Derek Kirk Kim, who wrote the great little collection of comics Same Difference and Other Stories—think Adrian Tomine before he got Carverier than Carver—just put up a post complaining about the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan movie Avatar: the Last Airbender. It's based on a popular cartoon and manga series for kids. In the comics and cartoons, all the characters are clearly Asian and Inuit. All the actors cast for the leads in the film version, so far, are white. There are two passages from the blog entry that really cut to the chase:

I was speaking with Gene Yang (author of "American Born Chinese" and National Book Award nominee) about the casting and he said it best: "It's like a white Asian fetishist's wet dream. All the Asian culture they want, without any of the Asian people."

and

Or let me draw a closer parallel—imagine if someone had made a “fantasy” movie in which the entire world was built around African culture. Everyone is wearing ancient African clothes, African hats, eating traditional African food, writing in an African language, living in African homes, all encompassed in an African landscape...

...but everyone is white.

How offensive, insulting, and disrespectful would that be toward Africans and African Americans? How much more offensive would it be if only the heroes were white and all the villians and background characters were African American? (I wince in fear thinking about "The Last Airbender" suffering from the latter dynamic—which it probably will.)

Just when you thought Shyamalan couldn't fuck his career up any worse, it looks like he has.