Racebending

Racebending is a term used to describe a process where a character's perceived race or ethnicity is changed in a narrative by an adapter as it is created in a new media form. The term 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 (MANAA) 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 principal cast 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 have used the term interchangeably with "whitewashing" to describe white actors being cast as non-white characters in adaptations of media.[5]

See also

References

Bibliography

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/21/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.