Stan Lee is in one sense a personal hero to me. He created, shaped, or influenced so many stories that I grew up on that I unquestionably owe him a lot. I used to read the letters pages and the Bullpen Bulletins as a kid and just thought the world of him. After I grew up and read more, I realized he was the front man for a lot of other people. Still, he was the ringmaster of the circus, the showman that beckoned me into the wonderful worlds in the tent. Despite all the controversy about credit, work for hire deals, etc. there’s a lot of stories I’ve loved because of the Funky Flashman.
Well, doing that now would just give them a lot of headaches, and Florida isn’t the Bluest state in the Union, either.
I’m embarrassed I forgot about Blacula. Next I’ll be forgetting Scream Blacula Scream or Coffey or Superfly!
Anyway, I wasn’t talking about Blaxploitation, I was talking about a mainstream Horror film which hews closely to the Stoker novel (which is now considered to be the Classic Vampire) but which just happens to have a Black Dracula. Maybe that’s impossible because Blacula has “claimed” that space sufficiently that any subsequent film would be compared to that one and not analyzed any other way.
Well, seeing as how the cartoon Arial speaks with American-accented English instead of Danish and lives in the blue Caribbean Sea instead of the murky Baltic and she doesn’t kill herself by the end of the story, then I think it’s fair to say that we really aren’t talking “the folklore” “Little Mermaid” anymore. If people want to be het up about Disney annexing a character from folklore and turning it into a American icon, OK. But I wish they would focus on all the ways she’s been Americanized, and not just her skin tone.
A couple of weeks ago I watched one of the best stage productions of “The Wiz” that I’ve ever seen (and I consider myself a connoisseur). “The Wizard of Oz” is a masterpiece, one that I have to tune into every time I see on TV. But I also love “The Wiz”. I guess if we want to be basic we can call it a blackified version of “The Wizard of Oz”. But even if that’s a fair description, being “blackfied” does not make it disrespectful. Indeed, there are wonderful subtexts in “The Wiz” that are missing in the “The Wizard of Oz” because of the cultural perspective the former is written from (e.g., the crows telling the Scarecrow he’ll never be able to get off the pole so he’s a fool for trying does not appear in the latter.) So, I think if someone were to create a Chinese “Peter Pan”–a version of the story that reflected Chinese values and traditions–I personally wouldn’t see it as a way to “fuck with everyone” but rather as a way to tell a classic story in a slightly different way. I don’t think we need another reboot of “Peter Pan”, but I would hold this opinion no matter who is cast or how the story is stylized.
At any rate, I would argue that if folklore is deeply entrenched in a culture, variations of that folkfore will always be secondary to the original. When people think of Dorothy and Toto, their minds immediately go to Judy Garland, not Diana Ross. If live-action Arial becomes the permanent face of the Little Mermaid, that would just mean that cartoon Arial isn’t as powerful an icon as people think she is. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think live-action Arial will always be secondary to cartoon Arial due to primacy effect (e.g., Those who are established first have more influence than those who follow).
It could be an interesting reading to reverse it, by setting it in one of the mediaeval African kingdoms with Othello played as a white mercenary, or one of the Europeans who rose to significant postiions after being taken into slavery in one of the North African kingdoms.
It’s not uncommon to do race/gender-reversed productions of Shakespeare, these days.
So here’s a semi-serious question. Why do white people act as though they are constrained by some scary authority figure when it comes to mundane speech and artistic expression?
Imma need you to walk me through what you think could happen if your daughter slapped a red wig on her head and put on a mermaid suit for Halloween. The Costume Police gonna arrest her? Are your neighbors going to mock her and withhold candy? Who is in a position to not allow your daughter to dress however the hell she wants?
I think msmith537 is thinking about the ramifications of a black Arial on his daughter’s Halloween costume. If she wants to go as the live-action Arial rather than the cartoon one, how far can she go because eyebrows get raised.
I guess I don’t see how hard it would be to explain to a little girl that we can dress up like Arial without trying to capture every single detail. Cartoon Arial has big-ass blue eyes, yet you can look like cartoon Arial without putting in blue eye contacts. Cartoon Arial has a zero waist, but no one would let their daughters starve themselves to capture that particular detail and some one the sky hasn’t fallen. I’m guessing that Halle’s hair will be done in particular way for the live-action “The Little Mermaid”. So a little girl will be able to capture her essence just by doing her hair like hers (or by getting a wig). I think it would be funny if live-action Arial still has red hair like the cartoon. That way, the Little Mermaid costumes based on the cartoon will still be relevant.
I find msmth537’s question odd because I’m trying to imagine what he thinks little black girls do when they want to dress up like a Disney princess or any other white icon. I know back in my day, many a black girl would become Wonder Wonder just by spinning around like Linda Carter and throwing up her wrists to deflect imaginary bullets. Have little kids lost the ability to make-believe like this? Are white kids unable to picture themselves as dark-skinned characters unless they darken their skin? If so, I think that’s something that can be easily addressed in a single sentence: “You will look crazy if you leave this house wearing brown make-up all over your body. Please don’t ask me anymore.”
Can’t imagine he’d even take his daughter to see the live-action version if he’s wrestling with such a question.
This paragraph sums up my thoughts pretty well.
There’s a weird underlying implication that black kids ought not be dressing up like white characters, and I’m pretty sure msmith would reject that implication. I certainly welcome white kids dressing up like Black Panther. The 8 year old son of one of my friends is psyched about being Megan Rapinoe for Halloween–not by stuffing a bra, but just by wearing the jersey and maybe some hair dye and gel. And msmith’s white daughter should 100% be live action Ariel for Halloween if she wants.
Representation is important for folks of color, but I also think it’s really important for white kids to imagine themselves into characters of color.
Non-white people have plenty of practice being enthusiastic about white characters, identifying with them, dressing up as them, etc. It’s significant that so many white people have a problem going the other way.
I get a little bit of anxiety about it. White people who are dimly aware of the idea of cultural appropriation may think they’re going to catch flak for dressing up as a character of another race/ethnicity. If dressing as a stereotype of a generic black person is bad, is it also bad to dress as a specific person who’s black?
But c’mon, people, think it through.
There’s also the more pernicious loss-of-status issue. In a society where white people have higher social status, what does it mean for a white person to dress as someone without that status? Again, the answer is for white people to get over themselves.
And white people really need to get used to this. White Americans (at least how we currently define this category) aren’t always going to be the numerical majority, which means the media isn’t always going to be dominated by white faces. We are seeing signs of that transition and people are being all butthurt about it…but this is the logical consequence of the breakdown of racial barriers and a diversifying population.
People can call race-neutral casting “pandering” if they want to, but they need to reconcile that view with the fact that white people have been pandered to for ages. And I gotta wonder who exactly is being pandered to with a black Arial? Black folks, who comprise only 13% of the population? Liberals? White people who love them black mermaid. Maybe I’m not cynical enough, but I don’t understand this particular angle.
At work is the same assumption that makes people think a black person in a prestigious position is only there to fill a diversity quota, while a white (male) is assumed to be there through merit.
It seems like this assumption is becoming stronger, not weaker, despite us being so far into the 21st century and in post-Obama times. But maybe this is an artifact of peak internet culture. When Eddie Murphy made Nutty Professor were there people calling this PC pandering? I don’t recall any controversy about this reboot (except for concerns about the way fatness was portrayed).
Little kids haven’t lost their ability to make believe but some adults have lost their damned minds. I’m sure there are some white folks worried about unnecessarily concerned about cultural appropriation but I doubt many people are going to have a problem with a little white boy dressed up as Black Panther for Halloween. But, yeah, if some little kid innocently suggests darkening his skin let’s steer him away from that.
I think an Asian Peter Pan is a fine idea…Pan is even a Chinese surname, so you wouldn’t have to change the full name of the character!
Not actually single. He got married in one of the books (and then his bride turned out to be a double agent, so she killed herself). So technically, he’s a widower.
And dead in a freak nuclear explosion in 1967. So shark-jumping goes WAY back for him…
I don’t give a rats ass about changing anything…what I DO care about is people being assholes about it all. And hypocrites.
“Mermaids arnt real. Fuck gingers. …YOU WHITEWASHED THE ANCIENT ONE??? Who will tibetan boys see in movies to represent them now??? You took a role from a Tibetan actor!!”
Heh. Peter Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little Neverland…
I mean why not? Already played by a female (but not as a female…Thats the target for the ‘progressive crowd!’)
Buzzfeed: Its time for a lesbian Peter Pan. (mind blown)
Surprised?
In a world where wearing a sombrero or dreadlocks gets you thrown in the pillory?
I think its funny that my desire to dress up my three year old as the Saw guy got me the dirty looks…but Darth Fucking Vader is a-Ok.