Yeah, the numbers you cited completely bulldozed me. I hadn't even noticed any gender imbalance -- to have it be that stark was just mind-boggling.


Sad thing is, I don't even really have it in me to hope; I feel like it's going to be one of those things, like the gender imbalance in background characters, that flies under the radar. The sense I get is that a lot of focus for their cultural sensitivity experts is making sure they aren't appropriating when they pull influences from other cultures.

I think it's also one of those things where, the closer you are to the material, the less likely you are to notice it. When you're intimately familiar with the fact that all of the nations in Avatar are based on Asian cultures, I think it's easy to forget that the pale characters will read as "white" even though they're not intended to be European.

(That said, I still think it's one of the best shows that is/will soon be on television, and I am unbelievably excited to see where Bryke and company are taking us.)