Comment on They made the fairy in the new Pinocchio bald
Sal@mander.xyz 2 years ago
The original fairy had turquoise hair and black eyes, and Disney made her blonde with blue eyes likely because they considered this to make her more marketable. I think that it is fair to make her black and bald now. These movies are watched by children all over the world, and the more diversity that can be shown among the cast of main characters, the better. Representation really does have a positive impact on the mental health of children, and there are no negatives. I understand that an adult who grew up with Pinocchio might be uncomfortable by seeing one of their childhood movies replaced with something so different - but this movie is not for those adults, it is a children's movie, so why not be happy that the newer generations will grow up exposed to more diversity in film than us?
masterofballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
I would say having a bald fairy is a negative. You can find a diverse group of attractive women with hair.
The negative for diversity points is that the little Italian kids are going to feel like they are being replaced. We need New stories to represent the current world sure but replacing someone's culture can have downsides. The feeling like we are all being socially engineered is uncomfortable too.
If this was a African story with the characters replaced with women from Italy people would riot.
Main complaint is she is bald though. I usually wouldn't let my kids watch Disney movies anyway its a terrible company.
Sal@mander.xyz 2 years ago
Sure, and they do find a fair share of conventionally attractive women with hair to put in movies. I don't see why putting an attractive bald woman instead is a negative.
The Fairy is a mytical creature from the forest capable of morphing into whatever look she wants, and she does morph in the original story, so probably she will do so too in the film. I don't really see Italian kids feeling replaced by this one instance. Many of those Italian kids have characters in movies to relate themselves and their family members - but those kids with mothers that lost their hair due to illness do not often see a character that resembles their mom. It really does have a positive impact to see someone like your mom being represented.
I suspect that if this was an African story and one of the mytical characters was replaced by a white Italian actor the Africans would not complain at all. Maybe even if the main character was replaced with a white actor, most people in Africa would be perfectly okay with that. I think this probably has already happened many times... In Mexico it used to happen all the time! It used to be very prestigious to get a famous foreign actor in one's film.
I agree. I don't think I will have many rules when I have kids, so they'll watch Disney if they want, but I agree that it is a terrible company.
masterofballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Come on, we aren't running for president here. Please allow me to be blunt for a moment to make a couple points.
You don't have to have a retard in every film to appease little retard Timy. There is nothing wrong with beauty standards. An ideal human female has hair. In all parts of the world that is true. Thats not to say there is no value in broken people. We all get more broken everyday but people like art to be a representative of our best. Retard cancerous Timmy isn't our best i'm sorry to say. It's not his fault, he ate fish out the lake that the factory was pouring chemicals in. But It's sad and I don't want to be sad all the time. I want to escape reality in a movie.
She could have put a wig on like real mom's do. She wasn't ugly, she was purposefully plain for a role intended to be excellent. Not young, Shaved head.
I can give you many many examples of people raging about white people playing asian or black roles. In more homogeneous cultures it's not a huge deal but in a country of immagrants like America we tend to want our stories to be played by their real ethnicity. Italians should play Italians. We have lots of them. Irish play irish, Japanese Japanese. As long as the plot line calls for it. All of this is fungible of course. I can promise you there are Italians mad about it though. They get super pissed everytime someone talks about ending columbus day.
Sal@mander.xyz 2 years ago
Maybe not you, but I already printed out my "Salamander 4 Fedipresident" buttons and stickers.
(1) I agree, it would be very wrong to force all of the movies to include a specific character to appease anyone. But we are not talking about making a bald black woman appear in every movie, but rather about diversifying the range of types of people that are included in films. I don't agree with the claim "An ideal human female has hair. In all parts of the world that is true" - but I understand that we have fundamentally different views that stems from how we define things and our values, so we can consider this a difference of opinion. Even if I accept that this is the truth - why would we ask for a fairy to be played by an attractive woman? Considering most people are closer to 'average', why would we want characters in movies to be played by people who meet the best beauty standards? As for Timmy the Retard, I understand your point - it would likely not be a good idea to give someone with severe ALS (like Stephen Hawking) the role of James Bond and have everyone in the movie act as if he were fully-abled. But I think movies such as Me Before You are trying to do this in a reasonable way, even if this one did stir its own big controversy about exploiting the disabled community... There will always be people complaining.
(2) Yes, but they are doing this on purpose to have a bald woman. For them it is not a bug, it's a feature. It is marketing and I really do believe that it is a net positive.
Don't worry about looking for examples, I believe you! People rage all the time for many reasons. I disagree with many of them... And even if I do agree with them I generally think that they should relax... Raging is usually unnecessary.