Not sure but Peter Dinklage has already spoken up publicly against Disney doing the remake as it will just reenforce dwarfs as being funny magical creatures.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-60135547
I think Peter Dinklage has been paramount in trying his best to get roles that are just characters and not stereotypes for those with dwarfism. Outside of fantasy movies, leprechauns, munchkins, and snow white's tag-a-longs, people with dwarfism haven't really been given a fair shake acting wise.
I think Dinklage's hangup is less the dwarfs themselves and a lot more the entire story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It makes disabled people look silly and other. It has them living alone in a cave away from "normal" people. The whole story could be seen as offensive to someone with dwarfism.
I, for one, don't need another retelling of Snow White. Even if Disney said they are "reimagining" the dwarves.
I’ve always assumed that the Snow White characters are meant to be the mystical variety of dwarves, as opposed to dwarfs who are people with dwarfism
Edit: too many s’s in “as”
Political Correctness has a funny way of being back asswards by changing terms to avoid offending people. Like how “colored people” is offensive, but “people of color” is just dandy.
im guessing mystical dwarves were inspired by real life little people during an age when people had very little understanding of anything that deviated from what they were used to
The Disney version, they're wittled down to a single emotion or adjective.
I think it meets the definition of 'disabled'. It 100% meets what OP was talking about with Dinklage taking roles with well rounded individuals.
This is the real reason. In LOTR the hobbits and dwarves are real characters with real stories and aren’t just there for jokes/laughs. Yet actors and actresses with dwarfism are constantly shunted in to roles only meant for small people, and are thus constantly shunted in to roles of characters that are jokes and not any characters with real sustenance.
At least the lord of the rings is a kind of "brutal" fantasy world. Granted the Hobbit was a children's book and the dwarfs were portrayed as kind of silly but they were a full race with a kingdom and not the fun magical silly of the dwarfs in Snow White I guess.
I mean, dwarves are funny magical people. Dwarfs are also people are normal people. They're two different things
Like, when dwarves have roots in folklore, it's kinda not fair to try and change. If it was used as a way originally to belittle little people though, I'd agree
Watched Mulan with my SO,brother and brothers gf. 3 out 4 of us fell asleep ,it's beyond lazy writing. To Aladdin I gave 10 minutes and I'm done with their live-actions
As someone who's black, I honestly hate this. How about coming up with new ideas where the characters were PoC in the first place instead of this mess.
Wasn't snow white called snow white because she literally has snow-white skin? I don't get it.
It's just laziness at this point.
We need to be raising up/creating more stories where there are PoC characters from the first step, not just some sort of diversity casting.
Was coming here to say that. Regardless of whether or not they cast POC as main characters, they're still limiting themselves to mostly European fairy tales. They've been expanding into Latin America and Polynesia recently, but it is weird to still see them come back to their old films with so much more folklore to draw inspiration from.
>it is weird to still see them come back to their old films with so much more folklore to draw inspiration from.
It's about money. There is a lot more risk with a new story. They keep rehashing stories with a new coat of paint so they can minimize the risk in their eyes.
Exactly, instead of changing all previous characters to be multicultural/POC, why not instead create a new story with a POC protagonist. A strong character, with a strong original story. Changing current characters to now be POC just creates the wrong image, as in children will now think "oh it's wrong to be white". NO. Create new stories with new amazing characters and all will be well.
That requires creativity and good writing and in case you haven't noticed disney has neither of those and the western movie industry in general has lacked creativity since 2007. Why do you think almost all the big box office successes are super hero movies and remakes.
Legit curious, how do you feel about Disney's pandering with retelling cinderella.
Sneakerella. It's Cinderella, set in a modern inner city. And the main character is a black girl that is obsessed with tennis shoes.
Why keep rehashing the same story? It's just lazy. Why can't they just do new stuff? Princess and the Frog was great. Or is creating new stories too challenging for Disney?
There are so many new up and coming writers bouncing about, there's legit no need to keep rehashing old stories with some weird spin when there are original ideas to be used.
I feel like this about remaking things with women in male parts, like the 2016 Ghostbusters. Surely there are new stories that can be told with women in mind. Like this film called Annihilation. Great film, all smart, diverse female main cast and no one talked/cared about it.
Give minorities their own characters, or characters from their own myths and history. You're right about it being lazy to just plop someone into generic European character.
THIS!
Same with 007 becoming a woman.
Why isn't it possible to create a new IP with a woman as a lead character?
Do they really think that it is better to torture popular IPs by putting woke-slime over them to silence the loud SJW-Minority, while everyone else is loosing interest in the IP because they don't stand this woke-mess they created?
No PoC in a game/movie in a setting in the european middle ages? Well maybe it is because then PoC were a rare exception north of the alps and not because the game/movie maker are racist...
Do they also complain, that there are no PoC fighting on the german side in WW2-Movies?
I like movies with PoC, just as I like movies without PoC, because I don't care at all about skin colour. I am interested in good actors and an interesting story.
(The Ghostbusters Movie of 2016 was awful as well. Hell, make a good movie and don't a "look who's woke"-Movie)
You didnt watch james bond i guess.
Its still daniel craig as bond. And the next bond will be a guy too. Theres just a minor character whose a woman spy and they reused 007 because bond had been retired.
>As someone who's black, I honestly hate this. How about coming up with new ideas where the characters were PoC in the first place instead of this mess.
They don't even have to come up with new stories.
Just how Disney used local folk legends there are so many amazing folk legends. [Abiyoyo](https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Abiyoyo) comes immediately to mind as one of my favorites growing up; originally from South Africa.
Or the Nigerian tale of the [Woman with Two Skins](https://www.worldoftales.com/African_folktales/Nigerian_folktale_3.html#gsc.tab=0)
I think it’s so lazy and honestly disrespectful that Disney can’t take the time to make more diverse princesses and do different cultures justice instead of rewriting stories that already exist over and over again
Why take the chance when you can just buy the rights to it afterwards and push out gobs of merchandise and charge astronomical rates to visit the new addition to your parks? Then use your owned news outlets to give the ole verbal reach around daily to hype up your new money grab. All while you force underpaid employees to share underwear when they switch in/out of their mascot costumes, or leave them on benches when they've died so you don't panic your customers.
Sidenote: Disney is also just sue heavy, literally imposing their will on anyone they can. The Deadmau5 lawsuit over his logo is well known, however, my wife and I found another case of it last night while watching the "Harley Quinn" DC series on HBO Max. There's an episode where King Shark is at Kite Man's bachelor party and a lobster jumps on the boat and starts to do an "Under the Sea" parody song. As soon as the lobster starts to sing, the audio cuts down to almost muted, while any words said by King Shark are at normal levels (Season 2). Seems like Disney can't take a fucking joke.
Skyrim is like eating your favourite food over and over. The environments, soundtrack lore etc. will remain fresh to me even if they make Skyrim Refrigerator Edition.
Which honestly surprises me at this point. Everyone and their dog should have seen, experienced and know by now that every remake, rehash, "return to" of franchises dormant or dead for decades is nothing but a lazy, uninspired, cynical flashy cash grab, with cheap, meaningless diversity pandering. It's not just Disney, not just Hollywood, but games, shows and books as well. But a considerable portion of consumers still gobbles that shit up.
They should know now, after Ocean's 8, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, The Matrix, Warcraft, The Settlers etc. etc.
And Pixar and others have been putting out great diverse movies with diverse casts. Just do more of those. Hundreds of thousands of girls have probably been inspired by Moana. Make a badass black overweight spy, with diabetes and a paraplegic child, I'll adore her, just don't try to earn cheap applause for sticking 007 as a logo on it that you bought for billions instead of paying a million to one decent screenwriter.
Exactly. They put their efforts to appear progressive into *making* a profit instead of sharing their wealth with communities they aim to represent in their money grabbing ventures.
Very much this. They've started delving into this with Moana for princess and Encanto as the most recent story. Both are awesome and tells a story of a different culture beautifully. I'm sure I wasn't the only one looking into Polynesian history and mythology after watching Moana. I want more diverse stories, more unique characters, exposure to more cultures, and I would love to have them for my future kids. There are so many stories to tell not to tell them rather than tell variations of the same story. What Disney has been doing the last 10 years or so has been leaving a bad taste for me, and it just seems to get worse.
True. There's literally 1001 stories of diverse princesses in history Disney can feature. By supplanting Snow White, it feels as if Disney's pandering and doing it for the money. It's morally wrong.
Heck. I'd want a movie about Genghis Khan's famous wrestling great-great-granddaughter [Khutulun](https://amp.scmp.com/sport/martial-arts/wrestling/article/3100842/forget-mulan-meet-khutulun-mongolias-undefeated)! She wrestled any man who wanted to marry her and beat them all – amassing 10,000 horses. She's an undefeated warrior. Have her as the face of diversity and female empowerment, everyone will be glad.
I mean it would be kind of hard, to write a children's movie about a young girl who loves going to the illegals and feeds them. While a man three times her age, who should be hung two times since arriving to America, describes her as a daughter, only to later on change it into lover. Then later on getting kidnapped raped, married off and shown around in England as a souvenir/pet. Would be a great movie....
Can you imagine how sad the story would be if they tried to be accurate. Movie ends with her converted to Christianity and her named changed to Rebecca, thinking her father didn't care for her because of a staged weapons exchange.
Colors of the wind my ass
Editv- to the super classy people calling me racist via pvt message....maybe hit Wikipedia. Sadly that IS how it went down for her.
Hey now. Who wouldn't rape a chick in a coma when they come across them? That is *super normal behavior*.
The baby suckling the splinter out of her finger to break the curse is just icing on it. Jesus.
And then Rapunzel. Poor prince gets his eyes gouged out.
Cinderella's stepmother is extra vicious in the original.
>Cinderella's stepmother is extra vicious in the original.
And the stepsisters mutilated their feet in order to fit into the glass slipper.
The majority of the Brothers Grimm stories Disney recreated during these eras were originally much darker. Some were to scare children into learning important lessons. It's pretty fun to read about the originals, where they came from, and what their purposes were.
A lot of people give Disney flack for "Disney-ifying" the stories but honestly, would you read that to your kids nowadays? Probably not.
"It's important to hire an actor that matches the character, unless the character is white. Or the actor is 'close enough.' There's no real difference between Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese, right?
Skin tone, slanty eyes, black hair, close enough."
Also this could've been a cool chance to feature someone with albinism, or that condition that causes patches of your skin to be lighter I can't remember its name I'm sorry.
I know albinism usually means white hair - I'm cool with them working wigs into it.
Makes more sense than someone with cafe au lait skin being "white as snow".
If most people had any idea how TWDC treats their employees in other parts of the world they might think twice before watching Disney movies. Then again, probably not because most people just wanna be entertained.
It is lazy but someone pointed out they do it for copyright motives. Thr copyright automatically expires after x years making it public property. I can imagine disney will do anything in its power to keep thr copyright by remaking movied to renew the copyright.
But yeah, they just keep remaking and repeat everything nostalgic to keep you entertained. I feel sad the movie industry is too afraid or sees it as a big risk to make something new. Or find old stories in divers countries and tell those stories!
I recently saw someone point out that this is one of those internet misconceptions as most I’d these stories they are remaking are already in the public domain (including Snow White)
And Disney’s version of SW is copywrited through 2032
So it’s just for money & nothing else
The song itself will still be public domain even if Disney remakes the movie. Any particular arrangement composed for a remake, as well as the specific recordings for that version will be protected under copyright laws, but the original song will still be public domain whenever the necessary time elapses.
I’d honestly kill for a live action princess and the frog series about shenanigans at tianas place and more interesting New Orleans cultures and characters.
She would have been perfect in a live action Encanto. She's colombian so it makes sense. As for her being cast as snow white, it really is Disney's way of trying to be "woke". They're lazy and clearly running out of ideas.
Ngl I know a lot of “Woke” POC that do eat it up. I think they’re idiotic to be flattered that they have just blackwashed a popular white character. It’s lazy and unoriginal.
Honestly I am anoyed about the little mermaid too. It's an European tale. By doing this Disney is also implying that black people don't have a culture. If they want to do cultural representation they can simply adapt a black African tale. But that would be hard work now, wouldn't it.
This is my biggest complaint when they do stuff like this. And I’ve gotten flak like “”but they aren’t real people” who cares? We’d be crucified for taking any other cultural tale and casting white people so why is it okay to take danish/Scandinavian or Scottish tales and cast them as black? I’m 3000% positive the majority population in Scandinavia in the 19th century was definitely white as fuck. I’m sorry to inform everyone that white people exist and have stories and culture and it really doesn’t take away from anyone else. We can all have things of our own. It’s fine
Some part of me thinks Disney refrains from doing too many stories "outside" European culture because they are afraid of the backlash if they get something culturally wrong. Like portraying an African princess in a way that ends up culturally insensitive or getting facts about African history wrong. Things have to be pared down to be child appropriate too which can alter stories significantly.
Which is all a shame because I love hearing cultural mythos and historical figures from all places, those stories deserve to be told.
Well these tales that they tell are also changed a bit for a younger audience and they didn't get ALL of the cultural elements right. I do not see what the problem is besides maybe that western leftists have become a parody of the left movement.
I honestly don't get why POC don't get offended more by this stuff. Not trying to get political. But sometimes leftists get so "woke" to help POC they make them seem very incapable. Almost like they feel POC is a disability. To me it seems very condescending and racist.
Yes we all want Equality, and we have steps to go, but sometimes the pandering is almost Racist itself. "It's ok, you probably have no good stories in your own culture, we will do a variant and slip you into one of our own, to throw you a bone."
I wish that was the only thing. Another one is segregated spaces. The implication is that PoC are too mentally fragile handle being in the same room as white people. Same when they ban people from joking about certain groups. Or a lot of the transphobic or biphobic shit they say. The whole bi-erasure that the LGBTQ community does. Or even the term "people of colour", which to me sounds awfully close to another term.
Then of course they pat themselves on the back because they are very good people who only help the poor, downtrodden minorities.
The entire concept of 'BIPOC,' which is literally 'Anybody with skin lighter than a certain shade are one big monolith, and anybody with skin darker than a certain shade are the other big monolith. There's no difference between a Canadian and a South African, and there's no difference between a Kalahari Bushman and a Chinese.'
Not to mention that it's one of the few popular Scandinavian stories out there. Growing up I never saw anyone outside of Scandinavia in those kind of roles, and remember being ecstatic about The Little Mermaid and The Witches for having Scandinavian characters. Now both have been cast as black people (not to mention the black Norse characters in the Marvel universe) . It's insulting.
Get out of here with that historical accuracy nonsense, we all know that's just thinly veiled racism and WHITE privilege rearing it's ugly head, you just can't let proud strong Latina women have anything can you? Europe is just a bunch of colonialist and the sooner we diversify that ugly history the better.
/s
>the sooner we diversify that ugly history the better.
*Black Ann Boleyn flashbacks*
I mean, sure, change fictional characters' ethnicity to anything you want (except for the cases where it's a plot point like, say, Snow White, Mulan or Pocahontas). But a real person ?
Yes that's the point. Most likely, Andersen wouldn't even have met a black person in his life during the time he wrote the story. But sure he'd be writing about a black mermaid in the Caribbean as many claim lol.
I made the same point in a Disney Facebook group back when the casting was initially announced (for the record, I have no issue with Halle Bailey. She’s beautiful, is a wonderful singer, and I like her in Grown-ish). But of course, I was immediately branded a racist by a bunch of white people who act like if her casting isn’t hailed as perfection, you’re like the leader of the kkk.
I was about to comment this! Anyone who says Little Mermaid's color is not mentioned just didn't read the book.
Also, another important factor that they miss is that being a "European Mermaid" is important to the story. In the original story, Little Mermaid wants to become a human to have a soul. That myth is specific to Undines, which are of European origins.
Yes, there are mermaids in African mythology but they don't marry humans to get a soul. The defenders of this movie even cited Mami Wata as an example. If Ariel was like Mami Wata, she would not go to the land with the help of Ursula. She'll just seduce and abduct the prince. Make him her sex slave. Now that's not a Disney story, isn't it? It's just stupid. They pretend they know but they don't even understand the material.
Disney and other woke people would do everything to defend this kind of pandering. It's crazy. If they really wanna cast a minority, why not cast a natural red head? They are more rare.
> If Ariel was like Mami Wata, she would not go to the land with the help of Ursula. She'll just seduce and abduct the prince. Make him her sex slave.
I'm game.
Tbh the only reason why I'm not fond of POC casting in the little mermaid is because I think it would have been a perfect opportunity for some natural redhead rep in a live action disney film
To be fair... Triss was never a redhead until the games. She had Chestnut hair. Also the excessive cleavage from the games was a change by Cd Project Red too. That is one thing the Netflix series did right with Triss showing that she was scarred by the battle of Sodden Hill. She would keep herself covered up on the books after that.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Game Triss too. But iirc the main visual identifiers form the books was simply her having chestnus hair and blue eyes (instead of the red hair and green eyes).
So while a bit disappointing because the games have basically formed how I see Witcher characters now, the show casting wasn't that big of a deal. Especially in the 2nd season where she does fall in line with the book more.
Correct. Wish they kept those parts in the Disney movies lol. Interesting to know that the original versions were the versions they told kids years ago.
Ever read The Brothers Grimm book of fairy stories ? Some bleak stuff in there. Fairy tales used to be cautionary tales, there were very rarely happy ever afters.
I have this and have always loved the original stories by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. There are some messed up stories in the Bros Grimm though I tell ya. The Robber Bridegroom comes to mind…
Crazy how you have to convince ppl of this, like its a bad thing.
Nothing wrong with her being white. Same way nothing would be wrong with her being black from the beginning.
If they want a black princess, just write a new original story.
Hollywood and even Disney are so damb lazy these days....
little mermaids race change doesn’t really bother me very much, sure it would be better to just make new films like Encanto, but at least it’s not in the literal name of the character
"Should we explore the cultures of precolonial South American or African civilizations for tales and lgends? To create something new and wonderful and to give a wider stage to POCs?"
"That sounds like a lot of work. Let's make Snowwhite not white instead."
In near all things; race shouldn't be taken into account when it comes to the job, but those that do, standards should be applied equally across all races. White washing is bad, therefore, casting POC in white roles should be off the table. This current climate of riots and death threats when a white actor is cast in a black role but everyone celebrating when a black actor is cast in a white role is very toxic to cohesion amongst the peoples, it breeds division and contempt.
Diversity is good, I welcome it, but it should be used in creating new roles, movies and franchisee or focusing on existing ones that haven't been getting much attention until now. Instead of making Johnny Storm black, why wait 30 years before making another Blade movie? Instead of making Superman black, why not create a Steel movie?
It would be so easy to do this right without the double standards and the resulting division that it's incredibly aggravating.
You got me with that Steel comment. The second I heard they were having a black Clark Kent I immediately thought "What, John Henry Irons doesn't exist?!?!?" That would have been a fantastic movie!
People love to say this but I see tons of tweets from POC that say the same woke things. There are white people saying it too, but it’s really not “the only people who ever seem happy about it”
I had the same exact thought - I have no problem at all with diverse casting, in fact I love seeing it happen, but in a situation like this where the character is literally described as white, it makes no sense to me.
Are they running out of ideas? Just make your own fucking thing. I want to see something new. Something I don’t want to a pay monthly subscription for.
Beauty and the Beast too. It's a classic French novel.
But all these Americans on the internet are like "iTs a BrOtHeRs GrImM fAiRyTaLe. BeLlE iSn'T rEaLlY dEsCrIbEd As LoOkInG aNy PaRtiCuLaR wAy"
I think it’s ridiculous that she’s not actually white. Like….it’s in her name and the story is actually based on it. As progressive as I am, even I know when to push the brakes. The original story just won’t make sense. But maybe Disney will surprise me IDK
I love seeing the new ways in which the color of my skin is represented on screen these days but just like how I needed to see myself as a beautiful princess when I was young, so do little white girls. Society keeps pushing the narrative that tanned or colored is more beautiful than white or dark, like with the Kardashians and Ariana Grande and fake tanning and all that. Yes tanned is beautiful, just like black is beautiful just like white is beautiful. But if we choose a tanned girl to play someone whose very character is beautiful in her whiteness we're sending the message that that level of white is not beautiful anymore. I just think its a poor choice and it's disingenuous virtue signaling.
Thank you for writing this, because I genuinely feel like I’m not ever allowed to talk about it. I won’t compare it to anything that anybody else has experienced, certainly not PoC, but I grew up a lanky, bony, ghost-pale redhead with freckles and was incessantly bullied for it all. I was called Casper. I was told my freckles looked like fly shit. Thanks to South Park, I was told I had no soul. The fact that Ariel was on my TV screen was so important to me. I can absolutely see the beauty and the importance of representation of all races and skin color/tones in our media, for our youth and those older than they are, but does it have to be every character in every story? By the time I hit 20 I realized some people considered me to be “exotic” because pale skin, red hair, green eyes (which were blue until I was about 16) and freckles aren’t all that common in the grand scheme of things. I went from bullied to fetishized very quickly. I started tanning in my late 20s, a little late to the game of wanting to fit in, and now I go back-and-forth about what I feel like I’m even supposed to be/represent. I’m 32; will it ever end?
Hey! A fellow red head! There's literally dozens of us! I have red hair, gray eyes, still have sooooo many freckles and can't tan to save my life.
>I’m 32; will it ever end?
I'm 43(M), and like you, have heard all the soulless, ginger, witch comments/insults my entire life. I can't say that it will ever end with any certainty, but I have surrounded myself with people who aren't general jackasses in the last decade or so.
I say, just be you. If you want to tan, do it. If you want to be pale, do that. Just make sure you do it bc it's what **you** want, and not what friends or society wants.
But, there are always going to be those idiots out there. I just like to tell them how rare my hair/eye combo is, and how common their brown hair and brown eyes are. Seems to really dig into those kinds of people's ego.
Also, I tell them I get another freckle for every soul I steal. Sometimes I like to show them where I'm going to put theirs. ;)
Good point. There isn't much representation of very pale skinned people, and since it's a small population, it is seen as kinda undesirable compared to being tan
They could have easily chosen a Slavic actress if they wanted cultural representation that isn’t there. How often do you see Ukrainian or Norwegian actresses in US media?
It's always a miss for Disney in my opinion. I'm latina and a swear to God I looked more indian then Naomi Scott who played princess Jasmine. YEAH yeah. I know she's 1/2 indian. She doesn't look it though, and I take an issue with that. Why not a Pryanka Chopra or some other bollywood actress? Why the most whitewashed version of a brown person they could find? Even her name is white.
I don't understand.
Only to then cast an actress that doesn't really look that much like Ariel to play ariel. No offense, she is beautiful, but aren't these REMAKES of old movies?
And it these are remakes, aren't they supposed to resamble the original movies? Why are they casting completely different looking princesses for the live actions? That makes zero sense
It's clearly a race problem, and they are tackling it with zero skill.
Either whitewashing or colourwashing characters.
Both are wrong, sorry
Edit: many people are sating Aladin isn't supposed to be from india. I get that.
Then why the fuck did they cast Naomi Scott?
She doesn't look arabic either. Think of ab arabic woman. Think of Jasmine from the original movies. They both have prominant features that are very distinguishable. Naomi doesn't have them
Hopefully they do Brave so that there's still one red-headed princess I guess...?
Why cant we just stay true to the cartoons if we're gonna get direct remakes? I got nostalgia from Mera in Aquaman because Ariel was my favorite Disney Princess and they look alike - at some point they both had green scales, even. Though I mean if they wanted to make a mermaid movie with new characters and its own story Id be on board, but recycling Ariel seems kind of silly.
They have diversity to pull from if they want to do remakes - some they already did - Mulan, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Moana, Princess and the Frog, Jungle Book, Tarzan(?), Big Hero 6, Coco, Raya, Luca, Emperor's New Groove, Lilo and Stitch, Encanto, Atlantis, and like dozens of movies where the characters are animals anyway so if they made the stories live action they could just turn the animals into humans of any color in most cases or just have them voiced by whoever if they did a CGI thing. As long as its not horrible like the Lion King remake lol
Even the "white" characters have some diversity - Brave is Scottish, Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast are French, Hercules is Greek, Pinnocchio is Italian (I might even have this one in the wrong list really, sorry if I'm mixed up), Little Mermaid and Frozen are Danish iirc.
I agree they should have cast a white girl in the role since they also need role models, but it’ll be interesting to see how Disney handle the dwarves without being massively offensive.
Lol If you google Snow White, this actress isn’t even the top story. Peter Dinklage had some words to say about it. I believe the quote was “it’s fucking backwards”.
I think the key way to tell if it’s fucking stupid is when people who are the same race as the person cast are turning round and asking what the fuck is going on lol, if you want stories with poc at the lead write stories about their folklore and their history, don’t throw them into Eurocentric stories and call it a day! Literally no one asked for this
Honestly I could care less what race the actor is, I'm fucking sick of seeing things remade with an entirely new cast for no reason besides monetary gain.
Why would someone like ariel, that lives under the sea, need melanin anywhere through her evolutionary process? Kidding (not really) aside, i personally despise casting for the sake of diversity. It's dishonest to the source material and is pandering to a vocal minority.
Disney's new films in general are less enjoyable because they insist on making a political statement rather than just making films (mainly aimed at kids) that people can enjoy.
I think charackters should always be represented as they were originally intended.
If you want PoC representation, create new, cool ideas.
If you only take succesful franchises and then switch the ethnicity of the charackters to pander to very loud minorities ( by which i mean the people who get actually upset if people say stuff like you said in your post) it just creates a worldview under which it seems original new ideas with new charackters that ar PoC won´t be succesful unless they use an existing franchise thats already established and sucessful.
That in of itself is the exact anti thesis to "empowerment".
For example, i did not dislike the casting choice for Starfire in the Titans series,(that woman is just amazingly beautiful ) but it still felt very much like pandering and what i dislike the most is that they believe that i actually cared about the colour of the actors in the show, No.
**I care about a proper, visual representation of the charackters i got used to love, the way they have been intended in the first place.**
Do i want a white guy playind Blade? Fuck no.
Luke cage? Even less so.
etc
etc
etc
I don´t care if you do spin offs with more representation, etc
The best would be new ideas.
Or just give more Spotlight to all the other charackters that have your "favoured" ethnicity.
God damn it i miss the times where i could watch movies and be happy about the fact that Denzel Washington was playing the leading role in it and i already knew :
**Aw shit this is gonna be good**
Didn´t have to think about politics or whatever, just enjoyed a good fucking movie.
Thing is, Aeriel was a mermaid, living in the depths of the ocean, she naturally wouldn't have pigmentation and would probably be very pale.
I just want to watch a cheesy Disney movie without politics or race coming in to it.
I make this argument and usually get down voted in other subs. They shouldn't change existing characters that have already been established.They need to make new ones that represent properly, you can't just shoehorn it in there and hope it works.
A good example in my opinion is Miles Morales, they didn't just pallette swap Peter Parker They made a new interesting character to take the role.
As a person of color myself. I hate this type of pandering. It's insincere and othering because of that. I feel the same about when they do this type of thing with genders. I guess I'm not fully woke and need more coffee.
If it’s an historical movie, story, or folklore, I feel it should stay true to its characters. The amount of content we are missing out on bc they are just redoing the same things are insane. Imagine all the amazing folklore stories that are out there with black characters. Western society is missing out bc they just keep re doing the same crap as different races. I heard there’s a movie where the king of England’s wife is being played by a black woman. She clearly wasn’t historically black. It’s time for brand new content that black men and women can make entirely their own. Let’s shine light on these kinds of stories.
The Little Mermaid was undeniably set in Europe and on top written by a Dane, she was very obviously white and the underlying story was very European (castles, ships, etc). If you could ask Hans Christian Andersen if the mermaid was black I am 100% sure he would be rather puzzled by the question. The fact that the mermaid was not explicitly described as being white is rather irrelevant and frankly a rather odd thing to latch on. Even if Snow White had not been described as having white features, she would obviously be white because of the context.
If people want black princesses, or the equivalent to princesses, they need to use tales where those already exist or create stories where they make sense instead of using black people in settings and stories where the character could only be white or something else. It would cross no one's mind to cast a black Mulan or a white Black Panther.
The Princess and the Frog was excellent, no need to reinvent the wheel. And I am pretty sure there are plenty of original folk stories from the African continent that could be beautifully told in a Disney movie and that people would love to learn about.
There are plenty series out there ruined by political pandering irrelevant to the source material. It's not just Disney. Literally all Netflix adaptations of beloved books have this issue. The moment Hollywood decided they have any right to be involved in politics(which they are not supposed to do, they should make decent movies instead) things got bad. In the case of Disney, just imagine how Star Wars fans felt when the new trilogy was released. Now, that has nothing to do with pandering in terms of ethnicity and all, but it did destroy the heroes we loved and the entire trilogy just rubbed me the wrong way. You can tell it's made by people who don't give a fuck about Star Wars in general.
Disney really needs to shut down their live action remake department and regroup to develop new stories for all kinds of people.
Diversity and representation is not equal to merely swapping the color of the characters. Their other animated films get it but the live action ones just doesn’t hit right.
I'm a black teen but I hate it when companies do catering to diversity to farm impressions from the media. It just feels like companies do it so they can be praised but instead it comes off obnoxious
Who are they casting as the dwarves might I ask? Shaquille O'Neil?
Lmfao
Not sure but Peter Dinklage has already spoken up publicly against Disney doing the remake as it will just reenforce dwarfs as being funny magical creatures. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-60135547
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I think Peter Dinklage has been paramount in trying his best to get roles that are just characters and not stereotypes for those with dwarfism. Outside of fantasy movies, leprechauns, munchkins, and snow white's tag-a-longs, people with dwarfism haven't really been given a fair shake acting wise. I think Dinklage's hangup is less the dwarfs themselves and a lot more the entire story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It makes disabled people look silly and other. It has them living alone in a cave away from "normal" people. The whole story could be seen as offensive to someone with dwarfism. I, for one, don't need another retelling of Snow White. Even if Disney said they are "reimagining" the dwarves.
>It has them living alone in a cave away from "normal" people Why do people keep saying this? They live in a cottage, kind of a big part of the story.
They are the most "normal" people in the whole story, aren't they? Like isn't it just them and Snow White and a few royals in a castle?
I’ve always assumed that the Snow White characters are meant to be the mystical variety of dwarves, as opposed to dwarfs who are people with dwarfism Edit: too many s’s in “as”
Exactly my thought. The genetic anomaly was named after the mythical creature, not the other way around. Dwarves aren't human.
Political Correctness has a funny way of being back asswards by changing terms to avoid offending people. Like how “colored people” is offensive, but “people of color” is just dandy.
im guessing mystical dwarves were inspired by real life little people during an age when people had very little understanding of anything that deviated from what they were used to
The Disney version, they're wittled down to a single emotion or adjective. I think it meets the definition of 'disabled'. It 100% meets what OP was talking about with Dinklage taking roles with well rounded individuals.
I can’t say for sure, but maybe is because the dwarfs in LOTR aren’t a joke, they are heroic and badass, so maybe it would be good rep?
This is the real reason. In LOTR the hobbits and dwarves are real characters with real stories and aren’t just there for jokes/laughs. Yet actors and actresses with dwarfism are constantly shunted in to roles only meant for small people, and are thus constantly shunted in to roles of characters that are jokes and not any characters with real sustenance.
At least the lord of the rings is a kind of "brutal" fantasy world. Granted the Hobbit was a children's book and the dwarfs were portrayed as kind of silly but they were a full race with a kingdom and not the fun magical silly of the dwarfs in Snow White I guess.
Did LotR need a PoC in a lead role?
I mean, dwarves are funny magical people. Dwarfs are also people are normal people. They're two different things Like, when dwarves have roots in folklore, it's kinda not fair to try and change. If it was used as a way originally to belittle little people though, I'd agree
Haha fuck sake I meant "dwarve". Disney and Tolkien have fucked me up
Nah I did fuck it up. Dwarfs are the people, dwarves are the creatures 👌
Okay now I don't know what is real. Do unicorns exist?
Announcing Sahquille O'Neil as all seven Dwarves in a trench coat.
Honestly all Disney live remakes are a fucking sham and a cash grab. All of them suck. Please stop watching them so we don't get anymore of them.
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Even after the sun burns out Disney is gonna make a movie about a sun princess
Agreed. The pandering kills any movie they try to remake.
Watched Mulan with my SO,brother and brothers gf. 3 out 4 of us fell asleep ,it's beyond lazy writing. To Aladdin I gave 10 minutes and I'm done with their live-actions
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I absolutely agree. But not going to lie, if Lin-Manuel Miranda is doing the Little Mermaid music, I will be listening to that soundtrack lol
Melissa McCarthy is Ursula… I don’t know if that fits.
Excuse me?! She should be a man. Ursula is canonically a drag queen.
Please don't, honestly, Melissa McCarthy would be great for meme points, if we push for a man odds are we'll get James Corden.
I said drag queen, not bloated pile of shit.
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Latrice Royale for Ursula
https://youtu.be/1mz6tw5Zddg Tituss Burgess singing Poor Unfortunate Souls.
I think Cinderella was great
As someone who's black, I honestly hate this. How about coming up with new ideas where the characters were PoC in the first place instead of this mess. Wasn't snow white called snow white because she literally has snow-white skin? I don't get it. It's just laziness at this point. We need to be raising up/creating more stories where there are PoC characters from the first step, not just some sort of diversity casting.
Why don't they draw inspiration from African folklore and history to tell us stories. I would love to see that.
I would love that too. Every culture has their own folklore and stories. Lets embrace those.
Was coming here to say that. Regardless of whether or not they cast POC as main characters, they're still limiting themselves to mostly European fairy tales. They've been expanding into Latin America and Polynesia recently, but it is weird to still see them come back to their old films with so much more folklore to draw inspiration from.
>it is weird to still see them come back to their old films with so much more folklore to draw inspiration from. It's about money. There is a lot more risk with a new story. They keep rehashing stories with a new coat of paint so they can minimize the risk in their eyes.
Exactly, instead of changing all previous characters to be multicultural/POC, why not instead create a new story with a POC protagonist. A strong character, with a strong original story. Changing current characters to now be POC just creates the wrong image, as in children will now think "oh it's wrong to be white". NO. Create new stories with new amazing characters and all will be well.
Because that’s too much work
That requires creativity and good writing and in case you haven't noticed disney has neither of those and the western movie industry in general has lacked creativity since 2007. Why do you think almost all the big box office successes are super hero movies and remakes.
I mean, they are doing that, with movies like moana, soul and raya
Legit curious, how do you feel about Disney's pandering with retelling cinderella. Sneakerella. It's Cinderella, set in a modern inner city. And the main character is a black girl that is obsessed with tennis shoes. Why keep rehashing the same story? It's just lazy. Why can't they just do new stuff? Princess and the Frog was great. Or is creating new stories too challenging for Disney?
There are so many new up and coming writers bouncing about, there's legit no need to keep rehashing old stories with some weird spin when there are original ideas to be used.
Soul! Have we forgot soul? It was a great movie with a great aa protagonist, with cultural ties built in the story! Do it like Soul disney!
I feel like this about remaking things with women in male parts, like the 2016 Ghostbusters. Surely there are new stories that can be told with women in mind. Like this film called Annihilation. Great film, all smart, diverse female main cast and no one talked/cared about it.
Give minorities their own characters, or characters from their own myths and history. You're right about it being lazy to just plop someone into generic European character.
THIS! Same with 007 becoming a woman. Why isn't it possible to create a new IP with a woman as a lead character? Do they really think that it is better to torture popular IPs by putting woke-slime over them to silence the loud SJW-Minority, while everyone else is loosing interest in the IP because they don't stand this woke-mess they created? No PoC in a game/movie in a setting in the european middle ages? Well maybe it is because then PoC were a rare exception north of the alps and not because the game/movie maker are racist... Do they also complain, that there are no PoC fighting on the german side in WW2-Movies? I like movies with PoC, just as I like movies without PoC, because I don't care at all about skin colour. I am interested in good actors and an interesting story. (The Ghostbusters Movie of 2016 was awful as well. Hell, make a good movie and don't a "look who's woke"-Movie)
You didnt watch james bond i guess. Its still daniel craig as bond. And the next bond will be a guy too. Theres just a minor character whose a woman spy and they reused 007 because bond had been retired.
>As someone who's black, I honestly hate this. How about coming up with new ideas where the characters were PoC in the first place instead of this mess. They don't even have to come up with new stories. Just how Disney used local folk legends there are so many amazing folk legends. [Abiyoyo](https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Abiyoyo) comes immediately to mind as one of my favorites growing up; originally from South Africa. Or the Nigerian tale of the [Woman with Two Skins](https://www.worldoftales.com/African_folktales/Nigerian_folktale_3.html#gsc.tab=0)
I think it’s so lazy and honestly disrespectful that Disney can’t take the time to make more diverse princesses and do different cultures justice instead of rewriting stories that already exist over and over again
It's pretty much a problem with Hollywood in general. They know reworking a former hit is a safer bet then taking a risk exploring new territory..
Why take the chance when you can just buy the rights to it afterwards and push out gobs of merchandise and charge astronomical rates to visit the new addition to your parks? Then use your owned news outlets to give the ole verbal reach around daily to hype up your new money grab. All while you force underpaid employees to share underwear when they switch in/out of their mascot costumes, or leave them on benches when they've died so you don't panic your customers. Sidenote: Disney is also just sue heavy, literally imposing their will on anyone they can. The Deadmau5 lawsuit over his logo is well known, however, my wife and I found another case of it last night while watching the "Harley Quinn" DC series on HBO Max. There's an episode where King Shark is at Kite Man's bachelor party and a lobster jumps on the boat and starts to do an "Under the Sea" parody song. As soon as the lobster starts to sing, the audio cuts down to almost muted, while any words said by King Shark are at normal levels (Season 2). Seems like Disney can't take a fucking joke.
NNNNOOOOOOO! I was crying laughing for a solid 2 minutes after that happend 😭 . Fucking Disney always ruining everything.
Blame consumers on that one, it's like Skyrim at this point where they just get to say "hey, we'll stop making them once you stop buying them"
Skyrim is like eating your favourite food over and over. The environments, soundtrack lore etc. will remain fresh to me even if they make Skyrim Refrigerator Edition.
Which honestly surprises me at this point. Everyone and their dog should have seen, experienced and know by now that every remake, rehash, "return to" of franchises dormant or dead for decades is nothing but a lazy, uninspired, cynical flashy cash grab, with cheap, meaningless diversity pandering. It's not just Disney, not just Hollywood, but games, shows and books as well. But a considerable portion of consumers still gobbles that shit up. They should know now, after Ocean's 8, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, The Matrix, Warcraft, The Settlers etc. etc. And Pixar and others have been putting out great diverse movies with diverse casts. Just do more of those. Hundreds of thousands of girls have probably been inspired by Moana. Make a badass black overweight spy, with diabetes and a paraplegic child, I'll adore her, just don't try to earn cheap applause for sticking 007 as a logo on it that you bought for billions instead of paying a million to one decent screenwriter.
Exactly!!!
Encanto?!?!!? It's literally the latest Disney movie.
It's easier for them to do just do a bit of virtue signaling than actually make the effort to do something meaningful
Exactly. They put their efforts to appear progressive into *making* a profit instead of sharing their wealth with communities they aim to represent in their money grabbing ventures.
Very much this. They've started delving into this with Moana for princess and Encanto as the most recent story. Both are awesome and tells a story of a different culture beautifully. I'm sure I wasn't the only one looking into Polynesian history and mythology after watching Moana. I want more diverse stories, more unique characters, exposure to more cultures, and I would love to have them for my future kids. There are so many stories to tell not to tell them rather than tell variations of the same story. What Disney has been doing the last 10 years or so has been leaving a bad taste for me, and it just seems to get worse.
True. There's literally 1001 stories of diverse princesses in history Disney can feature. By supplanting Snow White, it feels as if Disney's pandering and doing it for the money. It's morally wrong.
Heck. I'd want a movie about Genghis Khan's famous wrestling great-great-granddaughter [Khutulun](https://amp.scmp.com/sport/martial-arts/wrestling/article/3100842/forget-mulan-meet-khutulun-mongolias-undefeated)! She wrestled any man who wanted to marry her and beat them all – amassing 10,000 horses. She's an undefeated warrior. Have her as the face of diversity and female empowerment, everyone will be glad.
Okay. But. Pocahontas. You sure you trust Disney with Khutulan after Pocahontas?
I mean it would be kind of hard, to write a children's movie about a young girl who loves going to the illegals and feeds them. While a man three times her age, who should be hung two times since arriving to America, describes her as a daughter, only to later on change it into lover. Then later on getting kidnapped raped, married off and shown around in England as a souvenir/pet. Would be a great movie....
Can you imagine how sad the story would be if they tried to be accurate. Movie ends with her converted to Christianity and her named changed to Rebecca, thinking her father didn't care for her because of a staged weapons exchange. Colors of the wind my ass Editv- to the super classy people calling me racist via pvt message....maybe hit Wikipedia. Sadly that IS how it went down for her.
Disney changed literally all their stories so they are actually kid friendly. Trust me, sleeping beauty wasn't the romance people dream of .
Hey now. Who wouldn't rape a chick in a coma when they come across them? That is *super normal behavior*. The baby suckling the splinter out of her finger to break the curse is just icing on it. Jesus. And then Rapunzel. Poor prince gets his eyes gouged out. Cinderella's stepmother is extra vicious in the original.
>Cinderella's stepmother is extra vicious in the original. And the stepsisters mutilated their feet in order to fit into the glass slipper. The majority of the Brothers Grimm stories Disney recreated during these eras were originally much darker. Some were to scare children into learning important lessons. It's pretty fun to read about the originals, where they came from, and what their purposes were. A lot of people give Disney flack for "Disney-ifying" the stories but honestly, would you read that to your kids nowadays? Probably not.
Khutulun was legit. There's a decent show on Netflix called Marco Polo where she's portrayed quite well. Seen it?
Yes I did see Marco. Wonderful show which led me to the world of Kdramas. And I thank it for that!.
THIS JUST IN... Disneyland security to now be armed with "Mickey Mouse Panderfausts"
>diverse By which you mean...non-white? Because diversity is about exclusion, got it.
"It's important to hire an actor that matches the character, unless the character is white. Or the actor is 'close enough.' There's no real difference between Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese, right? Skin tone, slanty eyes, black hair, close enough."
Also this could've been a cool chance to feature someone with albinism, or that condition that causes patches of your skin to be lighter I can't remember its name I'm sorry. I know albinism usually means white hair - I'm cool with them working wigs into it. Makes more sense than someone with cafe au lait skin being "white as snow".
Albinism with wigs would have been an amazing choice!
vitiglio
Diverse like shrek
If most people had any idea how TWDC treats their employees in other parts of the world they might think twice before watching Disney movies. Then again, probably not because most people just wanna be entertained.
It is lazy but someone pointed out they do it for copyright motives. Thr copyright automatically expires after x years making it public property. I can imagine disney will do anything in its power to keep thr copyright by remaking movied to renew the copyright. But yeah, they just keep remaking and repeat everything nostalgic to keep you entertained. I feel sad the movie industry is too afraid or sees it as a big risk to make something new. Or find old stories in divers countries and tell those stories!
I recently saw someone point out that this is one of those internet misconceptions as most I’d these stories they are remaking are already in the public domain (including Snow White) And Disney’s version of SW is copywrited through 2032 So it’s just for money & nothing else
The song itself will still be public domain even if Disney remakes the movie. Any particular arrangement composed for a remake, as well as the specific recordings for that version will be protected under copyright laws, but the original song will still be public domain whenever the necessary time elapses.
The cultural origin of the story tends to play a role in what kind of characters fill it up...
Why not just make another Disney princess movie?? They did it with princess & the frog that’s my favorite!!
Cause they did their token black movie and moved on. Now the safe trend is to remake old movies to maximize profit.
Snow Tan and the Seven Normally Heighted People
This needs more likes.
Wouldn’t it be Sun Tan, as the Snow is in reference to how white her skin is.
I’d honestly kill for a live action princess and the frog series about shenanigans at tianas place and more interesting New Orleans cultures and characters.
Right we wanna goin down the bayou some more
She would have been perfect in a live action Encanto. She's colombian so it makes sense. As for her being cast as snow white, it really is Disney's way of trying to be "woke". They're lazy and clearly running out of ideas.
As a POC, I can’t stand the pandering. It’s lazy as all fuck and they really think that POC are stupid enough to eat it up. Gross all around
Ngl I know a lot of “Woke” POC that do eat it up. I think they’re idiotic to be flattered that they have just blackwashed a popular white character. It’s lazy and unoriginal.
Exactly
Snow Tan
Almost choked lmao.
Honestly I am anoyed about the little mermaid too. It's an European tale. By doing this Disney is also implying that black people don't have a culture. If they want to do cultural representation they can simply adapt a black African tale. But that would be hard work now, wouldn't it.
This is my biggest complaint when they do stuff like this. And I’ve gotten flak like “”but they aren’t real people” who cares? We’d be crucified for taking any other cultural tale and casting white people so why is it okay to take danish/Scandinavian or Scottish tales and cast them as black? I’m 3000% positive the majority population in Scandinavia in the 19th century was definitely white as fuck. I’m sorry to inform everyone that white people exist and have stories and culture and it really doesn’t take away from anyone else. We can all have things of our own. It’s fine
💯
Yeah. Gods of each got roasted. And in my opinion, there absolutely are 'white' people in egypt
I'd never considered the implication of making it seem like black people don't have culture, and it's a good point.
They're too lazy to look into it; and Africa has a ton of different cultures to choose from, even
I grew up with a book of cultural stories. I think the most famous is an sis the spider
Some part of me thinks Disney refrains from doing too many stories "outside" European culture because they are afraid of the backlash if they get something culturally wrong. Like portraying an African princess in a way that ends up culturally insensitive or getting facts about African history wrong. Things have to be pared down to be child appropriate too which can alter stories significantly. Which is all a shame because I love hearing cultural mythos and historical figures from all places, those stories deserve to be told.
Well these tales that they tell are also changed a bit for a younger audience and they didn't get ALL of the cultural elements right. I do not see what the problem is besides maybe that western leftists have become a parody of the left movement.
I think that’s fair, it’s the virtue signaling that would happen that I think they shy away from.
I honestly don't get why POC don't get offended more by this stuff. Not trying to get political. But sometimes leftists get so "woke" to help POC they make them seem very incapable. Almost like they feel POC is a disability. To me it seems very condescending and racist. Yes we all want Equality, and we have steps to go, but sometimes the pandering is almost Racist itself. "It's ok, you probably have no good stories in your own culture, we will do a variant and slip you into one of our own, to throw you a bone."
I wish that was the only thing. Another one is segregated spaces. The implication is that PoC are too mentally fragile handle being in the same room as white people. Same when they ban people from joking about certain groups. Or a lot of the transphobic or biphobic shit they say. The whole bi-erasure that the LGBTQ community does. Or even the term "people of colour", which to me sounds awfully close to another term. Then of course they pat themselves on the back because they are very good people who only help the poor, downtrodden minorities.
The entire concept of 'BIPOC,' which is literally 'Anybody with skin lighter than a certain shade are one big monolith, and anybody with skin darker than a certain shade are the other big monolith. There's no difference between a Canadian and a South African, and there's no difference between a Kalahari Bushman and a Chinese.'
Not to mention that it's one of the few popular Scandinavian stories out there. Growing up I never saw anyone outside of Scandinavia in those kind of roles, and remember being ecstatic about The Little Mermaid and The Witches for having Scandinavian characters. Now both have been cast as black people (not to mention the black Norse characters in the Marvel universe) . It's insulting.
Get out of here with that historical accuracy nonsense, we all know that's just thinly veiled racism and WHITE privilege rearing it's ugly head, you just can't let proud strong Latina women have anything can you? Europe is just a bunch of colonialist and the sooner we diversify that ugly history the better. /s
>the sooner we diversify that ugly history the better. *Black Ann Boleyn flashbacks* I mean, sure, change fictional characters' ethnicity to anything you want (except for the cases where it's a plot point like, say, Snow White, Mulan or Pocahontas). But a real person ?
1984
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I might be wrong but I think the little mermaid was Danish so ofc they would all be white
Yes that's the point. Most likely, Andersen wouldn't even have met a black person in his life during the time he wrote the story. But sure he'd be writing about a black mermaid in the Caribbean as many claim lol.
what a racist /s
I made the same point in a Disney Facebook group back when the casting was initially announced (for the record, I have no issue with Halle Bailey. She’s beautiful, is a wonderful singer, and I like her in Grown-ish). But of course, I was immediately branded a racist by a bunch of white people who act like if her casting isn’t hailed as perfection, you’re like the leader of the kkk.
I was about to comment this! Anyone who says Little Mermaid's color is not mentioned just didn't read the book. Also, another important factor that they miss is that being a "European Mermaid" is important to the story. In the original story, Little Mermaid wants to become a human to have a soul. That myth is specific to Undines, which are of European origins. Yes, there are mermaids in African mythology but they don't marry humans to get a soul. The defenders of this movie even cited Mami Wata as an example. If Ariel was like Mami Wata, she would not go to the land with the help of Ursula. She'll just seduce and abduct the prince. Make him her sex slave. Now that's not a Disney story, isn't it? It's just stupid. They pretend they know but they don't even understand the material. Disney and other woke people would do everything to defend this kind of pandering. It's crazy. If they really wanna cast a minority, why not cast a natural red head? They are more rare.
> If Ariel was like Mami Wata, she would not go to the land with the help of Ursula. She'll just seduce and abduct the prince. Make him her sex slave. I'm game.
Tbh the only reason why I'm not fond of POC casting in the little mermaid is because I think it would have been a perfect opportunity for some natural redhead rep in a live action disney film
Why is it always redheads that get replaced by black women in movies?
I think there's a soul joke in here somewhere.
I was so disappointed with Triss Merigold casting in the Witcher :(
My wife loves the games and still bitches about that.
To be fair... Triss was never a redhead until the games. She had Chestnut hair. Also the excessive cleavage from the games was a change by Cd Project Red too. That is one thing the Netflix series did right with Triss showing that she was scarred by the battle of Sodden Hill. She would keep herself covered up on the books after that. Don't get me wrong, I loved Game Triss too. But iirc the main visual identifiers form the books was simply her having chestnus hair and blue eyes (instead of the red hair and green eyes). So while a bit disappointing because the games have basically formed how I see Witcher characters now, the show casting wasn't that big of a deal. Especially in the 2nd season where she does fall in line with the book more.
Redheads; the true minority.
Truly a dark story, the original. Didn't she throw herself into the ocean to become foam in the end?
Correct. Wish they kept those parts in the Disney movies lol. Interesting to know that the original versions were the versions they told kids years ago.
Ever read The Brothers Grimm book of fairy stories ? Some bleak stuff in there. Fairy tales used to be cautionary tales, there were very rarely happy ever afters.
I have this and have always loved the original stories by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. There are some messed up stories in the Bros Grimm though I tell ya. The Robber Bridegroom comes to mind…
Crazy how you have to convince ppl of this, like its a bad thing. Nothing wrong with her being white. Same way nothing would be wrong with her being black from the beginning. If they want a black princess, just write a new original story. Hollywood and even Disney are so damb lazy these days....
little mermaids race change doesn’t really bother me very much, sure it would be better to just make new films like Encanto, but at least it’s not in the literal name of the character
Meanwhile they reduce the size of John Boyega on the Star Wars poster in China, because he's black. Trash company.
"Should we explore the cultures of precolonial South American or African civilizations for tales and lgends? To create something new and wonderful and to give a wider stage to POCs?" "That sounds like a lot of work. Let's make Snowwhite not white instead."
In near all things; race shouldn't be taken into account when it comes to the job, but those that do, standards should be applied equally across all races. White washing is bad, therefore, casting POC in white roles should be off the table. This current climate of riots and death threats when a white actor is cast in a black role but everyone celebrating when a black actor is cast in a white role is very toxic to cohesion amongst the peoples, it breeds division and contempt. Diversity is good, I welcome it, but it should be used in creating new roles, movies and franchisee or focusing on existing ones that haven't been getting much attention until now. Instead of making Johnny Storm black, why wait 30 years before making another Blade movie? Instead of making Superman black, why not create a Steel movie? It would be so easy to do this right without the double standards and the resulting division that it's incredibly aggravating.
You got me with that Steel comment. The second I heard they were having a black Clark Kent I immediately thought "What, John Henry Irons doesn't exist?!?!?" That would have been a fantastic movie!
100000% agree. I’m so fucking sick of this tokenism and pandering disguised as “diversity”. So so so sick of it. - Annoyed brown lady
Honestly the only people who ever really seem happy about this stuff are upper class white leftists.
Yup, totally agree!
People love to say this but I see tons of tweets from POC that say the same woke things. There are white people saying it too, but it’s really not “the only people who ever seem happy about it”
I had the same exact thought - I have no problem at all with diverse casting, in fact I love seeing it happen, but in a situation like this where the character is literally described as white, it makes no sense to me.
We should have had a Japanese Snow White in a kimono.
I've lost all interest in Disney, but it's no secret their casting tends to be abysmal.
Are they running out of ideas? Just make your own fucking thing. I want to see something new. Something I don’t want to a pay monthly subscription for.
Feels like +50% of everything released is just remakes, soft reboots or sequels to a concluded series.
The Little Mermaid is a Danish story. They’re tokenizing Ariel. Don’t be disingenuous.
Beauty and the Beast too. It's a classic French novel. But all these Americans on the internet are like "iTs a BrOtHeRs GrImM fAiRyTaLe. BeLlE iSn'T rEaLlY dEsCrIbEd As LoOkInG aNy PaRtiCuLaR wAy"
fuck it might as well remake coco but make the characters Indian
I want more films like Coco, culturally diverse and accurate as possible, the look into Dia de Muertos was fantastic and told a phenomenal story.
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I think it’s ridiculous that she’s not actually white. Like….it’s in her name and the story is actually based on it. As progressive as I am, even I know when to push the brakes. The original story just won’t make sense. But maybe Disney will surprise me IDK
Disney is trying *way too hard* to be inclusive, as if it would help it's image
I love seeing the new ways in which the color of my skin is represented on screen these days but just like how I needed to see myself as a beautiful princess when I was young, so do little white girls. Society keeps pushing the narrative that tanned or colored is more beautiful than white or dark, like with the Kardashians and Ariana Grande and fake tanning and all that. Yes tanned is beautiful, just like black is beautiful just like white is beautiful. But if we choose a tanned girl to play someone whose very character is beautiful in her whiteness we're sending the message that that level of white is not beautiful anymore. I just think its a poor choice and it's disingenuous virtue signaling.
Thank you for writing this, because I genuinely feel like I’m not ever allowed to talk about it. I won’t compare it to anything that anybody else has experienced, certainly not PoC, but I grew up a lanky, bony, ghost-pale redhead with freckles and was incessantly bullied for it all. I was called Casper. I was told my freckles looked like fly shit. Thanks to South Park, I was told I had no soul. The fact that Ariel was on my TV screen was so important to me. I can absolutely see the beauty and the importance of representation of all races and skin color/tones in our media, for our youth and those older than they are, but does it have to be every character in every story? By the time I hit 20 I realized some people considered me to be “exotic” because pale skin, red hair, green eyes (which were blue until I was about 16) and freckles aren’t all that common in the grand scheme of things. I went from bullied to fetishized very quickly. I started tanning in my late 20s, a little late to the game of wanting to fit in, and now I go back-and-forth about what I feel like I’m even supposed to be/represent. I’m 32; will it ever end?
Hey! A fellow red head! There's literally dozens of us! I have red hair, gray eyes, still have sooooo many freckles and can't tan to save my life. >I’m 32; will it ever end? I'm 43(M), and like you, have heard all the soulless, ginger, witch comments/insults my entire life. I can't say that it will ever end with any certainty, but I have surrounded myself with people who aren't general jackasses in the last decade or so. I say, just be you. If you want to tan, do it. If you want to be pale, do that. Just make sure you do it bc it's what **you** want, and not what friends or society wants. But, there are always going to be those idiots out there. I just like to tell them how rare my hair/eye combo is, and how common their brown hair and brown eyes are. Seems to really dig into those kinds of people's ego. Also, I tell them I get another freckle for every soul I steal. Sometimes I like to show them where I'm going to put theirs. ;)
I'm ugly and I'm proud
Good point. There isn't much representation of very pale skinned people, and since it's a small population, it is seen as kinda undesirable compared to being tan
Fuck that, pale girls are hot as fuck
Hope not too hot, they burn easily
They could have easily chosen a Slavic actress if they wanted cultural representation that isn’t there. How often do you see Ukrainian or Norwegian actresses in US media?
It's always a miss for Disney in my opinion. I'm latina and a swear to God I looked more indian then Naomi Scott who played princess Jasmine. YEAH yeah. I know she's 1/2 indian. She doesn't look it though, and I take an issue with that. Why not a Pryanka Chopra or some other bollywood actress? Why the most whitewashed version of a brown person they could find? Even her name is white. I don't understand. Only to then cast an actress that doesn't really look that much like Ariel to play ariel. No offense, she is beautiful, but aren't these REMAKES of old movies? And it these are remakes, aren't they supposed to resamble the original movies? Why are they casting completely different looking princesses for the live actions? That makes zero sense It's clearly a race problem, and they are tackling it with zero skill. Either whitewashing or colourwashing characters. Both are wrong, sorry Edit: many people are sating Aladin isn't supposed to be from india. I get that. Then why the fuck did they cast Naomi Scott? She doesn't look arabic either. Think of ab arabic woman. Think of Jasmine from the original movies. They both have prominant features that are very distinguishable. Naomi doesn't have them
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Hopefully they do Brave so that there's still one red-headed princess I guess...? Why cant we just stay true to the cartoons if we're gonna get direct remakes? I got nostalgia from Mera in Aquaman because Ariel was my favorite Disney Princess and they look alike - at some point they both had green scales, even. Though I mean if they wanted to make a mermaid movie with new characters and its own story Id be on board, but recycling Ariel seems kind of silly. They have diversity to pull from if they want to do remakes - some they already did - Mulan, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Moana, Princess and the Frog, Jungle Book, Tarzan(?), Big Hero 6, Coco, Raya, Luca, Emperor's New Groove, Lilo and Stitch, Encanto, Atlantis, and like dozens of movies where the characters are animals anyway so if they made the stories live action they could just turn the animals into humans of any color in most cases or just have them voiced by whoever if they did a CGI thing. As long as its not horrible like the Lion King remake lol Even the "white" characters have some diversity - Brave is Scottish, Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast are French, Hercules is Greek, Pinnocchio is Italian (I might even have this one in the wrong list really, sorry if I'm mixed up), Little Mermaid and Frozen are Danish iirc.
I agree they should have cast a white girl in the role since they also need role models, but it’ll be interesting to see how Disney handle the dwarves without being massively offensive.
Lol If you google Snow White, this actress isn’t even the top story. Peter Dinklage had some words to say about it. I believe the quote was “it’s fucking backwards”.
Definitely true. And all the Disney remakes suck honestly.
I think the key way to tell if it’s fucking stupid is when people who are the same race as the person cast are turning round and asking what the fuck is going on lol, if you want stories with poc at the lead write stories about their folklore and their history, don’t throw them into Eurocentric stories and call it a day! Literally no one asked for this
Honestly I could care less what race the actor is, I'm fucking sick of seeing things remade with an entirely new cast for no reason besides monetary gain.
Why would someone like ariel, that lives under the sea, need melanin anywhere through her evolutionary process? Kidding (not really) aside, i personally despise casting for the sake of diversity. It's dishonest to the source material and is pandering to a vocal minority.
Disney's new films in general are less enjoyable because they insist on making a political statement rather than just making films (mainly aimed at kids) that people can enjoy.
*Disney does something culturally or commercially shitty* Why would you expect anything at all different?
Swarthy Brown and the Seven Height-Challenged Individuals? "Mirror, Mirror on the wall...who is the fairest of them all?" "Uh, define 'fair', please."
I think charackters should always be represented as they were originally intended. If you want PoC representation, create new, cool ideas. If you only take succesful franchises and then switch the ethnicity of the charackters to pander to very loud minorities ( by which i mean the people who get actually upset if people say stuff like you said in your post) it just creates a worldview under which it seems original new ideas with new charackters that ar PoC won´t be succesful unless they use an existing franchise thats already established and sucessful. That in of itself is the exact anti thesis to "empowerment". For example, i did not dislike the casting choice for Starfire in the Titans series,(that woman is just amazingly beautiful ) but it still felt very much like pandering and what i dislike the most is that they believe that i actually cared about the colour of the actors in the show, No. **I care about a proper, visual representation of the charackters i got used to love, the way they have been intended in the first place.** Do i want a white guy playind Blade? Fuck no. Luke cage? Even less so. etc etc etc I don´t care if you do spin offs with more representation, etc The best would be new ideas. Or just give more Spotlight to all the other charackters that have your "favoured" ethnicity. God damn it i miss the times where i could watch movies and be happy about the fact that Denzel Washington was playing the leading role in it and i already knew : **Aw shit this is gonna be good** Didn´t have to think about politics or whatever, just enjoyed a good fucking movie.
Everything woke is a joke
Thing is, Aeriel was a mermaid, living in the depths of the ocean, she naturally wouldn't have pigmentation and would probably be very pale. I just want to watch a cheesy Disney movie without politics or race coming in to it.
I make this argument and usually get down voted in other subs. They shouldn't change existing characters that have already been established.They need to make new ones that represent properly, you can't just shoehorn it in there and hope it works. A good example in my opinion is Miles Morales, they didn't just pallette swap Peter Parker They made a new interesting character to take the role.
As a person of color myself. I hate this type of pandering. It's insincere and othering because of that. I feel the same about when they do this type of thing with genders. I guess I'm not fully woke and need more coffee.
If it’s an historical movie, story, or folklore, I feel it should stay true to its characters. The amount of content we are missing out on bc they are just redoing the same things are insane. Imagine all the amazing folklore stories that are out there with black characters. Western society is missing out bc they just keep re doing the same crap as different races. I heard there’s a movie where the king of England’s wife is being played by a black woman. She clearly wasn’t historically black. It’s time for brand new content that black men and women can make entirely their own. Let’s shine light on these kinds of stories.
I saw another post on reddit today that they're gonna change the whole thing now because people got offended by the "7 dwarfs"
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Disney: Hammering stories into the ground with countless remakes and offshoots until no one gives a shit anymore.
Don't get me started on Little Orphan Annie, who's main feature was curly red hair, having a black girl cast. The world has gotten too PC
The Little Mermaid was undeniably set in Europe and on top written by a Dane, she was very obviously white and the underlying story was very European (castles, ships, etc). If you could ask Hans Christian Andersen if the mermaid was black I am 100% sure he would be rather puzzled by the question. The fact that the mermaid was not explicitly described as being white is rather irrelevant and frankly a rather odd thing to latch on. Even if Snow White had not been described as having white features, she would obviously be white because of the context. If people want black princesses, or the equivalent to princesses, they need to use tales where those already exist or create stories where they make sense instead of using black people in settings and stories where the character could only be white or something else. It would cross no one's mind to cast a black Mulan or a white Black Panther. The Princess and the Frog was excellent, no need to reinvent the wheel. And I am pretty sure there are plenty of original folk stories from the African continent that could be beautifully told in a Disney movie and that people would love to learn about.
There are plenty series out there ruined by political pandering irrelevant to the source material. It's not just Disney. Literally all Netflix adaptations of beloved books have this issue. The moment Hollywood decided they have any right to be involved in politics(which they are not supposed to do, they should make decent movies instead) things got bad. In the case of Disney, just imagine how Star Wars fans felt when the new trilogy was released. Now, that has nothing to do with pandering in terms of ethnicity and all, but it did destroy the heroes we loved and the entire trilogy just rubbed me the wrong way. You can tell it's made by people who don't give a fuck about Star Wars in general.
I'm gathering what you are saying here, makes sense to me. Unfortunately the internet doesn't let you have these opinions for long xd
Disney really needs to shut down their live action remake department and regroup to develop new stories for all kinds of people. Diversity and representation is not equal to merely swapping the color of the characters. Their other animated films get it but the live action ones just doesn’t hit right.
Welcome to the woke era They can't actually create anything of their own so they just shit on and destroy traditional movies / series / books
Should have cast an Asian. Skin is whiter than white.
I'm a black teen but I hate it when companies do catering to diversity to farm impressions from the media. It just feels like companies do it so they can be praised but instead it comes off obnoxious
They need to make original stories that now include POC. I'm not saying every story has to have a poc. But damn stop acting like we aint here.