This is so disgusting. You can LITERALLY buy brown skin with PI tattoos and a grass skirt for $44.95. This is exactly why so many Pacific Islanders have been critical of Disney’s Moana – because this is the result. This is not “just a cartoon”, this is our culture and how we are represented. C’mon…
Hey look lmfao it’s the exact fucking thing I’ve been saying this movie would lead to for months 🙂
Despite all of the recourse to ‘representation’ politics, we have to fundamentally recognise that this ‘representation’ of/ for Pasifika people comes in the context of global capitalism. What that means is that anything we are, anything we have, will be taken from us, stripped of any meaning which doesn’t directly contribute to producing capital, and then mass produced until it’s no longer profitable to do so.
This is where the politics of capitalist ‘representation’ get us. Literally brown skin suits. This is the culmination of the historical process which saw the mutilated body parts of my exterminated ancestors preserved, stolen and mass-marketed to Europeans in the 19th century. Now for kids.
Let Disney know that selling a fake skin of Indigenous Pasifika peoples is disgusting and unacceptable in 2016.
this is like beating my head into a wall but at least with head + wall i’d eventually pass out and not have to see this sort of racist bullshit.
I am fucking LIVID and heart broken. The above posts really capture exactly how I feel. Any excitement I had for this film is gone. What happened to the supposed research and respect for PI peoples? Obviously we are worthless unless we can be milked for cash. As if the centuries long colonisation and obliteration of our traditions and cultures wasn’t enough. Fuck you, Disney.
i’ve been reading for most of the day now about howard ashman, the lyricist for the little mermaid & beauty and the beast. he was one of the biggest creative forces behind both films, helping to shape their characters, narrative arcs, and themes as well as their music; he was also a gay man who was diagnosed with aids during the production of the little mermaid and died shortly after beauty and the beast was finished. alan menken, the composer who collaborated with him on both movies, said that beauty and the beast is heavily influenced by ashman’s experiences and perspective.
and i can’t stop thinking about it. i’ve always considered beauty and the beast to be one of the darkest films in the disney canon, as well as its most beautiful. it’s entirely about monsters, about the ways that people are determined to be wrong and dangerous: there’s the beast alone in his castle in the forest, and belle mocked and sneered at by her village, and even maurice carted off to an asylum.
and that it was written and conceived of in part by a gay man who, according to his sister, trained himself out of “effeminate” physical mannerisms when he was young because he was bullied for them, and who as he wrote it was dying of an incredibly stigmatized illness— like, god.
i mean when you just listen to those songs he wrote, the mob song (“the beast is] set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite / he’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free”), belle (“it’s a pity and a sin / she doesn’t quite fit in”)— and there was a cut song, human again, where the castle servants looked forward to rejoining the world.
like it’s obviously queer, but more than that, it’s the self-identification and self-validation of a man who knew this was this work was probably his last. at the end of the film, the beast is so sad, has succumbed entirely to despair and death. his society is coming to destroy him, and he can’t even be angry, because he doesn’t have anything left. but then he does. and he is still precious, and his life is still meaningful. he’s a person, and he can be loved. he can find happiness.
in the original beauty and the beast, the beast proposes marriage to belle every night and it’s her acquiescence that breaks the spell. in the disney movie, the beast only waits for belle to love him, because he cannot love himself. it’s such an unexpected blessing for both belle and the beast that they can find acceptance in each other, after both are so othered and dehumanized by their communities. their vulnerable joy in each other and themselves is so important, and their love song so wonderingly sweet. at the end, it is only when someone loves and accepts you that you stop being a monster.
john musker, one of the directors of beauty and the beast, told this story about how ashman cried at disneyland when the little mermaid’s music was integrated into a parade and said that he was glad to know that his music would outlive him. beauty and the beast was my favorite movie when i was young and trying not to be queer, when i felt very wrong and very alone. it has been unbelievably important in my life. and so i am also glad— and so grateful— that howard ashman’s music outlived him, and that he lived at all.
I want Moana to become huge. I don’t care if it gets the Frozen treatment or the Minions treatment. I don’t care if the songs get played over and over until they’re unbearable. I don’t care if it becomes annoying and people say, “ugh, not again” when their kids beg to watch it on TV.
All I want is Moana on birthday cakes. I want plushies of Moana in every toy store. I want kids dressing up as Moana for Halloween. Moana in coloring books and plastered on bus stops.
I want Moana — this curious, dark-skinned, curly-haired, stocky girl with no love-interest; this girl who dares to take destiny into her own hands — to be the first thing that people think of when they hear the words “Disney Princess.” I want her to become who little girls aspire to be.
Eh, while it’s great that these characters are independent, something about all these princesses of color not finding love at the end of their movies rubs me the wrong way. Just like how Disney patted itself on the back for a black princess but she was Frogger damn near the whole movie.
And it would’ve been a great opportunity to cast moc in romantic roles from that culture
^^^ I’m so conflicted because yes, always having a love interest is annoying but poc never get to have a love interest
Having the princesses of color not find love reinforces the idea that we have to strong and independent and aren’t needing of any support
But I do like it because it deviates from the norm
It might be cool if they had dudes in the movie who were interested and they had the princesses be like, “naw, I got shit to do, but maybe later!”
Cause then it would obviously be a choice, instead of a worldstate that WoC don’t get hetero love (I’m not even gonna wish for queer love).
This is actually a good example of the need for intersectional feminism.
it is very common that white girl characters have love interests and finding love be the plot line and basis for all their stories and interactions.
It is uncommon for a girl character of color to be seen as a potential love interest, in need of defense by a male character and/or support from a male character full stop.
This is because of the history of social devaluation of woc and infantilization of white women.
Thusly:
it is subversive for white female characters to not have love interests for once and to focus on strength outside of male attention.
while at the same time
is it subversive for woc to be love interests and treated with care and reverence and with support in relationships on screen.
The “norms” for two groups of women are different based on the historical interaction both groups have had to suffer under patriarchal and sexist/racist media.
This is why its okay to feel hurt and roll your eyes when you see people screaming about how michonne from the walking dead “dont need no man” because she’s too “strong” to want to be desired and cared for, while at the same time feel hurt and roll your eyes when Black Widow is suddenly too helpless to get herself free from a basic ass cage and needs to be rescued by her randomly inserted love interest.
If I had a dollar for every time someone complained about why Yeine in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms a) did not resolve her problems by cutting somebody, b) had moments when she cried or was afraid or needed support, and c) had a romantic relationship – period full stop, not that the relationship was badly written but that she had a relationship – I would never have needed to run a Patreon.
it is subversive for woc to be love interests and treated with care and reverence and with support in relationships on screen
Raise your hand if you’re still pissed that the First Latina Princess is on a TV show and doesn’t get a big screen release.
Raise your hand if you’re NEVER going to let go of the way Sofia the First was supposed to be Latina but then Disney backed off and made it all ambiguous because white people flipped their shit. (Because, you know, not like Nickelodeon did AWESOMELY with Dora the Explorer or anything.)
THAT’S THE CREATION OF MY HOME HE’S TALKING ABOUT MAUI PULLED AOTEAROA OUT OF THE OCEAN WITH THE FISH HOOK MADE FROM HIS GRANDFATHER’S JAW BONE ‘OKAY THIS MIGHT BE ALRIGHT’ SHE SAID THROUGH TEARS
Oh good, I get to debunk fairy tale ridiculousness again. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to use my fairy tale knowledge on here.
Okay, first of all, there is no such thing as an “original” version of a fairy tale; there are only “popular” or “accepted” versions. All versions of fairy tales are as valid as any other version given their history as oral tales; each tale twists and changes as it spreads to other cultures, and several tale types have similar tales that formed independently of each other in various places around the world (Cinderella is the most famous example, with over 1,000 recorded variations and some of the oldest versions being found in Greece, China, and Egypt).
Second of all, several of these are patently false. I’ll just go down the list.
Snow White and Hunchback are the two that are actually true. In the Grimms version of Snow White (”Little Snow White”), the Queen does ask for her liver and lungs (though this was later revised to the Queen asking for her heart) and she is forced to dance in red hot shoes until she dies. This is the norm for Snow White tales, though the specifics vary quite a lot. Hunchback is similarly grim, which makes since given that it’s based on a book by Victor Hugo (like, come on. This is the same guy that wrote Les Mis. You expected something different?). The Rapunzel one is also more or less true, as is the Hercules one.
Clarification on the Little Mermaid one: she doesn’t actually wind up in purgatory. Since she was a mermaid and not a human, she didn’t have a soul and so when she killed herself, became a “daughter of the air” and can earn a soul (and thus proceed up to heaven) if she does good deeds for mankind for 300 years. Purgatory is a Catholic construction, and the probability that Hans Christian Andersen was Catholic is very very small considering that Roman Catholicism remained illegal in Denmark for nearly three centuries after the Lutheran Reformation in the mid 1500s.
Cinderella: This is only true in the Grimms/German version. I’ve actually written a paper on revenge and retribution in Cinderella tales across the world, so I can tell you with a great deal amount of certainty that it greatly depends on which Cinderella tale you’re looking at for the fate of the stepmother/stepsisters. Perrault’s Cinderella/the French version, on which the Disney movie was based, ended with Cinderella forgiving her stepsisters and inviting them to live with her in the palace. The only thing they are denied is the ability to marry the prince.
Pocahontas: this one is pretty half-and-half; there is absolutely no evidence that John Smith raped and impregnated Pocahontas before, during, or after his time in Jamestown. Historical accounts maintain that Pocahontas was friends with John Smith and often visited Jamestown during the years he was there. When the English reported that Smith had died after being sent back to England to treat him for injuries from a gunpowder incident, she stopped visiting the settlement for a couple of years. It’s also maintained in the historical accounts that when she visited, she often brought food and kept several of the settlers from starving. Historical accounts do not maintain that they were lovers, that she was of suitable age for a relationship (period), or that there were any sexual implications to their relationship. It is only in fictional accounts of their relationship (particularly in the Disney version, where she was significantly aged up) that that relationship is portrayed as romantic.
(cont) There are a couple of scholars that maintain she was raped during her captivity by the English (which happened long after Smith left for England), but the majority of the scholarship agrees that she was not raped.
Her only child is by John Rolfe and he was conceived after they were married, so the ‘raped and impregnated’ claim is wrong as well.
She was also not kidnapped and taken to England. She and John Rolfe were married before they left for England…for a good two years, in fact. She and Rolfe traveled to England, stayed for a year and a half, and then boarded a ship to return to Virginia, where Pocahontas died of an unknown disease along the way.
Mulan: false. I’ll let this post do the explaining for me, because it explains it better than I ever could. The actual ballad of Hua Mulan says no such thing; the ending this post describes is from a book called the “Sui Tang Romance” and is basically fanfiction of the actual Hua Mulan legend. The tragic end is “a detail that cannot be found in any previous legends or stories associated Hua Mulan.”
Beauty and the Beast: patently and blatantly false. I have never been so insulted by a statement about a fairy tale in my life, and I argue about Cinderella on a regular basis. There is no BATB variant tale where the Beast ends up eating the girl after the wedding. The Beaumont/French tale (again, the version on which the Disney version was based), has the Beast dying of heartbreak because Beauty was late returning to the castle, but ends with the Beast and Beauty happily married after she proclaimed her love for him. Here are links to BATB tales around the world, just because I want to correct the awful monstrosity that was “the Beast ends up eating Belle after the wedding.” Also, here’s a link to my favorite BATB variant, the Norwegian “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” and a link to “Cupid and Psyche,” the tale on which many BATB tales are based. The Aarne-Thompson tale type for Beauty and the Beast is 425 for anyone interested (425A tales are Cupid and Psyche tales and 425C tales are BATB tales).
Basically, this post is a hodge-podge of mostly true to embarrassingly and infuriatingly false information. Do your own research, and don’t believe everything the internet tries to tell you about fairy tales.
I love you
Fairy tale debunkers are my heroes
Bless this
Ok but Hercules is so much more than that??
Yes he killed his wife and children after Hera makes him go mad, but that’s literally the beginning of his story. He goes through so fucking much after that, and after literally EVERY BAD THING HE DOES he goes to the Oracle and asks for forgiveness and what he can do to atone for his sins?? Hence his 12 labors and slavery under a queen.
Literally at the end (which I don’t want to go too into) of his life he is allowed on Mt. Olympus because of his labors and such and he and Hera reconcile and she sees him as a son.
Like he still ends up ok at the end just couldn’t catch a fuckin break during his life.
I’m so glad this post has so many grand corrections.
I’m a direct descendant of Pocahontas’s only child, so when I see the bullshit about Smith and the raping and everything I just–fury. Stop fucking with one of my ancestors, you ignorant fucksticks. She was the first known honest-to-donuts DIPLOMATIC ENVOY of the American tribes to European/English settlers, and because of her status as daughter of Powhatan (sp), she was recognized as a Princess by the court of England.
(And it’s unfortunately most likely that she died of influenza, given the account written by Rolffe of her death.)
There's a Mirror on the Wall 
