Like Star Wars?

I never even interpreted Star Wars as ripping off Asian culture. It's such a mashup of Kung Fu Space Western randomness.

From Vader's Japanese style helmet to the Kabuki masked storm troopers... it all screams Japan.

I can see the vague Samurai resemblance in Vader's helmet, but never caught the Kabuki mask reference on the Storm Troopers. Star Wars pretty much rips off everything though, from cowboy movies to D&D.

The Airbender movie was more problematic because that universe was more wholly Asian-inspired. The costumes, the architecture, the locations, the mythology. They didn't even do the usual cartoon design strategy of slapping Chinatown roofs and dragons and pajamas on everything, it was extremely well researched.

The most humorous part about you bringing this up for me is the fact that I went and saw a performance of The King and I done by a local children's theater and there was only one or 2 Asians in the whole play. None of them had lead roles. et cetera et cetera et cetera

What annoys me with Hollywood, is when they're casting for a role that is clearly meant to be unattractive, but still cannot shake off their ingrained instinct to go for a traditional Hollywood star.

The example that springs to mind is Monster. I haven't seen the film, so don't know if it's any good; nor if she does a good job, but why on earth did they pick Charlize Theron? The character was clearly meant to be unattractive, so why not give a quality actress who isn't a looker their chance to shine? Instead they take a model and ugly her up a bit with makeup. Bizarre.

Your point being? Children's play =/= Big budget Hollywood production. The bar for suspension of disbelief for any children's theatre is much lower; I'd first have to get past the King of Thailand being four feet tall, high pitched, and sitting on a cardboard throne before noticing that he isn't Asian.

caffeine - Yeah, I get ya. Hollywood's idea of an ugly woman is a pretty woman in glasses and frumpy clothes. Recently in the British press, there was a minor kerfluffle over some idiotic TV critic saying that the presenter of a historical documentary was too ugly to be on TV. The woman in question was Mary Beard, an actual classics professor, who apparently committed the sin of going before the cameras looking like an average middle aged lady, which she is, instead of a stray cast member off of Desperate Housewives.

I realize that, but the timing was highly coincidental that's all

The primary cause of the racial disparity in Hollywood actors isn't the casting department, it's the creatives and the producers--writers tend to write their own perspectives, directors to film them, producers to produce them. If there were more black writers there'd be more black roles and more black actors to fill them, and the same goes for all the other minorities.

But that discrimination isn't codified, and it's in processes mostly invisible to the filmgoing public. Casting is all they see, so it's what they complain about.

The whole system plays into one of Hollywood's many self-fulfilling prophecies*, the notion that audiences only watch movies in their own demographic. Because this is taken as gospel, and because the mass audience is straight white males, predominately straight white male movies are the films that get produced. This is why Hollywood gets really surprised when a female comedy does well (Bridesmaids) or a movie about Indians in India makes a ton of money (Slumdog Millionaire). But it never learns the lesson for good.

On a side-note, as somebody who has actually casted actors before, it's a difficult process to navigate without discriminating, particularly for the reason cited in my first paragraph--for the most part, my characters are white, because I'm white. So the question becomes, can I be open to other races in my casting call? Or is that going to waste a lot of minority actors' time when I go with a white person anyway? It's not the easiest thing in the world, and I imagine it gets significantly harder when you're working on an actual movie where millions of dollars are at stake and not a little student film.

*Like, "big budget movies based on pre-existing properties do well", which means those are the movies that get the FX and advertising budgets that actually produce box office returns. As it turns out, quality is a rather good indicator of box office--when taken as a per-screen average. Bigger movies simply open on more screens, which costs more money, which only gets approved when the movie is thought likely to succeed, like when it's based on a pre-existing property. Prophecy: fulfilled.

I cast a white blond girl as Lofty in Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment. She had to pull out part way into rehearsals. We moved a girl from a support role into the Lofty role. An Indian girl. She slipped naturally into the role and by opening night I couldn't imagine anyone else in the role. I also reread the book. The description of Lofty: Dark skin and dark hair. You would've thought I would've known what Lofty should've looked like in the first place.

Movies is difficult. In some cases a demographic is an essential part of a character, like if you make a movie about the lives of certain demographics.

And in some cases a lot of demographics do not matter and the character would work with different demographics as well. But if you invent a character you usually have some looks in mind, and it requires extra thought process, to establish, what of it is actually important for the character, and what is just a placeholder, before you have done the casting.

I consider it a sign of artistic standards of the author (or director, or whoever is actually doing the decisions here) to actually think about that, and taylor casting requirements to what is actually important for the character, rather then asking for an actor of the same demographic as the person, who was the original inspiration for the character.

I sometimes wonder why Hollywood is so obsessed with pandering to the 16-35 male demographic. Don't they think women watch movies?

I think that TV writers are getting better at writing minority characters without making them into lame stereotypes, going all After School Special, or writing them as culturally white people who happen to have brown skin. In Community, Abed, Troy, Shirley and Chang all have their own personalities. Their race is relevant, but it doesn't define them.

I do still see a lot of lame stereotypes around, though. I practically cringe whenever an Asian character appears on Bones. Let's see how many stereotypical Chinatown fortune cookie mysticism woo-woo tropes you can cram into one episode!

I had a nice little laugh watching the show Eli Stone (about a lawyer with mystical visions also known as a brain aneurysm). The protagonist visits precisely that sort of woo-whoo Chinese acupuncturist in San Francisco to explain his mystical visions. In a rooftop conversation, it turns out that woo-woo guy actually was born in America, speaks perfect English with an utterly standard American accent, and went to (IIRC) Georgetown through an MA in Philosophy, after which he became a woo-woo acupuncturist to pay his student loans.

He then proceeds to give really proper mystical advice on the basis of what he learned in college.

Oh, and then there's the time the darned Syphilis Channel decided to cast an entire crew of Czechoslovakians to put on Dune, which is about a Greek prince and his Bedouin Arabs in space.

That would be quite impressive, since Czechoslovakians haven't existed since 1993.

They actually have a minor Middle Eastern character on Bones with a similar back story; he spoke with a fake accent because he thought that it would stop the other scientists from making fun of him for his religion.

If it's a mixed cast of Czechs and Slovaks, I think you can call them Czechoslovakians. Similarly, I'd use 'Yugoslavians' to describe a group of Bosnians, Croats and Serbs.