#and then there are things where actively wrong decisions are being made loudly and proudly

[mermaidsirennikita]

Yeah this needs to be talked about more, the amount of articles, podcasts, youtube/tiktok videos or just online comments that I saw after season 1 came out that just assume the Bton books were diverse because the show is? And the fact the new marketing push around the books is not disabusing people about that notion, mainly through the new covers (both regular and the show tie-in ones).

It's a really complicated, thorny issue in some ways and very simple in others. If I look at Just Romance Novels (which is obviously a niche, just zeroing in a genre for the sake of discussion) the genre is still dominated by product from white authors, largely with characters written as white. While it's diversifying (far more slowly than it should be) a lot of the older "proven success" books are written by white people, about white people. I don't think it's wrong to cast diversely if you're adapting those books--and on a practical, "people putting food on the table" level, I want actors of color to have as many solid, well-paying opportunities as possible.

At the same time, there are still so many authors of color neglected. Not all of whom wrote people of color on the page, of course, especially in historical romance--Sherry Thomas and Stacy Reid are two historical romance novelists who write about white characters, and it's no surprise that the potential adaptation of Stacy's works would be cast more diversely. There's a level of tracking how expectations have changed when you look at how Sinful Wallflowers was presented as a book series, and how it could be presented as a show.

And like, I'll allow that we're in the midst of a sort of "boom" (who knows how long it'll last) of period pieces cast more diversely than they would've been even 15 years ago. The approaches are often different and individualized. The Great has people of color playing characters who'd be literal white Russians "in real life", and it's literally never commented on, which I think many would prefer for a show like Bton. BUT, most of the lead characters are white, with Orlo (who I think did not get the strongest writing from jump, though Sascha wanting to leave after s1 didn't help) and Arkady (who I think is hilarious and finally got more screentime in s3, but he could've gotten more from the beginning... so much Velementov screentime should be Arkady screentime) being two of the only truly prominent people of color onscreen.

Then you have something like Sanditon, where Georgiana gets better writing than many people on Bton, but the show obviously never knew how to really confront her background, made the racist old lady the peak comic relief, and never prioritized Georgiana the way her white counterpart Charlotte was prioritized. Georgiana got an afterthought of an ending after being humiliated by the narrative several times.

One of the shows that handled this best was Tom Jones--Sophia is treated as this gem of a girl whose grandfather and aunt love her, but clearly aren't fully sure about how to solidify her safety as a Black woman of means in England. There's a very tender scene where she discusses her father enslaving her and her mother with Tom, and the show doesn't shy away from Sophia's mixed feelings on the entire thing. There's a heavy implication re: her being made to perform whiteness with face powder, etc, but nonetheless this is not dominating Sophia's storyline. She gets to be the swooning girl who falls head over heels and is desired by a good man and upheld as his ideal in every way. She confronts conflict, but she does not SUFFER, and she is not MINIMIZED in favor of white women in the story--Sophia is really pretty explicitly like, The Woman of that piece. Presented as the most beautiful, as not flawless but good and deserving of love, as a true classical heroine whose personal narrative is actively expanded to match Tom's. The only thing I find prominently weird (after one viewing) is that she and Tom never had like, a sweet wedding night scene, as we saw Tom have sex with three different white women onscreen, of of which was like.... the core villain. I would've liked to have seen Sophia get the full physical adoration there, onscreen, and it did stand out a bit that she didn't.

So those are adaptations with growing pains, not getting everything right, but some being better than others (and Bton being the bottom of the barrel, there).

Then there are things that are unequivocally wrong, and not a part of growing pains as adaptations navigate between what sells and what diversifies and what works, and one of those unequivocally wrong things is selling the Bton books as diverse reads. Those books are some of the most conventional Regency romances out there; you don't even get a lot of economic or class diversity, let alone any racial diversity. Almost everyone in that series is upper class. Even Sophie is the daughter of a nobleman. And I'm not saying it's wrong to write about those people, but for the books to now be sold as something they're not, when the author didn't even think people of color could get HEAs in her Historically Accurate World... is the worst kind of capitalism.

That's part of the extra ugliness (on top of all the obvious ugliness) here. Julia Quinn was against what she's now profiting from. It's not just picking a white author's works to be emblematic of diversity they don't represent; it's THAT author's works. And I think that making Queen Charlotte from all this, putting Julia's name on the cover (I am.... 90% sure that book was ghostwritten, with input from Julia and Shonda, but go off) just adds to all of it.

[trust-in-teeth]

The Intricacies in a Day and Coffee Making

This is a little piece I just finished up about a man who thrives on consistency and how he deals when his routine is disrupted.

It’s my first shot at posting my writing so...here goes

The sleek steel skyscrapers stood like soldiers on that cool autumn day, the sun peeling shadows off of them, laying them at perfect forty-five degrees angles on the sidewalk. Cal Duval walked beneath them, focusing his eyes on the seams between the concrete slabs, and counting out his steps between them under his breath: “One, two three. One, two, three.” 6PM, three steps, the ninth day of the month on the third day of the week, six buttons on his shirt, three blocks from the coffeeshop. The combined symmetries of that moment temporarily muffled the prickling feeling of discomfort that consistently inhabited his existence.

But some straggling shards soon slipped through. A crooked street sign, a faded line on the crosswalk, a flyaway hair on the side of a businesswoman’s ponytail; it was occurences like these that were more commonly peppered throughout his day, creating tiny papercuts of thoughts pushing out from inside him, as if wanting to slice out of his body and fix these glitches. Unable to accomplish this, he was instead used by them as a marionette, nothing restraining them but inertia.

Each day on his way home from the accounting firm where he worked, after a day of aligning stacks of papers, carefully inserting staples so that they were equidistant from the perpendicular edges, and working diligently to keep pen ink off of his flawlessly pressed clothing, he stopped at his favorite coffee shop— the small, organic one, six blocks from his apartment. 

For three years, without fail, he went to the counter and ordered a medium coffee with cream, sugar, and a shot of espresso. He would order from the same person, a college kid named Kyle with thick glasses and scruff, who inexplicably was always the employee working there when Cal went. He would take his drink to the table at the back right corner under the artisanal coffee bean poster, and read the neatly folded newspaper set out for him until he finished his coffee. Kyle knew to save this table for him at that time after some very conspicuous outbursts of panic early on in their relationship.

 It was a set system, time-honed to near perfection. When all of the other neat cards in his life were shuffled or merely misaligned, this was the constant stronghold Cal could go back to and know that some semblance of an established routine would be available to him, or at least it had been until that day. On that day he opened the artfully lacquered green door of the shop, hearing the familiar jingle of the bell, and immediately noticed two things:

His table was being inhabited by a very openly-affectionate couple with matching dreadlocks.

Kyle was nowhere to be found.

The door shut loudly behind him when he stepped inside, and there was a momentary lull in the calm chatter of the few customers of the shop, before the collective public’s short attention spans came into action and they went back to their conversations. Looking out across the coffee shop, prickling worries created a sense of discomfort he knew he desperately wanted to avoid.

Where was Kyle? Was it something he had done? It could be a disease that had taken him out— he had heard of a food poisoning outbreak in the spinach in Romeoville, and that was nearby. Cal had eaten a salad for lunch, what if he had gotten it? But it could not be food poisoning, the onset was usually soon after the contaminated food was eaten, and it had been hours since his lunch. But what if it could last longer? Cal took out his phone and quickly searched for the answer. It could last for days! He began thinking about where the nearest minute clinic was when a bright red can on the counter that doubled as a tip jar caught his eye. He painstakingly pulled himself back out of the pit he had fallen into, using this image as a rope to grasp onto.

He remembered the question that had brought him there, and began to count backwards: nine, eight, seven, six… Breathing deeply in a further attempt to settle himself, Cal quickly walked up to the counter, looking past the register at the closed swinging doors of the kitchen and the green-painted wall. There was no employee behind or line in front, so he waited. He began to tap his fingers rhythmically, sounding like the resolved drum beat before a hanging and holding some of that same severity in Cal’s mind.

It was after a moment of this that a flustered looking employee came out; a slender young Asian woman with hair cut angularly down to her collarbone on one side, and her shoulder on the other, a silver hoop running through the right side of her small nose. This was a new face to him; he had not expected this.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, appearing as if she truly was. “The manager went out to talk to one of our vendors, and I just started here a couple of days ago. I’m still getting used to listening for the bell. A bit Pavlovian don’t you think?” She looked him in the eyes, warm behind the apologies. “Maybe I’m slowly being conditioned, and next time I hear a bell I’m just going to start making coffee,” she said with the kind of laugh that doubled as an invitation.

Cal was flustered by her banter. A tall, black man with tendencies to talk to himself and count things under his breath did not draw much interaction like this— the casual, well-meaning kind. Not knowing how to respond, he smiled thinly and gave a jerky nod, an uncomfortable gesture which she seemed to willfully ignore. Knowing that this conversation was not likely to get anywhere with the strain of his underlying panic, he abruptly began asking the questions that were pushing at his ribcage, the ones that had brought him to her in the first place.

“What happened to Kyle?” he asked, his usually kind and reserved demeanor overshadowed by the pulsing of his discomfort and his head.

“Oh he left for grad school last night,” she said. “Why, does he owe you money?” She began to grin at her own joke, clearly pleased with herself.

“No,” Cal spouted defensively, “ he’s just been making my coffee for three years now. He knows what I like, the coffee, the table, the Times, and he gets it for me, every time.” He ran his hand over his head and looked down at the counter, embarrassed at his outburst. “I just like order to things, you know?”

She rested her chin on her fist as she leaned down onto the high counter, getting closer to his face than he might have liked and looking at it scrutinizingly. She suddenly seemed to have come to a decision. “You know, I’m no Kyle, but I can make you coffee. I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m getting paid for anyways.”

Without waiting for a response, she tucked her hair behind her ears and turned to grasp at a cup to start making his drink, then, stopping her grand momentum, she suddenly paused for a moment. She turned back to him.“What kind of drink do you want?” she asked, remembering what extremely vital information it was that she was missing to complete the task at hand.

“Coffee. Regular. Cream, sugar, and an espresso shot.”

“Well all right then, I can do that” she said, and she did. 

Cal waited at the edge of the countertop and watched as, with hands still fledglings to the dangerous world of a barista, she meticulously made a cup of coffee for him. She had to clean up various spills an odd amount of times, but seemingly determined to complete his order, the girl finally brought his drink to him, stained at the rim, with coffee in the crevices of the plastic lid.

“There you go,” she said proudly, ceremoniously setting the cup in front of him, looking him in the eyes as if challenging him to discover some fault in it.

Tentatively, he picked it up, swishing it around as if to test its contents, sniffing it, then, looking her in the eye, he took a swig not likely to cause protestation in this clearly very vocal server. It was like drinking corn syrup from the bottle. A shudder went through his body as his taste buds recoiled from a massive tidal wave of sugar washing over them, a bucket of ice water to their peaceful existence.

Noticing his reaction, the girl became defensive. “What’s wrong with it? It’s coffee. It’s not that hard to make.”

He cleared his throat and said cautiously, as if calming a wild animal, “Well, for one thing, there’s so much sugar in here I can hardly taste the coffee.”

Taking a moment to absorb this, she finally forfeited whatever battle she had begun with probability. Smiling ruefully, she said, “Yeah, I figured something like this might happen. This is my first day working alone, I’ve been training mornings with Kyle, and I just can’t seem to get those sugar-to-coffee ratios down.”

Unexpectedly, Cal let out a snort. With a mock-offended look from the girl, this grew into a peal of laughter, spraying out of him as if pressurized.

“It’s not funny!” she complained, finding herself laughing along with his reaction. “It really is harder than it sounds.”

But it was funny. It was funny in that a woman this amiable would be having this moment of closeness with someone so unused to allowing moments to truly occur like this, natural moments of a sort of lightness he personally lacked much of the time. His mind still surged actively beneath the surface. What might this much sugar do to his metabolism? Had he left the stove on, heating up his kitchen like the coffee? Should he wipe his forehead, now shimmering with a sheen of perspiration? Yes, he should— it was unsightly. No he should not— maybe she hadn’t noticed and this would bring it to her attention. The spigot had not shut off. But she was so open, to him, to any possibility that might occur, that he felt himself, unbidden, slightly unwind one of the threads of his tightly-coiled being. And he enjoyed this feeling.

She had joined in now, feeding off of his reaction, and their few moments of connection came to a crescendo of laughter, attracting the attention of the few customers, and ultimately marking their impending return to the world outside of themselves.

Their laughter finally died down, a lull taking its place, full of the warm satisfaction of a good meal. As Cal looked into the distance the, lingering remnants of his smile faded, leaving an impression of its wholeness. The girl suddenly disappeared beneath the counter, only to spring up a moment later with a napkin and pen.

“Listen,” she said, still smiling, “My name is Lee. I’m not going to charge you for that monstrosity I made you.” This drew a chuckle from the both of them. “But I’m going to practice, and by the time you come back tomorrow, I’m going to have it down.” Somehow Cal doubted this, images of her with coffee stains down the front of her shirt appearing in his head, amidst the white noise of his worries about the possibility of third degree burns, and his desire to shift that red tip jar just slightly to the left.

“But still, if you ever feel up to giving me some pointers, since I clearly need them, just text me with this number.” Lee punctuated this with a scribble on the napkin, handed it to him officiously, and, with a smile and a graceful nod, turned around with the cup of coffee in question. She pushed through the swinging silver door of the kitchen with her hip, holding the cup far from herself with two fingers. As her form withdrew, Cal watched the door swing back and forth in its frame, recovering from the disturbance it had just received, before slowing and settling firmly back into its accustomed place.

Still processing what it was that had just unfolded, Cal walked out of the coffeeshop. He walked past the counter with its puddle of coffee, past the red tip jar ever-so slightly shifted to the right, past the couple at his table, and out that pristinely lacquered green door. Ignoring his dangerous lack of caffeine and looking silently into the distance, he started down the sidewalk. 

Cal was silenced by his awe at this thread of a different kind of regularity than that of his everyday tangle that had somehow managed to peek through. He continued, absorbed by this, until two blocks before his apartment building, when that fuse broken in the closed circuit of his mind was replaced, he looked back down at his feet: “One, two three. One, two three…”

[lastgenpodcast]

Princess and the Frog-A Think Piece

Someone once asked why Princess and the Frog didn’t do as well as say Tangled or Frozen when it comes to popularity. I thought this was an interesting question due to the wide variety of reasons that seem to entangle themselves into this question. While I believe part of the lack of popularity may come from an obvious reason, I want to dig a little deeper and do some critical thinking on this topic.  Perhaps my perspective as a Disney lover and a female will bring us to another side of the argument.  Before I begin, let me just say that I don’t think there is one clear-cut answer and, by all means, I don’t propose that my theory is better than others.  This is just to make you think about this issue from another point of view.  

Let’s start with some background to the time period that surrounded the world at the time that this movie premiered.  The country had just been through a period where everyone was suspicious of one another, travel was a nightmare, and financials were a mess. The country also made a decision to back change and a positive attitude (mostly) though there were some dissenting voices. Overall, 2009 had more of a positive feel than many years previously.  Despite that, and I believe the most recent time can attest to the heart of the people, there is that underlying issue that may have played a part in why people didn’t run to the theater for this movie. Yet, looking at numbers, this film didn’t do so terribly.  It was the 5th highest grossing animated movie in 2009 (keeping in mind this year also brought us Up, Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, A Christmas Carol, The Secret of Kells, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs-besides the many smaller animated and direct to video releases).  It grossed $104 million in the US and Canada, but earned $267 million worldwide.  It was nominated for 3 Academy Awards, but lost to Up and Crazy Heart, which are wonderful movies in their own right.  

The thing about Princess and the Frog is what it did more for Disney animation than anything else. This was the first traditionally animated film since Home on the Range, one I have not seen yet, and was the first “princess” movie since Pocahontas and Mulan (which may be argued wasn’t a “princess” movie at all).  The animation department at Disney had not been firing on all cylinders with putting out stories that did not hit with the masses as Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast once had.  This was also the first film to bring back the Broadway-style music that captured the attention of audiences like those films in the 1990s.  With all these firsts, it would seem someone finally realized people wanted more than just bland animated stories quickly pumped out on the computer, and it’s clear that Disney forgot that one of the main factors in its major films is the music.  Bringing all these factors together really makes this film hit for me, as so many others who gave it a whirl.  

So, why the disconnect? Where did this movie lose people. Many purport that it’s a race thing, which may be accurate. To put some numbers in perspective, Pocahontas made $346 million worldwide ($141 million by Jan 1996) and Mulan brought in $304 worldwide ($120 million in the US and Canada).  Could these numbers be because of the previous films that were already tops, so another Disney film just brought people to the theater? Maybe.  Could it be people were more willing to watch a movie set farther back in history than say the 1920s? That may also be a thing.  Could it be the internet wasn’t such a big thing and the only way to get a review of a movie was to either read a critic’s write up or just go and hope for the best? Definitely something to consider.  Or is the fact that Tiana was loudly and proudly proclaimed as the first African American princess and hyped up long before the release of the movie, with the election of our first African American President rubbing some people the wrong way, causing many people to do what has now become the “thing” to do and hate something just for the sake of hating it? Super possible.  

What other perspective is there that I could possibly show that would make that last option not the main one to go with?  Well, the fact may lie in the history of other Disney princesses.  As we know, many of the typical Disney stories were fairy tales taken from very early times and set long before the 1800s.  That being the case, many of the roles we once held as ��typical” princess/female lead were no longer being portrayed in a story from the 1920s.  We sort of saw this change with the character of Princess Ariel, who rebelled against her father and tried to do her own thing; Princess Jasmine, who, while wanting to rebel, didn’t really go that far as she got married anyway and she had a much kinder father than Ariel; and even Belle and Pocahontas who were far more stronger female leads than say Snow White or Aurora, but were still motivated mostly by love/romance.  Yet, the idea of a woman, no matter her skin color, wanting to do something such as own her own business and be independent is not something that, even today, is very popular.  There are many places and careers that hinder the escalation of women into top roles and some even actively prevent a woman from truly being at the top- even in the 21st century!  So setting this movie in a time when women were not very independent, and adding on top of that the traditional Disney princess mold being broken, it makes the traditionalist in many give it pause.  

Now, what do I mean by the traditional Disney princess mold- it’s not her race if that’s what you’re thinking.  It’s the fact that many of the “traditional” princesses were modeled after the meek woman whose only real drive in life is to find that one true love and get married.  Tiana doesn’t need any of that. She wants to do her own thing since this is where her true happiness is found.  At the end, she realizes that having others around her also can make her happy, she isn’t defined by her significant other or the role she plays in his life.  In fact, he is the one that seems to have lost everything and is only made better through his association with her.  It’s not typical for the woman to be the one that completes the relationship- it was typically the strong, handsome man that “fixed” all the girl’s problems.  This is a bold stance for the story to take, and one that was seemingly repeated, though a little softer in Tangled. While Flynn is the one that gets her out of the tower and shows her the city, Rapunzel was seemingly on her way there- she just needed a push.  And Flynn’s redemption comes via his sacrifice for Rapunzel rather than her making the decision to cut her own hair to spite Mother Gothel’s plan.  Rapunzel leaned a bit more to this traditional princess idea of sacrificing for the guy and finding her happiness in him (as well as reuniting with her family). But the fact that there was a short put out not long after that film about their wedding just goes to prove that people want that “happily ever after” ending.  It wasn’t until Frozen that the typical mold was truly broken and everyone could see that a princess (or queen) didn’t need a man to find her true love and her self worth wasn’t dependent on a man’s acceptance of her.  And word of mouth was really where Frozen shone, so if people aren’t recommending Princess and the Frog, this gem remains somewhat undiscovered.  

Tiana was the first to really test that traditional mold and fight back against the idea of a woman needing a man to complete her story- she completed his in fact.  However, another issue with this movie comes up when we discuss the word of mouth scenario.  We have mentioned many times that marketing for movies has not been a strong point lately for Disney, particularly in regards to their animated movies.  I thought Frozen was going to be a buddy-cop type movie with a snowman and reindeer; Zootopia was just talking animals one of which was snarky and one was a goody-two-shoes.  So, while there was a lot of talk before Princess and the Frog regarding the first African American Disney princess, talk of the movie and proper promotion was somewhat lacking.  Most egregious, though, must be the lack of park presence.  While Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee was a delightful surprise in the parks, this only ran from October 2009 through January 2010 in Walt Disney World and from November 2009 through January 2010 in Disneyland.  In Disneyland, this movie got more love from 2011 through 2013 when Tiana’s Mardi Gras Celebration, which initially ran from January through October 2010, again ran for the “Limited Time Magic” promotion.  Yet, considering that the Move It, Shake It parade is still floating down Main Street, I find the lack of park presence to be aggravating at best, particularly with New Orleans Square in Disneyland and the riverboat in Walt Disney World as the perfect settings for these characters (probably more so in Disneyland, hence the extended Mardi Gras celebration). Though, it does seem some justice is being done with the incorporation of Dr. Facilier in the Halloween party and Tiana is finally representing up on the stage show at Magic Kingdom in Mickey’s Friendship Faire.  But, as someone who has been to the parks since age 3, and who has many friends taking young children, I feel that additional park presence would allow for additional exposure to these characters and perhaps a new found favorite for those children not typically exposed to these movies at home.  The music is surely catchy enough to warrant repeated plays in the car and the colors of the movie are truly captivating.  Plus, there’s a talking alligator who loves to play the trumpet and a cajun firefly- I mean honestly now!  

So, while the very easy answer to the question of the obscurity of this movie may be to blame it on racism, I truly feel there’s more at work here.  I do feel the non-traditional woman role is interesting to tackle, but also the seeming lack of faith parks and resorts have in hiding these characters from park guests.  What do you think?  Could the answer be so basic or is there something more at work here?  Do you love this movie- make sure to recommend it to your friends and get them to recommend it also!  The more love we can garner the better!