So, I thought everyone would be excited for the new Stonewall flick. Well, apparently not. There has been a huge controversy brewing around the release of Stonewall due to accusations of a ‘Whitewashing’ attempt by the director Roland Emmerich. To give some context to these claims for anyone who is unfamiliar with the actual events of the Stonewall Riots I will take this opportunity to fill you…
hey is anyone else from a multicultural background having trouble coping with the fact that their upbringing was whitewashed and every attempt to get closer to your culture makes you feel like a fraud? no? just me? cool
The recent film “The Great Wall” starring Matt Damon was released in theaters just a couple of weeks ago, and while I admittedly have not seen the film, the trailer and film poster alone raised a series of red flags and questions in my head. For those who have not heard of the movie, it basically tells the story of a warrior in China who joins a team of elite soldiers to help defend the Great Wall.
I think this film speaks volumes on the state of Hollywood today and also exemplifies exactly what Asian actors are trying so hard to fight against in the entertainment industry - whitewashing and the white savior narrative. The film is directed by one of China’s greatest directors, Zhang Yimou, and features several A-list Chinese celebrities including Andy Lau, Eddie Peng, and Lu Han. Additionally, the film was shot on location in China and supposedly tells the story of China’s might and power. It’s interesting then, to see that Matt Damon is the lead of the film, the “white savior,” and the only person featured on the film’s widely advertised movie poster.
When the film trailer was first released, it immediately sparked outrage, but Matt Damon defended himself by saying that he did not take the role from a Chinese actor, nor was the role altered for him in any way. He also insisted that critics were jumping to conclusions based off of the trailer without having seen the film, and it makes their views less credible. While all of this may be true, it does not change the fact that there is a very obvious placement of a white character where a white character does not belong. Additionally, this character plays the most important role in the film and is highlighted (based on the trailer) as being more essential than the rest of the characters. In fact, Matt Damon is the only actor that has any speaking lines in the entire trailer, even though several other Chinese actors are stated to have leading/crucial roles in the film.
There are so many different elements here that display Hollywood’s rejection of non-white actors and it makes it hard to believe that there has been any progress made. The white savior narrative, the whitewashing, the trailer, the promotional photos, and more, all point to one thing - Hollywood doesn’t believe that Chinese actors are marketable. At the very least, Hollywood believes that White actors are the most marketable, the easiest to sell, and perhaps the easiest to relate to. But this self perpetuating philosophy confines Asians in the entertainment industry and guarantees that no progress can ever be made. People sometimes wonder why so few Asians show up at award ceremonies like the Oscars, but the truth is simply that Asian Americans are never granted the opportunity to play Oscar winning roles because they are too often seen as a “niche” market or as “too exotic” to be front and center.
While minor progress has been made, such as the writing of the film “Crazy Rich Asians” and the popularization of the TV show “Fresh off The Boat,” we have yet to see the integration of the Asian community in the entertainment industry and Asian actors remain very much a niche group. So while hope ultimately prevails, Hollywood still needs to make great strides before genuine diversity can be reached.
[[so ever since Shafiq appeared in the Sacred Twenty-Eight list on Pottermore it’s become a growingly-popular last name in fanfic, but there are some uses of Shafiq that kind of make me wince, even if unfairly.
The most jarring ones are the names where Shafiq is paired with a very bog-standard Anglo name - say Bob Shafiq or Jane Shafiq. Because the Potterverse isn’t white-washed enough as it is? I often have to check myself when I see this happen because my own name is an English word (Tiara) and there are Anglo names that travel (Daniel, Sara), but even within my family tree that’s fairly unusual.
The other extreme of this is picking very Arabic names and setting the characters as being from the Middle East. Yes, Shafiq is from Arab origin, but names travel! It’s a common-ish Muslim name, and Islam has a lot of roots outside the Middle East - hell there are a lot more Muslims in Asia than Arabia. A lot of Africa is Muslim, Bosnia and surrounding Central Asia/Eastern Europe esque countries are Muslim, and there’s all the converts and enclaves and intermarriages etc etc etc.
I’ve seen Bangladeshi Shafiqs and Malay Shafiqs (as well as variations on the spelling, such as Shafik and Syafiq) and I’m sure that there are Shafiqs of all sorts of ethnicities. I would love to see a lot more diversity not just in the naming, but also in the origin stories of these characters. How about, say, a Ali Shafiq, Malay wizard from Singapore? Or a Siti Nurain Shafiq from Jakarta? Or an Afroz Shafiq from the East Indian diaspora based in Kenya? Or or or…
So many possibilities for names, let’s look outside the bog standard!]]
Im obviously against white washing characters of colour or race in a film or series where there is no legitimate reason to do so other than some crazy belief that having a white lead will attract a bigger audience.
But this film did something i didn’t expect that’s kind of brilliant if its what they were intending, almost like they were calling themselves out and any film company that whitewashes. I dont know enough about the lore of ghost in the shells world in the original movie or anime so correct me if my assumptions are wrong.
LAST CHANCE SPOILERS FOLLOW.
The major was actually a young Japanese girl that was kidnapped, her memory wiped and then her brain put into the shell that has Johanssons face. Now they never bring up or explain why her shell has the face of a white woman but think about it; a global corporation run and staffed by mostly white who probably outsource their products around the world, which will one day include a full body cyber enhancement like the major. think about how hollywood constantly changes the ethnicity of preset characters or puts white characters into films like 47 ronin or the wall, its totally not needed but in order to attract certain small minded people who at the least wont watch anything unless it has a famous actor they already know or for the even smaller minded people someone whose white. Its all about getting the publics money and ethics be damned. I feel there was a missed opportunity in the movie there to make that point or at least make it stand out more if it is what they intended; that they gave the major a white body under pretences that if they ever advertised their new “product” giving it a white shell would attract the more narrow minded of the worlds population. Not only does it add a further level of horror to what happened to the major as well as even more reason to hate our villains, it makes the audience take a look at themselves and question if they have been fooled by people like the corporation.
dont get me wrong it doesnt make the fact they completely changed the ethnicity of the character any less infuriating and im probably looking deeper into this than intended. although it would mean losing johnasson, who as far as im concerned is great in everything, it would have been good to end the film with her taking back her original identity by having her shells face rebuilt to look like her old self or at least like a japanese woman.
what do you guys think? did you have the same thoughts after seeing the movie? am i looking too deep into this?
Note: This is based on the information I learned in high school based on my textbooks (which were written by white people), my teachers (who were white), and comments made by my classmate (who were mostly white).
1. First there were cavemen. They were white. 2. Europe was awesome! They had so much art and stuff! But for some reason they traded with Asian people?? But the only thing that Asian people had to offer was silk. 3. Knights! Knights are awesome!! All the knights are white people!! 4. The Black Plague killed white people. :( 5. We decided to go to North America, woohoo! Europeans were the first people there. They rightfully owned the land. But for some reason these savages thought they owned the land. We killed them all because they were on our land. For some reason a few of them still survived but we made them go away to reserves because we don’t want to deal with them. 6. We decided to bring over black people from Africa. Before slavery, all black people were savages who didn’t know how to speak civilized languages like English. Every day of their lives was like “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. (You think I’m joking, but we actually watched that movie to “give us an idea” of what “uncivilized Africa” would have been like.) 7. White people rule the world. People of colour did not exist before white people. White people rescued them because they were savage animals and then we made them better. 8. 9/11. Arab people exist??? This is news to us, but they are all evil terrorists so we must make them not exist.
Why was I advertised this (first picture) on the marvel rising cover of disney plus and got that (second picture)
pls that’s not even just whitewashing he’s just an entirely different person
who did this disney is not having it– don’t even get me started on everything else that I don’t like about the show but this was actually racist so i had to point it out
Probably super old but I’ll never understand some folks. Are people seriously mad over bumble bee having a lighter skin tone?? Do light skin black people not exist????? Anyways BumbleBees a queen, she can stay winning.
I love Bumblebee in the new show but I am disappointed the creators decide to lighten her skin tone and give her green eyes. She’s usually dark skin with brown/black eyes
I got a really nice question about this, so I’ll clarify why this show is the most offensive way to present a Roma woman’s fantasy life, and why that matters in relation to Wanda Maximoff:
The “Magical Gypsy” Stereotype
Just to clarify: The word “gypsy” is a racial slur, and I’m using it to make a point about racial stereotypes. I’m not giving you permission to use it. If you aren’t Romani and/or Irish Traveller, that word is not for you.
If you’re familiar with the 1960s TV show Bewitched, you’ll have recognized that Wandavisionis dressed up like an homage to that show. What you probably don’t know is that Bewitchedwas conceived as thinly-veiled allegory to interracial marriage, a major hot-button issue at the time. Samantha and her family were a different race from Darrin (Samantha’s husband), in that witches were not humans, strictly speaking. That culture clash was most of the show’s storyline.
It seems as if Samantha and her mother, Endora, were meant to stand-in for Roma women. The popular stereotype at the time was that Romani and Travellers were “mystical,” even magical. The “Magical Gypsy” is our most prominent stereotype. Bewitched’s premise fed right into that narrative, and Wandavision makes it even clearer.
Samantha deceives Darrin into marrying her by lying about her heritage, and then they spend the rest of the series fighting over whether Samantha should act “normal.” Samantha’s parents have no permanent home. They have century-old customs that baffle (and even frighten) Darrin and other humans. They’re sneaky, and they lie a lot, and they often use their powers for personal gain, including theft. The witches and warlocks look white, of course, but they aren’t reallythe same as the “normal humans” of the series. That hit a lot of Romani people where it hurt, back then and in reruns.
One of the witches is even named “Esmeralda,” in a direct nod to Victor Hugo’s famous Roma character.
The Maximoff Twins, Adoption, and Romanipen
The Maximoff twins, like many superheroes, have complicated backstories which have not been consistent from universe to universe. In the earliest universes, they are the children of Whizzer and Miss America. Later, they’re revealed to be the children of Magneto, eventually placed into the adoptive care of a Romani couple. In 616, it is retconned that the High Evolutionary tricked them into believing Magneto was their father–in fact, they aren’t mutants at all. Their mother is actually Natalya Maximoff, the sister of their adoptive father and a Roma woman.
So, they might be Romani children (born to Natalya). They might be the adoptive children of Django and Marya Maximoff, without any blood relation. It may seem to outsiders that these distinctions are important, but actually…
Romani people do not determine family through bloodlines, but through a concept called “romanipen.” A person born to two Romani parents, but raised by outsiders, is notconsidered Romani. A person born of non-Romani (or “gadjo”) parents is considered Romani if they’re raised in the community. There’s no such thing as the “Romani race.” Romani people are a culture, and you must be taught the culture to be considered one of us.
The Maximoff twins are just as Romani, either way.
There’s a long, painful history of Romani children being removed from their families by the state “for their own safety.” It happens in the USA, it happens in the UK, it happens all over mainland Europe. It’s happening right now. These losses are horrifying, not only on a personal level but also to the Romani culture. These children–often placed into social services for years, even if they aren’t adopted–are not being raised as Romani. They are not considered Romani children anymore. The government has completely stripped them of their cultural identity. This has devastated Romani populations in some countries, leading to full cultural genocide in only a few generations.
Assimilate to Survive
Nobody understands “hiding in plain sight” better than a Romani. There might be peoples who have experienced something equivalent–Jews, the disabled, and the queer community come to mind–but no one has needed assimilation more, or mastered it more completely. We have assimilated into every country we’ve ever lived. We go to your churches. We speak your languages. We wear your clothes and eat your food and laugh at your racist jokes.
When Wanda and Pietro Maximoff lose their family to war in the MCU, the Roma in me knows that pain. When Wanda is pursued by the government, when they try to cage and control her “for everyone’s safety,” the Roma in me is in that cage with her. When she’s made country-less, forced into exile, the Roma in me has never related to her more.
The alternatives to assimilation aren’t just horrible. They are genocide.
If you have a Romani in your school or workplace, you’ll probably never know it. We don’t tell people we’re Romani. Even admitting it anonymously on the internet feels like playing Russian roulette.
Watching Wanda Maximoff, a Roma superheroine, dream herself into perfect assimilation in time-after-time, place-after-place… That’s really fucking twisted. She dreams about being “normal.” She dreams about putting down roots. She’s constantly assaulted with the possibility that she might not be “normal” enough to live safely, or to have children. Assimilation is the story, here, and that is an integral part of what it means to be Romani.
But In the MCU, Wanda Maximoff Is Not Roma
We don’t have much representation in the media. The MCU strips Wanda of her cultural identity while maintaining all the bitter truths specific to our people. It’s an insult. This show is an insult.
The Romani have no voice on the international stage. We have no seats in congress (few politicians at all, outside Hungary). We have a handful of published writers, worldwide, and even fewer prominent actors onscreen. We are invisible, often by our own design. I have wrestled a lot with that as I’ve grown older. How much are we to blame for our own erasure?
I remember that to be Romani means to live with a constant fear of homelessness, of statelessness. To teach your children to be chameleons. To be an outsider in the country where your grandparents were born. We don’t deserve to be erased, and it wasn’t right for Marvel to whitewash our pain.
Our pain is red. Blood red. Scarlet, even.
I hope that’s clear enough.
This post is doing big numbers again, as it tends to do every four weeks or so. I always get the same few questions every time that happens. I’m tired of answering this one individually, over and over.
What do I mean when I say, “There’s no such thing as the ‘Romani race.’ Romani people are a culture, and you must be taught the culture to be considered one of us?”
I’ve already responded to criticism of my poor choice of wording re: race vs. culture vs. ethnicity.
I understand that the original post is still most likely to be shared, but I have addressed this several times. It’s in the notes of the original post.
Thank you, as always, for continuing to share and engage with this issue.WandaVisionrecentlywon the Harvey Award for “Best Adaptation from Comic Book/Graphic Novel,” which is… Wow. I guess it’s still a stellar adaptation when you whitewash your lead characters. Even in 2021.
Western history loves to brag about their geniuses, philosophers, thinkers, and innovators throughout history but as far as I know, nobody talks about geniuses in non western history. Why can’t an Aztec community have their neighborhood Einstein who loved to study engineering and physics and helped build an efficient-running town?
Reblog is you’re uncomfortable with how eurocentric our understanding of history is.
Numerous Egyptian murals: literally explain that stone blocks and large sculptures were transported using water
having now been vaguely involved in star wars fandom for the last few months it has become increasingly obvious that many people don’t know how to draw clones (or any Māori characters for that matter) without wildly whitewashing them. I don’t want to assume that everyone is aware that a lot of the things they’re drawing are racist, many artists just seem to be uneducated and change how they draw the characters when kindly called out on it, so I figure the best way to address the problem is to make a masterpost of things artists should be avoiding, or adding in when making art of these characters (made with loads of help from Lucky @transfetts, who did all of the art for this post!
Should go without saying that this all applies to the Bad Batch, since the show isn’t too far away. Just because canon has come up with excuses for whitewashing the characters, that doesn’t make it fine for you to whitewash them too. Please actively try to make them look more accurate to how Temuera Morrison looks when you draw them.
1. Hair
One of the key issues is the way that people often draw the hair for the clones. remember, they are all Māori! this means their hair is not going to be naturally straight! in some instances, straight hair can be okay but only if there is a specific reason for it, eg. it was straightened artificially for a purpose like a costume or disguise. one of the two worst offenders for the hair being the wrong texture is the classic flat top and when the hair is tied up in a manbun style. the clone wars might have their hair sticking straight up but that doesn’t make it okay for you to draw it that way. Temuera Morrison has curly hair, when his hair is short there should be clear lumps showing it is curly. The drawing just below has some examples from Lucky, first of the mistake most people make is having the hair sticking straight up, and a couple of examples of better methods of drawing that style and the tied up style! the key to accuracy is just making the hair lumpy, and ideally adding a few little curls sticking out for longer styles
Long hair should also not be straight, rather it should be relatively curly. Curly does not just mean giving it a few waves! There’s a huge difference between making the hair vaguely wavy and making it truly curly
2. General Face Shape
The Clone Wars biggest crime is the way they fucked up the clones face shape. if you look at the gif linked below, you can see just how much they thinned out the clones faces and lengthened their chins. the best advice if you’re struggling with the face shape is start off tracing Temuera Morrison! when in doubt, go straight to the source.
I know everyone has talked about this but it always needs reminding that the clones are not white. stop lightening their skin. again, just copy Temuera Morrison! same goes for the eyes, the clone wars drastically lightened their eyes, the eyes should generally be a much darker brown. There is nothing inherently wrong with giving a clone blue eyes for plot reasons, but it is something that seems to happen far too much. Generally, stop looking for excuses to lighten their eyes. There’s already too many clones with light eyes.
4. Nose Shapes
Please look at the examples from Lucky below, Morrison has a much wider nose than the clones do in the animated shows. When drawing them both face on and side on, it needs to be clear that the nose hasn’t been thinned and lengthened like in the shows. This goes along with the face shape, Māori features are typically wide rather than long and thin, please stop white washing these features.
5. Moko
It has been super awesome seeing people incorporating the practice of inking the skin into clone and Mandalorian culture in their art! This is something I 100% support, but there a few things that should be noted in doing this. The most important is to never copy someone else’s moko directly. moko is a sacred practice of carving our ancestors into our skin, each is individual and should never be directly copied. absolutely take inspiration from other people’s moko! but please never come up with it directly. I would urge you to spend some time researching different designs, and spend the time designing something that is individual to the clone or Mando you are drawing. Even better would be to have an explanation of the meanings of the designs you have come up with along with the art! If this sounds too difficult I would recommend sticking with using mando'a for moko instead of traditional designs, although I personally think mando'a is the best thing to incorporate anyway.
The other important thing is not to refer to moko as tattoos, they are very much not the same thing. I would recommend doing a bit of googling to see the methods traditionally used for moko to help understand this.
TLDR: when in doubt, just use Temuera Morrison (or one of the actors of the younger clones) as a reference, rather than the Clone Wars models. just because the animated shows whitewashed the characters, that doesn’t make it okay for you to do it.
In an ideal world, if we as fans can reject the whitewashing done by Disney, the people designing the characters would follow suit and start representing Māori more accurately. At the very least, actively portraying clones without whitewashing them will make people of colour feel far more welcome and comfortable interacting with clone artists.
hey just a reminder (not friendly because i’m sick of this shit) toplease stop whitewashing characters of color. they are so few and far between that we need to embrace their actual race/ethnicities instead of just fancasting or drawing white versions of the characters as we please. characters of color are invaluable to readers, both readers of color and white readers, because they offer a broad spectrum of what humanity is. they offer representation. representation that is often very lacking. so please don’t disregard their backgrounds or their descriptions or their blatantly presented racial identities.
When Alesha Randolph wants to post a selfie on Instagram, she knows there’s only one filter that is flattering to her skin tone: Sierra. Yes, Instagram filters can work against people of color. But Randolph, a senior designer at Vox, and her fellow designers and engineers were tired of accepting it as a given. So they developed Tonr, a photo-editing desktop app built to enhance and affirm nonwhite skin tones.
Solstice/Kiran seemed like an interesting character although we barely got to know her before the rebooted the DCU. But a character with the same name showed up in the new 52. Of course, when she showed up she looked a lot different.
The Teen Titans has been cancelled and will have its last issue in May, not surprising as it has generally been considered one of the worst runs using the title Teen Titans, ever. But before we go we saw Solstice in her human form.
As a person of color, I’ve learned to expect a certain level of whitewashing from Hollywood. Jake Gyllenhaal as The Prince of Persia? Dude, wtf? Random white dude as Goku – wow, WOW, take it easy, buddy!
And yet, Hollywood execs surprised us with yet another bottle of fuckery by casting Emma Stone as Allison Ng, a character described as a quarter Hawaiian and a quarter Chinese. Let me lean in closer so I can say that again:
Emma Stone, a blonde haired, blue eyed WHITE WOMAN, was chosen to portray an ASIAN-HAWAIIAN PERSON with an Asian last name. I don’t approve of whitewashing, especially when Asian characters get swapped with white ones (see: Ghost in the Shell), but this is a new level of lazy bullshit. How can you go 80% of the way, write a script ABOUT AN ASIAN PERSON but not cast an Asian actress? That’s like making a movie about the Jackson 5 set in the 1960s but casting Honey Boo Boo as Tito and a ham sandwich as Michael – did you even try, bro?!
Hollywood continues to whitewash because white folks don’t see ethnicity as an IDENTITY. They don’t believe race and ethnicity can effect your opportunities and personality in real life, or in a fictional movie. Instead, race is treated like a COSTUME you steal from one person and give to another. In fact, white culture has ALWAYS taken ethnic labels and slapped them onto white products.
We needed more R&B artists so we slapped a label on Justin Timberlake. We lacked diversity in the workplace so we made a category called “White Latinos.”
And yet, when they do consider our ethnicity it’s used in a way to exploit us: to paint us as uneducated thugs, awkward math nerds, and illegal immigrants. They never meet us half-way and write a script about normal ass POCs, acting as if we’re either born into our designated stereotype or we’re colorblind.
If you wanna know how white folks feel truly feel about us, take a look at ANY Hollywood movie and observe the POC characters. When white men were at their peak of Black male intimidation, they made ‘Mandingo’ and 'Birth of a Nation.’ When they were afraid of Asians, they filmed 'Fu Manchu’ and 'The Interview.’
If we can accept the writings of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston as expressions of Black thought, why aren’t we accepting racist Hollywood films as expressions of white ones?
Is it just me or did someone say “Sure, Casca’s cool and all, but isn’t she a bit too dark? Lets make her a bit less black, that might be better. Just make her paler until she’s nearly the same as everyone else.”
Like, okay, her skin is still noticeably darker than other peoples, but they really have made her a lot paler. Was there a reason for this? I don’t think there was. I mean… People have mentioned whitewashing in animated films before, but this… Yeah, this makes it pretty damn clear.
it gets worse……..
It’s cause the beauty standard in Asia is pale skin. Nothing wrong with that but we still need dark skin representation
Seriously, it surprises me that people still don’t get that “whitewashing” doesn’t just mean “taking a character of color and turning them white,” but also applies to “focusing disproportionately on the stories of white people,” “glossing over or altering parts of a story to make it more palatable or make white people look better,” and “treating ‘white’ as the default race”
The fact that Disney churns out film after film after film after film about white people with a maximum of one film per ethnicity that showcases a group other than white people is whitewashing.
The fact that the story of “Pocahontas” (not her real name) has been substantially altered so that some of the white people in that story don’t look like such villains, with John Smith younger and Pocahontas significantly older, as well as recounting a popular myth of her saving John Smith from near-execution (a story John Smith made up to make himself look brave, the real Pocahontas told him to stop telling and hated him for using her to make himself look good, and he started to spread like wildfire after she died because she could no longer object) is whitewashing.
The fact that the characters on “How I Met Your Mother” are all white, and they supposedly live in New York City, but apparently associate exclusively with other white people (with the exception of Wayne Brady, who occasionally visits from out of town, and a recurring taxi driver) is whitewashing.
The fact that the Doctor has now been a white man a full twelve times in a row is whitewashing even though the character’s always been white, because the idea that there’s a character whose entire appearance can change in a matter of seconds, yet ends up white twelve times in a row by pure random chance, implies that white is a neutral default and other races are a deviation from that norm.
The fact that people get really angry at the suggestion that characters like Newt Scamander or Hermione Granger could be black because the books never explicitly say “they are black” is whitewashing.
Because that’s the thing. People often assume that when someone’s race isn’t explicitly specified, they’re white. People insist that Katniss Everdeen must be white because it is possible for them to rationalize that idea in their head. People think of white as “raceless” and every other color or ethnicity as “raced,” and that’s what we call “eurocentrism.“
And that’s the thing about whitewashing. It’s this idea that a “person” is white, and a “person of color” is black or asian or arab or latin@ or whatever they might be.
It’s why people call John Stewart the “Black Green Lantern” but just call Hal Jordan the “Green Lantern.” It’s why Miles Morales is called “Black Spider-man” but Peter Parker is just “Spider-man.” If you want to throw gender into the mix, it’s why Jennifer Walters is the “She-Hulk” but Bruce Banner isn’t the “He-Hulk.”
People think “character” is white and “character + black” is black. There is no default race. Community did a whole episode about how a truly raceless character would look something like this monstrosity:
But there’s the tricky part: Once you stop thinking of white characters as “character” and start thinking of them as “character + white,” it becomes really overwhelming how many characters are white.
I mean, I know there’s a kerfuffle over Disney Princesses right now, so let’s look at the list of official Disney Princesses, shall we? That is, let’s look at the list and include everyone’s race, not just the princesses of color:
Snow White + White
Cinderella + White
Aurora + White
Ariel + White
Belle + White
Jasmine + Arab
Pocahontas + Native American
Mulan + Asian
Tiana + Black
Rapunzel + White
Merida + White Soon to beadded:
Anna + White
Elsa + White
4 of those 13 women are women of color. All four of those women of color are different races than one another. At the moment, the number of white princesses is seven, but it’s about to go up to nine. All nine of those princesses are the same race as one another, despite a few of them being different nationalities, although most of them hail from Western Europe.
And a lot of people are saying “but they’re just accurately portraying the parts of the world those stories are set in!” First of all, the presence of a person of color has never been implausible in any part of the world, in any period of human history. Hell, a bunch of these movies were set after Shakespeare had born, lived, and died, but he still managed to write a play set centuries earlier featuring a black male lead in Italy.
Second, and most importantly, it’s not like they are being assigned a setting at random and have to accommodate it in their character designs. The people at Disney choose to set film after film after film in France and Germany and Denmark.
It’s not that those areas produce more or better fairy tales and folk tales than any of the other continents, it’s that the stories that come from those areas are the ones Disney considers universal.
In the eyes of Disney, there’s a Princess for Black little girls to look up to, a Princess for Native little girls to look up to, a Princess for Arab little girls to look up to, a Princess for Asian little girls to look up to, and nine princesses for all little girls to look up to. It’s no coincidence that in almost all promotional art featuring the “Princess Lineup,” Jasmine, Tiana, Mulan, and Pocahontas are all standing in the back, usually obscured by other white Princesses’ dresses, while the blonde lady brigade stands in the front.
Way back in my senior year of high school, my friends and I took full advantage of our senior year freedom to go see The Forbidden Kingdom in theaters several times. As far as we were concerned, The Forbidden Kingdom was the long-awaited team-up of Asian action stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li—it didn’t matter to us that the plot included some white guy as the main protagonist. In fact, we were pretty happy about it—we thought the white protagonist would make the movie much more attractive to Americans and thus make more money at the box office, thereby proving that Asians could sell movies. And to be fair, The Forbidden Kingdom did rank #1 at the box office in its opening weekend. But nearly a full decade later, it’s pretty apparent that The Forbidden Kingdom’s flaws in 2008 are the same flaws that Hollywood still has today.
After hearing the news that James Cameron would be helming a film adaptation of Battle Angel Alita next year, I decided to take a dive into the series and see what the fuss was about. I’d never actually read it, but after 15 years of anime convention-going I was sure I’d heard the name before. And since I like to be an informed critic, and am already strapped in and ready to critique the movie (with its tragically predictable almost-Asian-less cast) I figured there was no harm in familiarizing myself with it for dragging’s sake.
Well, after reading all nine volumes of the series, I can confidently say that while I can explain the story, I have no idea what the fuck it is about.
