I’m against putting POC characters in tales of European origin, because, y’know, historical and ethnic accuracy is an actual thing. It’s folklore and it comes from this or that European culture so, yes, accuracy IS a thing.
BUT. I’m all for making more movies based on mythology and folklore of other cultures, for example, African or Native American ones. This I support, it would be a great thing. Because, in all honesty, no one needs Black or Asian Cinderella, that’s just stupid (and, yes, inaccurate). but everyone needs more tales about a child lost in the forest meeting spirits and forest gods. Or at least lets make a movie using an Asian variant of Cinderella fairy tale, there’s more than one, y’know? Because I’m all for accuracy and I’m all for representing more than one dominant culture in multicultural society.
Are you for real? I bolded the above statements because you know what?
*I* needed a Black Cinderella. And I bet a lot of readers here did, too. We still do.
Because of colonialism, most of us have been force-fed European history, mythology, fairy tales, and Medievalism; told it’s the best, the highest, the only. It’s everywhere we look: movies, cartoons, books, tv shows, and we’re told that this is something you are required to learn, and in some cases, the only context you’re allowed for your imagination, but it’s not really for you. It’s not about you. Because you aren’t “Historically Accurate.”
That can go to hell and so can you. Because you know what? Our histories, once again, because of colonialism, kidnapping, enslavement, genocide, are marginalized, misunderstood, and misrepresented. They’re stolen from us and given to white people considered “more qualified” to tell them, and they make millions of dollars off of those misrepresentations. Entire libraries and histories were purposely, methodically burned in order to disempower people of color. These stories, when they survive, are made illegal to teach, specifically because they empower people of color! People of color are removed from their own stories and their own contexts and replaced with white people, because Ridley Scott “can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such.I’m just not going to get it financed.”
You claim you’re all for accuracy? And yet, a “Black or Asian Cinderella” is in your words, “just stupid”??? None of these women are “Accurate” to base a Cinderella on??
[source]
[source]
[source]
[source]
All of these women are just automatically disqualified from having their own Cinderella Story because of their races? No matter how “Historically Accurate” they are?
[source on all images here]
I think we can have both, all, and more. We can tell our own stories, make our own media, AND have a Black AND and Asian AND a Native American AND a Pacific Islander AND a Latina and any other Cinderella we choose. Our stories are worth telling, and for some of us, whose cultures have been crushed by multiple genocides, who have been colonized, who have had our imaginations replaced with Eurocentrism, we are allowed and entitled to our own Cinderella stories, whatever new and beautiful form they take.
Also, guess what? There is, in fact, at least ONE Asian Cinderella, told centuries before Perrault’s version. It takes place in China.
Did you miss the part where I talked about Asian version of Cinderella and other versions on purpose? Because either you didn’t see it even though it’s a black text on a white background and it’s really hard not to notice or you ignored this part on purpose.
Anyway. You are free to read my posts in my folklore tag. I already explained everything enough times to the people who only read those parts of my comments that let them be angry as they like.
Ah, yes, you did. My mistake. But why did you call it a variant, when others have existed prior to Perrault’s for centuries and you still call it historically inaccurate to have black or Asian Cinderellas?
Okay, but OP states from their original post: “Because, in all honesty, no one needs Black or Asian Cinderella, that’s just stupid (and, yes, inaccurate).”
In my experience, using the word “stupid” to describe something is entirely about shutting down other people’s opinions/thoughts and dismissing them despite the evidence that they’re wrong.
I skimmed through the folklore tag of the OP and it looks like they’re against racebending stating that people should be represented with their own culture’s stories. Which I guess makes sense from a non-US point of view. But what about the kids growing up in the US who may not feel like just one type of story from their culture is enough representation?
And it’s like OP’s forgetting that white people (I know OP isn’t white) borrow/steal aspects of other cultures and mash them together into awful adaptions. Firefly? Cinder? Big Hero 6? Pretty sure nobody was trying to be accurate or respectful of sharing aspects from another culture when those came out.
Other than some confusion over who exactly is being addressed as “OP”, I really must say the backpedaling here is more or less what I expected.
“Keep white Cinderella white” with a smattering of “make your own!” isn’t exactly the answer to needing more representation. Black and Asian Cinderella isn’t inaccurate, it isn’t “stupid”, and removing the context of the actual current situation doesn’t help fix it either.
Here:
Western Neutral: Separating Common Culture From “Whiteness”
^ If anyone needs help reframing this discussion. I’m saying that people of color DO NOT HAVE TO BE OTHERED TO BE ACCURATE. We don’t need “exotic retellings” or “other versions” or “YOUR culture’s story”.
People of color can JUST be “Cinderella”.
This whole thread ^ is how marginalization works. I am pushing back against that. And I will keep providing as much visual, cultural, and textual ballast as is required to help any and every Cinderella out there feel empowered to claim it. I want people of color to stop being pushed OUT. I want people of color to feel entitled to Cinderella.
Saying that people should be represented with “their own cultures stories” ignores the lived reality of people living in diasporas, in a global age, in a postcolonial reality. It strips people of the culture they live in. Are you really going to make a case that literally anything about say, the American Disney Cinderella from 1950, is a cultural claim for people in some time in Europe? It’s definitely not Medieval. It’s definitely not Victorian. It’s not set in a particular nation. As a matter of fact, note the poster’s claim:
Because let’s stop mincing words. There’s no specific cultural claim here. It’s not a claim for “European only” because Europeans of color exist. This is a claim for whiteness.
It’s part of the cultural claim that specifically American white people feel toward European History.
The myth of the monochrome Middle Ages, in which the medieval is originary, pure, and white, transcends geographical and temporal boundaries. It is attached, through supposed biological descent, to white bodies, wherever and whenever they go, even into the apparently non-corporeal digital realms of fan-forums, television and video-games. There are many fans of color of popular culture medievalisms, but a hostile milieu which consistently repeats the messages that ‘you don’t belong in the Middle Ages’ and the ‘the Middle Ages are not yours’ actively discourages setting out on, let alone completing, a journey from interested fan to professional scholar. And I know that there are many Europeans of color who feel differently, identify differently, and have an entirely different relationship with their heritage. There are many, many, many discussions that people attempt to have with me that cannot and SHOULD NOT be had with me, or this blog. Here’s a message, shared with permission:
(this is in response to your post http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/105371046543/belakqwa-medievalpoc-via-evilmarguerite-on) I totally agree with ”we can have all and more” and you have some good info/arguments. However, you need to understand the essence of the discomfort that a lot of us (non american and some american) black people have in regards to seeing ourselves only in a European narratives. Black people have lives and cultures outside of Europe/America. I’m tired of seeing black princess in European garbs. I want to see more princesses celebrating cultures from Africa. I want to see the clothes and the jewelery from OUR continent. I want to see the tales of OUR continent on OUR continent. We had cultures and history just as much as medieval Europeans did. European cultures have enough exposure in the world. We are not defined by our presence in Europe. Our history doesn’t start when we had first contact with Europeans. All of these paintings are nice, but I don’t feel valued by them. All these people came from somewhere (or had non European origins) and their cultures where never valued in these representations. If we’ve been kicked out of our own stories, I want first and foremost to be put back in them. I want the priority to be put in my narrative before constantly being mirrored into a foreign European one. Yes we have a presence in Europe, yes we have cultural influence in Europe, yes its not inaccurate to have a black princess is Elizabethan or Victorian dresses. But Europe is not essentially us. Our African cultures and heritage are always erased just to prove we had some kind of prestige in Europe too.
I know you’re not black and you might not get this. The opinions are mitigated and Black people in America seem to forget that blackness isn’t just them and they cannot define blackness for the rest of us non-Americans.
( you can publicly post this if you want)— sailorpoompoom
(^ Please take care to note the above; I am not Black and discussions of Black identity should not involve me. “People of color” is generally considered an American identity, born of necessity in our sociopolitical and cultural situation.) And there’s is always room for these discussions. One thing’s validity doesn’t make the other moot. One is not more important than the other. One discussion doesn’t eclipse the other. One issue’s existence doesn’t negate the other.
Many Americans are mixed-race and/or multicultural in and of themselves. Some of us do not know what race we are, what culture we come from, or have access to these kinds of connections with history. Too many of us have had cultures we should be entitled to denied to us. We are put in categories based on our appearance, regardless of heritage or cultural ties.
Essentially, this has become a discussion over which “race”, however it’s categorized, owns the idea of Cinderella. My answer, which is EVERYONE, should not be controversial in my humble opinion. However, it has become obvious that it IS controversial for some people. Critical thinking demands that we ask ourselves why. We all speak from our own knowledge and our own experience, and I’m no exception.
What I am trying to speak on is the importance of diversity in perspectives. I am trying to show how psychologically, physically, and spiritually damaging it is to say something is only for white people, because of the entire context of history and social reality of white supremacy. Medievalpoc is only capable of addressing a tiny and very specific fragment of a massive issue*.
It’s my hope that people can see this as evidence as the work that needs to be done, as opposed to a failure of work that has been done so far. No one source is good enough to meet every need. It’s not about closing down discussions, but about diversifying the perspectives of the discussions at hand, and that the people affected by them are the ones having the discussions.
________
*Using what is here to address other issues is definitely possible, but is not its purpose, and harm can be caused when using a screwdriver to perform surgery, to use a rather ugly metaphor. That does not, however, render screwdrivers universally unnecessary, or people who use screwdrivers for their intended purposes blameworthy.
BUT. I’m all for making more movies based on mythology and folklore of other cultures, for example, African or Native American ones. This I support, it would be a great thing. Because, in all honesty, no one needs Black or Asian Cinderella, that’s just stupid (and, yes, inaccurate). but everyone needs more tales about a child lost in the forest meeting spirits and forest gods. Or at least lets make a movie using an Asian variant of Cinderella fairy tale, there’s more than one, y’know? Because I’m all for accuracy and I’m all for representing more than one dominant culture in multicultural society.
Are you for real? I bolded the above statements because you know what?
*I* needed a Black Cinderella. And I bet a lot of readers here did, too. We still do.
Because of colonialism, most of us have been force-fed European history, mythology, fairy tales, and Medievalism; told it’s the best, the highest, the only. It’s everywhere we look: movies, cartoons, books, tv shows, and we’re told that this is something you are required to learn, and in some cases, the only context you’re allowed for your imagination, but it’s not really for you. It’s not about you. Because you aren’t “Historically Accurate.”
That can go to hell and so can you. Because you know what? Our histories, once again, because of colonialism, kidnapping, enslavement, genocide, are marginalized, misunderstood, and misrepresented. They’re stolen from us and given to white people considered “more qualified” to tell them, and they make millions of dollars off of those misrepresentations. Entire libraries and histories were purposely, methodically burned in order to disempower people of color. These stories, when they survive, are made illegal to teach, specifically because they empower people of color! People of color are removed from their own stories and their own contexts and replaced with white people, because Ridley Scott “can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such.I’m just not going to get it financed.”
You claim you’re all for accuracy? And yet, a “Black or Asian Cinderella” is in your words, “just stupid”??? None of these women are “Accurate” to base a Cinderella on??
[source]
[source]
[source]
[source]
All of these women are just automatically disqualified from having their own Cinderella Story because of their races? No matter how “Historically Accurate” they are?
[source on all images here]
I think we can have both, all, and more. We can tell our own stories, make our own media, AND have a Black AND and Asian AND a Native American AND a Pacific Islander AND a Latina and any other Cinderella we choose. Our stories are worth telling, and for some of us, whose cultures have been crushed by multiple genocides, who have been colonized, who have had our imaginations replaced with Eurocentrism, we are allowed and entitled to our own Cinderella stories, whatever new and beautiful form they take.
Also, guess what? There is, in fact, at least ONE Asian Cinderella, told centuries before Perrault’s version. It takes place in China.
Did you miss the part where I talked about Asian version of Cinderella and other versions on purpose? Because either you didn’t see it even though it’s a black text on a white background and it’s really hard not to notice or you ignored this part on purpose.
Anyway. You are free to read my posts in my folklore tag. I already explained everything enough times to the people who only read those parts of my comments that let them be angry as they like.
Ah, yes, you did. My mistake. But why did you call it a variant, when others have existed prior to Perrault’s for centuries and you still call it historically inaccurate to have black or Asian Cinderellas?
Okay, but OP states from their original post: “Because, in all honesty, no one needs Black or Asian Cinderella, that’s just stupid (and, yes, inaccurate).”
In my experience, using the word “stupid” to describe something is entirely about shutting down other people’s opinions/thoughts and dismissing them despite the evidence that they’re wrong.
I skimmed through the folklore tag of the OP and it looks like they’re against racebending stating that people should be represented with their own culture’s stories. Which I guess makes sense from a non-US point of view. But what about the kids growing up in the US who may not feel like just one type of story from their culture is enough representation?
And it’s like OP’s forgetting that white people (I know OP isn’t white) borrow/steal aspects of other cultures and mash them together into awful adaptions. Firefly? Cinder? Big Hero 6? Pretty sure nobody was trying to be accurate or respectful of sharing aspects from another culture when those came out.
Other than some confusion over who exactly is being addressed as “OP”, I really must say the backpedaling here is more or less what I expected.
“Keep white Cinderella white” with a smattering of “make your own!” isn’t exactly the answer to needing more representation. Black and Asian Cinderella isn’t inaccurate, it isn’t “stupid”, and removing the context of the actual current situation doesn’t help fix it either.
Here:
Western Neutral: Separating Common Culture From “Whiteness”
^ If anyone needs help reframing this discussion. I’m saying that people of color DO NOT HAVE TO BE OTHERED TO BE ACCURATE. We don’t need “exotic retellings” or “other versions” or “YOUR culture’s story”.
People of color can JUST be “Cinderella”.
This whole thread ^ is how marginalization works. I am pushing back against that. And I will keep providing as much visual, cultural, and textual ballast as is required to help any and every Cinderella out there feel empowered to claim it. I want people of color to stop being pushed OUT. I want people of color to feel entitled to Cinderella.
Saying that people should be represented with “their own cultures stories” ignores the lived reality of people living in diasporas, in a global age, in a postcolonial reality. It strips people of the culture they live in. Are you really going to make a case that literally anything about say, the American Disney Cinderella from 1950, is a cultural claim for people in some time in Europe? It’s definitely not Medieval. It’s definitely not Victorian. It’s not set in a particular nation. As a matter of fact, note the poster’s claim:
Because let’s stop mincing words. There’s no specific cultural claim here. It’s not a claim for “European only” because Europeans of color exist. This is a claim for whiteness.
It’s part of the cultural claim that specifically American white people feel toward European History.
The myth of the monochrome Middle Ages, in which the medieval is originary, pure, and white, transcends geographical and temporal boundaries. It is attached, through supposed biological descent, to white bodies, wherever and whenever they go, even into the apparently non-corporeal digital realms of fan-forums, television and video-games. There are many fans of color of popular culture medievalisms, but a hostile milieu which consistently repeats the messages that ‘you don’t belong in the Middle Ages’ and the ‘the Middle Ages are not yours’ actively discourages setting out on, let alone completing, a journey from interested fan to professional scholar. And I know that there are many Europeans of color who feel differently, identify differently, and have an entirely different relationship with their heritage. There are many, many, many discussions that people attempt to have with me that cannot and SHOULD NOT be had with me, or this blog. Here’s a message, shared with permission:
(this is in response to your post http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/105371046543/belakqwa-medievalpoc-via-evilmarguerite-on) I totally agree with ”we can have all and more” and you have some good info/arguments. However, you need to understand the essence of the discomfort that a lot of us (non american and some american) black people have in regards to seeing ourselves only in a European narratives. Black people have lives and cultures outside of Europe/America. I’m tired of seeing black princess in European garbs. I want to see more princesses celebrating cultures from Africa. I want to see the clothes and the jewelery from OUR continent. I want to see the tales of OUR continent on OUR continent. We had cultures and history just as much as medieval Europeans did. European cultures have enough exposure in the world. We are not defined by our presence in Europe. Our history doesn’t start when we had first contact with Europeans. All of these paintings are nice, but I don’t feel valued by them. All these people came from somewhere (or had non European origins) and their cultures where never valued in these representations. If we’ve been kicked out of our own stories, I want first and foremost to be put back in them. I want the priority to be put in my narrative before constantly being mirrored into a foreign European one. Yes we have a presence in Europe, yes we have cultural influence in Europe, yes its not inaccurate to have a black princess is Elizabethan or Victorian dresses. But Europe is not essentially us. Our African cultures and heritage are always erased just to prove we had some kind of prestige in Europe too.
I know you’re not black and you might not get this. The opinions are mitigated and Black people in America seem to forget that blackness isn’t just them and they cannot define blackness for the rest of us non-Americans.
( you can publicly post this if you want)— sailorpoompoom
(^ Please take care to note the above; I am not Black and discussions of Black identity should not involve me. “People of color” is generally considered an American identity, born of necessity in our sociopolitical and cultural situation.) And there’s is always room for these discussions. One thing’s validity doesn’t make the other moot. One is not more important than the other. One discussion doesn’t eclipse the other. One issue’s existence doesn’t negate the other.
Many Americans are mixed-race and/or multicultural in and of themselves. Some of us do not know what race we are, what culture we come from, or have access to these kinds of connections with history. Too many of us have had cultures we should be entitled to denied to us. We are put in categories based on our appearance, regardless of heritage or cultural ties.
Essentially, this has become a discussion over which “race”, however it’s categorized, owns the idea of Cinderella. My answer, which is EVERYONE, should not be controversial in my humble opinion. However, it has become obvious that it IS controversial for some people. Critical thinking demands that we ask ourselves why. We all speak from our own knowledge and our own experience, and I’m no exception.
What I am trying to speak on is the importance of diversity in perspectives. I am trying to show how psychologically, physically, and spiritually damaging it is to say something is only for white people, because of the entire context of history and social reality of white supremacy. Medievalpoc is only capable of addressing a tiny and very specific fragment of a massive issue*.
It’s my hope that people can see this as evidence as the work that needs to be done, as opposed to a failure of work that has been done so far. No one source is good enough to meet every need. It’s not about closing down discussions, but about diversifying the perspectives of the discussions at hand, and that the people affected by them are the ones having the discussions.
________
*Using what is here to address other issues is definitely possible, but is not its purpose, and harm can be caused when using a screwdriver to perform surgery, to use a rather ugly metaphor. That does not, however, render screwdrivers universally unnecessary, or people who use screwdrivers for their intended purposes blameworthy.
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