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Might as well post this Dinklage profile.
I told him I was impressed that he would defend “Tiptoes,” a movie that seems, on its face, ridiculous. “It was a lovely mess of a movie while we were making it,” he sighed. “I saw the director’s cut, and it was gorgeous.” That two-and-a-half-hour director’s cut was shown at a film festival in Austin, Tex.; the director, Matthew Bright, was reportedly fired shortly afterward, and the movie was recut. “The people who fired him ruined the movie,” Dinklage insisted. “They made it into a weird little quirky rom-com, but with dwarves.” He looked gloomy as he recalled this. “It was sort of an amazing idea for a movie, but the result was what we were fighting against — the cutesiness of little people.” I asked if he ever hoped to be a spokesman for the rights of little people. He made an exasperated sound and held his hands out, palms up. “I don’t know what I would say. It would be arrogant to assume that I. . . .” He put his hands down on the table. “Everyone’s different. Every person my size has a different life, a different history. Different ways of dealing with it. Just because I’m seemingly O.K. with it, I can’t preach how to be O.K. with it. I don’t think I still am O.K. with it. There’s days when I’m not.”
(no paywall)
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I always thought of mythical dwarfs, elfs, leprechauns, etc. as non-humans who we conveniently cast dwarf humans to play. Wouldn’t then the duty fall on the storytellers (including makeup and prosthesis) to make certain the audience does not confuse them with human dwarfs?
In the original Snow White Disney animated film, the dwarfs have distinctly different features from the human characters, including 4 fingers on their hands vs 5.
Does destiny/fate ever ask for consent?
If we can make it understood that these are different from dwarf humans, why couldn’t they be nasty creatures?
Still an issue though because it still puts the actors in a position where their body being smaller is associated with a spectacle of horror and morbid fascination. With… Monstrosity.
We have stories about all kinds of little people but all the actors that we have to play them are actual humans and actual humans still will face the stigmas associated with making a morbid curiosity or monstrous spectacle out of them.
Is there an answer? I dunno, but the problematic nature of disability and body differences in media doesn’t really care if I have a solution for it or not. That was a problem in film long before me and greater minds than mine have struggled to find good methods of representation with varying levels of success and failure.
Also did you just equate like a man molesting women’s corpses with the inevitability of destiny/fate? Uh… Was that supposed to be a joke cause that’s… phenomenally creepy? Is that what you meant to go for with that or am I misreading you?
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I doubt that the number of fingers was an intentional choice to indicate them as non-human. “Cartoony” characters of the era nearly all had four fingers. The only reason that the taller humans in the movie had a full set of fingers was because the animation was rotoscoped from reference footage of real actors.
If you look at some other Disney films they’re sometimes infuriatingly inconsistent on the number of fingers a character has. The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood spends half the film with four fingered hands and half with five, sometimes switching off in the very same scene:
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Whatever interpretation you care to take from it. When destiny and fate gets involved, stories seem to be turn more toward tragedy and sorrow – ancient tragedies, gods meddling in human affairs, destiny is often unkind and malicious, even creepy, not saying it’s right.
The fantasy tale of Snow White tries to transport us to a universe where destiny is kind and brings the right people together. And providing that escape from reality seems to be a theme in what Walt Disney was trying to give (or sell if you’re not feeling charitable) people.
Pulling the train back on track, the dwarfs in Snow White are also fantasy and should never be confused with complex and flawed humans.
But we have motion capture and passable CGI technology coming down in cost to where we don’t need to involve short humans to portray small mythological creatures. My feeling is that Disney would be making a mistake to cast dwarf humans as the Snow White fantasy dwarfs rather than using CGI.
I’m kind of excited to see where the new consciousness takes dwarf humans, I hope Peter Dinklage and others get more exposure in media as the kind of real people they are.
I think it’s also just that the more heavily caricatured characters tend to get the four-fingered treatment and the more realistic ones don’t. Or sometimes just the four-fingered hands are associated with innocence.
Gravity Falls is an interesting contemporary example because Dipper and the other children have four-fingered hands, most adults have five-fingered hands, and one character famously has six-fingered hands.
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WTF did i just watch 
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They did that for a different version of the story, Snow White and the Huntsman, and it was met with disapproval.
Those look exactly like short humans, not fantastical creatures at all. Unlike the goblins in Harry Potter which had inhuman prosthetics, unique facial expressions, and their own motivations and culture.
Because given how long it’s been this way, many people STILL make that connection.
But AGAIN, how about we defer to people who have skin in the game, like Dinklage, who actually NEVER SAID that we can never depict dwarves on screen at all. Just that how we typically see them are stereotypical and at odds with a humane representation that most people just conflate with real human beings with a medical condition…
Again, this isn’t difficult.
So… rape is okay, because destiny?
Yeah. How about fucking no…
Against women’s wills! WTF! NO. Just… NO. Just because some old story had that in it, doesn’t mean it’s okay or that it was EVER okay. Just like rom coms that have a man stalking a woman to win her over is not okay.
Human beings CAN and DO tell better stories, that are more inclusive and reflect all our experiences and common humanity. I don’t know why people here are insisting on defending that we keep telling stories that don’t do that. What’s the point of that when we can do better?
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It’s telling young girls that non consensual sexuality is not just normal - but desirable. It should be your dream.
That’s fucked up regardless of what kind of sugar frosting you want to put on it.
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I haven’t read the book, but it looks interesting
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That might be the most important “are you a spokesperson for (insert minority population here)” I have ever seen.
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Rape or assault as destiny is a really gross argument. I hope this is a misreading on my part.
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Destiny and fate need to stop perpetuating rape culture. That particular story trope needs to be abandoned post-haste
Yeah. An awful lot like the argument a man cannot rape his wife. The girl is a princess so a prince charming can sexually assault her?! No no no.
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You have a truly unique take on that story.
Most fairytales were meant to be horror stories or cautionary tales.
Disney made a mint white washing and sugar coating those stories, but that still doesn’t make them ideal.
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Words like “fate” and “destiny” seem like convenient constructs to explain away and justify all kinds of bullshit. As in fiction, so too in real life.
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Judas Iscariot had to betray Jesus for the whole crucified-to-save-mankind thing to work. Most people still consider him a major dick for doing it…and that’s with Jesus was being turned over to authorities who didn’t have to execute him.
It’s cruel to pretend things are kind that aren’t. People make their choices, they deserve to be held to account for them, and any story that tells you otherwise is a bad story.
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Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
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