/In short, I'm not really sure what Renee here was expecting from the movie. It was clearly in a vague fantasy quasi-European setting, and using source material which specifies that the heroine has long, flowing, golden hair. That would be like complaining that Mulan is Chinese even though the folktale her story came from kind of had her that way./
I agree. I'm a member of the racebending community on LiveJournal, which discusses whitewashing and other kinds of racism in media, and there was a recent post that also talked about this issue. Apparently, during the casting process for "The Hobbit," a British woman of Pakistani origin complained that her rejection by the casting director was racist because the casting director told her that it was because of her race that she was unable to be in the movie. Now, on the surface, that does sound pretty discriminatory and plenty of the members of the community argued that such a move was indeed racist.
However, another member pointed out that the world of "Lord of the Rings" is specifically based on Anglo-Germanic culture and folklore. She pointed out that Tolkien was a professor and specialist in Anglo-Saxon texts and that he borrowed heavily from pre-existing tales and myths in Germanic cultures in order to create the world of "The Hobbit." So, an all-white cast for the movie wouldn't be necessarily racist; it would just be accurate and faithful to the source material.
She also pointed out that "Lord of the Rings" was often used by members of the community (including myself) as a counter-example to people who supported the whitewashing of "The Last Airbender," which was based on a show that had a fantasy world that was derived entirely from East Asian cultures. Her point basically seemed to be that just as it wasn't right to whitewash "The Last Airbender," it wouldn't be right to change the ethnicities of the characters in "Lord of the Rings" while trying to do an accurate adaptation of the books.
So, while I understand that there definitely needs to be more diversity in media, I don't think that randomly putting people in color in movies that are clearly based on old European folklore is the way to go about it. I think that the more productive thing to do would be to create movies that are either specifically based on non-European cultures (thus the non-white cast would be necessary) or create movies that aren't necessarily based on any specific culture and include people of color as the leads there (I'm thinking of general children's movies, romance comedies, action movies, etc. that don't need to always have white leads, but, of course, often do). That's why, like you, I think that this person's indignation about Rapunzel's appearance in "Tangled" is misplaced.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-09 04:04 pm (UTC)I agree. I'm a member of the racebending community on LiveJournal, which discusses whitewashing and other kinds of racism in media, and there was a recent post that also talked about this issue. Apparently, during the casting process for "The Hobbit," a British woman of Pakistani origin complained that her rejection by the casting director was racist because the casting director told her that it was because of her race that she was unable to be in the movie. Now, on the surface, that does sound pretty discriminatory and plenty of the members of the community argued that such a move was indeed racist.
However, another member pointed out that the world of "Lord of the Rings" is specifically based on Anglo-Germanic culture and folklore. She pointed out that Tolkien was a professor and specialist in Anglo-Saxon texts and that he borrowed heavily from pre-existing tales and myths in Germanic cultures in order to create the world of "The Hobbit." So, an all-white cast for the movie wouldn't be necessarily racist; it would just be accurate and faithful to the source material.
She also pointed out that "Lord of the Rings" was often used by members of the community (including myself) as a counter-example to people who supported the whitewashing of "The Last Airbender," which was based on a show that had a fantasy world that was derived entirely from East Asian cultures. Her point basically seemed to be that just as it wasn't right to whitewash "The Last Airbender," it wouldn't be right to change the ethnicities of the characters in "Lord of the Rings" while trying to do an accurate adaptation of the books.
So, while I understand that there definitely needs to be more diversity in media, I don't think that randomly putting people in color in movies that are clearly based on old European folklore is the way to go about it. I think that the more productive thing to do would be to create movies that are either specifically based on non-European cultures (thus the non-white cast would be necessary) or create movies that aren't necessarily based on any specific culture and include people of color as the leads there (I'm thinking of general children's movies, romance comedies, action movies, etc. that don't need to always have white leads, but, of course, often do). That's why, like you, I think that this person's indignation about Rapunzel's appearance in "Tangled" is misplaced.