#tw: brownface

[princesssarisa]

Character ask: Maria (West Side Story)

Tagged by anonymous

Favorite thing about them: The fact that like her inspiration, Shakespeare's Juliet, she's not just a stock ingenue. Yes, she's innocent and romantic, but as Arthur Laurents wrote, she's also "excited" and "enthusiastic," and despite her youth she has "the temper, stubborn strength, and awareness of a woman." She's intelligent, lively, and playful, she makes a surprising number of demands on the people around her (however sweetly), and in the final scene, where she avoids Juliet's fate and becomes Prince Escalus instead, her anger shames two violent street gangs into mute remorse. As a character written by three men in 1957, she could so easily have been a flat ingenue, but instead they made her a dimensional character who's easy to like.

Least favorite thing about them: In the original stage version and 1961 film, the non-emphasized fact that she's willing to abandon her parents by eloping with Tony, on the same night as their son's death no less. Now, I don't judge her too harshly for this: it's a desperate, impulsive decision, and her parents seem to be fairly absentee, since they never even appear onstage/onscreen and mostly let Bernardo control her life. Still, I suspect this is a main reason why the 2021 film has her and Bernardo be orphans instead.

Three things I have in common with them:

*I like to wear red.

*I dislike conflict and bloodshed.

*I like to dance.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

*I'm not from Puerto Rico.

*Physically, I'm not "delicate boned."

*I don't have a brother.

Favorite line: Her famous angry "gun speech" after Tony's death.

brOTP: Anita and (when he's not being controlling) Bernardo.

OTP: Tony.

nOTP: Bernardo or Chino.

Random headcanon: She's pregnant with Tony's child in the end. This doesn't come only from me: there are several fanfics out there that revolve around the idea. Of course her life won't be easy as a young single mother of a mixed race child, but she's strong enough to face it, and the baby will be a symbol of hope and a source of purpose and healing, both for her and for the other characters too.

Unpopular opinion: I don't mind the fact that she so quickly forgives Tony for killing her brother, or that she sleeps with him directly after forgiving him. No one ever criticizes Juliet for so quickly forgiving Romeo for killing Tybalt or for sleeping with him that same night, and I think the difference between "brother" and "cousin" can be overstated: Tybalt has no parents in sight and apparently lives with his aunt and uncle, so he's arguably Juliet's brother in all but name. The entire message of West Side Story is against hate and in favor of love and forgiveness – the idea that it's wrong for Maria to forgive Tony goes against the main theme. As for their consummating their love directly afterwards... well, they're both impulsive teenagers, and they're in a desperate situation where they know that this meeting might be their last. I don't blame them for seizing the moment!

Song I associate with them:

"I Feel Pretty"

Favorite pictures of them:

Carol Lawrence, original 1957 Broadway production:

Natalie Wood, 1961 film:

Josefina Scaglione, 2009 Broadway revival:

Mary Joanna Grisso, US national tour, 2012:

Rachel Zegler. 2021 film:

[fatalemuse]

liza soberano did blackface and brownface

oof, i did not know that! i'm not familiar with them or their work.

for the reasons mentioned above, i will be removing any content on page related to this person.

thank you to whomever submitted this ask and brought this issue to my attention.

if anyone else is unfamiliar with this person and their actions, you can get a brief overview here.

[homunculusalphonse]

all i wanted was to find fma scar content and instead i'm getting a shit ton of ppl praising the live action movies when they fucking used brownface for scar.

free blocklist i guess

[strangeauthor]

TW for child abuse re: lily

Correction again she isn't and has been disproven by her sister (whom she molested as a kid) that they're not native, and their last recognized member was generations ago. Lily fetishizes native americans at most and has shown time and time again that she doesn't respect other NAs, as shown by her feeble attempts at proving she is one by adding a Feather into her "sexy" (by request) brownface puppet, and never sharing the name of the tribe she belongs to when asked for several years.

She's gone from "i'm half-native" to "i'm fully native", and gone from vaguely referencing being one to to "i'm cherokee"

All she's shown is she's more concerned in looking the part online than actually engage in the culture and learn about it. Several other native american users have poked holes into her story throughout the years, so it's not just me

#rape tw

oh.

well fuck me then sorry for being misinformed other anon! unless youre that anon who told her about the white privilege in which case Sorry For Wrong Info

[writingwithcolor]

Aracial deity, coping mechanisms for mourning, Kitsune/South Asian aesthetics (???)

TW: Brownface, fetishization, dehumanization

[Redacted] said:

Hi, i have i bit of a weird question. I have a story where the main character is a genderless aracial deity of death made of light, who was created by the grim reaper/death itself to take care of earthlings, has been alive since the beggining, takes human forms and has dated women throughout history, but always outlives her girlfriends (since she can't make them immortal bc that'd mess up everything, she just has to let them go) but as a way of remembering them, changes her appearance to look more like them (but still with a touch and sense of her own identity) so she's had a LOT of different forms and appearances, multiple skintones, hair types, etc. (At the moment she has a kitsune-esc/south Asian aesthetic due to her last girlfriend being japanese and loving the legend) Would that be problematic? Like, drastically changing apperance and skintones and stuff y'know. I love this little story of mine, i just want to make sure I'm not being an idiot, and I'm willing to change things if needed. Sorry if that's a dumb thing to ask ksskdkkckdks

WTH

Wearing the skins of loved ones sounds very creepy, not comforting at all, and makes me think of serial killers - not a mourning lover. You can drastically change someone’s appearance without literally wearing their skin (I don’t even want to think about how she gets them). There are much better ways to honour someone, such as keeping mementos, and these can be specific to the deceased’s culture.

- SK

Did the girlfriend have any other traits/interests that weren’t the most stereotypical and weeb-appropriated legend ever? My recommendation: talk to A Japanese person. Any Japanese person will do

~Mod Rina

Coping Mechanism for Mourning?

I’m not Asian, but personally do not like this at all. 

This has the essence of a lot of problematic things.

Brownface

Fetishization

Dehumanization (Wearing the skins of dead PoC, literally, like a conquested animal)

There are other ways to honor and remember loved ones who have passed on:

How about keeping an image of MC in a locket, a portrait, or photograph? 

Depending on available technology, keeping a video(s) to watch & remember

Keeping belongings they left to MC (like a piece of jewelry, making a memory box)

Having a day to reflect and remember them on (e.g. anniversary of death or wedding, their birthday, memorial day celebrations.)

Visiting their gravestone or a memorial, leaving flowers or offerings

Planting and nourishing a tree or perennial plant in their memory

Visiting a place that was special to the lover or to them the couple

Honoring any wishes they asked of MC 

You know, the tried and true methods of honoring the dead without wearing their skins.

~ Mod Colette

Trace your logic

There’s a lot to unpack here, but I think first and foremost, it’s best to trace the logic of your protagonist from a first person perspective.

You are an immortal being.

You long for connection, but all of your intimate relationships are tinged with tragedy because you will always outlive the person you are close to.

As a way of coping with having your loved ones taken from you, you adopt their appearance after their death until you find a new object of your affection because...Why?

How does approximating the action of wearing the skin of a loved one bring about feelings of comfort? To me, this sounds immensely traumatizing. I can imagine few things worse than waking up everyday to see a face resembling someone I loved who is now dead looking back at me. 

If anything, this sounds like a curse. In fact, given all the undertones fetishizing brown-face/ yellow-face/ black-face what have you, I almost feel the only way this story works is as a curse.

- Marika.

Kitsune/South Asian aesthetics (???)

Why are we combining the “kitsune aesthetic” with a “South Asian aesthetic”? If her girlfriend was Japanese, then where did the “South Asian aesthetic” even come from?

- SK

I’m with the other mods on this. You may need to rethink the story so that you’re not generalizing all of South Asia.

- Jaya

Also, as someone both South Asian and Japanese, I am unclear as to what you mean by a kitsune/ South Asian aesthetic. I suspect you mean a person with South Asian features with some Japanese pop culture reference that you think is a “kitsune” aesthetic. However, two problems. Kitsune just means fox in Japanese. There are a variety of fox imagery associated with many Japanese myths, rather than a singular aesthetic. Secondly, South Asia has a ton of racial/ ethnic diversity, so there is no “South Asian” look.

In other words:

[Image description: The gif depicts Inigo Montoya from the Princess bride: a man with shoulder length brown hair saying “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”]

- Marika.

[nowayhome]

no because if you are latine and are fully supporting a white guy playing a mexican man while doing brownface, something is not adding up here ?? latin america has a very rich history of racism and culture appropriation for y’all to just ignore that because of your white man, and instead of criticizing this you are just supporting it, y’all are fully part of the issue and this goes beyond some tumblr gifs 

[archae-heart]

Miranda's transphobic rhetoric on reddit:

Verification of alias here.

[azoraahai]

here is a link of leigh bardugo’s live where she addressed the brownface of amita suman’s stuntdouble: https://twitter.com/steinfeldbishop/status/1392566078102978562?s=20

[jaanii]

wait??? okay this is stupid but like.. that evil bitch is married?????? what??????

yes ! ariana grande got married to uh dalton gomez (who is i think a real estate broker??) earlier this year and they’re both racist <3 match made in heaven

[princesssarisa]

Snow White Winter: "Cannon Movie Tales: Snow White" (1987 film)

Any child of the '80s or '90s probably has at least vague memories of the Cannon Movie Tales. This series of star-studded direct-to-video musicals was produced (of course) by the Cannon Group and filmed in Israel, allegedly conceived both as an answer to Disney's animated fairy tales and as a tribute to the German fairy tale films of the '50s and '60s (e.g. the films of Fritz Genschow or Erich Kobler) that were once a staple of "kiddie matinees." While only nine films were made, the series still stands out in the memories of countless fairy tale lovers. It most definitely stands out in mine!

1987's Snow White was the fifth entry in the series. It opens with the Prince (James Ian Wright) riding home from long travels through the snow (massive quantities of paper and salt used to transform the Israeli landscape into a European winter wonderland), and yearning, as princes do, to find a princess. Straight away he finds one, but unfortunately, she's lying lifeless in a glass coffin. Beside it, he meets the seven dwarfs, Iddy, Biddy, Diddy, Fiddy, Kiddy, Giddy and Liddy, and the story leading up to this point is told as a flashback, narrated to the Prince by the eldest dwarf Iddy (Billy Barty).

Compared to most other non-German Snow Whites, this version is remarkably faithful to the Grimms' tale. It features the Grimms' opening with Snow White's mother wishing for a child with snow white skin, followed by her death in childbirth. This is also the only screen adaptation of the tale to portray Snow White as just a small child (Nicola Stapleton) when the wicked Queen (Dame Diana Rigg) resolves to be rid of her. The Queen isn't yet told by her magic mirror that Snow White is the fairest in the land, though. Her initial motive is jealousy of her husband the King's loving bond with his little daughter – hearing him playfully call her "the most beautiful lady in the kingdom" is the last straw. It's only some seven to ten years later, when Snow White (now played by 17-year-old Sarah Patterson) has grown into a lovely maiden in the dwarfs' cottage, that the mirror proclaims her to be the fairest. Meanwhile, the poor King dies during the time skip, thinking his daughter was killed by wild animals.

All three of the Queen's attempts to kill Snow White are included: the suffocating bodice, the poisoned comb and the poisoned apple. Each attempt sees her adopt a distinctly different disguise and accent, and unfortunately, the first two are embarrassing by today's standards, as she delivers the bodice in brownface as a Romani woman and the comb in yellowface as a Japanese geisha. Only for the apple does she dress as the conventional old peddler woman.

After hearing the story, the lovesick Prince begs to take Snow White's coffin to his castle to keep her safe from harm. But as his entourage rides home, a blizzard blows up, a falling tree startles the horses, and the coffin is thrown from its wagon, jolting the piece of apple from Snow White's throat. As for the Queen, this version revives the old tradition of "she breaks the magic mirror in her rage over Snow White's survival and its magic backfires on her." As the cracks gradually spread across the glass, she slowly transforms into an ugly old hag, and when the mirror finally shatters altogether, her body shatters too and crumbles to dust.

This is no perfect Snow White, but without question it has charm. Its settings and costumes strike an excellent balance between fairy tale whimsy and folksy realism. The Queen's often outlandish gowns and headdresses perfectly suit her larger-than-life personality, while the blue and white royal castle surrounds her with coldly beautiful elegance. Particularly in the eerie room containing the magic mirror, which speaks from a sinister man's face (Julian Chagrin) carved into its ornate white frame while other carved faces on the sides of the frame underscore his speech with high-pitched chatter and laughing. In contrast to this world is the rustic warmth of the dwarfs' cottage, with the endearingly eccentric dwarfs (all played by actors with dwarfism) portrayed as raggedy nature-gnomes with leaves and twigs in their scruffy hair. The songs – "Where Is The One I Long For?" "Let It Snow," "Hopping On My Daddy's Knee," "More Beautiful Than Me," "The Bed Song," "Iddy, Biddy" and "Every Day" – are tuneful and appealing too, if not Disney quality.

The film's main weakness (besides the Queen's racially stereotyped disguises) is a slight lack of heart. The scenes with the most feeling come at the beginning, where Snow White's parents are shown as a truly loving couple, her mother is given is given a brief yet touching deathbed scene, and young Snow White's sweet bond with her father is highlighted. But the second half of the script seems more concerned with moving through each plot point than with emotions. The King is perfunctorily killed off (I would have preferred to see him live to reunite with Snow White in the end), and Snow White's "death" is less poignant than usual, because the dwarfs barely mourn before comforting themselves with the hope that she's only under a spell.

But regardless of any flaws in the writing, the cast is excellent. The real star is Diana Rigg as the Queen, whose deliciously campy comic villainy is unforgettable. But both of the two Snow Whites, child and adolescent, are perfectly cast too, and the dwarfs, the Prince and the rest of the supporting actors all fill their roles very well.

For anyone who might like to see a charming musical Snow White that's more faithful to the Grimms' tale than the Disney version, and who doesn't mind a little camp, I recommend this version highly.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @superkingofpriderock

[seasonoftears]

What I want to write to Jessie:

Vs what I actually wrote:

cause freaking Instagram won’t let me write more than one line.

[shesnake]

did you see what jessie mei li said about amita’s stunt double...and how they viewed skin color in that context as basically a costume? it was such a disappointing statement

that's not what they said but it's still gross to see netflix sending their lead actress of colour to do damage control on their fucking instagram story than to release any significant statements promising contractual parity in future!

thread with screenshots can be viewed here, would encourage focus on Jessie's actual words rather than what the reposter has commented: https://twitter.com/defnoodles/status/1393635325226864643?s=19

[alinaxstarkov]

How can you advertise your tv show preaching about diversity, anti-racism, equality, empowering minorities, giving chances to marginalized groups and then have a brownface scandal? How?

[luuuna-rambles]

HH Songs Survey Results - 61/63

HH 1x03, “Making A Mummy”

Statistics under the cut

Score: -0.4474

Q1) People who said this song was their favourite: 0

Q2 ) People who said this song was their least favourite: 2

Q3) People who said they like this song: 1 (The lowest of any song)

Q4) People who said they don’t like this song: 29

Q5) Give this song a score 1-5: 8, 24, 14, 3, 0

[newsfromstolenland]

this blackface and brownface scandal has been an absolute disaster (I'm finding out which people around me I can actually trust)

but one of the most hurtful reactions in the wake of this has been "it was socially acceptable in 2001! no one thought it was bad then!"

so I'm calling bullshit on that. personally I was a child in 2001 and I had no idea what blackface and brownface were. however, based on what older people of colour and research have told me, I've come to the following conclusion

people of colour have been calling these acts racist for decades. maybe white people thought it was socially acceptable then, but for most people of colour, racist face paint has been bad from day one

so honestly, white people need to stop saying that this extremely racist act was socially acceptable in 2001 (and yes, even the 80s and 90s)

maybe your white ass didn't mind it, but most people of colour sure as shit did

[convenient-plot-device]

The Discovery creators in season 1