After "The Little Mermaid" chose a black actor as the protagonist, Disney chose a Latino actress to perform a live-action version of the classic animation "Snow White". Is this yet another "politically correct" show?
✎ Author | Cheng late
✎ Edit | Xiao Feng
Can you imagine snow white with dark skin whose "skin is as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony"?
A few days ago, Disney officially announced that the live-action version of "Snow White" was played by Latino post-00 actress Rachel Zegler. As soon as the news was released, many netizens believed that Disney "did not respect the original work", "was too politically correct" and "ruined childhood". This is not the first time Disney has faced such a casting controversy.
Rachel Zegler
Disney has been "unbridled" many times
In July 2020, Disney announced the live-action of the famous 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid, and 20-year-old black actor Halle Bailey was selected to play the new "Little Mermaid", which almost caused a Disney public relations crisis.
The live-action version turns Ariel, a red-haired, white-skinned, blue-eyed little mermaid in the anime, into a black little mermaid, which is unacceptable to many people. Some people say that Disney disregarded the fact that Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote the original book, was Danish — how could the Danish Little Mermaid be black in Andersen's 19th century?
Poster for the movie The Little Mermaid.
Followed by the live-action version of "The Little Mermaid" is a big "boycott movement". On social media, the topic #NotMyAriel (not my mermaid) appeared. Many people insulted and personally attacked Halle Bailey's account, believing that she was not worthy of interpreting the role. But after that, with the support of many stars, including the voice of the animated version of "The Little Mermaid", the controversy gradually subsided.
Recently, with a set of "The Little Mermaid" on set and news that 15 people on the crew tested positive for COVID-19, it has come to the forefront again – people still seem to have a hard time accepting that the Little Mermaid may be black, and that she is a black woman with a body and appearance that is not as provocative as Beyoncé.
In addition to the Marvel series, Disney's other trump card is its Princess series. Is Disney's choice of people of color really for the sake of eyeballs and force "political correctness"?
Disney's animated version of the princess in the early years is the memory of a generation, and classic animated characters such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Mulan have long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, so whenever Disney has made "Disney Princesses" live-action over the years, casting has always been the focus of people's attention.
Stills from the live-action version of "Mulan".
After all, as a synonym for kindness, bravery, sincerity, and purity, Disney princesses have long been no longer simple "princesses". It can be said that they are the "patron saints" of many people's childhood. Princess, of course, is to be "flawless", so what kind of actor can interpret this innocence and flawlessness, people have different opinions.
A few years ago, Disney made animations such as "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty" and "Beauty and the Beast" live-action, and achieved good box office results. A-list actresses such as Angelina Jolie, Ellie Fanning, Emma Watson, Lily James, and China's Liu Yifei have all participated in the "Disney Princess" series when their careers are in full swing. But interpreting the classic is not an easy task, the animated version is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, 10,000 viewers have 10,000 kinds of Disney princess appearances in their minds.
Emma Watson played Bell in Beauty and the Beast.
Lily Collins and Emma Watson have been criticized for not interpreting the princess well, but the scolding, the box office proves that Disney's planning and casting are extremely "safe" to ensure the extremely high box office.
Why doesn't Disney go all the way "safely"? Finding a "sweet" white actress who matches the image of the animated version and the original is not a difficult task. Is it commercially wise to stir up controversy with black actors subverting previous fairy tale images? Is Disney wrapped up in "political correctness"?
In fact, this support for minorities is far from enough.
Let's start with Hollywood
If we look at the production of Disney and Hollywood in recent years, we will find that the era of white domination of Hollywood is over.
In Disney's new version of Spider-Man, Spider-Man's girlfriend has changed from the previous two versions of a white woman to a dark-skinned Zandaya to play, and in the acclaimed and popular animated version of Spider-Man: Parallel Universe, Spider-Man in the parallel world is already a black guy. The success of "Black Panther" at the box office shows that black superheroes can have the same market appeal.
Marvel's old rival DC Comics, in the new version of Batman, also turned Catwoman into a "black cat" played by black movie star Zoe Kazan.
In Hollywood a decade ago, this was unthinkable. If you read this, if you think this is "political correctness" in Hollywood, let's set the time back to 1937.
Poster for the movie "The Land".
That year, a big $8 million production was being made in California, and the studio was ambitious about the film. Adapted from 1931 Nobel Prize winner Pearl Buck's "The Land," it was a favorite genre in Hollywood that year—epic narratives, individual cares, and deep cultural accumulations that gave it high hopes.
But there's only one problem, and it's a movie about China. Although the original author, Pearl Buck, insisted on using all Chinese actors or at least Chinese actors, in the end, there were almost no Chinese actors in the film.
At that time, Hollywood's most well-known Chinese actress, Anna May Wong, was the most vocal actor suitable for the heroine, but the producers "did not dare" to use her. Because if she is allowed to be the heroine, the producer may face severe penalties, resulting in the film can not be released normally.
Yellow willow cream
At that time, the American film industry needed to abide by the FilmMaking Code, because it was promoted by the American Film Producers and Distributors Association of Will Hayes, so it was also called the "Hayes Code". Simply put, it determines what kind of rules American cinema needs to follow, and if it doesn't, the producers are likely to lose money because of a movie.
In the movie version of "The Land", the male protagonist finalized the white film star Paul Muni to star. According to the Hayes Code, white people cannot have marriage (sexual relations) with people of different races, so Huang Liushuang cannot play the female number one "Alain". Although the filmmakers still wanted Huang Liushuang to play the villainous role "Ah Lian" in the end, although Huang Liushuang, who had not had a movie to shoot for many years at that time, needed to "show her face", she still refused.
Yellow Willow Cream in the American drama "Hollywood". /Hollywood
"You let me— a man with Chinese blood— play the only unsympathetic character in a movie about China involving all-white actors." This is her response.
Huang Liushuang's refusal is still loud to this day.
Although "The Land" received four Oscar nominations in addition to its box office success, and Luise Rainer, who played the heroine, won the Oscar for Best Actress, years later, the excellence of the script, acting, directing and cinematography still can't stop it from becoming a negative textbook about racial discrimination and prejudice.
Also suffering injustice are black actors. In 1940, Hattie McDaniel won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for playing a black maid in Gone with the Wind, but at the Oscars, she had to sit with her agent at a table in the corner for the duo— which was only facilitated by the "open side" of the hotel that hosted the awards ceremony at the time.
Hattie McDaniel
After Heidi McDaniel won the award, she still couldn't attend the "all white" celebration banquet. In Hollywood at the time, discrimination, prejudice and discrimination against minority actors were the norm. In the broader American community, there is more explicit and direct discrimination than in Hollywood.
Innate racial labels
2020 is a very important year for both blacks and Asians.
After George Floyed, a black man, was killed by Minnea Police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020, the nation began a massive BLM (Black Lives Matter) movement.
The movement is widely debated, with some arguing that it magnifies individual cases and is merely a "politically correct" show. But why did this case lead to such a massive protest movement that went beyond the black community?
In "The Label of Nature," scholar Ibram Kendy cites a very straightforward set of data on why the black community is so dissatisfied with the current system.
"The Label of Nature"
[American] Ibram Written by X. Kendi, translated by Zhu Yena / Gao Xin
Social Science Literature Publishing, 2020-5
Young black men are 29 times more likely to be killed by police than whites. A 2014 study showed that the median household wealth of whites was 13 times higher than the median of black household wealth, and the unemployment rate of blacks was exactly 5 times higher than that of whites.
Kendy then asks the question very directly: Why do blacks, who make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, account for only 2.7 percent of the total wealth, while the unemployment rate accounts for 40 percent of the total?
Kendy believes that black people have been labeled as "innate" at birth, although in this group, there are different genders, occupations, ethnicities, nationalities, etc., but people only see skin color. The label "negro" is enough to keep them out of the mainstream.
It is difficult to integrate into the mainstream, and Asians.
Asians have long been considered a "model minority" in the United States because they have a clear economic and social advantage over African-Americans and Latinos. But "model minorities" are themselves a pitfall.
At the 2016 Academy Awards, three Asian-American children in suits took the stage, and the host Chris Rock joked that the three were employees of PwC, a well-known accounting firm, which was intended to joke with the stereotypes of Asian child labor and good mathematics.
The 2016 Academy Awards.
The presentation of Asian stereotypes at the awards ceremony immediately drew opposition from Asian filmmakers, including Ang Lee, who subsequently issued a public letter of protest.
"In light of oscasrsSoWhite's criticism, we had hoped that the awards would provide the method and opportunity to serve as an example of inclusion and diversity, but the awards ceremony was dusted by the absurd way of showing Asians," the letter said. Many people may ask, "mathematics is good" such a stereotype, it seems not to be bad?
If you knew about the "Asian quota," you might not think so. Asian quotas are deliberately limited in American education and the workplace. In popular culture, Asians are considered to be a high-performing group, so the admission requirements are much higher.
While many Ivy League schools don't recognize limits on the number of Asian students, the numbers do tell the story. Over the past three decades, the number of Asians in the United States who reach college age has tripled, but the number of people entering college has not increased (and declined in some schools).
Back in 2010, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua published a book called Tiger Mother Battle Song. Through this book, the word "Tiger Mother" became the focus of public attention, and the stereotype of Asian Americans reached its peak. After looking at this book, we will find that Cai Mei'er is peddling a very traditional "ideal life", which is no wonder that this book has caused a lot of waves.
Tiger Mother Battle Song
By Cai Mei'er
CITIC Press, 2011-6
Therefore, people do not need to worry about being Asian, to be good at mathematics, to know the piano, to be patient... These stereotypes have made more ordinary Asians encounter invisible obstacles.
Another, more frightening stereotype is to tie Asians to utilitarianism and money. In the first two years, "Picking Gold", which performed well at the box office, was also adding to this stereotype through a series of spectacle displays of the wealth of Asians (protagonists) – even though the film achieved the best box office results of an all-Asian actor's film in nearly 20 years. But there's no denying that its biggest selling point — as its English title, Crazy Rich Asians — is stereotyping.
Stills from "Picking Gold".
In March 2021, a serial shooting in Atlanta, USA, killed eight people, six of whom were Asians. This caused an uproar in the United States. StopAsianHate campaigns were quickly organized in solidarity with Asians.
But even if minorities are treated unfairly, is Disney's subversive adaptation of classic fairy tales, consciously or unconsciously pandering to political correctness, justifying the use of minority actors to play white characters in the original?
Without minority involvement,
These commercial successes are almost impossible
In his "Identity Politics", the scholar Francis Fukuyama points out the awakening of people's "identity" consciousness at present, the awakening of people's "inner self" and the desire for dignity. To understand the current global politics of identity, we must be aware of this.
Fukuyama analyzes that in some early civilizations, dignity belonged to only a few people, such as those who were willing to risk their lives to fight on the battlefield; in other societies, dignity belonged to all people; and in others, dignity belonged to a small group of people attached to certain groups.
《Identity》
Francis Fukuyama
Farrar, Straus and Giroux，2018-9
Dignity is essentially an "identity", and the search for identity is rooted in human nature, as Hegel believes, dignity is the "ultimate driving force" for the development of human society. Understanding people's desire for dignity, that is, identity, is the key to understanding modern society.
Modern history is, in fact, a history of seeking identity. Marginalized groups are constantly seeking the recognition of mainstream society, and they allow themselves to be "seen" through various ways of speaking.
But the challenge for identity politics is whether, when one group seeks a dignified identity, does it place itself above other groups and create another kind of inequality?
Disney's casting was questioned as a show for "political correctness" precisely because it was believed that Disney prioritized people of color.
But if you understand the history of Disney, you will know that Disney's bold use of casting to subvert the classics in the past two years, in addition to responding to the voices of supporting marginalized groups in the past two years, is also using "manufacturing identity" to pursue commercial success. The casting of one or two films does not "put minorities above other groups" and causes substantial harm to mainstream groups.
In 2020, the epidemic has brought the world's films to a near standstill, and as a result, film companies have begun to invest more resources in streaming media. Disney's Disney+ is Disney's online streaming platform. In July 2020, Disney streaming released hamilton, a stage play starring Lin Manuel Miranda.
The stage play Hamilton featured a large number of black actors in historically white roles. /Hamilton
This is a stage play that created a box office miracle after performing on Broadway in 2015. The screenplay's creator and lead actor, Lin Manuel Miranda, is of Puerto Rican descent, while he plays Hamilton, a well-known American politician of Scottish descent, and in the stage play, Miranda also invites a large number of ethnic minorities to play white characters – a cognitive challenge for the audience.
Lin Manuel Miranda
But in the first weekend of Disney's launch, the Disney streaming app added 260,000 downloads, and a month after its launch, Disney streaming users increased by 37.1%.
The success of Hamilton, Black Panther, and Spider-Man: Parallel Worlds proves that as long as it is a good story, the shade of the protagonist's skin color will not affect commercial success. It can even be said that such commercial success is almost impossible without minority creators.
Perhaps, some people will retort that "Snow White" and "The Little Mermaid" are classics, even if they advocate diversity and conform to the trend of the times, why should they take the classics?
Classics are never set in stone
When it comes to Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and Brothers Grimm's Snow White, what pops into most people's minds is probably the classic image in Disney animation.
What is a classic? In Herbert Grabes' cultural memory and literary classics, he summed up the "classics" very precisely, arguing that "classics are the objectification of shared values of individuals or groups." The classics that can be passed down to this day are because they embody the shared value of the group and are the heritage shared by mankind.
Classics are part of human cultural memory, and Jan Asman, the scholar who first defined "cultural memory", defined cultural memory as "a characteristic store of texts, images, and rituals that are repeatedly used, and in the process of cultivating these things, the self-image of each society and era is input into it and stabilized."
Cultural Memory
[de] Jan Asman, translated by Jin Shoufu / Huang Xiaochen
Peking University Publishers, 2020-5
Therefore, the last thing people need to worry about is that the classics will be "destroyed". In our history, the classics that carry the collective will not disappear so easily, and a new story based on the old classics can become a classic if it has enough power to resonate with people.
Shakespeare's Hamlet, for example, became a classic because it perfectly told the great confusion of mankind in the story of Prince Hamlet—no one can forget the phrase "to be or not to be." But can you imagine Prince Hamlet of Denmark becoming black?
In 2016, the highlight of the gala commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth belonged to the black "Hamlet" launched by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
A party to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth.
In this show, in addition to the black actor Papaa Essiedu, including the British national treasure "Gandalf" Ian McLean, "Curly" Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant, and even The Uk's most respected actress Judy Dench also took the stage to play her own Hamlet.
Of course, the show's most mixed moment is when the final real member of the royal family, Prince Philip, also comes on stage to perform the phrase "to be or not to be" as naturally as if Hamlet itself is infinite.
In this show, we see that classics can penetrate skin color, gender, age, and occupation and hit people's hearts.
If we denigrate and hate the classics because of the color of our skin, we will lose more color. Only a very small number (less than 1%) of genes are involved in the inheritance of skin color, and therefore, beyond skin color and labels, people can find their full value.
Our pursuit of "white" is more the result of the shaping of acquired culture. Some time ago, actor Shu Qi posted several photos on Weibo, and then some fans released photos of P Baihou in the message. Shu Qi replied directly to the messager: "Why don't you go and powder a white person?" ”。
Shu Qi's reply.
Social media has made people's enthusiasm for "white and thin" more than ever, and under various filters, people have become more and more blurred. It is precisely for this reason that the out-of-line casting of "The Little Mermaid" and "Snow White" is valuable.
There is a line in the black writer James Baldwin's anthology Next Time Will Be a Fire: "Behind his appearance today is the overlap of countless faces of his past." ”
The new "Little Mermaid" and "Snow White" were not Disney's choices, they were chosen by a past that people could not avoid.
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Can you accept a blackened Disney princess?