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Multiculturalism in children's lit and media: Racebending Disney's FROZEN - and critiques of our field/industry from the outside
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From: Ebony Elizabeth Thomas <ebonyt_at_gse.upenn.edu>
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2014 19:20:06 -0500
Again, it has been enlightening to listen in on this complex, multifaceted, often uncomfortable, yet very necessary conversation. Many thanks to all who have participated. I have learned something from each of you.
This is tangential, but related, so I hope you'll humor me. I wanted to draw your attention to an essay that was published today by the Medieval POC Tumblr blog, weighing in on a growing Internet debate over the new movie FROZEN, Disney's take on Hans Christian Anderson's popular fairy tale, "The Snow Queen": http://ebonyteach.tumblr.com/post/76888826052/hopeless-hyperbole-the-internet-debate-over-disneys
To provide some context, repeating my post earlier this month, social media artists and authors, some of them preteens and teens, some of them young adults (generally between 18 and 40, but not always) have lately been responding to very popular children's "texts" -- books, movies, television shows -- by racebending them. (Racebending means to change the race, ethnicity, and other visible markers of difference of a character -- some say it's the flip side of whitewashing.) Here are a few examples of many:
http://jackfrost-flakes.tumblr.com/post/75211379816/inspired-by-this-post-a-fire-elsa-just-in-time http://nikston.tumblr.com/post/75093443038 http://nikston.tumblr.com/post/74434607657 http://rebloggy.com/post/my-art-frozen-feel-free-to-keep-scrolling/69532296503
It's not just young POC doing this to Frozen. The most prolific of the artists doing the race bending is a 19 year old kid from Austria: http://nikston.tumblr.com/tagged/nickart
I've noticed a small bit of this phenomenon over the years in fandom, and always chose to write fanfiction that included characters of color, even writing an entire controversial story from the point of view of a Black minor character. However, I've never seen anything quite as frequently racebent as Disney's latest movie FROZEN. As a lifelong fan of Scandinavian folklore, fairy tales, and children's literature, I have been absolutely fascinated by the fact that readers, viewers, etc. younger than I would draw people of color as characters in these tales. I would have never dared imagine something of this sort, let along try it, as I was reading and re-reading these stories. This was literature I always loved, but I knew I didn't belong there. I was a spectator, not a participant. I've never seen anything like what these young people are doing, in 15 years of fandom and teaching, and not in more than 30 years as a reader and viewer in this genre.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one surprised by their audacity. Some fans strenuously objected, saying that there simply WEREN'T any people of color there or back then. (The location of POC kids and teens in time and space is something I'm thinking about -- quite hard -- for my first critical monograph, extending amazing work by scholars who have thought about this in more general times.) Know Your Meme, a fan wiki, weighed in on the side of canon, saying that you can't just change the race of a character simply because you don't like it. So hundreds of people messaged Malisha Dewalt, who is an art historian, and runs Medieval POC. I quote her at length, because I think it's important for those of us who are children's literature and media professional to know these discussions rage on (and have implications that reverberate) far beyond our domain:
****
"But the bottom line is, historical documents cannot compete with a false idea that so many people are this emotionally invested in. The history of Denmark has nothing to do with Frozen, but the near-ubiquitous whiteness of children’s media is one of the most polarizing issues in American/U.S. culture today. Too many have looked to this blog to somehow “settle” this debate once and for all, or “fix” it, to prove to the people who say mean and often racist things that it’s okay to draw a version of a brown-skinned character from Frozen.
"That’s not how History works. There is evidence, and there are interpretations. One might imagine that “absolutely every single last person in the entire nation of Denmark for a thousand years was white with no exceptions whatsoever” seems like a very extreme position to take, and yet MY position, which is merely that there are some exceptions and they are notable, is still framed by many people as “extreme”, apparently to a laughable degree.
"I’m sorry, but for people who are emotionally invested in the whiteness of Frozen, there is no proof because there can’t be proof. No evidence is strong enough. Nothing they see or read will change their minds. A cultural promise was made to them that they are the owners and arbiters of history, of fantasy, of imagination. You only have to look at the demographics of children’s literature to see how that promise has been fulfilled."
--Malisha Dewalt, Medieval POC (People of Color in European Art History), "Hopeless Hyperbole: The Internet Debate Over Disney's Frozen." http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/76885844280/hopeless-hyperbole-the-internet-debate-over-disneys
****
I found it interesting that she included the HuffPo link to the CCBC research study on diversity in children's books, so I though I'd point it out. Although I am a woman of color, I've been a member of the children's literature community for my entire professional career. I felt implicated, called out, and complicit in perpetuating the "all White world of children's books" that Larrick wrote about nearly a decade and a half before I was even born. Which is why I decided to take a risk, defying the "no blogging until tenure" advice I've received, and started a professional Tumblr, THE DARK FANTASTIC. I've been doing lots of reblogging of diversity in children's and YA literature blogs, but I also want to highlight children's literature and reader responses that are emancipatory within their contexts.
Although I am a bit more mild in my time, Malisha's last paragraph that I've quoted is also my position on these matters. I've only been around 12 years, and I've witnessed the same conversation, over and over again. I am far too young to have even been part of these conversations, except listening to them in historical retrospect, learning about the past. Which is why, while I value the conversation, I do believe we won't be having the same one 15-20 years from now. It has a shelf life that grows increasingly limited with the rise of new technologies, apps, sites, and methods not only of creation, but also disseminating creative work.
As I told a friend who studies new media literacies, if we decide to maintain the status quo, no matter how logical and sound our reasoning for doing so, the younger generations will simply write, draw, and create themselves into existence… and ignore texts and contexts that erase them. The market has shifted before, and it's shifting now. Nature abhors a vacuum. This is not the end or a blip. This is just the beginning.
It is up to us -- all of us -- to determine how we will respond.
Ebony
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2014 19:20:06 -0500
Again, it has been enlightening to listen in on this complex, multifaceted, often uncomfortable, yet very necessary conversation. Many thanks to all who have participated. I have learned something from each of you.
This is tangential, but related, so I hope you'll humor me. I wanted to draw your attention to an essay that was published today by the Medieval POC Tumblr blog, weighing in on a growing Internet debate over the new movie FROZEN, Disney's take on Hans Christian Anderson's popular fairy tale, "The Snow Queen": http://ebonyteach.tumblr.com/post/76888826052/hopeless-hyperbole-the-internet-debate-over-disneys
To provide some context, repeating my post earlier this month, social media artists and authors, some of them preteens and teens, some of them young adults (generally between 18 and 40, but not always) have lately been responding to very popular children's "texts" -- books, movies, television shows -- by racebending them. (Racebending means to change the race, ethnicity, and other visible markers of difference of a character -- some say it's the flip side of whitewashing.) Here are a few examples of many:
http://jackfrost-flakes.tumblr.com/post/75211379816/inspired-by-this-post-a-fire-elsa-just-in-time http://nikston.tumblr.com/post/75093443038 http://nikston.tumblr.com/post/74434607657 http://rebloggy.com/post/my-art-frozen-feel-free-to-keep-scrolling/69532296503
It's not just young POC doing this to Frozen. The most prolific of the artists doing the race bending is a 19 year old kid from Austria: http://nikston.tumblr.com/tagged/nickart
I've noticed a small bit of this phenomenon over the years in fandom, and always chose to write fanfiction that included characters of color, even writing an entire controversial story from the point of view of a Black minor character. However, I've never seen anything quite as frequently racebent as Disney's latest movie FROZEN. As a lifelong fan of Scandinavian folklore, fairy tales, and children's literature, I have been absolutely fascinated by the fact that readers, viewers, etc. younger than I would draw people of color as characters in these tales. I would have never dared imagine something of this sort, let along try it, as I was reading and re-reading these stories. This was literature I always loved, but I knew I didn't belong there. I was a spectator, not a participant. I've never seen anything like what these young people are doing, in 15 years of fandom and teaching, and not in more than 30 years as a reader and viewer in this genre.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one surprised by their audacity. Some fans strenuously objected, saying that there simply WEREN'T any people of color there or back then. (The location of POC kids and teens in time and space is something I'm thinking about -- quite hard -- for my first critical monograph, extending amazing work by scholars who have thought about this in more general times.) Know Your Meme, a fan wiki, weighed in on the side of canon, saying that you can't just change the race of a character simply because you don't like it. So hundreds of people messaged Malisha Dewalt, who is an art historian, and runs Medieval POC. I quote her at length, because I think it's important for those of us who are children's literature and media professional to know these discussions rage on (and have implications that reverberate) far beyond our domain:
****
"But the bottom line is, historical documents cannot compete with a false idea that so many people are this emotionally invested in. The history of Denmark has nothing to do with Frozen, but the near-ubiquitous whiteness of children’s media is one of the most polarizing issues in American/U.S. culture today. Too many have looked to this blog to somehow “settle” this debate once and for all, or “fix” it, to prove to the people who say mean and often racist things that it’s okay to draw a version of a brown-skinned character from Frozen.
"That’s not how History works. There is evidence, and there are interpretations. One might imagine that “absolutely every single last person in the entire nation of Denmark for a thousand years was white with no exceptions whatsoever” seems like a very extreme position to take, and yet MY position, which is merely that there are some exceptions and they are notable, is still framed by many people as “extreme”, apparently to a laughable degree.
"I’m sorry, but for people who are emotionally invested in the whiteness of Frozen, there is no proof because there can’t be proof. No evidence is strong enough. Nothing they see or read will change their minds. A cultural promise was made to them that they are the owners and arbiters of history, of fantasy, of imagination. You only have to look at the demographics of children’s literature to see how that promise has been fulfilled."
--Malisha Dewalt, Medieval POC (People of Color in European Art History), "Hopeless Hyperbole: The Internet Debate Over Disney's Frozen." http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/76885844280/hopeless-hyperbole-the-internet-debate-over-disneys
****
I found it interesting that she included the HuffPo link to the CCBC research study on diversity in children's books, so I though I'd point it out. Although I am a woman of color, I've been a member of the children's literature community for my entire professional career. I felt implicated, called out, and complicit in perpetuating the "all White world of children's books" that Larrick wrote about nearly a decade and a half before I was even born. Which is why I decided to take a risk, defying the "no blogging until tenure" advice I've received, and started a professional Tumblr, THE DARK FANTASTIC. I've been doing lots of reblogging of diversity in children's and YA literature blogs, but I also want to highlight children's literature and reader responses that are emancipatory within their contexts.
Although I am a bit more mild in my time, Malisha's last paragraph that I've quoted is also my position on these matters. I've only been around 12 years, and I've witnessed the same conversation, over and over again. I am far too young to have even been part of these conversations, except listening to them in historical retrospect, learning about the past. Which is why, while I value the conversation, I do believe we won't be having the same one 15-20 years from now. It has a shelf life that grows increasingly limited with the rise of new technologies, apps, sites, and methods not only of creation, but also disseminating creative work.
As I told a friend who studies new media literacies, if we decide to maintain the status quo, no matter how logical and sound our reasoning for doing so, the younger generations will simply write, draw, and create themselves into existence… and ignore texts and contexts that erase them. The market has shifted before, and it's shifting now. Nature abhors a vacuum. This is not the end or a blip. This is just the beginning.
It is up to us -- all of us -- to determine how we will respond.
Ebony
-- Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Reading/Writing/Literacy Division Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216 Office: (215) 898-9309 Fax: (215) 573-2109 Email: ebonyt_at_gse.upenn.edu Website: http://scholar.gse.upenn.edu/thomas Twitter: _at_Ebonyteach Tumblr: ebonyteach "If I do not love the world--if I do not love life--if I do not love people--I cannot enter into dialogue." --Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed --- You are currently subscribed to ccbc-net as: ccbc-archive_at_post.education.wisc.edu. To post to the list, send message to: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu To receive messages in digest format, send a message to... ccbc-net-request_at_lists.wisc.edu ...and include only this command in the body of the message: set ccbc-net digest CCBC-Net Archives The CCBC-Net archives are available to all CCBC-Net listserv members. The archives are organized by month and year. A list of discussion topics (including month/year) is available at http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ccbcnet/archives.asp To access the archives, go to: http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/ccbc-net and enter the following: username: ccbc-net password: Look4PostsReceived on Sun 16 Feb 2014 06:23:35 PM CST
