Race in movies

Erin Goldberg Post 12

I remember reading an article a while back about the movie The Last Airbender, and how the movie was being cast with mostly white acts, even though the television show was about Oriental culture. The main character Aang was cast as a young white male, even though the in the series Aang is most likely Chinese or Japanese. In fact, the three main roles in the film are filled by white actors. I've noticed that casting agents and producers sometime tend to cast white actors in ethnic roles. I'm assuming they do this to appeal to a larger demographic (maybe they assume that white Americans tend to go to more movies than any other ethnic group). Either way, I think it's unnecessary and that even when minorities are cast in film and television they tend to play stereotypical roles (black convict, Asian nerd, etc.). Margaret Cho mentioned this in her special as well, when she referred to the producers hiring her an Asian coach to help her be "more Asian." This seem so unnecessary and I wonder if it would be at all possible to make a movie or television series that didn't focus around a minority as a stereotype.