Fan activists and the politics of race in The Last Airbender

Abstract

When the producers of the film The Last Airbender announced their casting decisions, a large collective of fans became irate – they argued that the original cartoon was set in an Asian world, so all four lead roles should go to Asian American actors. Instead, producers cast three white actors as the heroes, and an actor of South Asian descent as the villain. This article investigates the fan-activists who organized to protest the casting and utilized the skills they developed as fans to participate in larger conversations about politics and race. Within their demand for changes in the representation of Asian Americans in entertainment media, these politicized fans offer new ways of considering the potential impacts of ‘racebending’ and the politics of minority representation.