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Fan activism over ''The Last Airbender'' led to the term becoming prevalent and becoming the name of the activist movement.<ref>{{Harvnb|Young|2015|p=61}}</ref> Activists used the term interchangeably with "whitewashing" to describe white actors being cast as non-white characters in adaptations of media.<ref>{{Harvnb|Young|2015|pp=85–86}}</ref>
Fan activism over ''The Last Airbender'' led to the term becoming prevalent and becoming the name of the activist movement.<ref>{{Harvnb|Young|2015|p=61}}</ref> Activists used the term interchangeably with "whitewashing" to describe white actors being cast as non-white characters in adaptations of media.<ref>{{Harvnb|Young|2015|pp=85–86}}</ref>

== Activism ==
'''''The Last Airbender:''''' After the producers of ''The Last Airbender'' announced their decision to cast white actors as the lead roles, the artists who had worked on the animated show created an anonymous [[LiveJournal]] website and started a letter-writing campaign<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1012.9007&rep=rep1&type=pdf|title=Download Limit Exceeded|website=citeseerx.ist.psu.edu|access-date=2018-04-09}}</ref>. As a result of being ignored, two fans from the LiveJournal site created their own forum: Racebending.com.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.racebending.com/v4/|title=Racebending.com|website=Racebending.com|access-date=2018-04-09}}</ref>

'''''Power Rangers Samurai:''''' Racebending.com wrote a letter to [[Nickelodeon]]’s CEO Jeff Dunn regarding the audition restrictions for ''[[Power Rangers Samurai]],'' the eighteenth season of the ''[[Power Rangers]]'' franchise<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://racebending.livejournal.com/277256.html|title=Update on the Red Samurai Ranger|access-date=2018-04-09}}</ref>.


==Other uses==
==Other uses==

Revision as of 20:24, 9 April 2018

Racebending is a neologism that describes the changing of a character's perceived race or ethnicity during the adaptation of a work from one medium to another. It was coined as a term of protest, but its meaning has shifted and developed.

Whitewashing

Whitewashing, particularly common in film, refers to casting a white actor for a character who, in the original work, was of another race.

The term "racebending" was coined by one of the founders of the website Racebending.com, which was created to protest the casting of white actors in the 2010 film The Last Airbender, where the originating TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender featured characters of East Asian appearance.[1] The term "racebending" was derived from Avatar characters' ability to manipulate or "bend" the classical elements of water, earth, fire, and air.[2]

In 2010, Racebending.com and the Media Action Network for Asian Americans urged boycotts of The Last Airbender as well as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time due to their practices of racebending. Prince of Persia was criticized for casting white actors for the leads instead of actors of Iranian or Middle Eastern descent.[3]

Fan activism over The Last Airbender led to the term becoming prevalent and becoming the name of the activist movement.[4] Activists used the term interchangeably with "whitewashing" to describe white actors being cast as non-white characters in adaptations of media.[5]

Activism

The Last Airbender: After the producers of The Last Airbender announced their decision to cast white actors as the lead roles, the artists who had worked on the animated show created an anonymous LiveJournal website and started a letter-writing campaign[6]. As a result of being ignored, two fans from the LiveJournal site created their own forum: Racebending.com.[7]

Power Rangers Samurai: Racebending.com wrote a letter to Nickelodeon’s CEO Jeff Dunn regarding the audition restrictions for Power Rangers Samurai, the eighteenth season of the Power Rangers franchise[8].

Other uses

Usage evolved, and by 2015, media studies academic Kristen J. Warner wrote that the term has "many definitions and contexts", from the film industry practice of color-blind casting to the amateur labours of love that are fan fiction. She describes how writers can "change the race and cultural specificity of central characters or pull a secondary character of color from the margins, transforming her into the central protagonist."[9]

Paste's Abbey White said in 2016 that the term can apply to actors of color being cast in traditionally white roles. White said, "In the last several years, racebending has become a practice used more and more to help networks diversify their ensembles and capture a bigger audience. Not only has it resulted in more racial visibility on the small screen, but in a far more unexpected way, racebending can generate deeper and more significant depictions of characters."[10]

Other examples of racebending

Harry Potter received an addition to its installment with the screenplay for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It was revealed that the character Hermione would be played by Noma Dumezweni, an African actress residing in England. Many fans were displeased with this and called it reverse whitewashing, but J.K Rowling, the author of the original series, stated in a tweet that white skin was never specified in the making of the character Hermione. What was important about this was the fact that the color of the person's skin had nothing to do with the character itself, since Hermione is not known for being white, but rather for being intelligent and smart.[11]

See also

References

  1. ^ Hart 2015, p. 208
  2. ^ Chu 2015, p. 169
  3. ^ Lee, Chris (May 22, 2010). "Hollywood whitewash? 'Airbender' and 'Prince of Persia' anger fans with ethnic casting". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 19, 2015.
  4. ^ Young 2015, p. 61
  5. ^ Young 2015, pp. 85–86
  6. ^ "Download Limit Exceeded". citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  7. ^ "Racebending.com". Racebending.com. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  8. ^ "Update on the Red Samurai Ranger". Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  9. ^ Warner 2015, pp. 38–39
  10. ^ White, Abbey (August 29, 2016). "5 TV Shows That Benefited from Racebending". Paste. Retrieved January 23, 2017.
  11. ^ "Whitewashing vs Racebending". The Odyssey Online. 2016-06-08. Retrieved 2018-02-26.

Bibliography

  • Chu, Monica (2015). "From Fan Activism to Graphic Narrative". Drawing New Color Lines: Transnational Asian American Graphic Narratives. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 978-988-8139-38-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Hart, William (2015). "Racebending: Race, Adaptation, and the Films I, Robot and I Am Legend". In Kapell, Matthew Wilhelm; Pilkington, Ace G. (eds.). The Fantastic Made Visible Essays on the Adaptation of Science Fiction and Fantasy from Page to Screen. McFarland. pp. 207–222. ISBN 978-0-7864-9619-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Warner, Kristen J. (2015). "ABC's Scandal and Black Women's Fandom". In Levine, Elana (ed.). Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century. Feminist Media Studies. University of Illinois Press. pp. 32–50. ISBN 978-0-252-08108-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Young, Helen (2015). Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness. Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-85023-1.

Further reading

  • Gilliland, Elizabeth (2016). "Racebending fandoms and digital futurism". Transformative Works and Cultures. 22. ISSN 1941-2258.
  • Fu, Albert S. (2014). "Fear of a black Spider-Man: racebending and the colour-line in superhero (re)casting". Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 6 (3): 269–283. doi:10.1080/21504857.2014.994647. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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