Indigenous Rising

haiweewicci:

aeleala:

I’m seriously so done with people bitching about Frozen. It’s a Danish fairy tale, the lead character is going to be white with blond hair and blue eyes.

“Why didn’t they make a movie about a different fairy tale???” I don’t know, because this is a good fairy tale maybe?

And guess what, it is…

Sigh, alright, here we go again.

- How can you argue that Disney wanted to stay true to The Snow Queen when Frozen diverged so WILDLY from the source material that it is not even recognizable anymore?

- There are similarities in the faces of old Disney movies because the old characters were modeled off of actual celebrities.  Aurora and Anita are both meant to resemble Helene Stanley.  Alice and Wendy are both meant to resemble Kathryn Beaumont.  Peter is modeled off his voice actor, Bobby Driscoll, with the result that if you look at pictures of Bobby as a child, you will see Peter Pan right away.  Disney liked to do this thing were he treated his characters like they were being played by actual actors.  Snow White is the exception, and notice how she looks completely different from, say, Ariel and Belle (both based on Sherri Stoner).  (Pocahontas is modeled off of Irene Bedard.  Lady Tremaine and Maleficent are both supposed to be Eleanor Audley.  None of these things have anything to do with a limitation in animation.  I dare you to look at Eilonwy and Wendy and tell me they look remotely similar.)

- If Disney Co. can make Hans, Flynn, and Kristoff look like completely different people, there’s no reason Rapunzel, Elsa, and Anna all have to look the same.  (Although the Anna/Elsa resemblance is understanable, they are sisters.)

- Did you even read the original Snow Queen fairy tale? Because at least one of the main characters was a Lapp (Saami) woman.  You know indigenous Scandinavians are not actually white, right?

- Here’s something else you probably don’t know: The original Aladdin story takes place in China. Yep. Go read 1,001 Nights and you’ll be really surprised.  If Disney can turn traditionally Chinese characters into Arab characters, why can’t they turn traditionally white characters into non-white characters? Is there a double standard here wherein (a) only non-white narratives are allowed to be altered, and (b) only non-white characters need to be justified by the narrative?  Notice Cinderella & co all take place in fantasy worlds without a specific location.  Well, so does Frozen.  (Or can you really point out Arendelle on a world map?)  Frozen does not take place in our world.  The main character quite literally could have had blue, gray, or green skin.  There is no reason these characters had to be the same white people we see every other day.  So when Disney opts for more of the same, the question is…”Why?”

Seems like you’re just arguing white is the “default” when it’s not.  White people are only 9% of the global population…and yet they’re a good 97% of what we see on our TV screens.  A minority is being treated as a majority.  Even in the US, where Disney first started and where whites are a majority, 40% of the population is not white. 13.1% = black, 16.9% = Latino, 5.1% = Asian, 2.4% = biracial, 1.4% = Native American/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian.  Almost half the population is not white.  Why aren’t these people on our screens?  There is a problem with this. Don’t pretend there isn’t.

(via haiweewicci-blog)