I'm having a mood.

[questionstar]

This has been irritating me for several months.

Because I've been wishing for a black disney heroine since I was five they've got all the other colors godammit. But the problem is that I'm not five anymore, and I'm just not going to be able to apprecate it on such a shallow level because it's A) too little too late and B) OMG they're getting it

Comments

[mudron]

Yeah, I pretty much wrote off this whole "Disney renaissance" thing when I saw that Randy Newman was writing the goddamned music for The Frog Princess. The guy must have pictures of top-level Disney executives butt-fucking the guy in the Mickey Mouse suit or something - I don't know how else Newman keeps on scoring these gigs.

[questionstar]

Man I am so bitter about Disney now that I'm older than 11, seriously. It all went downhill for me after I found out the Lion King was going to be featuring animals not people. :| And saying this as someone who actually loved Atlantis, imaginary ethnicities are still just a way to appease the *color* issue without having to deal with all that apparently backbreaking work of writing a nonwhite culture respectfully. Princess Kida is Atlantean, not black.

I don't have anything against Randy Newman but gawd seriously, why couldn't they get someone else for once? There's lots of white men who write jazz!

[evilgecko]

Oh, Disney. They will flub this. I can smell it.

And I LIKE 2-d disney movies, dammit.

[questionstar]

It's already flubbing the whole way since the beginning T_T Which is kind of the whole point of my ranting... they just stumble and stumble and the further they go along the more impossible it will be to "fix". And it's not going to be fixed because their idea of fixing is just going in the opposite direction of what they think will cause controversy. Prince Naveen of Malkadesh???

It's a cop-out since there are no Malkadesh..ites to offend. Except obviously they didn't make the prince not-French out of fear of offending French people. But it's totally okay to do all this stuff that is pretty ignorant and disrespectful of black people and their history. I wish I could go up to the writers and explain to them that they are lazy. :P

It seems like it's being pushed in this creative direction out of fear until it becomes art-by-committee. Which always sucks.

[jrho]

I wonder how they will handle the standard treatment a poor, black girl would have had from whites in the deep South in the 1920s. I'm sure the princess will end up in the house of some kind elderly woman who was very forward thinking in her views on blacks, females, and education, so Disney can neatly sidestep having to use any racial terminology.

[questionstar]

Of course! They already changed it so she's not a chambermaid anymore! As if black girls had any other job options back then. 9__9

[jrho]

Sharecropper, prostitute, and cook's helper are the only other ones I can think of.

[questionstar]

OSNAP lol
Yeah I was thinking sharecropper too but I guess working in a kitchen wouldn't offend those people (who made a big stink) as much as a maid- oh wait yes it would.
I'd bet money that she doesn't end up having ANY job (after all the character is 19 she'd totally be in COLLEGE LULZ), but nobody would pay up.

Well, she could be a singer MAYBE. And the elderly progressive woman would let her pursue that dream of becoming a famous jazz singer... And this being a musical... hmm seems likely.

[questionstar]

Sigh :( :( :( And when it doesn't do well it'll confirm the belief that things with black people in it don't sell. And at worst the whole movie can be viewed as a pity gesture toward Katrina victims cos they're having the premiere in New Orleans to help the economy there or something. Bleeegh.

I think the most troublesome thought is the idea that now that they own Pixar, they're going to squash the creativity instead of being revitalized by it. I was never in the camp of people who felt that the Pixar acquisition would somehow usher in a new animation golden age at disney... becaaaause I don't think Disney can be saved THERE I SAID IT

[boorman]

"they could bring back some of what people liked them for in the first place."

...they can make us eight? O.o

please, disney is as disney has been. and yes, they need to go back to princess stories. ITs the only bloody thing they do that kids give a shit about. I work at a boosktore with a lot of disney books for kids. Little girls? dont give a flying shit about liko and stich. I'll sell fifty books about (and generally these five:) Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Cinderella or Jasmin before ill get a kid to even LOOK at lilo and stitch.

And, it is those same 5, every time. They even come in little boxed sets now. one dates back to what, 1937 then 1950, then a 40 year gap of NOTHING before 1989, 91, 92.

[questionstar]

Yeah honestly that whole Disney Princesses thing is real big now, since they're marketing it heavily, and it appeals to the princess complex every little girl is raised with.

But yeah that's totally also my point. I'd be nuts about this movie... if I was 8. But I still think there's a way to tell a REAL story AND have your sexist princess wish-fullfillment too dangit!

I loved Jasmine when I was little since she was the only nonwhite princess and I clung to that (they include Mulan and Pocahontas in the disney princess canon to add some color even though UM NOT PRINCESSES), but I rewatched Aladdin recently and HOT DAMN she's a really stupid and entitled brat disguised as an independent spitfire. Yuck :(

I'm... also trying real hard to ignore the implications of a lowly black girl being civilized? bought? swept off her feet by a rich white boy. Him being from an imaginary country just gives me the nasty nagging feeling that implies the story is just too impossible with a boy from a REAL place. Brrr.

[nem0]

Ow.

The lack of Real History in Disney movies has always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, I understand what they were trying to do with Hercules (a kid-friendly bildungsroman with none of that ugly infanticide and those nasty gods and their deviant sex lives), but the whole thing felt like a cop-out. And don't get me started on the Jungle Book.

Disney tries too hard to make middle-of-the-road, don't-offend-anyone, it's-childrens'-entertainment-quit-cher-bitchin' stories, but it's pathetic and pandering. This isn't the 50s, and while they don't have to be "edgy," they can still have some GUTS and write stories that aren't, well, lame.

[questionstar]

Hercules gets a pass with me cos it's mythology, which gets screwed up and changed all the time, whereas Mulan was a real person. Whereas the 1920s are a real and *recent* time period. Turning Greek mythology into a family-friendly story is fundamentally a terrible idea... but lol I still loved it >_>;;

So I figure Lilo and Stitch was a fluke that gave everyone some vain hope. Boooo