Hooooooly hell.

[nenena]

asdfghjkl;asdfghjkl;

I know that I don't post much about the gawdawful The Last Airbender film, mostly because by this point the number of epic, jawdropping failures that the film has managed to pull off before it even hits theaters has become too large to count. Still, this one REALLY leapt out at me:

http://community.livejournal.com/racebending/214837.html

Look at the way that Katara, Yue, and Suki's clothes are folded.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Airbender-Dave-Roman/dp/0345518551

Look at the way that Katara's clothing is folded.

Jesus.

The next thing you know, they're going to have Suki sticking her chopsticks out of a ricebowl.

(By the way, in the animated series? They did the clothes-folding correctly. And if you were paying attention during the "Ember Island Players" episode you would have noticed that Jet's clothes were deliberately folded backwards in order to indicate that he was DEAD.)

ETA: Look, everyone! A dumbass came to play in our sandbox! How pwecious.

ETA 2: This comment sums up pretty well the astounding level of failure on display in the costume department.

Comments

[sno-oki.livejournal.com]

*cries*
Why costume department, WHYYYYYY?! It's left-over-right, not right-over-left! YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS, DAMNIT!

[pheonee.livejournal.com]

Now I can't watch this movie (not that I was going to) at all, because I will be too busy being CONSTANTLY DISTRACTED by the tradition-breaking clothes. Angry keysmash. >|

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

Whatever! I no longer acknowledge the existence of this movie. Anytime I get upset at how badly it's failing, I will watch happy-making fanvids.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I'm just baffled, utterly baffled, as to how this could have happened. Either the costume designers didn't know about the significance of the right-over-left fold (which speaks very poorly about the amount of effort they put into researching the costumes - I mean, this is BASIC CLOTHING 101 STUFF right here), or they did understand the significance but choose to deliberately ignore it for some reason (which speaks very poorly about their respect for the source cultures).

There's speculation on the racebending post that it's only the women who wear clothes folded right-over-left, whereas all of the men wear their clothes folded left-over-right. So this was like, something deliberate that the costumers did to make a distinction between genders. In which case, what the hell?!?!?! WHHHHHHHHYYYY would they do something so COMPLETELY unnecessary and so COMPLETELY disrespectful to the source cultures?!

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Arrrrrgh I know. It is really, really, REALLY distracting.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

OMG those are awesome. ^___^ Thank you for linking me to them!

[une-pomme-folle.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, what is the significance of the way clothes are folded?

[pheonee.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was wondering this as well. _{(I graduated from the school of Born In China with a participation award.)}

It's incredibly distracting only because I'm so used to seeing it the other way. (I figured that the costume department should have just pulled out a few photos, saw that they all went left-over-right, and simply went with that, since that's what I do.) Then again, my dad had no answer apart from "it's tradition" either, so perhaps it's not a Chinese thing? >_>;

[nenena.livejournal.com]

The right-over-left fold is only used to dress corpses.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

No, it's a Chinese thing. And a Japanese thing. And a Korean thing. And pretty much the same thing in every Asian cultural that wears folded robes: the right-over-left fold is only used to dress corpses.

[une-pomme-folle.livejournal.com]

Oh God.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I know, right?

What's even worse is that Shyamalan is so very vocal about his plans to market the film in Asia... I mean, think about that for a moment. For anybody who understands the meaning of the right-over-left fold, it is incredibly distracting to see those movie characters running around wearing a clothing fold that is considered extremely taboo for a living person to wear. Now imagine a theater full of people who can spot that taboo right away. Yeah, I'm sure that's going to go over real well.

[neocloud9.livejournal.com]

My head and the wall have become very good friends lately.

[furikku.livejournal.com]

So this was like, something deliberate that the costumers did to make a distinction between genders. In which case, what the hell?!?!?! WHHHHHHHHYYYY would they do something so COMPLETELY unnecessary and so COMPLETELY disrespectful to the source cultures?!

1) I'd assume it's inspired by the Western gender conventions of girls buttoning one way and boys another. (I don't remember which one is which because who gives a crap now? Not Sooz!)

2) This is the same production that brought us, "If you're Korean, wear a kimono!" so I think there's really no reason to expect any level of accuracy or cultural sensitivity.

This is, as they say, one hot mess.

[ilikebigtoes.livejournal.com]

not only in Shyamalan land are Asians turned into Caucasians (unless they are bad guys of course) they are turned into MAGICAL ZOMBIES.

[vaecrius.livejournal.com]

I remember reading that for women it was right over left so that it was easier to open up the blouse with one's left hand to nurse a baby... even if false, that's just the mnemonic device I use (that and "what I'm used to, the women have the other one" which now that I put it into words that kinda highlights how arbitrary and othering-for-no-reason-but-itself this distinction is)

Reposted for copula fail

[furikku.livejournal.com]

IIRC it's supposedly because a woman was expected to have someone else buttoning her, while a man would button himself. Or something.

It was all based on everyone being right-handed, and I'm left-handed and never gave any amount of shit, so I'm constantly mixed-up on this issue.

[badninja.livejournal.com]

I would watch a movie with magical zombies.

But not this one. :x

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*

Oh, what a thing to get wrong.

I am quite impressed, though, about the switching of the folds in EIP. Hot damn, the animators were on.

[kyrafawxe.livejournal.com]

I might have thought for a second that this was worth seeing but if you did not research then I have no time for you.

Maybe it'll be Shymalan's plot twist. Everyone is actually dead.

-____- Yeah, right.

[earthy-dreamer.livejournal.com]

>>Maybe it'll be Shymalan's plot twist. Everyone is actually dead.<<

THIS.

Or it's all a mass conspiracy of the Ember Island Players.

...What? I can pretend, right? T_T

Honestly, the cultural/racial fail is SO GINORMOUS in basically EVERY ASPECT of this film, the clothing folds seem a small thing overall. But of course I noticed, too. And of course pro-casters call it nitpicking.

Incidentally, am rewatching the series with meiousei and her brother (who hasn't seen it), and while they wound me with their Kataang jabbering (*SIGH*), at least we can all agree that the movie is a racist, poorly-researched, horribly cast POS.

Um. Not that I have an opinion or anything. <.< >.>

[zakuro-jane.livejournal.com]

So, not only did they make Iroh look like Jafar, they also decided to make everyone into a corpse. *Head desk*

I will never EVER see a movie by this director EVER.

Who is he planning to market this to, anyway? He screwed up the casting, so the fans won't see it. The CGI looks like crap so regular people won't see it. The fact that he pissed all over the Asian culture means they won't see it.
This is going to be such a bomb at the box-office that they'll be making references to it in jokes for years. It'll be the new Batman and Robin!

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Eh, I dunno. Pretty much everybody that I talk to in real life is unfortunately very, very excited about the movie. And avatar_fans is full of people defending the movie. Just the amount of ignorant crap that keeps getting directing toward the Racebending protests makes me think that there are a lot people who are going to see this movie.

Unfortunately.

(I really hope it flops, though.)

If Avatar - I mean, that OTHER Avatar movie - proved anything, though, it's that people will pay a lot of money to see a steaming pile of cinematic shit.

[zakuro-jane.livejournal.com]

My head and the desk seem to have decided to get married.

I guess it's the same concept as Twilight- when people find something that they like, they refuse to see it's flaws, even when it was god-awful to begin with.

Human nature will never cease to amaze me.

[zakuro-jane.livejournal.com]

BTW, THIS is what the cast should look like.
http://community.livejournal.com/ohpretty/6767.html#cutid1