disneylanddilettante:laffiteslanding: pureimagineering:Trader Sam is a racist caricature. I support

disneylanddilettante:laffiteslanding: pureimagineering:Trader Sam is a racist caricature. I support removing the animatronic from the ride. The Jungle Cruise can – and should – be anti-racist. But here’s the issue: the Disney Parks have nearly no characters of color. And now they are literally removing an indigenous man from the stage… and replacing him with a gift shop. Rainbow capitalism =/= representation. Disney should be telling more stories of color – starring characters of color – in their theme parks. Disappointing. Cowardly. Ah, well. Maybe I’ll appreciate this new scene, once I see it in person. I appreciate the goals here, though I do think this is a bit of a cop out. Like, the intent is good with the whole gift shop angle (Sam is a savvy, successful businessman now, not a headhunting racist caricature!) , and the joke setup is similar so it maintains that beat in the ride’s story. That’s all good stuff!But you can’t have it both ways by keeping the character’s influence but eliminating the animatronic. By saying he’s “out looking for goods”, it implies he’s very much the same character with the same design and thus the same issues. Either that, or new guests see “Trader Sam” on the shop and assume it’s some random character who may/not be a person of color. So you end up with either the same racist issues that were already there, or straight up erasure. Either A) Redesign the character to modern standards and put him in the gift shop scene, creating a good example of inclusion by acknowledging the past and growing from it. OrB) Eliminate him from the ride and replace him with an appropriate POC, such as Alberta Falls, who they’ve hyped up in press releases but as of yet hasn’t been revealed to have an on-ride presence. Surely having her would make for a great finale scene? While it would eliminate indigenous presence almost entirely, this route would likely be a bit of a better fit than the unoccupied gift shop angle. Overall, the gift shop has a lot of potential for corny jokes and could work quite well. It’s hard to judge without having gone on the ride. Still, the lip service without actually addressing the racism/erasure issue in the scene doesn’t sit quite right. There’s some progress, but they could definitely do better. @laffiteslanding You have put your finger on why this is so disappointing. How many times have we heard privileged creators respond to criticism of their handling of minority representation with “Well now I’m afraid to have them in my story at all!”Adventureland is troublesome in many ways because of its colonialist-fantasy roots. How do you express the romance of the tropics for people from wealthy nations in the temperate zone (the great majority of guests) without reducing the people who actually live there to mere “sights to see” alongside wild animals? I don’t know, but erasure surely is not it. The skippers are the colonists in the jungle. The gag is that they are bad at their jobs. So why can’t the ride include (respectfully depicted) indigenous characters, in scenes where the skipper is the butt of the joke? Scenes that stick it to The Man? These Eurocentric schmucks traveled to a foreign land, and declared themselves as authorities! They are unworthy, and untrustworthy, and they’re not even willing to admit it! That’s funny, and they deserve to be mocked for it! Idk, I love this ride. I want to keep it. But if they’re updating it, then why not do it in a way that will last? Tiptoeing around the controversy – while also exploiting it for profit – is not cool. If Disney sincerely cares about representation, then why not lead the conversation about colonialism? -- source link
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