, allowed to assume that Ringer was (the default) white? While we don't presume to doubt Ringer, we wonder why his heritage was hidden and obscured by Paramount Pictures, while other actors' backgrounds were flaunted by Shyamalan in his TLA-defensive interviews. But in lieu of ambiguous ethnicity, white should not be the default. In the conversations Asian American organizations and had with Paramount, including with the President of Paramount Pictures, both parties operated on the premise that Ringer was white. This was never disputed or debated by the production. What does this mean for kids and for adults who want to see people of colour in lead, protagonist, hero roles? The debate still continues about Aang's ethnicity, regardless (or perhaps exacerbated by?) of Ringer's background.įor the entirety of the production and release of the film, Ringer was presented as a white person who Shyamalan "felt" was "mixed race with an Asian quality to him.". The organizers have discussed what this news means, and here's what we've come up with: Should pack up shop and close our doors, as this news of Ringer's heritage effectively negates everything we stand for? Is Paramount truly the noble upstanding, legally moral studio for remaining mum about Noah Ringer's heritage, in both public interviews with Marshall and Shyamalan as well as in letters between the Paramount Pictures President and ? Does this statement negate everything that was protesting for the past two years? *When asked by Entertainment Weekly about his ethnicity, Noah Ringer self-identified as "American Indian." It discusses his future as an actor, and also includes one revelation pertinent to the TLA protest: Ringer, who’s of American Indian* heritage, still lives in Dallas with his parents. ![]() As many of you are aware, there was a recent article about Noah Ringer.
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