media: tv/movies

Kelebek sent in an Australian commercial for Brut deodorant. In it, a male robot transforms various objects (a motorcycle, a drink) into “better” versions, more fitting of a super macho robot. One of the improved items is a Barbie doll/woman:

The woman is, quite literally, an object, to be “modified,” and then posed with his other belongings. And as we see, being “brutally male” is associated with drinking a lot, driving powerful vehicles, having hot women, and probably engaging in the type of risky behaviors that partially explain why men in many industrialized nations live shorter lives than women.

The commercial was pulled from TV by the Advertising Standards Bureau after they determined it was offensive to women. The commercial had to be recut…so that the woman isn’t one of the “objects” in the back of his vehicle at the end. The scene where he modifies the Barbie to be a live woman, and the phrase “reject, modify object,” weren’t removed. And:

Brut brand manager Deane De Villiers defended the ad, saying the robot carried the woman with the utmost of respect “as one would carry one’s bride”.

Yes. If your bride were an object you created to your very own specifications.

And for fun, read the comments to that Sun-Herald article.

As you may know, Disney has a movie coming out later this year called “The Princess and the Frog,” a retelling of the story of the princess who kisses a frog that then helpfully turns into a handsome prince for her to marry. The noteworthy aspect of this film, aimed at a mainstream audience, is that the female protagonist is African American. We’ve seen Disney films with non-White protagonists before–“Mulan” and “Pocahontas,” for instance–but to my knowledge there haven’t been any with a Black main character, unless I guess you count the Uncle Remus stuff, and that’s just a whole lot of ick.

While many people have eagerly awaited “The Princess and the Frog,” Disney’s long history of negative or stereotypical portrayals of non-White characters (i.e., “Fantasia“) meant many were concerned about what the final product might be, expressing concerns based on the trailer and other promotional materials that have emerged so far. Margaret Lyons at EW.com says,

Disney’s track record with racism and racist caricature makes me a little nervous when I see stuff like that toothless firefly.

According to Jezebel, “…Tiana was originally a maid named Maddy (to0 close to mammy?)…” And Leontine says,

…based on this trailer, the other things that Black people get to do are voodoo shit, playing jazz and dancing, and making jokes about their butts.  Charming.

For the record, the protagonist is only African American for part of the movie; for a good chunk of it she’s a green frog. But then, doesn’t the princess turn into an ogre in at least some of the “Shrek” movies? I can’t quite recall.

The movie website has a video game. In the game (from io9),

…Tiana, is sent on a mission to retrieve the rich white girl’s tiara, so she can borrow it, but along the way she’s asked to fetch some hot sauce for the gumbo before she has permission to get to the rich girl’s bedroom.

A screenshot of the hot sauce part:

Rebekah R. pointed out a deck of promotional cards handed out at Comic-Con (also at io9). There are some interesting gender and racial elements. Here are Tiana’s parents; note that her mother is “nurturing” while her father is “inspirational”:

Dr. Facilier is a “witch doctor,” practices voodoo, and looks a bit like cartoonish images of pimps I’ve seen now and then:

I did notice that the valet (is that the same as a butler?) for the prince is White rather than Black:

The text for one of the cards says “It’s not in yo’ cards”:

Here’s Mama Odie, the godmother figure, is a “seer” with a snake:

These images and objections are interesting by themselves, but they also bring up some of the difficulties in portraying groups that have historically been stereotyped negatively and occupied a subordinate social status. For instance, the fact that Tiana was originally going to be a maid wouldn’t, on the surface, necessarily be that different from “Cinderella,” in which the (White) protagonist is basically a maid. And there’s nothing wrong with playing jazz or, for that matter, practicing voodoo (which could be seen as very similar to the magic that is so common in kids’ films).

But of course, an image of a Black woman as a maid carries different connotations than that of a White woman doing the same job. There have certainly been large numbers of White maids  in the U.S. as well as other countries; in the late 1800s many female Irish immigrants to the U.S. took jobs as domestic servants. But they fairly quickly transitioned, as a group, into other types of work. African American women were stuck with jobs as maids a lot longer because of job discrimination. The “Mammy” figure, a happy-go-lucky servant pleased to take care of the White family she worked for, was applied exclusively to Black women.

Depicting Cinderella as a maid doesn’t play into pre-existing stereotypes of White women; it’s just an individual portrayal. A Black character cast as a maid, to many people, reproduces an image of Black women that goes beyond the individual–whether the creators intend to or not, such images bring with them associations to the Mammy character and real oppression of African American women in a culture that saw them primarily as servants for more privileged groups.

Disney may have intentionally tapped into those cultural images when Tiana was originally imagined as a maid for a White character (as well as including other stereotypical elements). Or the creators may have unthinkingly reproduced stereotypes because, when thinking about characters to use in a movie set in New Orleans with a Black protagonist, they drew on existing cultural imagery. In the absence of a concerted, thoughtful effort to avoid reproducing them, it’s not surprising that problematic elements show up in TV shows, movies, and so on.

Anyway, this should be an interesting situation to watch unfold when the movie is finally released.

UPDATE: Commenter John Lewis says,

This movie’s worth analyzing, but Gwen’s commentary here is not among the most insightful I’ve read on this blog. From my viewing of the trailer, without knowing much else about the film, I think she’s really reaching.

I don’t know that I’m “reaching,” exactly–we know quite a bit of other stuff about the film, such as the fact that Disney originally had Tiana cast as a maid, and that many people who want this to be a good film are very frightened about how it might turn out, which I think is fascinating in and of itself–but he’s right about it not being the best commentary ever. Meh. It’s free content, people, and this is the first week of classes. My brain works better at putting together a coherent argument some days than others. Taking the post down b/c it’s not my best, or b/c people say I’m off-base, seems sort of intellectually dishonest, like I’m trying to hide anything that gets criticized, so I guess I’ll just leave it up and people can read the critical comments.

And in my defense, it also turns out Disney has recut the trailer and some of the scenes that were in it when I first started writing up some commentary aren’t in it any more. I didn’t realize when I found a link to the trailer after the original link disappeared that it had been changed to leave out some things I found odd in the first one.

See also this post that includes a discussion of concerns that the movie “Up” wouldn’t be popular because it had an Asian lead character as well as our post on gender in Pixar films, gender roles in “Bee Movie,”

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Giorgos S. sent us a link to a story in the Guardian about the cover of DVDs of the movie “Lesbian Vampire Killers.” Some stores are carrying censored versions. Giorgos says he’s seen the censored version at Borders stores in the U.K.:

So apparently the phrase “they won’t go down without a bite” is fine, and major cleavage requires just a tad bit of coverage with a sticker that says “Warning: Contains explicitly fit bloodsucking hotties!” The sticker that nearly entirely obscures the word “lesbian” says, “Warning: may display sexually suggestive cover image.”

The distributors blame stores, saying a number of large retailers requested that they obscure particular parts of the cover. The stores say they didn’t request that the word “lesbian” be hidden. I suppose we’ll never know what happened there. It does crack me up that you’d be willing to sell a movie called “Lesbian Vampire Killers,” but then be worried about the cover.

The issue of censorship leaves aside, of course, the content of the film itself. This may surprise you, but it was apparently widely negatively reviewed. IMDb summarizes the plot thusly:

Their women having been enslaved by the local pack of lesbian vampires thanks to an ancient curse, the remaining menfolk of a rural town send two hapless young lads out onto the moors as a sacrifice.

Here’s the original marketing poster:

I like how her nipples have been photoshopped out (unless lesbian vampires have nipples on the sides of their boobs).

If anyone’s seen it, I’d be interested to know if it portrays lesbians as ridiculously as I suspect it does.

See also: airbrushing out men’s nipples.

This clip from The Daily Show nicely illustrates how ridiculous and utterly meaningless the statistics we encounter can be:

This probably goes without saying, but there are multiple problems here:

1. Viewers of these shows are a self-selected group who are quite likely watching because they agree with the hosts to some degree, so it wouldn’t be surprising they’d agree with the hosts’ views.

2. Viewers who care enough to text are an even more unusual group, likely to be those who feel most passionately about an issue.

3. Only those people watching the show and are able to text right then are able to vote.

4. The wording of the questions is clearly intended to lead to a particular answer, using leading phrases like “are you outraged,” which responsible social scientists would never use–any question that uses something along the lines of “don’t you agree” or “wouldn’t you say that” makes it more likely the respondents will, indeed, agree with the point.

5. The hosts actively cajole viewers to give a specific answer if they aren’t getting as many of that answer as they wanted.

Of course, the hosts aren’t trying to present factual, useful information and almost certainly know very well that they’re manipulating questions to get results that will appear to overwhelmingly support their position. But we’re inundated with “statistics” such as these every day that are completely meaningless, but many many people don’t know how to evaluate them. This little clip shows some of the things a person should look for as an indication that a number was created to support a particular viewpoint and should be viewed with extreme skepticism, if not dismissed altogether.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Jen S. emailed us about the controversy surrounding casting for the movie version of Nickelodeon’s cartoon “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” Jen describes the cartoon:

[It’s] set in a fantasy Asian world that also incorporated the philosophies, cultures, martial arts, and writing of a pan-Asian world. Multiple groups were brought in like the Media Action Network for Asian Americans and a master of Chinese calligraphy to bring an authentic Asian feel to the world and this was the main thing that made the cartoon an award winner. It was non European based and wasn’t afraid to use characters of Asian and Inuit cultures as the lead characters.

Fans of the series protested when it became clear that the cast for the movie was overwhelmingly Caucasian. The “bad” character, Zuko, was originally played by Jesse McCartney, a White actor/musician, but when he pulled out of the movie the role went to Dev Patel:

Jen says that in the cartoon, the “evil” characters were lighter-skinned than the heroes, but the casting has reversed that, and apparently several of the Asian-inspired elements from the cartoon have been removed for the movie because “they wanted to make the world ‘more diverse’ than the show and apparently that means an all white lead cast.”

Commenting in an article, Jackson Rathbone, the actor who plays Sokka, said,

I think it’s one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan…

It’s unclear to me if he was saying he needs to do those things to look Asian enough to play the role, or was arguing that Sokka isn’t specifically Asian so Rathbone can play him, and either way it misses the point, but I suppose an actor isn’t likely to make an argument that someone else should have gotten their role instead of them.

The animatic editor of the cartoon series expressed disappointment that none of the main “good” protagonists will be played by Asian characters.

This reminded me of the debate about the Pixar movie “Up” that came out earlier this summer. One of the two main characters, and the only child, is Asian-American:

The character was apparently partially based on Pixar animator Pete Sohn:

Before the movie came out, I read an article in a magazine in which industry insiders expressed doubt about whether non-Asian kids would identify with an Asian-American character. The gist of the comments was that the movie might fail because kids might not like watching an Asian-American lead. Of course, the movie went on to gross over $287 million in the U.S. and $367 million worldwide by early August.

In another example, when faced with criticism of casting Whites as the main characters in “21,” a movie based on a book about actual Asian-American college students, the movie’s producer said,

Believe me, I would have loved to cast Asians in the lead roles, but the truth is, we didn’t have access to any bankable Asian American actors that we wanted…If I had known how upset the Asian American community would be about this, I would have picked a different story to film.

There were no bankable Asian American actors…that they “wanted.” None of the men on this page, for instance, are bankable. And the solution to concerns raised by Asian Americans about the lack of roles for Asian American actors isn’t to provide them more leads, or at least seriously engage in a discussion about the issue…it’s to pack up your toys and go film something else.

There are many other examples of movies in which characters that were Asian or Asian American in the source material (book, TV series, etc.) are played by Whites in the movie adaptation; the links above describe many of them. There still seems to be an assumption that male Asian American actors won’t appeal to a general audience, that they aren’t “bankable,” and that it’s therefore preferable to cast relatively unknown White actors over Asian American actors who may be more recognizable. It’ll be interesting to see if the Korean-American actor who plays one of the non-vampire characters in “Twilight” will now get as many opportunities as Jackson Rathbone, who also stars in the movie (but, from what I understand, actually has a less prominent role and smaller speaking part).

In a comment, reader Julian says,

And I have to wonder why no one has pointed out that in the original (animation), though all the characters are non-Caucasian, the only one with “slanted” or upturned eyes is the Bad Guy. Though lighter skinned, he looks like the one least likely to be able to “pass” as white to me. This strikes me as odd, and even weirder that no one has mentioned it, especially among all this talk of erasing/demonizing PoC.

Matt K. adds,

…I do recall that in anime, one shorthand for identifying good vs. evil characters is eyes. Good characters have huge eyes, round faces, and so forth. Evil characters have pointy chins and narrow eyes. Of course, of interest in a lot of anime is how so many of the characters look white…but that’s probably another story.

And Adam says,

I don’t think Up is a good counter-example given that it is narratively structured around colonialism in Latin America. I mean, was there even ONE single Latin American person in the film or even any refrence to the people who must have lived on the land they were tredding across and the sacred species whom they had been hunting/rescuing. No. Not to mention the dogs were racialized via popular physiognomy.

Also see our post on gender in Pixar films.

Tracy R. sent in the trailer for the movie “Good Hair,” a documentary by Chris Rock:

This movie looks awesome. It humorously addresses the social construction of “good” hair, which means, of course, straight hair. As we see in the trailer, African American women often feel pressured to wear their hair straight in order to be seen as attractive; this is similar to how lighter skin is often defined as more attractive than darker skin, even by other African Americans (and Latinos). It’s also interesting that the pursuit of “good” hair has created a global market for human hair.

On the topic of African American women and weaves, Sexual Buzz sent in this KGB “Natural Weave” commercial (KGB is a service where you can get answers to questions via text) that plays on the “angry sassy Black woman” image.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Elizabeth H. sent in the trailer for the movie Precious (based on the novel Push), which should be released later this year:

As Elizabeth says,

It seems to reinforce…negative associations [of] underclass or working class African-Americans: poor education, single motherhood, teenage pregnancy, abuse, child obesity, etc.

The trailer brings up some interesting issues about skin color as well. Precious’s desire for a light-skinned boyfriend highlights the emphasis placed on skin color as a measure of attractiveness: a light-skinned boyfriend would indicate her own success in the world, just as fame and wealth would. Elizabeth points out that all the “good” adult characters are light-skinned (and thin) as well.

Also see our posts on kids’ perceptions of skin color and attractiveness, an ad for skin lightener, a club letting light-skinned girls in for free, Malaysian anti-racism parody of skin lightening cream ad, and an ad that shows darker skin as more exciting.

Laura A., of Border Thinking on Migration, Trafficking and Commercial Sex, has an interesting post about the film Zinda Laash: Bollywood’s Norms for Dhandewalis that explores portrayals of sex workers in some Indian films.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.