Background on the whitewashed Avatar story.

Aang Ain’t White has done an awesome job rallying offended forces into one place. They encourage civil action and empower fellow advocates with pertinent information. The most important post I’ve seen on the blog, though, has come from an anonymous tipster in a recent comment:

(Anonymous) wrote:

Jan. 26th, 2009 03:31 pm (local)

Douglas Aibel – Casting Director

Found this on ASN (http://forums.avatarspirit.net/index.php?topic=16356.0):

Douglas Aibel is the casting director for the ATLA movie (he’s also done other M.Night films). For those of you who have issues with the casting, they are not with M.Night, Mike and Bryan, or Paramount as a whole – they are with him.

More info about him (including some contact) may be found here.

Here is a mailing address:

Doug Aibel
Vineyard Theatre
108 East 15th Street,
New York City, NY 10003

DeeDee Ricketts is the director for on location/extras casting.

If you do intend to write him a letter, be civil and don’t just demand a recast. Politeness and cohesiveness is the best way to get your message across.

Glock Gal has found some really amazing (in a jaw-dropping, eye-opening way) and telling transcriptions of interviews with the Avatar cast’s most popular actor, Jesse McCartney. You just have to read them. Let me know if you’re able to get through all the ignorance. A snippet. Emphasis by jaquenerd:

Jesse McCartney (JM): Signed on for Chipmunks 2 and, um, I don’t think I’ve, I don’t think I’d actually had word on this ‘till after I saw you guys last, but I’m going to be in M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie, starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie that we’re filming, uh, this March. [It’s] [c]alled “The Last Airbender.” Which is the first, uh, first part of a trilogy. Um, based on the anime series that was huge, like cartoon anime series called Avatar: The Last Airbender that was explosively huge in Asia. They brought it to the US and it was on for, like, three seasons, uhh….

Wow, they brought Avatar to the U.S. from Asia? This is news to me! International import success story status!

So, action items that we can take away from all of this discourse? Here’s, at least, what I pledge to do:

• Write to Douglas Aibel.
• Add a banner to my sidebar.
• Inform fellow bloggers and outspoken advocates.
• Boycott the movie if it keeps original casting.
• Hold respectful debate with people on the subject.

I encourage you to read up on the subject and take on a couple of to-dos yourself.