I hit their website to see if they'd commented on it at all. No dice, although the first words that caught my eye were "For the August issue, we are privileged once again..."
That word, it means so much more than you think it means.
Ahem. Yes. Anyway, the writing in question:
Cut for those who are just not up to dealing with whitewashing apologists right now.I can't even begin to play bingo with this.
However, The Last Airbender has already caught flak for "whitewashing," meaning, the casting of white actors (or actors who appear to be white) to play non-white characters, especially when those characters are heroic. It's a hot-button issue that dredges up memories of images like Al Jolsen wearing black-face makeup. Of course, there are two sides to this coin. On one hand, whitewashing can feel insulting, disrespectful, and disappointing to movie-goers. Many may label it as politically incorrect. On the other hand, anyone who has run a casting call will tell you that when you find the right person for the role, something magical happens. Time seems to stop, and you feel as if the character comes to life right in front of your eyes. The character is no longer ink on paper; the character begins to live and breathe. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the individual human being reading for the part. Adding to the mix is the fact that some roles written for white people have been won by actors of color, and some roles written for men have been played by women. In other words, whitewashing isn't a one-way street. It's a difficult situation that places filmmakers between the goal of finding magic and not offending audiences. At the end of the day, most directors simply want to tell a good story.
So yeah. I cancelled my subscription to RoF, and am working on a letter to them. And... Jesus, does the fail ever begin to end?
(How's Clarkesworld doing these days? I am sure that not picking up a year's worth of RoF makes buying their print anthologies a lot more workable.)
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
- Mood:
angry
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Comments
*sigh* Remember, there is *one* right person for the role! And when the director finds them, it's absolutely objectively true that magic happens! (The concept that the director might be more likely to pick a white person is to be dismissed, silly.) That makes it okay, but it's an awful shame if those politically correct people feel that it's hurtful.
MAGIC?
*groan*
Also reverse sexism, the reality of magic happening versus the subjective feelings of people who have a problem with this, and the intent card.
(Intent, because sometimes it really *is* fucking magic. Who knew?)
Okay. There are other magazines (and thank you for the link to that post; I check in on
Hee hee. Thanks.
And regarding the above... /facepalm. A two-part facepalm. One, because I had literally JUST decided to resubscribe since a friend of mine got hired by them. Two, because if people don't quit this sort of thing I'm going to have to start walking around with a bag over my head going, "Me? I don't know any white people..."
(And yeah, I feel you. I just... I am trying to explain this to an older family member that I love very much, and I keep worrying that I am going to accidentally drop my invisible knapsack in the middle of the explanation and dismiss part of the problem. But what the hell else can you do? I mean, this is not okay. And I feel clumsy every time I bring it up, but I just... I do not want this to be one of the times that silence gives consent, you know?)
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[1] Local magazine store.
What's the line? "If you're not pissed off, you're not paying attention"?
(The icon was really the only thing which seemed to nail the sentiment if not the details.)
Clarkesworld is brilliant and run thoughtfully, by people who have both taste and brains. I would highly recommend it even if I hadn't been published by them, which I have been, but I don't submit to magazines I don't like.
I just... my personal level of tolerance has about hit its limit, I guess.
Thanks for the heads-up, and congratulations on placing a story there. :)
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[1] Or sewing, but you know.
I'm somewhere between rage and "Well, actually I probably can't rage about it on Racebending too too much, because everyone will say, 'Who is Realms of Fantasy again?'"
I've been trying to explain "Racism is not just that deliberately malicious stuff" to an older family member that I lvoe very much for the last two days. It started with this and it's sort of wending its way forward in a long and tangled mess. I'm currently somewhere between rage and exhaustion.
It's one reason why I don't take the "minorities can't be racist" line that some people toss out (both white and non-white folks, including M. Night Shyamalan). My parents (I'm Vietnamese) were very racist (and, for my father, almost every other kind of *-ist you can think of, including against other Vietnamese not from the South).
My mother was not deliberately malicious. My father admired the Nazis. It was probably not very wise of me to try to convert either, but of course, my parents were a bit special, and not in good ways.
I myself have internalized racism and internalized sexism. Those were a treat to find out. Not. I do my best to learn these days, and I hope that M. Night Shyamalan makes the same self-discovery I did, because it looks like he has both and really, really doesn't know it. Like, at all.
I don't believe my parents were deliberately malicious. Are. I think there's a lot of slowly internalized things there, and I'm trying to catch myself on them. Not always successful.
...I've spent twenty minutes trying to type up a closing paragraph and failing. I am going to go get food for my sanity, now, and close with the comment that at least people are consciously trying to change things. Intent's not magic, but intent applied in that direction with thought behind it? I have hope.
Yes, yes it is! That's why it's called whitewashing. *facepalm* I've been kept up to date on this issue since the cast of that movie was announced due to to someone on my flist being really involved in racebending.com. This issue directed me to Derailing for Dummies which has been a really good resource/privilege checker.