Snow, Ergo White

Hey, I got a question for you.  Does this gal look like a cool character for a Disney movie?

made by the excruciatingly rad heysawbones.  Used with permission.

I know, right?  How neat would it be to have a princess from Tibet?  (Her name's Nyima, by the way.)

Or how about these guys?  Like, why don't we set a movie in Argentina, maybe high up in the Andean mountains somewhere?

made by the amazing Amy! Used with permission.

Oh, and one more: I didn't hear back on permissions, but you need, want, and deserve to check out Qila and Nanook.  Go do it right now.  I'll wait.

Anyway, here's what all of these ideas have in common: they all are fan-drawn characters, created by artists who wish that Disney had gone a different direction with its upcoming Snow Queen reimagining, Frozen.

And I tell you what: I could not agree more.  There's an interesting Tumblr, thiscouldhavebeenfrozen, which posts fan submissions and rebuts a whole array of "no, but this totally had to be a movie about white people" arguments (and does so pretty fiercely.)

Anyway, there's one post / infographic gallery in particular that I REALLY recommend checking out, about diversity in Disney, and the lack thereof.  (It doesn't look so good on the author's tumblr, but if you click the initial picture, you can click through the gallery one at a time and it's much easier.)  Here's the part that that blows my mind:

The white princesses are never given real-world locations and any assumed setting is based on the origin of source material and sometimes influence in design.

But with the exception of Aladdin, the movies with PoC characters are given explicit settings that justify their existence.

White princesses never have to justify their existence. 

Oh, and for those of you who for some reason don't have your finger on the throbbing heady pulse of the Disney Princess lineup, we're up to 11. (I know, right.  At this rate, the Earth's supply of winsome fictional royalty will be exhausted by 2037.)  Here's the current lineup. 

from Fanpop  © Disney

Anyway, it's a hell of a notion.  The part about how Ambiguous Fantasy Neverland is whiter than Chubbuck, Idaho, and if we're going to have any kind of princess-of-color, we have to program the TARDIS for Jamestown, 1607, or New Orleans, 1923 - you know, go to Earth and set the friggin' GPS, because we need precision scientific accuracy in order to locate sufficient justification for a brown girl.  (Or even a white girl with an accent, in Merida's case.)

Okay, so I was thinking about all that.  And then I thought - you know what Disney movie is COMPLETELY AWESOME?

from Feedio.net  © Disney

YES.  Would you believe that they were originally going to set Lilo and Stitch on a farm in rural Kansas?  Can you imagine how much less interesting that would have been?

Okay, okay, let's go again - think of another one that just took Standard Formula Disney and snapped it over its knee.

from Generic Movie and TV © Disney

Yeeeeeeees.

The Emperor's New Groove is easily one of my favorite films - I am always hugely impressed with any movie that can do genuinely funny all-ages comedy, and this is easily one of the best.  And again, how much less memorable would it be if we sucked out all that indigenous high-altitude flavor (freaking LLAMAS, people!) and set it in Vaguely Germanic Neverwhere?

And you know what's weird about these?

There is nothing in "cuddy but violent alien crash-lands into the lives of two struggling orphans" that screams modern Hawaii.  There is no part of "outrageous buddy comedy about learning how not to be a jerk" that even suggests Incan Empire.  We got to have two solidly non-white settings just for the hell of it - and I would submit, two fantastic movies as a result.  Why?  Well, here's a theory: because a creative team willing to go beyond generic settings and protagonists was far more likely to do likewise for plot, characterization, and dialogue.

And hell, let's throw up some props for Atlantis while we're at it.  Like, who would have beefed if Kidagakash had looked like Namor the Sub-Mariner?  Nobody!  But there we are - free complimentary princess of color!  Look at her, all powerful and magical and shit!

from Disney Junior © Disney

(So why is Kida not in the Disney Princess lineup?  Maybe because her movie didn't do so hot.  Or maybe because she's an actual twentysomething adult who becomes a queen and leads her people instead of, you know, skipping off into a nebulously responsibility-free happily-ever-after.  But I digress.)

Okay, so I guess what I'm saying is:

1.  I don't think Disney deliberately sets out to be stodgy or exclusive.  (On the contrary, they'll do whatever gets them the best PR and the most money.)

2.  I do think Disney is far more willing to take risks outside of its giant expensive tentpole Standard Disney Formula films.

3.  I absolutely believe that more underrepresented characters and settings need to be brought into the picture - and the more we ask for them and talk about them and support the ones that do make it into the world, the more likely that is to happen.

So that is what I am doing here.


You know, it's a good thing you're not a big fat guy, or this would be really difficult.

No, He Really is a Cunning Linguist

Okay, I'm like... six weeks late to the game, but I finally saw Django Unchained last week.

I won't write a whole review here, because the movie's too big and I'm too dumb (I need to see it at least two more times to get even half a grip on it).  Still, I'll get in line behind my hip compadre Matt Borgard in saying, "Loved that it was a movie about slavery that said more than 'Slavery sucks, aren't white people awesome for ending it?'"

But let's scoot over out of the massive shadows of racism and history for a sec.  Let me tell you what was really exceptional and interesting and surprising as hell.  (Spoiler level: mild.)

It's rare enough to get a story with a protagonist who's explicitly multilingual, and rarer still for that ability to be central to the plot.   But I can't remember EVER seeing a bad guy "baddened" by his ignorance of other languages.  

Well, so why is that?  Why is this so unheard-of?

Possibly it's a byproduct of our famed American anti-intellectualism.  After all, science gets you Frankenstein, Godzilla, zombies, super-viruses, the Matrix, Reavers, SkyNet, GladOS, HAL 9000, and Krieger Kleanse.  And whatever learning the heroes need in order to handle up on all that is usually about controlling your powers, using the Force, Eye of the Tiger, the power:responsibility ratio, or some other montage-friendly combination of physical know-how and moral fortitude.  Basically, unless you're tracking down a serial killer or doing night shifts at a magical museum, fancy-pants learnings are a gateway drug to supervillainy.  (So put down the book and go for a jog, Faustus, before you get us all killed.)

Every time somebody does science, somebody else gets a workout.

And possibly it's simpler than that.  Americans skew monolingual (only 20.3% speak a language other than English at home, though of course that doesn't catch multilingual people who default to English), so why would we want heroes who make us feel stupid and inferior? 

Here's what I don't get, though. Even setting aside all explicit fantasy, our heroic canon is full of exotic people with fantastic skills. We thrill to watch secret agents and fighter pilots and unstoppable kung-fu badasses, cops, soldiers, athletes, cowboys, explorers, gangsters, smoldering playboy billionaires, and yes, even the occasional noble attorney or oddball inventor.

So it's not like we're threatened by heroes who are cooler, smarter, or more talented than ourselves.  That's practically a prerequisite.  If we thought it was sexy to speak other languages, the silver screen would be full of people doing exactly that.

Inflect your prepositions for me, baby.  I want your relational noun.

Quick, name three movie characters who speak French.

I got Inspector Clouseau, Pepe le Pew, and Gomez Addams.  For the record, that's an idiot, a skunk, and an Addams.  If you want someone more respectable, you can hit up Le Chiffre or the Merovingian, but then you're over to villainy in pretty short order. 

And if that's what we think of what's widely regarded as a lovely and sophisticated language (which is to say, the mother tongue of those cheese-eating surrender monkeys), what hope can there be for German (Nazis), or Spanish (illegals), or Russian (wacky potato-drunk commies), or Mandarin (sinister industrial commies), or Swahili (wait, where's Swahiland again?)

Is part of the reason our heroes don't speak these languages because we don't respect the people who do?

I don't know.  I do know that it is really, dangerously easy to fall into the "Americans are stupid xenophobic bigots" mindset, where we gnash our teeth and pillory the tabloid-reading, reality-televising, Bieber-beliebing lowest common denominator.  That way lies madness, and yelling at the kids to get off our lawns.

But I would like to find out more about when we lost our reverence for the so-called "classical education", and whether there's any hope for reviving the intellectual sexiness of languages.  (By the way, this is one reason why I'm so jazzed for Russell Connor's Sargasso - danger, mystery, and monsters in the Bermuda Triangle, and one of the leading ladies is a linguist!)

In the meantime, please feel free to add to my list: which of your favorite books and movies have language is a central feature?

--I am simply trying to ascertain -
--Speak English, goddammit!

Being Malton Milquetoast

Well, as of yesterday, it's official: One Night in Sixes is out on submission.  I would say something here about taking up a position at the punch bowl and waiting to be asked to dance, but that is exactly the wrong kind of metaphor.  Better to say that I've already got my dream date, we are already cutting one hell of a rug, and we have no plans to pause until the the lights come up and the judges are ready with their scorecards.

In the meantime, here is another thought that's been a few months in the making.  (Yes, I suck at topical timeliness.)  Let's talk about these guys:

Just in case you didn't catch them in theaters, they're the Sugar Rush racers from Wreck-It Ralph.  And I bet you can spot their pattern even if you didn't see the movie.  Shoot, you could probably make up your own glucose-fueled NASCAR cherub, if you wanted to.

DAT TIE.

As it happens, that is exactly what Ronald MacKinnon did.  Meet Malton Milquetoast, mild-mannered soda jerk and high-octane milkshake stuntman.

(We may pause here for a moment of virtual cheek-pinching, yes.)

So what?

Well, in the words of LRC, the triple-initial-wielding author of Springhole.net:

I really think writers should create universes that are friendlier to fan characters... Any fiction that has a small and non-negotiable number of Chosen Ones or Special People is hostile to fan characters by nature. Be a good sport and share your toys - write universes that easily accomodate fan characters and make the rules and mechanics clear.

(Incidentally, Wreck-It Ralph does a stellar job on this front.  Halfway through the movie, we have absorbed all the relevant rules: how the video game worlds connect, which characters can cross from one to another, what could happen if they do.  I could write a competent canon-faithful sequel right now, with no more guide than the original movie.)

"Well," you might very-reasonably say, "I don't especially care to do that.  They're my toys, it's my creation, and I believe you'll find that copyright law supports my decision not to willingly open my universe's door to every amateur-hour writer and artist who wants to take a free ride on my hard work."

You would be entirely justified in saying that.

However, it's also true that competition for followers, readers, listeners, and buyers is fiercer than it's ever been.  And no matter how prolific a content-creator you are, it ALWAYS takes longer to create said content than it does to consume it.  The book I spent three years writing can be read in a few hours.  A song that took a month to produce plays out in three and a half minutes.  Shoot, even a meme takes longer to write, assemble, save, and upload than it does to "Like" and "Share". 

So I think a good question for ALL content creators to ask themselves is, "what am I giving my fans to do while they wait for my next work?" 

Because if you look at the biggest, most mega-successful series of recent years, a tremendous number of them - Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Avatar: The Last Airbender, My Little Pony, Adventure Time, Star Wars, and others- are so intricate and explorable in their mythology that they seem almost custom-designed to encourage future fan-created ponies and wizards and Jedi and benders of every imaginable stripe.  (As a matter of fact, you may reliably find Mr. MacKinnon working undercover as Equestria's resident advice columnist and self-appointed field medic, Ask Charlie Foxtrot.)

Lumbering laboriously to the point, then: you CAN craft your world however you want.  You CAN hold it up as a perfect, untouchable work, to be admired and critiqued from behind museum glass.  But if you design it a little differently, build in some few extra features ahead of the curtain rising, and then have the courage to toss the whole thing out into the mosh pit, I think it'd be enormously satisfying to watch your creation go crowd-surfing as you set to work on the next one.

I am looking forward to saying that with authority, though.

I'm gonna wreck it!

10 Things I Learned From Watching "Skyfall"

Well, I tried to cut this for spoilers, but I can't get the dang cut to work.  So let me do this the old fashioned way and say

Hey

There's some spoilers here.

So probably you should see the movie first.

With that said...

10 Things I Learned From Watching "Skyfall"

1. If a female agent has a hard time driving big cars and assassinating bad guys, she'd probably be happier as a secretary.

2. Corollary to #1: if you have to fire a woman for gross incompetence, make sure you replace her with a man ASAP. 

3. Flicking your cigarette butt into a coworker's drink is a fun way to show how you respect her as a colleague and an equal.

4. Surprising a rape survivor in her shower is a great way to get laid.

5. Using a woman for target practice is *definitely* a waste of good Scotch.

6. Homosexuals are bad people who will molest you at the first opportunity. 

7. Corollary to #6: any good guys who happen to be homosexual will have the decency to keep that to themselves.

8. Nerds can type on their little keyboards all they want, but if you need to crack the unbreakable computer code, let a real man take a look at it.

9. Corollary to #8: you probably shouldn't have let Poindexter play with it in the first place - he's only going to make a bigger mess.

10. It's okay to be a physically and mentally unfit alcoholic pillhead who botches jobs and gets people killed, as long as you get the bad guy.

Look, I know it's supposed to be a fun spy movie, not a monumental step forward in the quest for diversity and social progress.  And I get that this is the James Bond franchise, not the MI6 Justice Friends.  He's the hero, so he's supposed to do most of the cool stuff and have all the deep and interesting flaws.

But that's exactly the problem.  If James Bond is a flawed hero, then I'm supposed to ride along in his head and root for him while he makes terrible decisions and treats women like garbage.  If he's a fundamentally broken anti-hero and we're *not* meant to identify with him, then this is basically a story about a guy who is rewarded for being a terrific asshole, mostly by virtue of being the least incompetent person in the movie.

I dunno.  This thing is currently sitting on $260 million and 92% on the Tomatometer, so it's clearly given a lot of people some solid entertainment.  But I'll say this much: anyone who still wants to lament America's descent into a dark age of political correctness needs to clam up and catch another matinee.

What do you say about a man like that?

The Pixar Princess

Right, first of all: can I put my hand up and ask that we get MORE movies where the trailer doesn't cover 3/4 of the plot?  It was so refreshing to go see Brave this weekend and enjoy some honest-to-god surprises for a change.

Still, it was hard to watch without thinking about the conversation that must have been its genesis.  I picture it something like this:


Bob Iger and John Lasseter get together to play Barbies and talk girl power.

Disney Exec:  "Right, so John, buddy... we love your movies, but you know what they're saying - the Pixar canon's getting to be sort of a boys' club, and it's about time you kicked in for the princess collection, so..."

John Lasseter: "Seriously?  Can't I just do another movie about cars?  What if it starred a girl car, could we - "

Disney: "Er, no.  No more cars, John, really.  No, what we're going to need for this one is a princess, and I mean an honest-to-god human being, not a robot or a fish or what-have-you.  She'll need to be headstrong and want to follow her dreams - are you getting this? - and see if you can do something ethnic; that's big with the kids these days."

Lasseter: *doodling Mater with an afro in notepad margins* "Ethnic, right..."

Disney: "Make sure you have a talking animal - and no goddamn magic dog-collars, John, just play it straight.  And songs, of course - do you need Phil Collins' number?"

Lasseter: "Er - no, thanks, I've got it.  Speaking of Phil, do you think we could do something like Tarzan, where she doesn't actually have to - "

Disney: "John..."

Lasseter: "No, really - look, I tell you what: get me off the hook with the singing, and we'll do THREE funny animals - three CUTE funny animals.  Think of the merchandise!"

Disney: "Well... all right, but don't get screwy.  Standard operating procedure on the rest: soaring vistas, inspiring message, a handsome prince..."

Lasseter: "At least one handsome prince, got it."

Disney: "What?"

Lasseter: "Nothing, nevermind - say, have you read about The Hunger Games?  Let me run something by you..."

18 months later: Disney execs drop by to see the first ten minutes of test animation.  There's a heartwarming childhood scene, Merida chafing against the demands of princess-dom, soaring vistas and rousing music.  Disney execs leave, pleased.

John Lasseter shuts the door after them, turns around, and claps his hands briskly.  "RIGHT," he says to his creative team.  "Here's what we're going to do..."

I don't want to get married - I want to stay single and let my hair flow in the wind as I ride through the glen, firing arrows into the sunset!

Snow White and the Festering Fairy Tale

I love my sister.  She's everything I'm not, in all the best ways.  She does this thing, where she purses her lips and makes this dog-whistle-pitched fart noise, and...

... anyway, the point is: she's great, but I do kind of want to punch her in the arm for making me sit through Snow White and the Huntsman this weekend.  It was terrible, not in a "this was a total waste of time" way, but in that much more insidious "this could/should have been SO GOOD" way.

Hell-bent to get my money's worth after the fact (well, her money's worth), I've sat back and tried to figure out what derailed my train to Magical Fantasy Wonderland.  Which got me thinking, "all right, so what separates a good fairytale retelling from a bad one?"

Here's what I got.  (Modest Snow White spoilers included; read on if you already know or already know you don't care.)

First of all, one quick political aside: it SUCKS that they did not cast any actual dwarves for this movie.  I wouldn't care as much if they were one-dimensional clownish buffoons, but the writers did a terrific job of making the dwarves into admirable, relatable, interesting characters - which I'm sure is why the casting director said, "oh, these roles are much too important for you, shorties - we'll just shrink Ian McShane & co. down to size and call it a day."  Bastards.  I love what CGI has done for fantasy filmmaking, but every now and then I wish we could go back to the '80s, when you HAD to strip Warwick Davis out of the Ewok suit and let him play Willow.  How many talented actors are missing out on a career because of this digital hobbitizing bullshit?

Anyway, okay, so movie.  Quick, what are some of your favorite fairytale films?  My short-list: The Princess Bride, Shrek, Tangled, and of course The Emperor's New Groove.  I'm sure you have others.  But I'll bet yours follow the same rule as mine:  if you're going to play by fairy-tale rules, you need to keep a fairy-tale atmosphere.  The granddad, in The Princess Bride?  He's not just there to read the book - he keeps reminding us that this IS a book, and a fairytale book at that, so that when ludicrously improbable stuff happens, we are okay with the idea of "mostly dead" or what-have-you, because it fits the story.  The Emperor's New Groove does the same thing in hilarious fourth-wall-breaking fashion, lampshading obvious plot-holes so that we can have a laugh, turn off our inner critic, and get on with the action.

One of these ladies is trying to be taken seriously.

This is one place where Snow White REALLY falls down.  It starts off magically enough, with Thor's voice-over telling the story about the rose, the queen, the fair little princess, etc.  But then we slide right into reality.  The world outside the castle is straight out of Les Miserables: the streets are rivers of mud, the people are filthy and ugly and unshaven - shoot, you can just about feel the itch of the pubic lice.  Everything about the atmosphere is oozing nasty, gritty realism... so by the time Snow White escapes her tower and swims to freedom and there just-so-happens to be a white horse literally sitting on the beach waiting for her to show up, your inner critic is screaming, Artax, what the fuck?
 
This constant clash of fairytale plot devices and syphilis-blistered setting continues through the whole movie.  Cartoonishly over-the-top Disney villain!  No, wait - implied pedophilia!  Magical happy fairyland paradise!  No, wait - tragic demise of secondary character!  I'm not saying you can't have "true love's first kiss" and "death by boiling oil" in the same story - I'm saying that if you're going to tie your fairytale to a ten-pound brick of gritty realism and drop it off a bridge, you'd better make sure you give it enough internal consistency (i.e. rules for magic) to make the swim.

I have more to say, but this is a good place to stop for now.  So let me turn the mic over in the meantime: what about you guys?  Did you see the movie?  What do you consider essential in a good fairytale?

We're promised gold, and what do we get?  Poo!

The Avengers: What Was Missing

My mom is pretty rad.  I don't say that because she wanted us to take her out to see The Avengers for Mothers Day, but it's definitely a contributing factor.

So anyway, my social mediaverse has been dripping with Avengers-flavored orgasmic juices basically for weeks now, and of course hype is a spoiler of a different kind: if enough people tell you that it's the most awesome thing EVER, you're bound to be disappointed when you finally get there.  The fact that I STILL enjoyed the dickens out of this movie surprised me.

Here as my belated effort to catch up to the rest of the world, then, are

Five Things Missing From The Avengers (spoilers included)


1.  Romance.  Or maybe better to say 'giant protracted romantic subplot.'  I'm not dogging on romance in general, but in this movie, the given purpose is to stop Loki from screwing planet Earth, and I appreciate keeping the focus there.  Yeah, there's some hints about there being some kind of a something between Natasha and whatsisname, but that's the extent of it: hints.  Then we're back to kicking ass.  Isn't it wonderful?

2.  Angst.  Maybe this is the great side-benefit of sticking six superheroes together and forcing them to share the screen: there's not enough time for any one of them to take 20 minutes and an overwrought monologue to mope about whatever.  Everybody got a minute and a couple (excellent) lines of dialogue to get poignant.  Then we're back to kicking ass. 

3.  Poor Decision-Making.  Sure, everybody's got their own personalities and prejudices, which makes for some decidedly less-rational behavior, but at no point does the plot hinge on somebody doing something holler-at-the-screen ridiculous.  Iron Man doesn't go diva and quit the team in a huff.  Thor doesn't blow the mission trying to 'redeem' his brother.  These people are adults, pretty consistently making smart decisions to advance a shared goal, and that is unbelievably refreshing.

4.  Fight-Scene Filler.  Let's be honest: long straight-up fight sequences are boring.  Spending ten minutes watching Wolverine fight the spiky-nails chick, or Captain Jack and Norrington duking it out on top of some ridiculously convoluted hamster-wheel bullshit, is boring.  Because all you're doing is waiting to see which one wins, and you already know that even if the good guy loses, he's not going to die.  The Avengers has its share of long action sequences, but it's much less like watching a CG version of Super Punch-Out, and much more akin to extreme eye-candy speed-chess: the outcome of each encounter changes the whole board, and keeps your brain engaged even while your eyeballs are juicing. 

5.  "Strong Female Characters."  I knew this wouldn't be a problem with Joss ("the Boss") Whedon, but it still warrants a mention.  There is some kind of insidious rule that a "kick-ass" heroine must be a rude, domineering, abrasive, nigh-unbearable shrew who strangles innocent bystanders with her ovaries.  And gets naked at some point.  It was so nice to see a lady character who was genuinely kind and polite and kept her (admittedly skin-tight) clothes on all throughout, and STILL kicked major ass.  Aspiring writers of the world, please, for the love of God, take note.

You know, I'm glad that the studio dumped $220 million into this thing: it allowed for a bunch of truly top-tier actors, amazing setpieces and special effects, and some first-rate marketing.  I just hope that when the movie gurus look at The Avengers' eleventy-billion dollars in revenue and set out to emulate its success, they will realize that the secret formula isn't "expensive eye-candy and lots of it."  Good writing is cheap by comparison, and yet incredibly valuable.  It's nice to see that rewarded.

Clench up, Legolas.