MANAA to protest 'Last Airbender' film opening night July 1st

The Media Action Network for Asian Amerians (MANAA) will stage a protest of the new film "The Last Airbender" on Thursday July 1st at the Arclight Cinerama Dome on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood.
Guy Aoki, Founding President of MANAA, which is the only organization solely dedicated to monitoring the media and advocating balanced, sensitive, and positive portrayals and coverage of Asian Americans, has stated that "the film sends the message that Asians can’t be the heroes in their own story."

In a letter to media, Aoki wrote:
"I just wanted to make sure you know about the controversy surrounding M. Night Shyamalan’s film The Last Airbender. It's based on "Avatar," the TV show, where all of the characters were Asian or Inuit. It was popular with a lot of children and their parents and for once gave Asian Americans their own heroes. For the film, the casting directors sent out notices with a stated preference for white people, which is what they ended up with--four white stars--until one of them dropped out. Dev Patel now plays the bad guy leading a nation of brown people against the good guy white nations.

"It's more of the white-washing Hollywood's done to films based on Asian/Asian American source material like 21 and Dragonball: Evolution (Mickey Rourke recently announced he's going to play Genghis Khan in a film for John Milius!). They made these movies with unknowns, so they didn't need big stars to make them successful--these projects were sold on their concepts. Unfortunately, even Shyamalan, who’s Asian American himself, has fallen for the cynical assumption that whites will not pay money to see Asian Americans starring in a film. I hope you'll make note of these issues in your review of the film or write about this important subject.

"MANAA even met with Paramount President Adam Goodman to discuss our concerns, and we‘ve received coverage on this issue from the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and Associated Press. We saw the movie at a pre-screening at Paramount yesterday and it was even worse than we thought re: speaking parts for Asian/brown non-bad guys.
"Except for a few lines from Asian villagers, every Asian who speaks is bad and every white character is good. MANAA and racebending.com are calling for a boycott of the film because we don’t believe discriminatory practices should be rewarded. You can go to manaa.org/videos/html or racebending.com for more information."

Story by Ed Moy - Examiner.com ( Original article here)