fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2629 ]

[ SECRET POST #2629 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2629 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 071 secrets from Secret Submission Post #376.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I don't think it's the best movie EVER but that doesn't mean it's horrible. And I laugh at people who tell me I HAVE to accept that it's racist.

(and for certain peeps on tumblr that doesn't fucking mean I'm "moonlighting as a KKK member" either, I shit you not someone suggested that seriously.)

Yep pretty much.

People need to learn to differentiate between "racist trends in hollywood" and "racist movies".

ITYM Racially centered problematic trends rather than racist trends. I don't think anyone in hollywood (no, not even Michael Bay) is setting out to be racist, so the trends may be racially problematic, but they are not racist themselves. Having said that though, I'd love to see a full on blaxploitation revival. Some of those movies were fun.

Better than the weird tumblr racists insisting that Frozen and Tangled have the first 'truly feminine and admirable female characters' since Beauty and the Beast. Apparently Jasmine was just a little too tan to be mistaken for a real woman.

Jasmine is trans*! Check your privilege >:O

Obviously the racists are leagues worse, but that shouldn't prevent me from thinking some people on the social justice side of things are being unreasonable.

I totally agree with you, there's a section of the frozen fanbase that is gross and racist, but the movie itself isn't.

... Wait, what? How is it racist? It's The Snow Queen! There is a reindeer! They live in a cold enough climate that they can get ice during midsummer! Everyone is going to be pale simply because it helps them absorb vitamin D! People still travel on *sailing ships* and in *sleds*! It would take someone with dark skin *months* to even get up there, and why would they want to?

Seriously, the only main character they could have made any sort of POC without damaging the narrative and being obnoxiously, obviously pandering with was Hans, and making the *villain* the only POC *would* have been perceived as racist.

The problem is that ethnicity-ist doesn't really work as a word. The complaints had something to do with the Sami people, who look like this. (I didn't really get the whole kerfuffle myself.)

......

Look, I know you're trying to be all logical and stuff. But HOW does absorbing vitamin D through the skin give you ice magic powers and create singing trolls?

I don't remember covering that in science class at any point.

*digs out textbooks, flips through* Nope, nothing about the absorption rate of vitamin D on magical witches. So just... you know. Please don't try to apply "But.. but SCIENCE." To your own personal preferences to see certain stories told with white-looking characters. There was no real historical Queen Elsa absorbing vitamin D with her lily white skin. There was no Arendelle that was nearly cursed with winter and saved by true love. There's no reason a magical made-up fantasy world has to be all white except for personal preference (and for the company, marketing). No reason. None. Just admit you like watching white people. I won't judge.

Are you making a joke or did you really think that's what they were saying? They didn't say vitamin D absorption had anything to with ice powers, they were saying vitamin D absorption relates to pale skin, and pale skin relates to a cold climate.

Elsa just happens to live in a cold climate and have pale skin, her ability to absorb vitamin D is not related to her powers. If it was, the whole of Arandelle would have ice powers and the whole fuss over Elsa hiding hers would never have happened.

I'm saying, in a world where people can fart out snowflakes and have talking snowmen running around, you have tossed realism out the window and waved goodbye. And you don't get to pull real world science for why a fictional queen has to be pale skinned until you explain the real world science for how Olaf worked.

Bring me a living, singing, stone troll and you can go "Science says she had to be white, duh." Otherwise admit that it's dumb as a sack of hammers to say Olaf was more historically and scientifically accurate than a darker skinned fantasy queen in a cold climate.

You know, I find it a little bit annoying that people insist that any vague nod to "accuracy" and "realism" is irrelevant and unnecessary in a fantasy setting.

I find it more than a bit annoying that the 'accuracy' and 'realism' tends to generally be kinda sexist or racist or otherwise obnoxious. I mean, where are the people pissed off that we never see the characters have to take a dump?

How about the fact in the Hobbit they spent all this time elaborately laying out Bag End and mention indoor plumbing, but in none of the designs or references is a bathroom included? But shit, you want to give a character a tan and suddenly everyone's howling about "accuracy."

I'm not talking about giving people tans. Arandelle's people can have as many tans as they like! How many Scandinavian royal families are POC though? I just feel it's slightly more accurate that that Elsa is white because she's the queen of a psuedo-Scandinavian country.

I always took that snappy line about Bag End's plumbing as an indicator than maybe the toilet is in the bathroom - that is something that happens a lot. I do however think that the maps I've seen of PJ's Bag End don't make it the luxury home the books imply.

Keep in mind, I keep using words like "vaguely" and "slightly" in relation to this accuracy issue because I know that the bits of realism come in, well, bits. Also, do you really want detailed accounts and scenes of characters taking dumps? Some realism is just boring, while some is interesting world-building.

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(Anonymous) - 2014-03-20 02:34 (UTC) - Expand

It's not about giving them a tan. It's about making a character nothing but their skin tone. That's what tossing a POC into a film for no other reason than calming some screamers does.

What I want to see is not a black princess in a white fairy tale, but a black fairy tale. Show us something new. Teach us about a different culture. That's one of the things I loved most about Mulan: it showed us something new and told us a story we'd never heard before. Same with Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame. Disney has already done this! There's no reason they can't do it again. They did it much worse in Frog Princess, and it comes across as very heavy-handed.

Disney's pretty good, especially with their Princess movies, with having the character skin tone geographically match the location. They're at least consistent about this.

Oh, please.

But anon said nothing about Vitamin D relating to magic powers. This is some impressive asspulling, I must say.

"It's The Snow Queen! There is a reindeer! They live in a cold enough climate that they can get ice during midsummer! Everyone is going to be pale simply because it helps them absorb vitamin D! People still travel on *sailing ships* and in *sleds*! It would take someone with dark skin *months* to even get up there, and why would they want to?"

Hey, I'm not the one saying magical Snow Queens follow real life science! And treating it like it's real history. Did you have Queen Elsa in your history class? I didn't. Why would it take someone with dark skin months? They could have magic flying ponies haul them there! Magic! They could teleport. Walk through a magic mirror. Be resurrected by the moon and fly there on a crooked stick, because magic! Not real. No need for "Well in the real world vitamin D!"

Magic looked like it was something rare and uncommon in Frozen. Who has magic in the movie? Only Elsa and the trolls. Well the trolls are a magic race anyway, but Elsa is the only person shown with magic in the whole country, and possibly all the countries who sent envoys to her coronation.

If one counts that brief cameo as an indicator that Tangled is in the same universe, the flower as a rare magical thing as well and a lot of Gothel's scare-mongering centred on the idea that people are greedy and want Rapunzel's rare magic. Not even Gothel had magic there, only Rapunzel, thanks to her mother drinking sunlight-flower-based medicine.

These POCs from way off south may not have all the flying ponies, magic mirrors or teleport there. The people who did make it to Elsa's coronation all had to come by ship, so they certainly didn't.

Yeah but they didn't.

sooooo

No one cares, asspuller.

Look. The straight-up truth is that making the main character white does not make a movie racist. It can make the movie part of a larger issue in Western media of having a dearth on diversity, but unless the movie is actively white-washing (ie. retelling the story of non-white people with white actors), it is not inherently racist for a movie to star white people.

It's especially ridiculous to accuse Frozen of this when a) Disney actually has a decent track record of being racially diverse compared to some things. Aladdin, Lilo & Stitch, Brother Bear, Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Jungle Book, Pocahontas, Mulan, The Emperor's New Groove, Up (if you count Pixar), and The Princess and the Frog all have casts with either completely non-white casts or non-white main characters. Do some of these movies have issues? Yes! Could they do to make more movies that star non-white characters? Totally! But is Frozen racist because the main characters aren't white? NO. Also b) Frozen is probably the first Disney movie set in fantasy-Europe that actually acknowledges that non-white people exist and has several of them in the background of the ballroom scene.

Like, seriously. I'm not saying Frozen doesn't have issues. But it pisses me off that some people are singling it out and acting like it's actually racist (no, that would be something like the Natives in Peter Pan), just because it's about white people.

Do I think the movie itself is racist? Heck no.

Do I think saying the movie would be unrealistic if she weren't white because of vitamin D is racist? YES. If she were real, pale skin would absorb vitamin D better. She'd also probably fall over dead in five minutes because her waist is something like 6 inches around, and she'd look like some sort of strange nocturnal creature with her eyes taking up three fourths of her head. But those are totally cool and suspension of disbelief, BUT NOT DARK SKIN.

Oh, no, the bobble-head look is ridiculous. It was ridiculous in Tangled and it's still ridiculous in Frozen. It's just also entirely tangential to the 'racist' comments. Neither has any bearing on the other besides the basic fact of both referring to a character's appearance.

I can sort of see it in Frozen because of the concept art, which is a style consistent with storybooks from certain European regions, but that doesn't make it look less ridiculous in animation.

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