Disney Live Action Little Mermaid

[Khev]

I believe I saw that woman at 1am in Miami's MiMo district last month.

Don't ask me what I was doing up there.



You mean the blond hair?

I mean without the faux tattoos and movie's cultural overlays Momoa visually appears pretty much white (and was raised in Iowa for crying out loud.) And hello - Hawaiian (he's half native Hawaiian) myths centered on the sea are pretty aligned with Aquaman's ocean powers.

Not really in the same realm as an African American actress playing a red-haired Danish fairytale character.

I mean imagine the outrage if an Nigerian myth story had been turned into a beloved animated movie centered on a black girl - and then Disney cast one of their white TV stars to play her in the live action version. And then they went on their OFFICIAL Instagram to mockingly defend it by suggesting that you don't have to be black to be Nigerian. Just stop for a second and imagine the reaction - it'd be like a cultural apprpriation asteroid hitting earth.

Yeah Disney's Instagram went full Rian Johnson/Chuck Wendig.

 

[TaliBane]

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And don't get started on the non-comic race-flip casting remakes - Annie, Karate Kid etc - or the adaptations that had no connection to black stories, but became one like Wrinkle in Time, or the "historical" race-flip casting where a true white historical figure is arbitrarliy flipped to black like Mary Queen of Scots (the list of race-flip casting of true historical figures is almost too long to list.)

It's a backhanded thing too - a way to NOT tell genuine POC stories while appearing as if that's what you are doing. I mean if a rush of Africa-originated graphic novels featuring a black superhero came across a studio exec's desk, would they grab them, or would they rather race-flip cast a second-tier established character? What about black authored fantasy or sci-fi stories? The answer is obvious - they would say it's go with the branded content, but the truth is it's lame to try to say that race-flip casting is a fine enough surrogate for POC stories of the same kind.

And even though a couple of genuine POC genre projects popped up in development in the wake of BP, in many ways these race-flip casting projects "tick the box" for the studio - making it even less likely they will produce a genuine POC-authored story because they just put out several POC lead movies that were race-flip casting.

I mean so many in the media talked about Black Panther as "a truly African character" - apparently unaware he was created by a couple of white guys, and that even worse, their choice of name probably inspired the civil rights militant group's name, not the other way around.

 

[jedijim3002]

I can agree with that. The thing that is most sad to me is that these studios won’t back anything that’s not a guaranteed money maker. They don’t take chances anymore unless it’s part of an established franchise.

You could argue that GOTG was a risk but it was part of the already established MCU that was making money hand over fist. You could also say they took a risk on Rogue One but again part of a multi billion dollar franchise.

In the end I agree that until smaller studios take risks on stories that are new to cinema that are TRUE representations of POC folklore they won’t get told and the larger studios won’t take notice. Mulan looks like it may be a good example of that. It was pretty successful as a cartoon and is part of the Disney machine so it should have no problems. Moana was amazing too. But all of us will miss out on amazing stories from so many cultures around the world if someone doesn’t speak up. I guess until then we will be stuck with remakes and carbon copies of only European tales.


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[Wor-Gar]

POC = Pirates Of Caribbean...

Or am I missing something?

 

[TaliBane]

POC = Pirates Of Caribbean...

Or am I missing something?

Not a thing.

 

[Lejuan]

...

In the end I agree that until smaller studios take risks on stories that are new to cinema that are TRUE representations of POC folklore they won’t get told and the larger studios won’t take notice. Mulan looks like it may be a good example of that. It was pretty successful as a cartoon and is part of the Disney machine so it should have no problems...

I'm interested to see how Mulan will be treated - I'm guessing the whole thing will be appeasement of Chinese nationalism.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Not a thing.

Puts the Yo! in yo-ho!

 

[TaliBane]

I'm interested to see how Mulan will be treated - I'm guessing the whole thing will be appeasement of Chinese nationalism.

Yeah, had to laugh about the 22 nations who all got together secretly to prepare a joint statement against China's concentration camps (like... actual concentration camps) just so China couldn't get revenge on any individual country or whoever started it. Indivdually they all feared China.

Reminded me of schoolkids trying to "share blame" in order to raise a complaint against the teacher.

One thing that's guaranteed - no black actress is going to play Mulan in the live action movie, THAT'S for sure.