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 Posted:   Apr 5, 2023 - 12:27 PM   
 By:   John McMasters   (Member)

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 Posted:   Apr 5, 2023 - 12:38 PM   
 By:   Ado   (Member)

I am gonna confess that I do not know, at all, what it feels like to be a black girl

I do not know what it feels like to be a fish.


ah, come on dude, friend, you know what I am saying.


My apologies, I got a little frustrated and it ran into your post.


that is okay, understand,
Have a good afternoon Sol.

 
 Posted:   Apr 5, 2023 - 1:02 PM   
 By:   Yavar Moradi   (Member)

You're a hoot Yavar.

Why thank you.

You keep saying I'm complaining. I'm just stating a fact.

No, you keep bringing up an imaginary "diversity mandate", and keep acting like it's a BAD THING. That is complaining, by any definition of the world. Just own it.

Disney and the other studios have a mandate towards featuring minorities in their films. Go back a couple of years, notes from the studio leaked out and that was one of its main priorities.

I Googled it and couldn't find that. Feel free to provide it. I found this, which is a standard boilerplate corporate page at this point: https://impact.disney.com/diversity-inclusion/
But if there IS some kind of "diversity mandate", I think my comprehensive list of Disney films released in the past 5 years pretty definitively *proves* they HAVEN'T been very diverse or "woke" in their output, since the vast majority of their releases have still been focused on white protagonists as always. If there's a mandate it's overall failing and that's a fact.

Watch ANY press release from virtually ANY studio and the topic up front is "diversity". The producers talk about it, the actors talk about it, the writers talk about it.

Soooooo what? DEIJ language is standard issue for all corporations now, and it just shows they're doing the standard thing to look good/acceptable in a United States racial landscape where white people will soon become the minority.

Its the reason we're getting a Moana live action BEFORE a Frozen live action movie.

That's nonsense speculation entirely cooked up by you. Maybe they aren't done with Frozen as an animated franchise yet? Having a live action Frozen before a potential Frozen III would be weird, to say the least. The live action How to Train Your Dragon is moving forward now, only after the animated trilogy finished as a franchise.

None of your in-dept research contradicts that.

Um, yeah it does. You contend there is a MANDATE to focus on non-white characters... and I demonstrated that the vast majority of Disney film releases in the past half decade (the time period you suggested this mandate has been in place) have still been centered around white people.

BTW Dumbo was not "super white", Nico Parker is half black. wink

Sure, then we can get into a conversation about colorism in Hollywood. And Nico Parker's mother Thandie Newton is half black, so that would make Nico one quarter, if we want to go down that rabbit hole...



And notice that they made a point of straightening her hair for the film, besides:


Oh wow, actually now I see that (poorly lit in the background) there's "clearly" a black character. Congratulations. If you look at this cast image and don't realize this film is "super white", well then you're just being dumb on purpose:


Surely a "diversity mandate" would result in cast members of color being a bit more numerous and prominent than that?

Godmothered, I think the daughter in that film is half black too.

I wouldn't know because I haven't seen the movie, but literally every different movie poster for it is two white actresses -- again if, as you contend, there's a "diversity mandate" surely that would apply to the marketing?


Is this the "half black" daughter you're referring to?


Yeah, clearly a STRONG case to be made here for your "diversity mandate"!

Are you really adding nature films in your list on non-diversity? Pretty sure the Elephants are African.

Obviously I only included them in an attempt to be comprehensive about Disney film releases, and if you bothered to read what I wrote (apparently you didn't), I clearly poked fun at the silliness of including them, i.e. "they're penguins" and eventually just outright acknowledging that DisneyNature films are "N/A". Did you somehow miss that... really?


Um, really. Okay. So black girls couldn't relate to Ariel because shes white? Or Anna? Or Princess Jasmine? Or Pocahontas? Or Moana?

Literally nobody here said that. But they should also be able to have many role models in media who look like them. And if you're able to relate to a black female protagonist yourself, what do you have to complain about?

If this is the mentality of kids growing up nowadays something is terribly wrong.

Watch this and tell me "something is terribly wrong" with it. I refuse to believe you'd be that shitty, and maybe you'll finally see some value in having a black mermaid:


Its ironic too as so many here claim white people can't accept other races and other people.

Nobody has suggested that as a blanket statement. Are you seriously going to contend that it isn't true about *many* white people, still? You think racism was just solved by the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s or something?

Yavar

 
 
 Posted:   Apr 5, 2023 - 1:08 PM   
 By:   WillemAfo   (Member)

Again, there is a merging of "inclusion" vs. "trashy social media performance" happening here.

The general public does have a reasonable negative response to the very real cultural shift towards the performative reality-TV monster of social media that dominates and influences large parts of present-day culture. Social media is a mostly performative space masquerading as reality and it's not just a fad - people make a living off of it from the scummy personalities to the industry of management companies and content production houses built up around it.

Streaming content is adjacent to it, with the similar business model of churning out content.

Reaction videos of people crying at a trailer might have some real emotions, but most reaction videos are performative, and for every crying person watching a trailer there are plenty of others who don't cry when they see a movie trailer, and are just excited or mildly interested to see the movie.

We are not socially responsible enough to take the small percentage of honest stuff on social media and value it above the fake, performative stuff, therefore social media must be painted with a broad brush of negativity until it's responsible regulated or addressed from an ethical standpoint by society at large. It's not.

These are all real things.

On the flip side we have inclusion.

Having one movie like "To Kill A Mockingbird" that includes a black actor or Sidney Poitier being a black actor in some films that people like is entirely different from having a fully developed industry of black writers, directors, editors, composers, producers, production houses, etc.

Having a movie about "Selma" that specifically deals with African-American history and casting it with black actors is different from having a movie like "Star Wars" where the race or ethnicity or gender of a character could more or less be anything. In the latter case, the default of "cast white" has shifted in recent years to "why does this have to be cast white?"

There's nothing wrong with that, it's a thoughtful question and not unfamiliar to the types of questions that creative people have always faced.

Concerning "Moana", it's literally a story about Polynesian characters and the peoples of Oceania in general, so ethnicity is already baked into the story.

For "The Little Mermaid", there's nothing wrong with creatively asking in this day and age whether Ariel has an ethnicity. If you've got a talking crab with a Jamaican accent singing a calypso song, any responsible writer with the knowledge that society in the 2020s has is going to ask "Where does this story take place? If Sebastian is Jamaican does this place our story in the Caribbean? What is the historical background of seafaring lore and myths like krakens and giant whirlpools? When is the time period? Is this a tale of British colonization? Spanish colonization? What if the story was set in the Indian Ocean? Could Ariel be Hindi? Or what if it was in the Pacific, could she be from one of the islands in Oceania? But then why is Sebastian Jamaican? Would a Jamaican crab travel halfway around the world to hang out in unfamiliar waters? Does that mean Ariel is Jamaican or from an island in the Caribbean?"

These literally are the types of questions that writers and productions have and what activism and inclusion is about is not forcing or mandating people do a specific thing, it's baking into the process the consideration of diverse viewpoints and having that be part of the process and conversation.

 
 Posted:   Apr 5, 2023 - 1:11 PM   
 By:   Yavar Moradi   (Member)

Been enjoying all your posts on this subject very much, WillemAfo.

And yes, a lot of YouTube and social media is performative, but I think the reaction of these black girls is very genuine and beautiful.

Yavar

 
 
 Posted:   Apr 5, 2023 - 2:09 PM   
 By:   WillemAfo   (Member)

Been enjoying all your posts on this subject very much, WillemAfo.

And yes, a lot of YouTube and social media is performative, but I think the reaction of these black girls is very genuine and beautiful.

Yavar


Thanks for the compliment! I hadn't seen that video before so it's helpful you posted it.

I'm definitely always skeptical of social media though I do agree that some of these reactions seem genuine - I think the wrapping of it as a compilation would kind of be my main issue with it. It's a longterm issue I've had with social media and content aggregators in general, being the issue of "bathos". Upworthy is a great example of "bathos" because it would take positive stories and TELL YOU how positive they are, which has the effect, at least for me, of leeching away the genuineness of real human emotions and interactions.

This is also where comments on social media reinforce "bathos" - like the video is one thing but the comments also TELL YOU what you were supposed to feel, and I'm always bothered by comments. So that's just kind of the tricky space we live in today where there might be good points to be made, but the social media tools and venues where the points are made counteract the message.

All that to say thanks again for sharing the video, I understand your perspective and definitely agree with the value sentiment that the video is communicating about the power of representation and inclusivity.

 
 Posted:   Apr 5, 2024 - 7:41 PM   
 By:   Jason LeBlanc   (Member)

Opens July 10, 2026

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/disney-star-wars-movie-mandalorian-and-grogu-toy-story-5-live-action-moana-tron-ares-release-dates-1235961998/

 
 Posted:   Dec 9, 2024 - 3:38 PM   
 By:   Justin Boggan   (Member)

And it is Mark:
https://filmmusicreporter.com/2024/12/09/mark-mancina-to-return-for-disneys-live-action-moana-movie/

 
 
 Posted:   Dec 9, 2024 - 3:52 PM   
 By:   TJ   (Member)

Cool! Good for him, I feel like he hasn't had a lot of work the past couple decades.

 
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