I don’t think there is any such malice intended. Corporate media conglomerates tend to be focused primarily on how to offend as few people as possible. Insulting potential customers isn’t profitable.
I don’t see it as disingenuous. It seems like the audience just wanting the characters to look like them. And this is how media has always been done. Look how Disney took classic and violent Germanic fairy tails and then morphed them into sanitized Americanized versions of the characters. Should we abandon Disney’s Sleeping Beauty because the prince doesn’t stay faithful to the source material by raping the princess to awaken her?
Tales get reinterpreted. Stories get retold. New versions of old stories are made and retold through the lens of new times and places. Welcome to human culture. This is how we do things. This is how we always do things. This is how you end up with a white Jesus or a Chinese Jesus.
I hate to break this to you, but the US is no longer a white nation. It’s a multi-racial, multi-ethnic melting pot. The majority of newborns in the country are not white. Audiences want characters that represent them. And sometimes that means retelling classic characters through a new lens. Sometimes that lens is racial. Consider it from a few perspectives.
Think of the people actually making this art. These films are the work of actual human beings! Don’t forget that. Especially in works of fiction, where everything is fantasy anyway, why shouldn’t the characters in a work not look like the human beings actually creating that work?
Or think of the people viewing it. Let’s say you’re a 5 year old black girl in the US, and you’re really into fairy tale princesses. You want to imagine yourself as a princess in a classic fairy-tale castle, something out of a fantastical version of Medieval Europe.
Is a young black girl allowed to have such dreams? Or must she have historically-accurate dreams? Must she dream of being a princess in Great Zimbabwe?
Or is she allowed to dream of being a princess at all? Must she dream of much lower social strata?
Must her dreams be so confined? Must a child dream of historical accuracy? Are we policing the dreams of our children based on race? If she wants, why can’t she imagine a classic fairy tale castle where everyone looks like her? Or as diverse as the world around her?
By your rule, she could never have her dream realized on screen. Little white girls get to have that vision fulfilled, little black girls do not. Being a fairy tale princess is only something white girls are allowed to really do.
Children will have the dreams they have. And it’s not healthy for children to grow up only idolizing people and characters that do not resemble them. It is incredibly valuable to have real and fictional examples of people of your race, gender, etc. doing the things and living the lives you dream of living. And fictional characters often are role models. Hell, most fairy tales have an explicit moral to them. They’re designed to be role models!
By your rules, we couldn’t make an Asian Cinderella that a young Asian girl could look up to. We couldn’t create an black Rapunzel a young black girl could identify with. Etc. We would just always have to tell them with white characters. Even though these are completely fantastical stories in literal magical worlds. But because their original authors would have assumed white characters, we just have to keep doing that forever. Hopes and dreams of children be damned.
You know what that really results in? That results in these old works being abandoned and forgotten. Again, the country’s future is majority-minority. Viewers want to see themselves in the art they view. Artists want to represent themselves in their art. If we adopt the rule that you have to respect the original author’s ethnicity choices, that will simply result in classic stories being abandoned. If we had some rule that we couldn’t remove the rape from Sleeping Beauty, Disney never would have made that movie. All the stories you grew up with as a kid, where all the characters are just assumed white? Those will never be retold. They’ll just be remembered as “those old racist stories.”
Is that really the future you want? I don’t think so. I grew up with stories where most of the characters were assumed white. And you know what, if casting a multi-ethnic cast for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory means the story gets retold down the generations, then I’m all for it. Works need to remain relevant to the times they are in. Otherwise they will not be retold.
We’re not deleting the old copies. You’ll always be able to go and rewatch the original versions of these works. But if we’re talking new works? New versions of old stories? It needs to remain relevant to both the people making it and viewing it. And ultimately, more inclusive works are simply more popular with audiences and thus, more profitable. Hamilton made bank.
I don’t think there is any such malice intended. Corporate media conglomerates tend to be focused primarily on how to offend as few people as possible. Insulting potential customers isn’t profitable.
I don’t see it as disingenuous. It seems like the audience just wanting the characters to look like them. And this is how media has always been done. Look how Disney took classic and violent Germanic fairy tails and then morphed them into sanitized Americanized versions of the characters. Should we abandon Disney’s Sleeping Beauty because the prince doesn’t stay faithful to the source material by raping the princess to awaken her?
Tales get reinterpreted. Stories get retold. New versions of old stories are made and retold through the lens of new times and places. Welcome to human culture. This is how we do things. This is how we always do things. This is how you end up with a white Jesus or a Chinese Jesus.
I hate to break this to you, but the US is no longer a white nation. It’s a multi-racial, multi-ethnic melting pot. The majority of newborns in the country are not white. Audiences want characters that represent them. And sometimes that means retelling classic characters through a new lens. Sometimes that lens is racial. Consider it from a few perspectives.
Think of the people actually making this art. These films are the work of actual human beings! Don’t forget that. Especially in works of fiction, where everything is fantasy anyway, why shouldn’t the characters in a work not look like the human beings actually creating that work?
Or think of the people viewing it. Let’s say you’re a 5 year old black girl in the US, and you’re really into fairy tale princesses. You want to imagine yourself as a princess in a classic fairy-tale castle, something out of a fantastical version of Medieval Europe.
Is a young black girl allowed to have such dreams? Or must she have historically-accurate dreams? Must she dream of being a princess in Great Zimbabwe?
Or is she allowed to dream of being a princess at all? Must she dream of much lower social strata?
Must her dreams be so confined? Must a child dream of historical accuracy? Are we policing the dreams of our children based on race? If she wants, why can’t she imagine a classic fairy tale castle where everyone looks like her? Or as diverse as the world around her?
By your rule, she could never have her dream realized on screen. Little white girls get to have that vision fulfilled, little black girls do not. Being a fairy tale princess is only something white girls are allowed to really do.
Children will have the dreams they have. And it’s not healthy for children to grow up only idolizing people and characters that do not resemble them. It is incredibly valuable to have real and fictional examples of people of your race, gender, etc. doing the things and living the lives you dream of living. And fictional characters often are role models. Hell, most fairy tales have an explicit moral to them. They’re designed to be role models!
By your rules, we couldn’t make an Asian Cinderella that a young Asian girl could look up to. We couldn’t create an black Rapunzel a young black girl could identify with. Etc. We would just always have to tell them with white characters. Even though these are completely fantastical stories in literal magical worlds. But because their original authors would have assumed white characters, we just have to keep doing that forever. Hopes and dreams of children be damned.
You know what that really results in? That results in these old works being abandoned and forgotten. Again, the country’s future is majority-minority. Viewers want to see themselves in the art they view. Artists want to represent themselves in their art. If we adopt the rule that you have to respect the original author’s ethnicity choices, that will simply result in classic stories being abandoned. If we had some rule that we couldn’t remove the rape from Sleeping Beauty, Disney never would have made that movie. All the stories you grew up with as a kid, where all the characters are just assumed white? Those will never be retold. They’ll just be remembered as “those old racist stories.”
Is that really the future you want? I don’t think so. I grew up with stories where most of the characters were assumed white. And you know what, if casting a multi-ethnic cast for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory means the story gets retold down the generations, then I’m all for it. Works need to remain relevant to the times they are in. Otherwise they will not be retold.
We’re not deleting the old copies. You’ll always be able to go and rewatch the original versions of these works. But if we’re talking new works? New versions of old stories? It needs to remain relevant to both the people making it and viewing it. And ultimately, more inclusive works are simply more popular with audiences and thus, more profitable. Hamilton made bank.
is such an amazing quote, well written