Which are indeed- Black.
Does it need any excuse? It is necessary to insert minorities into a scene in order to tick off boxes?
So you can accept the presence of witches, dwarves, dragons, fairies, dancing broomsticks, and talking mice. But a black face in a crowd scene would have made the movie seem unrealistic to you.
You can’t see the roustabouts’ faces clearly, true. But the reason you can’t see them clearly is that they have dark skin and it’s dark out. And they’re doing work that was typically done by black men. I’d say they count.
But the only thing that makes those settings “Western European” is the fact that all of the characters are white. OK, a few of them, like Hunchback and Beauty and the Beast have other cues identifying them as France or other specific lands, but in what nation was Snow White, or Cinderella? And how can you tell?
Not a fair comment, IMHO. A fantasy setting has to be self-consistent and follow its own rules. It’s not a matter of what’s realistic, per se, but what’s appropriate vs. out-of-place (the way, say, blatantly 20th-century clothing and hairstyles might be).
To @caligulathegod’s general point: it’s not at all surprising or unusual that many of Disney’s animated features have no Black humans, since so many of them have most or all non-human characters and so many others are set in pre-modern Europe. But I think it is surprising and noteworthy if none of their many animated features have even a single Black human.
Cinderella was originally a ninth century Chinese folktale.
That’s begging the question. You’re saying black people shouldn’t be included in a fairy tale setting because they would seem out of place in such a setting. And the reason black people would seem out of place in a fairy tale setting is because they don’t get included in those settings.
No, I’m saying that just because it’s a fairy tale setting doesn’t mean they couldn’t look out of place.
Can you clarify? Do you think black people would look out of place in a fantasy setting, or NOT look out of place in a fantasy setting?
Essay on this topic: https://nkjemisin.com/2013/09/how-long-til-black-future-month/
Black people in medieval art: https://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/
That’s irrelevant to the point that I was trying to make. (Although, if you insist on an answer to that question, it would be: I suppose it depends on the fantasy setting.)
My point was that just because it’s a fantasy setting doesn’t mean anything goes. Just because it contains “unrealistic” or counterfactual elements such as dragons or talking mice does not mean that it can and should contain anything and everything. I express no opinion over whether any particular element is appropriate or out-of-place. I merely reject the argument that it must be appropriate because fantasy.
Some generic Western Euro nation of some sort, based upon the clothing, castles, etc.
No one is saying that. If they are, that is fine.
But one would not expect black people in a medieval generic western European setting. I would not expect an Asian or an Amerind either.
There could be, and if there were, that would be fine. They added a part for Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and it worked for me (altho the lead actor did not, Rickman and Freeman were the best parts)
The Modern inclusion of POC in such setting is a good idea, IMHO, but since those films were not made recently, it does not say anything about the artists, etc that there are not such. We are trying to be more inclusive now, but that doesn’t mean we need to add a black man to a film about the battle of Hastings, etc. Mind you, we could, the Normans had conquered Sicily, so it is not impossible, but hardly to be something the film needs to have or it is racist.
Were there blacks in say- The Lion in Winter nor the Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Robin and Marion, Henry V, nor William the Conqueror or all sorts of Medieval period costume dramas of the past?
So, you are turning it around. There is a vast difference between we would not expect a medieval generic western European setting VS there cannot be and should not be such. Of course there can be.
You wouldn’t expect talking animals to be present in a medieval generic western European setting either. So why do you accept the introduction of them into a medieval generic western European setting?
And you feel the explanation is the studios were striving for historical accuracy rather than the studio was appeasing the racial biases of its mostly white audience?
You don’t see the faces at all. They do not show ears or eyes or faces, just blobs. My point still stands even in this case. I never said black people didn’t exist, just that they weren’t represented as human characters even just standing in the backgrounds. This could be accounted, at best perhaps, with an asterisk as they are humanoid abstractions.
As far as the absence of such characters because of verisimilitude, it didn’t stop them from using such characters when portraying them as animals. I never really noticed any of the films too concerned about anachronism.
But again, I’m not so much as criticizing Disney so much as bringing up an obvious thing about creative works that really doesn’t get realized unless one approaches it in a certain way. In my instance, it was watching them chronologically. I’ve come across many articles on Disney’s problematic history on race, but never have I found any mention of the issue of human representation being so rare or delayed.
For whatever reason, I didn’t recognize him at first, but Liberace played a villain in the 60’s Batman series.
No one recognized him because of the great costume…
[/sarc]
They’re not inhuman creatures; they’re humans who aren’t seen clearly. They look exactly like humans would look, under the circumstances.
I don’t believe I said inhuman. They are indeed humanoid. Maybe I’m employing too much nuance. They aren’t just out of focus or in shadow, they are literally completely featureless. At best, it is impressionistic. Does it really invalidate my point that much? I was trying to say that black people exist in the Disney canon, but are only represented by animals and not by human beings. Closest we get are vague featureless impressionistic humanoids. Like I said, * .
It seems to me that they’re not humanoids, they’re just out of focus humans. It’s a subtle difference but an important one. To my eyes they’re black men, interchangeable and devoid of character traits, but clearly black men.
I prefer my updated version:
Q. Do you like Peter Dinklage?
A. I don’t know - I’ve never had my peter dinkled.
Do you think by “humanoid” I don’t mean human? I mean in the form of a human. And again, does this invalidate my point? The only black humans on 60 years are are 25 seconds of nondescript vague interchangeable images devoid of character traits?