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' fictional 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

• Blackface
• Colour-blind casting
• List of films featuring whitewashed roles
• Yellowface
• Examples of Yellowface

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

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.
• Hart, William (2015). "Racebending: Race, Adaptation, and the Films I, Robot and I Am Legend". In Kapell, Matthew Wilhelm; Pilkington, Ace G. 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.
• Young, Helen (2015). Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness. Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-85023-1.

External links

• What is "racebending"? at Racebending.com
• PSA: Whitewashing A Character Is Different From Michael B. Jordan Being Cast As Johnny Storm at The Mary Sue, which contrasts racebending and whitewashing