Moana: portraying Māui, a revered Hawaiian (and Polynesian in general) cultural and religious figure as the comic relief.
Mulan: portraying the Dragon, a revered Chinese (and East Asian in general) cultural and religious figure as the comic relief.
Yeah, those are cute, lovable characters and totally not racist and culturally offensive, right? Imagine the outcry by the West if a Indigenous Hawaiian, or especially Chinese film portrayed Jesus in the same way.
I’m ashamed to say I adored Mulan as a kid but because I thought Mulan was badass and not because Mushu was a compelling character. Why couldn’t the cricket have done the comic relief? It was infinitely funnier.
Now I can’t bring myself to engage with any Disney products/movies/etc because I’m older and see the abject racism they’ve normalised and profited off.
I genuinely believe that the only thing that saved the Lion King from being just as racist if not more, is that there were no humans for them to make “jokes” about. And there were only a few humans in the Jungle Book, so same boat. Also they didn’t try to “”“adapt”“” a real folktale or other cultural thing from over there.
I mean, they still used mostly white voice actors for a story set in Africa and India respectively. Animal characters or not, don’t ya think there’s a problem with that?
I absolutely do. They made a big deal about casting all the voice actors for the remake of the lion King as black actors which was a rare bit of consideration by Disney but it felt performative (to me at least) and too little too late but as a filthy anglo I’m always hesitant to shout my takes too loudly regarding the above considering its not my culture that is getting fucked about.
Like the Raya example, I listened to a podcast by East and South East Asian Internet peeps regarding how it handled their culture before shitting on Disney because frankly what do I fucking know.
Moana: portraying Māui, a revered Hawaiian (and Polynesian in general) cultural and religious figure as the comic relief.
Mulan: portraying the Dragon, a revered Chinese (and East Asian in general) cultural and religious figure as the comic relief.
Yeah, those are cute, lovable characters and totally not racist and culturally offensive, right? Imagine the outcry by the West if a Indigenous Hawaiian, or especially Chinese film portrayed Jesus in the same way.
Couldn’t agree more.
I’m ashamed to say I adored Mulan as a kid but because I thought Mulan was badass and not because Mushu was a compelling character. Why couldn’t the cricket have done the comic relief? It was infinitely funnier.
Now I can’t bring myself to engage with any Disney products/movies/etc because I’m older and see the abject racism they’ve normalised and profited off.
I wonder what culture they bastardise next.
I genuinely believe that the only thing that saved the Lion King from being just as racist if not more, is that there were no humans for them to make “jokes” about. And there were only a few humans in the Jungle Book, so same boat. Also they didn’t try to “”“adapt”“” a real folktale or other cultural thing from over there.
I mean, they still used mostly white voice actors for a story set in Africa and India respectively. Animal characters or not, don’t ya think there’s a problem with that?
I absolutely do. They made a big deal about casting all the voice actors for the remake of the lion King as black actors which was a rare bit of consideration by Disney but it felt performative (to me at least) and too little too late but as a filthy anglo I’m always hesitant to shout my takes too loudly regarding the above considering its not my culture that is getting fucked about.
Like the Raya example, I listened to a podcast by East and South East Asian Internet peeps regarding how it handled their culture before shitting on Disney because frankly what do I fucking know.