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#any disney film
girafferoyalty · 3 months
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inch resting…?
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In one of Vil’s Yasmina Silk lines, he reveals that he didn’t actually visit the Scalding Sands (which is why I guess he doesn’t have associated vignettes or involvement in the actual event story). Rather, Trey bought the outfit for him as a souvenir because apparently (this was never said anywhere else else before) Vil had expressed an interest in the fashion of that country. Vil tells him to stop it because Trey is “spoiling” him (as well as like, everyone else because he’s “too considerate”) 😂 but I guess that doesn’t actually help??
Okay, kind of weird??? I never thought of these two are particularly good enough friends to the point where one of them just buys the other a present for no particular occasion…? They definitely speak on polite terms in some vignettes, but I didn’t get the impression they were good friends. I also kind of understand Trey dumping extra cakes on others because he does it to everyone, but getting a whole outfit for Vil from a foreign country?? That’s not even a “considerate” thing to do, that seems like going above and beyond. I feel like you wouldn’t do that for anyone except a really good friend (especially since it’s mentioned that the fabric is pretty nice quality). If Trey wanted to get something wearable from the Scalding Sands for Vil, he could have just gone with a smaller accessory, no??? Not a whole outfit which costs… who knows how much?? I guess Trey was okay with just asking for an extra outfit (from the Asims)??
Maybe I should revisit those vignettes 😂 and sniff out their friendship…
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m-ushroomtale · 9 months
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Replicated mother-daughter relationships and privatized Chinese American cinema
Qi Xiangu Film Arts Magazine  2022-09-15 17:00 published in Beijing
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This article is selected from "Film Art" Issue 5, 2022
Qi Xiangu
Film researcher, Master’s Degree from Renmin University of China and Master’s Degree from Florida State University 
Abstract: "Everything Everywhere All At Once" is a win-win at the word-of-mouth box office around the world. After "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Turning Red", it once again pushed this kind of Chinese-American film with mother-daughter relationship as the core to the public. It unexpectedly won the favor of Chinese and American audiences. However, this type of film actually caters to the "political correctness" appeal of the American film industry in recent years, which is directly manifested in the conservatism of its content. More importantly, through a mother-daughter relationship that is constantly being reproduced, they strategically shift the audience's attention to the Chinese American family, conceal the survival and struggle problems that these families may face in society, and then personalize Chinese-American films.
Key words: Chinese-American film, mother-daughter relationship, privatization, "Turning Red", "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
American movies have always been a mirror for observing American society, history, and culture, and it is also a manifestation of its social symptoms. During Trump’s tenure as President of the United States (including a long time after he left office), the various crises encountered by the United States have been presented in American movies, among which the most prominent and most likely to attract attention are Sino-US relations and “#MeToo" movement, and the immigration issue is also sandwiched between these two phenomena or issues.
The connection between these three is not only the fall of the myth of American superheroes (mostly white males) in the Chinese and American markets, but also the global coronation of Asian female directors and actors, represented by Zhao Ting and Sandra Wu. The "re-popularity" created by Asian women, specifically, the survival and encounters of Chinese women immigrant, "Crazy Rich Asians", "The Farewell", "The Half of It", "Turning Red", "Everything Everywhere All At Once", the continuous achievement of "amazing" results in box office and word-of-mouth by movies such as "Crazy Rich Asians", "Turning Red", and "Everything Everywhere All At Once", has repeatedly brought this kind of movie to the fore. Chinese-American films centered on the relationship between mother and daughter have been pushed to the public.
It is also here that American films, especially Hollywood films, integrate the aforementioned three major issues in their own way, and try to use this to regain their status as "universal language".1 It became a sharp weapon for a new round of siege. However, the appearance of Chinese-American female protagonists seems to not only support the "#MeToo" movement fermented from Hollywood, but also observe the successive "Stop Anti-Asian Hate" movements to a certain extent, which is absolutely "politically correct" ", but in fact none of them responded to or dealt with these social issues directly or indirectly, but circumvented them skillfully and strategically avoided the risk of being further questioned; the ordinary mother-daughter relationship in creation is achieved by further personalizing this type of creation.
The reason why the term "re-popularity" was used to limit this type of film creation is because the essence behind it is the old tune of Chinese mother-daughter relationship, and the prevalence of this "old tune" can be traced back to "The Joy Luck Club". 
The double sales of "The Joy Luck Club" novel and movie not only verified the American society (readers and audiences) to the parents of Chinese immigrants, especially the story of how a daughter representing Western culture can get rid of the oppression of a Chinese-style mother, and even carry out reverse education through books and movies, and this relationship between reading tendency and watching movies has been consolidated by taking advantage of the "best-selling" stories of the commodity economy.2
We may even find that the "re-popularity" of this type of creation shares many power logic relations of representation with the Hollywood Walk of Fame of Huang Liushuang (Anna May Wong) and Guan Nanshi (Nancy Kwan): who is "represented" and who is manipulating this "representation", who consumes this "representation," who benefits from this manipulation of "representation," and so on. 
In other words, "Chinese-American mother-daughter conflict" (a relationship), following "Oriental Beauty" (an image), has become a shortcut for American society to interpret or imagine the Other/"China (culture)"/Chinese-American.
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Still from the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
Replicated mother-daughter relationship
In the aforementioned intricate matrix of power relations with regard to representation, this so-called manipulator points to the entire social environment in which this type of film production takes place. As Foucault puts it, "The status of a discourse and its reception are affected by the social context in which it circulates"3
The latest Chinese-American films are all set in contemporary times, which is related to the starting point of view of the creators. Although the history of Chinese immigrants has a long history, the present is obviously closer, and many heavy political and historical burdens can be stripped away, especially considering the injustice and suffering that Chinese immigrants have encountered in American society, as a ‘model minority’ seems to be more easily accepted as an object worthy of being filmed.
Even so, the selection of the location is more thought-provoking than the natural setting of the time. Different from "The Joy Luck Club" and other early films of the same type, where China, the United States, and the social and cultural poles are set in space, recent films of this type are set in multiple spaces. 
"Crazy Rich Asians" chose multiple geographical spaces, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, etc. have been included in the landscape, but the Chinese mainland has been absent. "Turning Red" chose Chinatown with the most transnational characteristics, and "Chinese culture" was replaced by an ancient myth and a dull old ancestral hall. 
In "Everything Everywhere All At Once", Michelle Yeoh's Evelyn shuttles through countless universes, but China has always been only the place where "prehistory" took place, that is, all the universe splits occurred after Evelyn left China. Different from the presentation of China in the Chinese-American films of the 1990s, these new films all deal with "China" as a blank index.
In this sense, the "ethnic Chinese" in "ethnic Chinese disapora" has been exiled into the background, or even out of the background, and such banishment behavior and visual choices have inspired us to think: what kind of social context has given birth to such The narrative setting? In order to answer this question, we must first clarify: Why is the relationship between Chinese mother and daughter selected by American movies again at this time?
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Still from the movie "Crazy Rich Asians"
The mother-daughter relationship is not only an intergenerational relationship, but also a relationship of cross-cultural communication. Although the problem of Chinese and Western cultural conflicts has become so common in movies that recent films no longer use it as the only theme, in fact this problem has always existed, but it has only been put on a mask-the relationship between mother and daughter.
Although "Crazy Rich Asians" is about the dispute between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, its essence is the debate between the older generation of Chinese female immigrants and the younger generation of Chinese female immigrants debating the purity and insufficiency of Chinese sexuality, and is no different from the other two films about the conflict between blood-related mother and daughter.4
In view of the dominant position of the tense relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in Chinese society and culture, the presentation of such a (type of) mother-daughter relationship is more likely to be recognized as a typical representative of "Chineseness". 
These (types of) mothers more or less carry the influence of Chinese tradition and culture, and represent China, while the daughters who grew up overseas are undoubtedly the spokespersons of American culture. The personalities of the two are also shaped as opposite ends mainly around the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, and the dramatic conflicts unfold and advance from this.
This kind of narrative mode has defaulted from the beginning that the mother-daughter problem is not simply a communication difficulty or an intergenerational gap, but is based on the premise that Chinese and Western cultures are different. Therefore, no matter what era it is, how globalization develops, and how much mothers are soaked in the culture of settlement, Chinese and American cultures are different, and the similarities are completely erased. 
This "difference" not only exists, but is selected, amplified, and circulated, while "similarities" are "disappeared" in the reproduction production of this media age. Therefore, the cultural conflict between China and the West is "a pre-publicized confrontation" hidden in the inner layer of mother-daughter relationship. 
The result of the confrontation is often the reconciliation of mother and daughter, but before that, the mother must go through a process of inward self-examination, and this process also points to the family. 
In these movies, from the daughter's point of view, the mother often has no empathy and is superior, but at the same time she stubbornly thinks that she is doing what is good for the child.5 Such an image is directly or indirectly derived from Western culture's deep-rooted cognition of "tyrannical and authoritarian" Chinese parents. 
This cognition is based on the fact that Western culture believes that Western civilization is more modern and enlightened, and it is also based on the fact that American daughters who have been influenced by Western culture absolutely cannot identify with and understand the Chineseness represented by their mothers.
In "Crazy Rich Asians", the superficially gentle but extremely bossy, Mandarin-speaking mother-in-law played by Lu Yan is a typical Chinese parent, far more traditionally Chinese than Eleanor Young (played by Michelle Yeoh). And Eleanor Young's contempt for Rachel Zhu (played by Constance Wu) is actually copying her mother-in-law's behavior. 
The red panda and the curse-removing ceremony in "Turning Red" also appeared among several generations of women as an intergenerational inheritance.
The repetition of history is actually an intergenerational practice of so-called "inheritance". This kind of "inheritance" is manifested as a fixed, rigid, and oppressive practice, and the content of the practice is often incompatible with American culture's ruthless attitude towards Chineseness.
No matter how far or how long the mother in the film is away from home, the imprints and genes of her previous generation will not disappear due to changes in time and space, but instead become stronger and deeper, so that they themselves begin to believe that is their way to survive, the foundation of their foothold, and it is a precious thing like a "family heirloom". 
Therefore, they look forward to their daughter's inheritance, and then hope that the family in a foreign country that they have worked so hard to support can be maintained through this treasure. Daughters often become "ungrateful daughters" because they cannot bear the weight and constraints of such expectations.6
Under Eleanor Young's repeated attacks, Rachel Chu finally fell into self-denial because of the "embarrassing" experience of her biological mother and her boyfriend's rich background. In "Turning Red", the mother wept silently and threw herself into Xiaomei's arms; when Joy was about to come out to grandfather, Evelyn rushed to declare her own identity for her daughter.
Once the antagonistic mother-daughter relationship intertwined with the issue of family inheritance is locked as the core of the story, the social relationship connected with the characters will be greatly compressed and simplified. As a result, many problems faced by immigrants, such as racial discrimination, gender discrimination, public violence, etc., are all generalized as problems within the family, or are all traced back to the original family, and blamed on the parent-child relationship.
In other words, it seems that the education of children is only the responsibility of the family, or even the responsibility of the mother. Therefore, motherhood has become the best spokesperson for the crime. From here, we have to think about at least two questions: first, where is the father, and what did the father do? Second, where is the United States and what is the United States doing?
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Still from the movie "Turning Red"
In the films mentioned above, the father is, if not completely absent, then silent, powerless, indifferent, and even a direct persecutor. Nevertheless, the father’s negative influence on the family seems to only affect the mother, making the mother appear more masculine and socialized, thus losing the (maternal) softness and affinity that the world expects, and becoming an agent of patriarchy; it has no similar effect on daughters, and even daughters will get closer to their fathers because of this, thinking that fathers are the ones who understand themselves and can help them resist mother's dictatorship.
This kind of family model has both a credible side and a false side in the life of Chinese immigrant to the United States, because women will encounter more difficulties than men no matter where they go, especially in immigrant culture, women seem to naturally echo the world's admiration for the tenacity of survival in difficult situations, as well as the vigilance of the accompanying temperament such as toughness and utilitarianism. 
American society has enough space for imagination when it comes to Chinese women, but shows little interest in Chinese men. Naturally, there are historical and political factors, and the role of media representation cannot be ignored.
Firstly, Chinese-American fictional writers in the United States are dominated by women, or female writers are more exposed in the public eye, and most of their brushstrokes fall on female characters. The subsequent film and television adaptations will basically continue to use the original storyline and character relationship, and the image of the father is mostly single and flat in both literary texts and film and television texts;
secondly, most of these stories are set within a framework of family ethics, and their target audiences (readers and viewers) are mainly middle-class American women and Asian women. The father who is out of focus is blind and indifferent.
In reality, take the husband-and-wife Chinese restaurant that is most well-known to the public as an example. The male owner is the chef and the backstage manager, who is not seen or known by the guests, and the role of the cashier and lobby service is often played by the female owner.
Among the people coming and going, everyone knows more about the woman with great social functions, while the man becomes a shadow hidden behind the curtain. As clear as the former is, so vague is the latter. This is how the production of popular knowledge about Chinese immigrant families is constantly copied, disseminated, and stereotyped.
The second question is perhaps more worthy of investigation. Although most of these films set the story background in the United States, the real face of American society is rarely presented. Even though Chinese immigrants like to live together, this does not mean that they have no contact with Americans, nor does it mean that they live in a self-contained and monolithic heterotopia7 that is not connected to American society.
Compared with China's geographical absence, the United States has not played a substantive role despite its geographical presence. All important stories and plots take place within a family or among several families, and even if there are outsiders, they will not lead the insiders to break out. The United States seems to have become an empty place, and the influence of Western culture on the daughter has also become a "factory setting", which has never changed, and is only fine-tuned when the last scene comes. And such a design actually serves a certain invisible operation shared by these films, that is, domesticating Chinese-American films.
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Still from the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
Privatized Chinese American Cinema
There is no doubt that the popularity of these films has internal market, political, and economic reasons, but they still largely continue some of the previous content of the Asian American identity crisis, intergenerational relations, and cultural conflicts. They are more family-oriented, which means that they condense many problems in one family, and even tacitly strip away the influence of American social problems on Asian-Americans.
American society is relatively open, but these films almost all default to Asian-American families, especially Chinese-American families, as being very homogeneous. The struggles faced by the characters almost all come from their mothers, and they all come from within the family. Such acquiescence privatizes the lives of Asian Americans and the problems they face as a single family problem, and behind it is not only the privatization of cultural differences, but also the privatization of the real social context.
The selection of the laundry room as Evelyn's living space and working space in "Everything Everywhere All At Once" is an audio-visual presentation of this kind of private domain. Although the laundry room is the most common means of survival for Asian-Americans, washing machines, washing clothes, and tidying clothes are directly regarded as housework activities, and have been tied to women for a long time, so the movie actually domesticates Evelyn's identity as a woman. She is a mother herself, and all her problems come from her family. At the same time, her identity and work are all related to her family.
Whether as a housewife or as a professional woman, the movie sets up a double private domain for Evelyn. The scene at the beginning of the movie fully reflects this point: in the dark light, the mirror that once reflected the picture of a happy family of three leads the audience to the interior of the family; the picture instantly turned into a messy dining table and desk. The camera advances in depth along the mirror, and Evelyn carries the bag into the painting, hangs the bag quickly, and then sits in front of the table surrounded by various furniture and home decorations. The camera slowly zooms in from a panoramic view to a close-up view, and finally fixes on her, making her seem like a trapped person.
In front of her was a pile of laundry bills, while she was actually sitting in her living room. With the arrival of her daughter and customers, we see that the next step she takes out of the living room is actually into the laundry room. Her home and her workplace are so inextricably linked that her work and household chores become one, and she herself is completely confined to this private space. 
Under such a design, the social space where the story takes place is completely reduced to the background board, and our eyes are completely directed to the contradictions within the family—the relationship between mother and daughter, without being able to trace its social and institutional roots, and the United States was thus exonerated.
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Still from the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
If the film provides the father's way of survival—be kind, then what is the mother's way of survival? In these movies, the mother's survival strategy is the opposite of being kind. They have to be strong to survive in America because their immigrant status is indelible.
The parental relationship we see in Chinese-American movies is different from the division of labor between men and women in general Chinese/American movies, because in the process of survival in Chinese families, the mother’s role is often forced to be kind, otherwise the whole family will find it difficult to survive, but this series of movies do not demonstrate this truth well.
Chinese mothers seem to always be tiger mothers, overwhelming their daughters to the point of suffocation, but no one goes into the social reasons for the formation of this personality or temperament, and no one asks: these mother characters were originally conceived as transnational "Nara" so why do they doubt the validity of American culture and try their best to suppress their daughter's rebellious spirit when they arrive in the America they yearn for? And why did they turn from being traitors of the family order into defenders of it?
There is also a core setting in these films, that is, the characters in the film are anti-diaspora, but this setting is exactly at odds with the development of the plot. In the classic studies on diaspora, even if the diaspora group is in a foreign country, their hearts are still attached to their homeland. What connects the two places is the suspended mentality of this group who wants to go back but can’t go back, and this also constitutes a certain collective unconsciousness, collective imagination and collective temperament of this group.
Although diaspora studies in recent years have moved beyond this scope to include critical discourses such as cosmopolitanism, hybridity, and flexible citizenship8 the so-called "hometown of mind" has also begun to turn to reflections on assimilation into American culture.
However, in these films, separation is the premise for the development of the story, that is, the mother is still influenced by "China" or "Chinese culture" to some extent (this is also an important reason for the mother-daughter confrontation). Paradoxically, this situation never actually unfolds in the story.
Therefore, no matter how diverse Chinese-Americans are experiencing diaspora outside the screen, the end button has already been pressed for diaspora on-screen. This also means that neither the real China nor the imagined "China" is available as the selected object, since US is set to be the only visible option from the start.
This setting, which is different from the earlier films of the same type, not only implicitly blurs the complexity of the contradictions involved, but also subtly diverts the audience's attention from the reality of Sino-US conflicts, immigration, race and other related issues.
In addition, these recently hotly discussed films also intentionally incorporate stories of growth education, and "Turning Red" is the most prominent. This change implies a problem of perspective adjustment. This is not to say that earlier films of this type only started from the perspective of the mother, or were more empathetic to the mother, but rather the perspective of the "daughter" (including not only the perspective of the daughter in the film, but also the perspective of the mother in the film when she was young, as another family's "daughter") becomes more prominent in these films.
Moreover, the mother's own growth process from daughter to mother is pushed to the narrative foreground, and will play a vital role in the "last minute rescue". For example, after the mother-daughter battle in "Turning Red", Xiaomei redeemed her young mother. It is also in this sense that "before the mother became a mother" constitutes an important part of the problem, and the mother's own growth story actually points to how the daughter who left the country can get rid of the bad influence of the Chinese native family.
Taking women as the main characters and combining the two narrative models of bildungsroman and melodrama not only indicates that such films have entered a new round of creative context, but also implies that "the urgency of the task of "saving the city/saving the world" seems to further illustrate that only when the crisis9 occurs, women will be given the responsibility of saving. 
The emergence of these recent blockbuster films is evidence of this situation, and "Everything Everywhere All At Once" is the most obvious and powerful example of it. Evelyn was directly set as the "chosen one", shouldering the heavy responsibility of saving the universe, because the fact that she couldn't do anything well proved that she had great potential.
The logic of this is worth digging into: the man from the Alpha universe—Waymond (played by Ke Huy Quan believes that the woman—Evelyn is the savior, so she is. This is exactly the same as "God said let there be light, so there was light". It even reveals a certain disdain for women: what I say you are, you are, why doubt this? The appearance of a male savior is always touted, while the appearance of a female savior only requires confirmation from a male. From this perspective, these films are no more meaningful than "The Chair". The motive is to find a puppet, or even a scapegoat.
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Still from the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
In Conclusion
Based on the above analysis, American movies choose Chinese female immigrants to rescue the market, which is the most "politically correct" choice. In the confrontation between mother and daughter, the American-style daughter finally won, and thereby stopped the inheritance of Chinese culture that lasted for several generations, while American society became the key field to resolve this confrontation, but was completely absolved. 
However, the Chinese-American film, which has been widely accepted, recognized, and promoted by audiences in China and the United States because of the loud voice of "stop anti-Asian hatred", not only failed to respond positively and deal with this imminent social problem, but instead cleverly circumvents it and strategically avoids the risk of being questioned, which just exposes the real contradiction.
Of course, this does not mean that we should stop eating because of choking, and regard these Chinese-American films as meaningless creations. Instead, they make sense. Regardless of whether it is in terms of genre mixing, character image creation, or the application of film technology, these films have made some progress. 
At least the female savior broke out from the male saviors and was seen by more people, and these female saviors hold the initiative a lot of the time. Xiaomei escaped from the family's curse-removing ceremony, returned to her friends, and defeated her "demonized" mother with her "red panda" in her arms, saving everyone.
But it is still worth noting that this limited subjectivity is still based on a subject position given by the male or patriarchal system. Therefore, this is not an excuse for us to give up our vigilance. On the contrary, we should get closer, take the initiative to reach out to uncover that layer of illusion, carefully see the dark hand behind this subjective position, and seriously think about why it pushed the female savior to power at this time, and what it intends to do.
Only in this way can fundamental changes really take place, and we can expect Chinese-American films to usher in a new turn, which is to break the prohibition of private domains, enter the depths of society, and even go to transnational, in the context of globalization, we should face up to the problems that need to be paid attention to and solved urgently.
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Still from the movie "The Joy Luck Club"
At the same time, outside the screen, represented by the directors of these films, the new generation of Chinese-American directors, with a mixed attitude different from the older generation, described the curse of "sandwich survival" suffered by Chinese-Americans. It is understandable to turn it into an in-betweenness10 survival advantage of great flexibility and fluidity, and promote the discourse of cosmopolitanism, so as to seek a more flexible and resilient creative path. 
However, the middle leap as both a survival strategy and a marker of the subject’s identity is not an inscription-style preaching, but a practice deeply rooted in the specific social and cultural context, which always requires us to stay alert to structural restrictions and potential compromise costs. In other words, the price to be paid for privatizing Chinese-American films and winning the embrace of the mainstream American film industry, is the long-term accumulated criticism of such film creation.
For example, Wayne Wang’s discussion of the so-called Yellow Peril and racial identity stereotyped reflection, the richness and heterogeneity of Chinese Americans shown by Alice Wu through "Saving Face", Ang Lee's filmization of the process of self-disintegration and self-suture of a solid cultural tradition through the "Father Trilogy" (Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman) etc.
Then, from the film creators to the film recipients, maybe everyone should carefully re-evaluate the gains and losses, and promote the entry of new criticism from a historical and contextual perspective.
Notes:
See also: Hansen Miriam. Babel and Babylons:Spectatorship in,American Silent Film.Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1991:173-187.
Rey Chow.Women in the Holocene: Ethnicity, Fantasy,and the Film The Joy Luck Club.Feminisms and Pedagogies of Everyday Life. Carmen Lake(Ed.),New York:State University of New York Press,1996:204-211.
Michel Foucault. What Is an Author?. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Vincent B. Leitch(Eds),New York:W.W.Norton,2018:1394-1409.
See also: Xiangu Qi.Mahjong,Chinese Diaspora Cinema and Identity Construction.East Asian Journal of Popular Culture,2021,7(2):223-240.
In contrast to this type of mother image is the traditional Chinese mother image in Asian male mythology, that are gentle and loving, such as Chen Fala in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, played by Ying Li.
See also: Erin Khue Ninh.Ingratitude:The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature .New York: NYU Press,2011.
See also: Michel Foucault.Of Other Spaces.Jay Miskowiec(Trans),Diacritics,1986,16(1):22-27.Originally published as Des Espace Autres (Conference an Cercle d'hudes architecturales. 14 March 1967).Architecture,Mouvement,Continuire,1984(5):46-49.
See also: Aihwa Ong.flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality.United Kingdom,Durham: Duke University Press,1999.
It includes both the crisis of American movies and the crisis of American society.
See also: Xiangu Qi.Mahjong.Chinese Diaspora Cinema and Identity Construction.East Asian Journal of Popular Culture,2021,7(2):223-240.
被复制的母女关系和被私域化的华裔美国电影
#well now i just. am glad i didn't waste any time on this movie cos i wouldn't hav been able 2 relate at all. validating cos no matter how#good the acting n story is -- it's still shit painted in gold. i've never been able 2 relate 2 any western movie since i was a child wc was#frustrating back when i did want 2 assimilate but physically couldn't (cos i'm not wh*te wc thank fuck). the closest they came was disney's#animated little mermaid cos 'i wanna b~ where the ppl r~ I DON'T BELONG HERE THIS ISN'T MY HOME CAN I LEAVE NOW???' that was my childhood ya#anyway my disabled baba had been abusiv 2 my ma n so i looked down on him 4 being cruel n ungrateful. n my ma was indeed 'forced 2 b kind'#'otherwise the whole family will find it difficult 2 survive' n i looked down on her 4 being soft-hearted n WEAK. how 'abnormal' was my fam#they never were abusiv 2 me / pushed any of their beliefs on2 me tho i probs qualify as a neglected child i knew they adored me#n sent me 2 the best brainwashing school they could afford (yay!) i had sympathy 4 my parents i knew instinctively that they did not deserve#the lot they got in life. i never felt any 'lov' 4 them it's mor like i can't abandon them i'm the only 1 they hav in this shitty ass world!#anyway i hate the west. i hate : ) like i'd never let my son raise his future children outside of china : ) only the best 4 my grandchildren#hollywood#hollywood propaganda#orientalism#western cultural imperialism#article#thesis#putting a dent in the language barrier#china#us#film
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faelapis · 8 months
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elemental has turned around at the box office and gone from flop to doing well. it seems this is pretty much entirely because of word of mouth. maybe theres other factors im not considering, but thats pretty fucking impressive.
and i think it deserves it tbh. it is far from perfect, but it might be my favorite pixar film of the 20s so far. granted, the bar isn't as high as the 10s or 00s, but hey, the decade is young. its pretty good!
i think what i liked about it was mainly that it was really emotionally sincere. like. its not too snide or self-aware, it just deeply cares about its characters and is totally committed to the world.
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so many newer pixar flicks have this "popcorn filler" middle where there's zany antics that barely connect to the emotional journey. this movie doesn't. its all about these two main characters bonding in a way i found organic and compelling. and there's very little cringe humor. that one annoying tree guy is basically just in it for two seconds. idk why disney marketing still (wrongly) believes that kind of eyebrow wiggle humor is popular, because that made the movie look WAY worse.
anyway. its definitely good for a movie that was written off en-masse as cringey and generic and a lazy race metaphor. i don't think its any of these things. i think the main creative voice speaking about their own immigrant experiences does the job in a decent way.
also, that one clip of "fire girl being racist" is ignoring the crucial context that SHES the immigrant whos discriminated against, not some white-coded karen who needs to learn to be less racist. shes aware that shes less privileged and doesnt want to rock the boat.
also-also, i'm not even going reason with the badfaith twitter take that "she doesn't wanna date the tree boy because she's RACIST instead of it being because he's a CHILD?? #groomer alert!1!!"
like. come on. she's clearly not interested in him, she doesn't need to Spell Out that its because he's a child. that's not the point of the movie. thats just the most lazy twitter hot take for the sake of morally justifying that you found a thing cringe. don't be that person.
if you don't wanna see it, hey, don't. its fine. i'm not gonna go to bat like its the most important movie ever or anything... but its nice seeing pixar have more well-rounded, developed girl characters, after decades of being the emotionally sincere boys club. about time.
also, the romance is cute. i totally get why the aroace community in particular relate. like. its a romance where they Literally cannot touch each other, so its a relationship that actually develops because of their personalities rather than anything physical. its nice :)
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kowabungadoodles · 21 days
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dumping some thoughts in the tags
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absolxguardian · 23 days
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Iwájú has been a very good show so far for many reasons, but it's also the first show I think I've seen ever where the closed caption subs actually transcribe a non-english language instead of just [speaking x]. The Yoruba is transcribed and a non-hearing person who knows Yoruba would have the same ability to understand it as a hearing person who knows Yoruba. The show uses English, Nigerian Pidgin (which is mutually intelligible with English), and Yoruba and it all gets transcribed in the closed captions. This has to be because Disney made it in collaboration with the Pan-African studio Kugali Media.
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creative-hanyou-girl · 4 months
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2000's Trio 2020's Trio
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Imagine how great it would be if the PJO show is successful and gets the Harry Potter treatment where we get to see these kids grow up throughout the show!
If the Golden Trio was our big 2000's trio, I hope the Original Trio will be our big 2020's trio💙💙💙
#these are my 2 favorite middle grade book series and I'd love if I can have well done adaptations for both of them to squeal over#I actually didn't get into the HP movies until they were all well done and over with#so i didn't really get to 'grow up' with the characters in real time as the movies were coming out#so I'm really hoping I'll get that chance with the actors in the PJO series#how cool would it be to watch the Original Trio and the rest of CHB grow up alongside the show in real time?#also my mom and I love marathoning HP together and I'm really hoping the PJO show can be the next big thing we obsess over together#I convinced her to watch PJO with me be telling her PJO is like HP and showing her the trailer and musical songs#she was interested and said she's into mythology too so its a start!#tbh I'm looking forward to the PJO show way more than the HP reboot#mostly because I'm so attacted to the films and think they're pretty good adaptations even if they're not perfect#but with PJO we don't have any GOOD and FAITHFUL adaptations at all#what movies? there are no PJO movies#I still might give the HP reboot a watch esp. if its good but still. the movies mean so much to me#i love both series and there's nothing wrong with that#please be nice#percy jackson#percy jackson and the olympians#percy jackson tv show#disney+#the original trio#annabeth chase#grover underwood#harry potter#harry potter movies#harmione granger#ron weasley#the golden trio#harry potter reboot#hbo max#2000s trio and 2020s trio
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writebackatya · 9 months
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harlequinchaos · 1 year
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Now that I'm older, every time some form of media is adapted in a new format (book to movie, videogame to tv series, animation to live action, etc.) I always take the criticisms of it with a grain of salt because I feel like what it means to adapt successfully means something different to everyone.
I always feel like people want an exact 1:1 adaptation but fail to realize the nuance that comes with each form of adaptation. Sure you can break every piece of media down by like, setting, character, and plot, or specific story beats or even down to specific physical details but people fail to realize how this is going to read to the consumer across different forms.
Scenes that are in a first person point of view in say, a book, are going to read different than a scene of a movie, which similar to a play or show on a stage need to be designed in a way the consumer can digest.
In a book, you can slowly be fed information as it is deemed necessary to the story. Details can be intentionally left out, leading to inaccurate judgements that can snowball into larger consequences. With movies or television, as soon as you see the scene or characters, you're seeing them as the whole bigger picture. The details are either there or they aren't, a faster judgment can be made, more meaning can be inferred by visuals, so a character's motivation becomes more of a driving point. A plot element intentionally left out in a book, can alienate the consumer if not properly handled in a movie or television setting, and part of adapting that piece of media is ensuring it's done properly, and I feel like people don't understand that. The art of adaptation is how consistent purpose can be conveyed while adhering to the rules of the established media.
It seems people just want, "the same thing" as a book, tv show, or a movie, videogame, comic, animated version, or in a live action version and it just Doesn't Work Like That.
Each form of media has their own rules of what 'works' and a good story will utilize those unique aspects of that form of media to tell the story; but the method of how that story is told has to change in order for it to be a successful adaptation.
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A list of shows that are on indefinite hiatus or dramatically pushed back due to CEOs unwillingness to simply be reasonable and pay people.
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I just wanna let the MCU fandom know it’s okay to expect decent CGI from a multi-billion dollar corporation. It is literally the least they can do.
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shadowjinx626 · 4 months
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Person A, after seeing the Mario movie: Omg, look at all these easter eggs! This movie is so cool!! IT's a masterpiece!!! Person B: I mean the easter eggs were nice, but it made the movie feel like a commercial. Person A: Omg, it's just a kid's movie! Why you gotta take it so seriously? Months later... Person A, after seeing Wish: Omg, this movie is nothing but easter eggs! And they're trying to make a Disney cinematic universe!! This movie is so terrible!!! Person B: The easter eggs are just references and jokes. They're not meant to be taken seriously. Person A: Omg, stop defending Disney you shill!!!
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thetimelordbatgirl · 1 year
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Summary of my feelings on Descendants 4 currently:
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eclipsecrowned · 4 months
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Girlies keep misusing and abusing Scottish stereotypes when writing Soap. Given he canonically only uses Scots in high stress situations, am I to infer the Sergeant is in mild to severe distress in every imagine or Ghoap fic?
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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 11 months
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I’m fully convinced that the main reason Disney have made Peter Pan and Wendy a Disney+ release and not released it in the cinemas is because this way they don’t have to pay any money made at the box office to Great Ormond Street Hospital (a children’s hospital which receives royalties from any and all things related to Peter Pan)
If I’m wrong and GOSH are in fact profiting from this remake, then please let me know but… yeah.
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deathsmallcaps · 7 months
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So, I was just looking for a Snow White gif set, and I came across quite a few posts expressing displeasure about Rachel Zegler’s flippant attitude to the original Disney film. And while I agree she was being a bit glib, you have to remember, it’s all about playing it up for the camera. Maybe her manager told her to push a love-to-hate-it angle. Who knows. Disney is still trying to work that little bit of feminism that is truly marketable but is ‘safe’ in their standards.
But what irritates me is that those posts immediately delve into the history and animation of the work in the film. As an artist, I totally respect the work and success Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was in 1937. It’s a beautiful piece, to be sure.
And Snow White was kind of modern for the movie’s supposed setting and time period! She has a bob! It’s easily demonstrated and acknowledged by the audience how hard she works, in both the castle and the cottage! She’s a upper class woman who manages to stay chaste despite living with, horror among horrors, seven unmarried men!
But, come on. She was relatively safe, barely pushing the envelope, in 1937. Women were in factories, wearing pants, and were still actively fighting for their rights at the time. All while weathering the Great Depression!
Films like Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman have already done more-feminine-modern takes on the tale. But Zegler isn’t wrong. If the original film’s story, no changes, came out today, it would be disappointing to a lot of feminists. So if you’ve watched the other live action Disney princess films, I’d say don’t knock the Snow White one just yet. It might actually offer something new but nice to more modern feminist audiences.
Just please don’t forget that something can be wonderful in one way and meh in another. The original film was an artistic masterpiece, but wasn’t the be-all end-all of feminism in the 30s. Check out this film, for example.
And hey, this is the webbed site of anxiety. You’ve all probably said things you regret, whether you ‘deserve’ to regret it or not. Don’t forget actors can make mistakes too. They’re human.
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