And this, and so much more?
I feel you.
An antagonist is the protagonist in their own world
Stop Disney from Copyrighting Day of the Dead →
The Walt Disney Company filed 33 applications on May 1st to trademark “Day of the Dead” in anticipation of a future film. That Disney intends to make money off the name of a cultural holiday celebrated by millions of people of Mexican and Central American heritage is awful enough. That they intend to file for ownership of the name and tradition is downright unacceptable and incredibly offensive.
Previously, Disney attempted to trademark the Navy SEAL team that captured Osama Bin Laden, but after outrage from the public, it was forced to withdraw that application citing “deference to the Navy.” If we send a strong enough message to Disney this time around, it will be forced to also withdraw applications to avoid another public relations disaster.
Tell Disney that culture is NOT for sale. Sign this petition calling on Disney’s CEO & chairman to immediately withdraw all applications to trademark Day of the Dead. If we get over 15,000 signatures, we’ll personally deliver it to Disney headquarters. Can you help us get there by signing and sharing?
Feminist Disney asked me to make a series of asks I wrote a few days ago about yet another reason to love Lilo & Stich (need more? find them here) rebloggable, so here it is:
I don’t think that this has been mentioned before, sorry if it has. I was reading your review of Lilo and Stitch, which is by far one of my favorite Disney movies, and you did a great job of cataloguing so many of the things I love about it. However, there is one more subtle thing that most viewers might miss without context, and that is the movie’s inclusion of main plot about the continued systematic problems with treatment of Hawaiian Native families by the child welfare system.
At least some social science literature has been written about the consistent removal of Hawaiian native children, usually from more remote islands, due to poverty-linked “neglect” or relative-based fostering systems (‘ohana is an actual key concept among Hawaiian natives regarding childrearing and keeping kids within their biological families through informal relative fostering agreements even when parents are unable to care for them).
Continued impoverishment of rural areas in Hawaii leads many adults to be unable to provide sufficient resources for the children they are fostering. However, rather than giving these families (often headed by single grandmothers or aunts) resource-based support, children are often removed from these homes and sent to foster be fostered in the homes of mainlanders.
This is a kind of cultural genocide, with Hawaiian adults unable to pass on their culture and language to children fostered outside their communities. Judith Modell has written about this problem and the struggles of Hawaiian relatives to regain/maintain the right to keep children. This process is not explicit in the film, but it is nice to see how Nani’s economic circumstances lead her parenting abilities to be questioned by a mainlander and her resistance to Lilo being taken away.
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.
The closest I ever got to a Disney movie starring characters that look like me and theoretically don’t cause some sort of disconnect is The Jungle Book which was based on a story written by a big dumb racist and is all about some idiot kid raised by animals and it doesn’t really require a big stretch to see my issues with that
The closest that black people ever got stars a girl who spends well over 75% of the movie as a frog
It’s fun as a kid to be able to place yourselves in the shoes of the protagonist but when you’re not white, the ethnocentric nature of the world effectively others you and you spend the rest of your life struggling with that dichotomy
You grew up not having to think about that so when you do see it you’ll exclaim “keep your social justice bullshit out of my Disney” and other moronic and fallacious catchphrases
The truth is you guys have gotten well over half a century of animated stories to relate to and honestly, not even being confrontational, it’d be nice to see some change there
“A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.”
Stop crying, Taffyta!
“This classmate turned best friend became the love of my life, and my very own fairytale ending. Our first date lasted over eight hours, as neither of us wanted to say goodnight. Later, she and I had the amazing opportunity to portray fairytale characters at a local theme park, a young boy who never wanted to grow up and the beautiful girl that flew away with him. After seven years of not wanting to say goodnight, I proposed to her and she said yes, and why not? Peter and Wendy turned out just fine.”
Spieling Peter and Carebear Wendy / Husband and Wife
