I’ve not seen the movie either, and probably won’t, but I still think, making the movie with a NA actress cast in the role, that’s all they could be faulted for. But now they bear the fault of whitewashing, which is, IMHO, rather more damnable than making the movie in the first place.
As others have pointed out, they tried to mitigate the controversy by making them a generic “tribe of kids” in the movie and not Native Americans in any way at all, so in truth, they could’ve cast any ethnicity and it would’ve made just as much sense. But as you say, the whole concept of a prequel to Peter Pan was so ill-advised in the first place that nobody actually saw it.
1 Like
They got around that in the last Peter Pan remake by casting an actual Native American but making sure the role itself didn’t use any of the offensive stereotypes from the source material, and it worked really well.
It’s more like remaking 1942’s Holiday Inn and replacing the blackface number with actual black people singing a non-minstrel-show song.
Aladdin is a weird one because the original story is supposed to take place in China, arguably a muslim territory of ancient China but very much part of the Chinese empire.
1 Like
Aye, and those comments put me in mind of the responses to the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan Noonien Singh. Now I love me some Cumberbatch, but Singh was introduced as engineered from Indian genetic heritage. I just think that once a character is a non-white ethnicity in the original source material, that re-inventing them as a white character is, well, pretty blatantly colonialist.
ETA: If someone were to reboot the whole Pan story with a totally different take on Neverland, then that would probably be awful, but at least they could dodge the baggage of the original stereotypes. But if you’re going to use the original characters, you’re going to pick up the baggage that goes with them and you better pay attention to the messages your sending with how you portray them.
2 Likes
Just to throw in a little pedantry, Peter Pan was a play before it became a novel.
2 Likes
Such light. Such beautiful smoke.
2 Likes
Have you seen it? The plot is shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
1 Like
That was later checked, and debunked. Apparently no Cherokee ancestor, no native ancestor.
Nobody ever seems to have a Spokan great, great grandmother, it’s always from the most known peoples.
And most don’t seem to grasp that a lot of the intermarriage was in the days of the fur trade and exploration. No European women around. Once they appeared in any given area, it was the age of the settler, and the “respectability” of “civilization” generally put a damper on mixed marriages until a later time. Besides, once European women were around, the native women were no longer the only available women.
So it would be a “grandmother” before the settlers, at which point I can’t see why it couldn’t have been a “grandfather”.
So if there is a vague ancestor up the family tree, it’s more likely in a small frame of time and space.
People who have some vague family knowledge of a native ancestor should actually look into it, rather than use it as an excuse to act out stereotypes. It may turn out to be false, or at least what generation and of what people may be wrong. There’s no reason to act out stereotype plains indian stuff (maybe most familiar to people because of “westerns”), especially when someone’s ancestor really was a native, and of a different people
The erasure of those ancestors is just part of the process that happened to native people. It doesn’t really matter if someone stopped being an indian because of residential schools or to get married or vote, or if that great, great, great grandfather said " the kids will be raised as white". The result was
fewer indians, and generations later, just that many fewer who speak the language. Many of the languages have very few speakers now. It someone is going to claim something, they should know enough to claim that past.
And I still don’t know where the concept of “indian princess” comes from, other than some weird misinterpretation of how people lived.
3 Likes
What, Holiday Inn? Sure, we used to watch it and White Christmas every year when I was a kid. Our VHS copy didn’t have the blackface number; I didn’t see that until later on. The plot’s ridiculous indeed, just an excuse to get to each musical number and let Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire do their thing.
1 Like
I’ve been watching a good deal of Star Trek lately, and it’s starting to bother me that they have made no attempt to depict Chinese people (from what I’ve seen). Kind of disturbing lacuna, imo. I’m not the biggest Star Trek fan in the world so if there are some episodes of some Star Trek series that have Chinese people in them, I would really like to know.
First off - Neverland is not a real place. No flying boys, flying ships, walking crocodiles and flying pixies. Yet we get upset with a white Native American.
Neverland is a construct of a young (white) boy’s imagination. Heck, the whole thing could be happening in his head the moment before the ice-pick strikes home as he’s being given a lobotomy in the “home” he’s staying…
Now the casting doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
By the way - these “career-ending” movies only end the career of the young kids in the movie. Rooney will be just fine, just as Johnny Depp was after that Mortdecai. Ugh.
It doesn’t have to be anything. No consensus necessary. This isn’t a legal court, there’s no finding of innocence or guilt at stake, and if you’re offended by something different from me, I’m not offended by that.
1 Like
Was it really that bad? I’m kind of intrigued. Not enough to pay to watch it, natch, but I quite liked the first book, the latter two less so.
I quite liked The Lone Ranger, too
I’m a pretty big Star Trek fan (not quite Trekkie level, but definitely seen all the episodes and much of the non-canon stuff more than once), and I can’t recall a single Chinese character. Plenty of Japanese characters, and Harry Kim is a Korean character played by a Chinese actor, but no explicitly Chinese characters that I know of. Odd considering population.
1 Like
Othello is a somewhat different situation, as Othello the character doesn’t exhibit stereotypical behavior, but his racial otherness is an essential plot element as it affects how others treat him. Still, there are plenty of great actors of color (however “Moor” is interpreted) that certainly deserve these roles, and production companies and casting agents should respect this. Compare The Merchant of Venice where Shylock does engage in racially stereotypical behavior, and while the character has depth he is consumed with a cruelty that I think most people would find unbelievable, and while there are many well-written scenes in the play, the ending is in extremely poor taste.
And on the original topic: The world doesn’t need Peter Pan or Lone Ranger revivals. It’s okay.
4 Likes
Yes!!! This is exactly it.
1 Like
Oh I know who she is. I was just pointing out that the article couldn’t keep it straight. Wasn’t sure if that was intentional (some joke I’m unaware of) or just a simple mistake.
1 Like
Hamilton. (mic drop)
3 Likes
Has she done more than vocalize her change of heart?
