This might be a good time to point out that this whole thing actually isn’t about Americans being offended. It’s about Pacific Islander people, many of whose sovereign homelands have been occupied by the United States or other imperial powers. Many Native Hawaiians, for example, object to being referred to as American, even though the illegal occupation continues.
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What can I say, I’m an optimist.
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Bless you; somebody’s gotta be.
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Uh, racism aside, what I hate about modern-day animation is the lazy way every other expression in an animation is: the smile with one eyebrow up, one eyebrow down (“Pixar eyebrow”). Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And it’s practically the entirety of expression of these characters, especially in the still captures.
[EDIT: And the examples above are both Pixar and Dreamworks. You can’t lay all the blame for this on Dreamworks, calling this “Dreamworks Eyebrow”!]
To answer your question, ethnically I am mixed race including Asian via Hawai‘i. Culturally, I was hānai (adopted) by a Hawaiian family whose matriarch gave me extensive training in traditional Hawaiian culture.
And you want my opinion? My opinion is that the tone of your “If not then keep telling me how you’re an expert” stuff makes your request for my opinion sound sarcastic, or pushy, or both. I gave the info I wanted to, which was to show a broad range of opinions from Native Hawaiians, and you don’t get to demand more. Bye.
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Was she Zelda or Link?
Exactly. And this shows the historical effects of under-representation too, in that if there had been more of a history of black superheros (in american comics), then there would be more cases of superheros who just happened to be black. Because, especially in the past but hopefully less so in the future, if an important character was written as not the ‘default race’, then the race would certainly be written as central to the character.
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I believe the trope is better known as “Dreamworks Face” (or “Dreamworks Eyebrow”). It’s actually much more prominent in the marketing materials for films than in the films themselves.
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I love this way of putting it!
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Some of those have what you are talking about, several of them not really. The Dreamworks is way worse than the Pixar. But many of them have only a slight difference, which is actually normal. Thing’s don’t have perfectly symmetrical eyebrows, especially when they are doing anything besides having a resting face.
If you ever watched these films, you would know that to not be true.
If this bothers you, though, don’t see the new film because The Rock is one of the voice actors and the raised eye brow thing is kinda what he is known for.
This.
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The ‘size’ of the issue may influence the ‘size’ of the response (i’ve not heard of any marches over this), but does not have to affect whether there is a response.
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This gives me flashbacks from watching Ewan McGregor’s penis The Pillow Book.
I just hope Italian American’s will still let us honor this god movie icon in cosplay tribute:
(Seen today at Target)
But, I dunno, it might be disrespectful to Italians, or boxers, or vertically challenged actors, or…
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That photo makes me feel funny…
They changed the name in western Europe because Moana it’s a registered trademark there. Still named Moana in South America
This conversation is interesting to me because I just ran across this image in a professional wrestling fan Facebook group:
[The reaction in that group was primarily derision over how the kid in the Seth Rollins costume looks rather like A.J. Styles instead, but that’s neither here nor there…]
Now, in the top row, third from the left, is a terribly off-model costume of The Rock, the wrestling persona of Dwayne Johnson, voice of Maui and real-life Pacific Islander. It appears to be similar in design to the Maui costume.
My guess is that the people who designed the Maui costume thought of it as being more-or-less equivalent to these wrestler costumes. They’ve got to figure out how to make a Halloween costume for a character that barely wears any clothes (because god forbid they not be able to sell a Halloween costume for one of their characters), and this is the obvious precedent. If anyone was offended by these costumes, I haven’t been able to find it, so they probably had no inkling that anyone would be offended by the Maui costume, either.
I suspect that the difference in reaction is at least partially due to the way people see the characters - Maui’s heritage as a Pacific Islander is much more central to the way people perceive that character than the Rock’s Samoan lineage is to the way they perceive him. As a result, race is seen as much more salient to the Maui costume. Or maybe people just have higher expectations of Disney than they do of WWE (although I’m not sure why they would).
Does any of this make the Maui costume less offensive, or are these costumes - or just the Rock one - just as bad? I’ll take my answer off the air.
[Note for non-wrestling fans: The costume that’s front and center here that looks potentially …problematic… is of Finn Balor, an Irish wrestler whose facepaint is inspired by a demon from Irish legend. Make of that what you will.]
[Note for wrestling fans: The costume here that I find most offensive is the Brock Lesnar costume, because fuck Brock Lesnar.]
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It’s the mom-style haircut. 
The most dangerous one to walk around in would be the Cena one. Because drivers wouldn’t be able to see you crossing the road.
As a white dude, when people complain about things being racist or their culture being appropriated, I STFU and listen to them. Because I can. As a member of the prevailing/dominant* culture, I get the opportunity to do so. It ain’t my culture that’s in danger of being subsumed and I don’t have to face some of the daily aggro that others do. So I listen.
*Not the right word, but it’ll do.
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Thank you for being the saviour of the Maui people, Rob! Doing all us white folk proud.
