this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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Oh it’s even worse than that: they hate live action Ariel because she's “ugly”
sex+race racism is horrifically nasty, yet more common and more “accepted” in my experience.
Also, I will leave this here:
Fortunately, it’s just hypothetical, that live action doesn’t actually exist…
As to your picture, everyone hated that.
Would they today, though?
I feel like there would be conservative 'backlash against backlash' over racebending the cast.
I'm sure I'm missing something super obvious, but can you explain the image?
The big panel is a bit clearer:
Basically the original heroes were vaguely Tibetan (Aang) or dark-skinned Inuit, but for the movie (that doesn't exist) they quite consistently color coded the good guys as white and the bad guys as darker skinned; the total opposite.
I got that part. The part that was confusing me was Aang's "hero" font being a different color than the other two. I think I'm reading too much into it, maybe
I think is just because of the nation, Katara and Soka water tribe = blue, Zuko fire = red and Aaang air = yellow(air nation use yellow robes)
Oh, duh! I'm such a dumbass lol
What Zero said, or maybe it's just because Aang is the main protaganist/Chosen One.
I'm such a dumbass, I didn't even think of that. I've seen it. One of my favorites
Though the director is South Asian himself, so I guess in a way he did that to increase representation, messed-up as that sounds.
Colorism, the favoritism towards lighter skinned people against darker skinned people, has a long history in India, and is still very much a problem today.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200818-colourism-in-india-the-people-fighting-light-skin-bias
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8932098/
https://www.stearthinktank.com/post/colorism-in-indian-society
You'll be surprised how many Indians hate other Indians. Not saying M Night does though. I mean just look at how many Indians are in the Trump admin. They get successful and then abandon their roots. Btw I'm Indian.
I don't think it's an Indian hating Indian thing. I think some (often better off) Indians and their families have a propensity to lick the boots of certain evil white people because its what worked out for them during the colonial era.
There's always going to be people that side with the bad guys and in India's case, for the past few centuries, people that sided with the bad guys often attained wealth and luxury beyond what other Indians had. Even if those bad guys were committing a few genocides along the way.
It sucks. Its a very "fuck you, got mine" attitude but I can't think anything more American / Western than that.
Oh, I’m from the North of England. I know haha
Compare the skin tones of the actors they cast for the live action compared to the original anime
I'm sorry but if you think that Zuko is not a hero, you must have sopped watching Avatar after the third episode.
I think this is comparing it directly to the movie that doesn't exist where he's 100% not a hero
I have no knowledge about a thing which doesn't exist. I can't even see the second row of images.
Weird, isn't it?
I mean, I've watched it through many times, but tha's not really the point here. They switched up the appearance of the whole Fire Nation demographic because... Well...
do you remember the original animated "Lion King"?
all the voice actors for the Hyenas were black stereotypes...
I’ll give you that for Shenzi (Whoopi Goldberg), but that’s a big stretch for Banzai (Cheech Marin) and Ed (Jim Cummings). I don’t think Marin can play anything other than a mexican stereotype, and Ed was just a moron.
they originally wanted Cheech and Chong... they were not going for the educated but poor stereotypes here