Starting with my first hot take: Cats Don't Dance is the only animated movie to do a racism allegory using animals and not fuck it up YEAH I SAID WHAT I SAID
god, i read a quote from one of the dragon age devs that was something like, the mages are a metaphor for any oppressed group, but also for gun control
I SWEAR TO GOD I WAS LIKE 'WHY IS NICK PLAYED BY A WHITE MAN' AND SOMEONE SHOWED ME PRODUCTION TEAM COMMENTARY ABOUT HOW THEY WEREN'T THINKING ABOUT RL RACE RELATIONS OR SOME SHIT AT SOME POINT
a girl in love
: YEAH LIKE. I both, Get It, since tbh if a POC played him they would have gotten EVEN MORE SHIT ON i bet. But the main thing is there's no winning when you decide to put minories in the role of CARNIVOROUS PREDATORS
that said I have zero problem with beastars because it explicitly goes out of its way to be like 'the world is Just Like This, there are biases all around for herbivores and predators and everything in between, sometimes you might just eat your neighbor whats up'
and you can like, pull real world parallels from it of course, like with haru's issues of being viewed as child like despite being a grown ass sexual woman but
you say that but lately ive been seeing a lot of takes on how legosi's desire to eat/fuck haru, an herbivore, is actually commentary on homophobic social structures or some shit idk
the voice casting thing was not strictly related I just got sidetracked cuz that is the memory linked in my brain to 'the writing team of Zootopia somehow wrote this movie without actually intending to make commentary on US black community-police relations.' possibly that was just a claim they made to deflect criticism. I simply still don't understand
spring peeper
: ALSO IF THEY'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TAKE ON HOMOPHOBIA, SHOULDN'T THEY BE LOOKING AT LOUIS 'PLEASE EAT/FUCK ME BIG STRONG MANLY CARNIVORES BUT ITS NOT LIKE I LIKE YOU BAKA' BEASTARS
X-Men comics were mainly an allegory for disabilities! Since their reboot had a radically racially diverse cast for the time that was the on text thing while powers were the other thing, even if it sometimes was mumblemumbleNorthstardiesofafairydiseasemumble
only goes to 11
: actually this is a very good point ty. this is not the only series I know of wherein the main point of discrimination is received as/talked about as 'fantasy racism' but it's not actually race related at all
also i must emphasize its still okay to enjoy all these things!! just also they are lol when broken down and like, with the disney folks esp being like ~we had no intention we don't see color~ its liiiike shut up. shut the fuck up lol
man i don't watch as much LA but this also applies to some supernatural type shows or anything that's like US VAMPIRES/ZOMBIES/LITERAL MONSTERS THAT EAT YOU DESERVE RIGHTS TOO
on the one hand they are writing some really bad metaphors about discrimination but also you get the idea that. they don't even give a shit abour the specifics
i think cats don't dance works really well because the allegory is really direct and clear and specific. like it's not trying to do Racism As A Whole and it's not claiming one person is responsible for all racism even though it has a villain
like these characters are all incredibly talented actors, dancers, singers, performers, whatever, and it's not that they were maliciously singled out by some boogeyman it's that they got to the Big City and for some reason success just didn't come to people like them no matter how talented they were or how hard they worked
'but what's the difference between cyborg and human--' idk man maybe the ones that can be reprogrammed, reset, have implanted memories, be physically stronger than humans and hack into computers MIGHT BE DIFFERENT THAN HUMANS
the metaphor isn't all muddled by trying to be every nuance of racism at once it's like HELLO! THIS IS AN ALLEGORY FOR RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN HOLLYWOOD!
Ain'tpril
: and yeah i honestly can't blame anyone being intrigued or even enjoying the game?? some lets plays i watched were really funny. just in execution...yeah. the biggest oof lol
Promare felt more like it was about people who were ostracized In General and then got MORE ostracized after the fact, but like, it's also a highly dumb over the top movie that didn't put too much thought into... anything.
son boy allowed
: i feel like they would have gotten more sympathy out of me had they not shown the whole backstory of said firey people LITERALLY BURNING PEOPLE ALIVE LOL
Upon rewatches I thought an interesting detail in the opening was that the people who got alien'd specifically were all people who were unhappy or in pain/not wanting to be where they were at the precise exact moment that the aliens entered that dimension
For example I really loved a particular Fred Astaire movie in college, the Band Wagon, but I haven't been able to watch it in like 15 years because theres like Astaire-era-typical" Benign Racism" and its just not watchable
I can give Japanese media a little more leeway in the sense of like. there just aren't as many people in Japan who are not the racial majority. most of the bad takes are coming from a place of ignorance. but when stuff from the US is just as if not more hamfisted I just lose my mind
tbh my take on db:h is that the inventor guy who instigated the entire android revolution is actually using it as a roundabout form of voting fraud. android sapience may or may not be real but that guy can definitely sudo all androids into voting him president and giving him unreasonable amounts of political power
honestly as much as tolkien has a lot of shit that is of the times in unfortunate ways its surprising how... mostly unbad the dwarves are beneath the yikes. and there is some yikes.
a girl in love
: YEA thats another thing, it literally just does not Occur to them. Like I remember the drama around sister krone from promised neverland but that, genuinely seemed more like /artist draws her to be scary to children and less [this is a mammy]
at least Tolkien's scary foreigner humans were just sort of generic enemy armies with basically no cultural details attacbed lmao which is fir the best
anyway true lowkey reason for this plurk: why are there avatar sequels and how many times is disney going to pimp out pocahontas but in space and with exotic cat people
a lot of jp media is actually probably talking about xenophobia more than racism (but still not particularly well, which sure muddles already muddled waters on the distinction there)
The robots will start to sing, and that will convince the armed cops converging on them to not shoot because, only beings with souls would be able to sing? I guess? And they respect that?
my opinion of Zootopia has always been "I dislike the messaging of this entire movie but recognise its importance in at least trying to air these issues"
writers need to rely less on real world parallels and think a our how their fictional society actually works and put the effort into avoiding these Yikes Takes
and that really bothered me like... um, is no one going to bring up the fact that there is literally a huge biological imperative for the predators to consume the prey and the prey to fear the predators?
god the BNA Big Bad twist was so bad and so shoehorned because I was enjoying goofy people animal show with not-quite real world parallel stuff, it had a lot of potential just for its own lore explanation
bread singalong
: zootopia was wild because they like, tried to be about every possible form of discrimination including new types they made up and failed at like every part
i think the problem w/ acknowledging that predators are in fact harmful and have a biological imperative to hurt/kill prey is uh. these are anthropomorphized/humanized animals and if they are in a position where one side of representative of poc (incidentally or otherwise) that starts getting
oh no, these fireball-spitting people with knives for hands are just trying to peacefully live their lives, but the government wants to limit their freedom and stop them spitting fireballs everywhere and cutting everything they touch to pieces!
bread singalong
: yea like, again i get what they were going for. BUT WHEN THE PREDATORS STILL HAVE FANGS, AND CLAWS, AND SOMETIMES BULLY, THE HERBIVORES...it doesn't add up my dudes!!
the other thing about zootopia is that they also were throwing so many ingredients in the pot that somehow both predators and prey were simultaneously representative of both marginalized classes and oppressor classes
like ok nick is clearly meant to be from a marginalized class. .... but judy is also from a different marginalized class. but nick's backstory is less about systematic racism and more about bullying. but judy also got bullied. by a fox. and herbivores are a majority bt the mayor is a lion and most of the police force is predators and
that scene where nick gets all offended at judy carrying fox spray but judy fully got attacked by a fox in her childhood and has lingering trauma would work better with a gender binary bent yeah
X-Men comics were mainly an allegory for disabilities! Since their reboot had a radically racially diverse cast for the time that was the on text thing while powers were the other thing, even if it sometimes was mumblemumbleNorthstardiesofafairydiseasemumble
and killed the first Native American X-Manand its just full soap opera now