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Not a bug it’s a feature

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Not a bug it’s a feature

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“I fucking love this photo. Where stood the statue of a slaver, stands the raised fist of a proud black man. Share it wide.

Bristol isn't erasing history. They are making it.

How shameful it would be to have to tell your kids and grandkids that - when this happened - when the greatest movement for civil rights swept the world and tore down idols to slavery and inequality and made Western society a better place at last - you stood against it.

Finding #AllLivesMatter on someone's old facebook wall will be like finding Nazi memorabilia in a dead relatives attic.”

- Taken in Bristol, United Kingdom

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This blog's sudden kind of thinly veiled of a passive aggresive humor reposts is so vibing with me.

Love in the time of corona

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loose study

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Shaelan Cadash for @20skai!

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Quick reminder that James Baskett received an Academy Award in 1948 for his performance as Uncle Remus in the Song of the South, making him the very first Afro American to ever receive such an award. 

Disney continues to retroactively erase any memory of this historical achievement. 

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Black Adora would change EVERYTHING, plus she’s super ADORA-ble! 💖

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egg galaxy

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Wait how is Tangled antisemitic????

Gothel’s design, to put it simply.

We need to understand that all our media is part of a large continuity. When we design a villain, we use certain features to tell the audience they are evil. Crooked noses, sharp features. Faces that remind us of heavy make-up. Dark hair, dark eyes and often dark clothes. But our choice of “evil” features in character design tells a story. Why do we think these things make a character look “evil”? What kind of people are we representing as “evil” when we draw like this? 

Gothel has classically “evil” traits, such as sharp angular face, long nose and dark, unruly hair. She shares these with many other villanous women, but they are even more strongly visible in her because she is placed as the opposite of Rapunzel. These features that Gothel has are more common in ethnic minorities present in Western world; especially Jewish people and Roma. In turn, Rapunzel has features usually adored in European and American cultures, such as soft face, small nose and light, soft hair. 

Basically, Gothel looks like an evil Jewish woman who has kidnapped a white child. It is an old trope that people of color are out to take pure, white children away from their parents. Jews and Roma have been especially accused of this, and with that design Gothel can also be read as antizigamist. 

Now I know many people in the back row are like “well evil characters have to look evil and good characters need to be cuter, why are you making this about ethnicity”. But our concept of “good” and “evil” is a long tradition. Modern Western media has inherited its concept of “evil” from centuries ago. Europeans of olden times would always cast obvious Jewish and Roma characters as villains in their books and plays. The audience did not need to be told that a woman with a crooked nose was Jewish and a man with dark skin was Roma. They knew based on these un-European features.

And we inherited this imagery. How many people know that contemporary Western witch we use every Halloween is actually an antisemitic caricature? Not just the exaggerated noses, but their black clothes and especially the hat are based on mocking caricatures of Jews. So we may not realize the obvious connections as clearly anymore. But we are still burying ourselves and our children with the message that certain facial features and looks are “evil” and some “good”. And when we meet real people representing these categories in real life, our concepts still affect us.

That is why Gothel’s design is among the only real complaints I have about the movie. They had a good design for her when they started out. She was supposed to be this prim and proper woman, who looked completely white. I would have loved for them to use these features instead of tweaking her into the classic evil design and resorting to centuries-old antisemitic tropes. It was harmful, offensive and even lazy. Using tropes like this is harmful to real people and the whole practice of art, since we do not challenge ourselves and the society by using them.

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- comfort drawing~ ❄️

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Sailor Moon redraw challenge 🌙❤️

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And sure enough… there was a baby yoda! ⁠

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why get mad at fictional female characters when you can get mad at the adult men writers who disappointed us like this you fucking cowards

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If you look at Angry and Adira and Cass compared to Rapunzel and Stalyan etc., you’ll notice that the team make the woc look more masculine and give them ‘aggressive’ behaviours, which is racist is itself, and something the fandom doesn’t realise. It’s just...tiring.

Another great point, thank you!

This is especially glaring because the show usually contrasts the aggressive woc with demure white girls. Angry is dark and aggressive while Red is easily maintained and sweet. Cass is masculine and pessimistic while Rapunzel is happy and extremely feminine. These are outdated racist tropes that many shows would try to avoid but not Tangled Series it seems. If it was just one character it would be okay, but it’s already a pattern here.