Pixar! Where are your black characters or actors?

Why were there no Black actors or characters in Toy Story 3, or Horton Hears a Who?, or in fact any Pixar movie to date. Maybe I am missing some... research time!


So I looked at Disney and Pixar. I found that the purple octopus, Stretch, was voiced by Whoopi Goldberg in TS3, but what about actual humans represented as Black? There was Joshua Sweet in Atlantis, Cobra Bubbles from Lilo and Stitch, and Frozone was in The Incredibles, but I cannot find any others - why is that?


Is there some difficulty in accurately portraying black skin in animated movies? (See Making'white'people white by Richard Dyer, The Social Shaping of Technology, 1999 - where he notes that black skin was difficult to photograph and thusly moulded cultural relations between communities.)


Even the black sounding (can I say that?) character with darker skin than the other Whos, Mrs Quilligan,  was voiced by Jaime Pressly a white actress. What is going on?

@OldSpice #OldSpice: why I began to lose the love...

For those that follow me on Twitter you'll know that I spent a tonne of time the last two days watching and commenting on the genius advertising campaign that Old Spice produced using their frontman, Isaiah Mustafa. It was a comprehensive web-based project, using YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, whilst also trolling reddit, diggit, YahooAnswers, yedda.com and by keeping a weather eye on posts/articles on various websites. There must have been a band of industrious search engine machinists keeping track of the references and picking the best for comedic writing opportunities. The popularity of the whole enterprise even made other organisations join in: Starbucks, Gillette, Twitter, EW, biz, Huffington Post, G4TV, NHLBlackhawks, GQ, etc. Lots of celebrities joined in: Alyssa Milano, Christina Applegate, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Ellen DeGeneres, etc. Then there were the thousands of ordinary folks who commented on the three main sites. Plus Isaiah himself got a video response and his daughter, Hayley, too! Reddit helped build an answer machine message maker using Isaiah's contributions.


I was going to write a quick post about how these were all brilliant. That they were helping to produce a new masculinity, a new male identity. One that recognises the cultural power of the patriarchy and the stereotypes of strong, slightly dim, bragging men being the preferred partner for legions of women. They were playing it so tongue-in-cheek. Deliberately using nonsensical/incorrect language constructions to show that OSMan wasn't too nerdy/knowledgeable. Recounting all the heroic tales of extreme endurance activities. Reminding everyone that the main purpose of the product, the Old Spice body wash range, was to attract ladies, obviously.


I thought it clever that whilst superficially supporting these stereotypes (who doesn't want to have a ripped, charming man offer to bake you cakes and ride horses with you? Even the most stalwart of lesbians can appreciate toned abs and the promise of apple or peach pies), it was also subverting them by deliberately making a mockery of them. Just as the other television adverts had done. If it had been too serious, it would have come off badly. Just as P.Diddy has managed to keep just this side of obnoxious in his Ciroc advertisements based on his smoothness, there was a fresh take on a hackneyed trope.


However, there were a few too many references to things that I was starting to think were a bit sexist and homophobic. Either the writers were getting tired, or they weren't being as careful with their language as they should have been. Eye on the ball, people. Engage your audience; don't alienate a market segment that just may spend a tonne of money on your products (clean-cut gay men, holla! Ladies who buy soap for their men because if they didn't they'd just use water and never be clean!). Singing happy birthday isn't within the range of a studmuffin, it would not work for the theme, and who knows, maybe Isaiah can't sing. But don't say that other men would laugh at male singers and say it is a lady thing to do. Plus the producers took their own sweet time to acknowledge that women might want to use the products, too. Did they embrace a butch army and welcome them? Saying that the more mighty warriors available for protection of Mount Olympus, the better? Or that Old Spice Man would be running recruitment sessions for all those that believed they had the tenacity to withstand a lion pride? No, they warned that ladies would get man-hair...and if they ever did smell like Old Spice it would be from rolling around with said-fragranced men.


Maybe I've had a sense of humour bypass. I watched all the videos - there were 96 according to the Twitter log - maybe all that overt masculinity was getting a bit much and I forgot it was meant to be wry irony. It was a drip-drip feed of over-the-top testosterone and it had me floored.


Now, I'd love CollegeHumour.com to copycat the style and have a bunch of dykes talking about the benefits of using Old Spice. No, there is no need to have them topless in just a towel... Maybe they can recruit the ladies who were in the Lez Chat clip: "recycling and cuddling are important to me"!

Two things I don't understand

1. Why do I find it surprising to hear about famous black people living in Nashville? I associate that area with white country and western singers and plaid-wearing red necks - which is a terrible stereotype, but it remains.
2. What is with the fascination with extra long false nails? Does it make larger women feel dainty and delicate, needing (male) help with ordinary tasks?

Back to life, back to reality...

Today's queeriosities include:

1. Jezebel's guide to lesbo stereotypes and cliches
2. Twelve-year old daughter of two gay mom's presented her life facts to politicians, some of whom expressed a change of heart over their voting direction after her speech. The wee one was interviewed: check it out.
3. Jezebel's helpful recruitment guide for turning non-Sapphists into lady-lovers.
4. Frightening news from Saudi Arabia - an 8yr old girl married off to a 47yr old man to settle her father's debt has been told that her marriage cannot be annulled until she reaches puberty. This is about as far from the fairytale of a Princess being married off as a child to her future Prince Charming as you could get.
5. Three exciting women using their energy and faith to become engaged in fighting for justice and equality in a range of arenas.
6. Firoza Bibi, a brave woman from rural India, has won a local governmental election and is fighting for justice for her local community, including women who were sexually brutalised as a weapon of war.
7. Bilerico's guest blogger, Monica Helms, talks about how boring life is in binary. I like spectrum ideas, that we are a sliding scale of all types of humanity, but I worry that this somehow interferes with yin/yang, dualism philosophy of ancient cultures. Can I support a continuum whilst advocating a two-sides of the coin, together-we-make-a-whole argument?
8. Li'l Wayne has been on the Jimmy Kimmel show and revealed that he lost his viginity at 11yr old to a woman, and it sounds like rape to pretty much everyone who has seen the clip and commented on it. From feministing.com there is a link to a smart essay on it, which raises the issue of rape apologism and its meaning for women-on-men assault, and how black men are hypersexualised and therefore the host and other guest (white) felt able to laugh about it.
9. Sadly, the other news story about sexual assault that caught my attention was the disturbing story of a female Sunday School teacher who kidnapped, raped with a foreign object, murdered then put the body in a suitcase in a lake. The victim was a little girl. Paedophilic attacks are not just carried out by men.
   
10. Thanks to queerty.com, I found 2M4M.org and their fab picture
11. Clever video about wrongness of NOM claims through Towleroad.
12. A hilarious video that mocks the original NOM film (@Bilerico)
    
13. New book and online publicity drive for the femme-themed literature: Femmethology
14. The fabulous, genderfucking superstar, Peaches, has a new album I feel Cream and a single from this Talk to Me has a fantastic music video, which feels a little Goldfrapp, Ride a White Horse, which incidentally looks a little Lady Gaga: check it out via queerty.com
15. Cutest thing today - wee robot that has been helped around NY by kind citizens: an art project with humanitarian overtones - click here for the video. (@gizmodo)
16. Sadly the elderly are getting a raw deal again: a fifth are not taking meals to save money according the Daily Mail (UK).
17. But a British supermarket, ASDA, is helping the aging process by selling walking sticks and wheelchairs - no more NHS scrappy, institutional, utilitarian, stuff for you, Grandpa - a loaf of bread, a bottle of ale and a mobility aid - marvellous! (@DailyMailUK)
    

Friday Follow-through

Gay elephant disappoints its owners! Politicians in Poland are complaining that the breeding programme is an expensive failure after Ninio has shown little interest in females, preferring boy time! (@DailyMail)

Librarians fumble classification of famous archaeology text: Prof Stringer's important book, Homo Britannicus was incorrectly shelved in the LGBT/queer section! (@DailyMail)

Queerty has a fascinating article on Jesus as a Gay Man based on a new book by Kittredge Cherry - what a fabulous name for an author, and she is a lesbian, too!

Bilerico moves the debate towards racism after the writer remembered being called someone's 'perfect little geisha boy', meant as an affectionate term, but brought up the wrong sort of feelings in Jason Tseng.

Women are finding less satisfaction with their career than men - they are preferring to have a happy home life, whereas their male counterparts are prioritising their employment prospects. (@DailyMail)

Happily childfree woman has had to reconsider her opinion now that she has a puppy in her life messing up her hormones! (@DailyMail)

Google founder's wife has produced a product (with the help of her organisations) that allows a person to be genetically tested for tell-tale mutated genes, etc. that might signal a predisposition to getting certain diseases. Both Sergey Brin and his wife, Ann Wojcicki, and their child have been tested; they are especially concerned about Parkinson's Disease, since there is history of it in the family.

I think this development is wonderful and I suspect that eventually it will be common practice for those wanting to procreate to ask the other person involved in the matter (that is the other person providing the genetic material) to provide their testing results before they decide to make babies together. If you have a higher risk of creating children with dreadful painful diseases, you might decide against producing offspring together. This does conflict with my distaste for abortion and euthanasia; I think all life has value and afflicted people can teach those around them so much about patience, compassion and love. However, if the choice was available before procreating (as in the movie Gattacca) then I, and I would think countless others, would want to know what they face beforehand. Not that you can ever really prepare to parent a severely disabled child. Plus, those scientists in the article are right, chance and environmental factors are not taken into account in the testing.

Would the testing go too far... with only tall, athletic, non-disabled children being created in the ideal world? I'm not sure we can avoid selection - you might not want to marry a bald fat man with coronary disease to prevent your babies being afflicted. Mothers choosing sperm donor candidates choose ones with 'best' qualities. I surely want intelligent, healthy, blonde babies...but that might say more about my ego than my desire for the 'best' children.

Racism in a queer world: fact or fiction?

Now I consider myself a film-fan, not a buff (my knowledge of directors, lighting, sound tracks is lacking) and not a connoisseur (my taste is not refined - I do not prefer Bergman films to ones starring Jim Carey - in fact it is usually exactly the opposite) - but I do watch a lot. On a good day (or bad day if you are my supervisor and want me to be finishing my sodding PhD) I watch three - most likely I have seen them before, because I like the comfort of popping in a video (yes, VHS wins hands down over DVD right now as a local charity shop sells them for 20p each and there is nothing like a quick detour back from the library to pick up 6hrs of entertainment with enough change from a quid to buy a choccy bar; though my poor hearing and my fascination with words means the subtitles on the DVDs means it is a tough call when browsing my film shelves) and hearing the familiar dialogue and action in the background as I tackle more academic endeavours. The movies are normally ones that I have seen multiple times, otherwise the new scenes and plot will distract me. A familiar movie is much better to study along to than a music album, with which I will be tempted to type in tempo or sing along.

Given this self-belief in my film-fan status, I was surprised to see that I only own ten movies with an LGBTQQ theme or main character:
Ace Ventura Pet Detective
Crush
Bound
Kissing Jessica Stein
The Birdcage
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Orlando
East is East
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (I continue to hold that Idgie and Ruth had a non-straight romantic love for one another, perhaps Idgie more so than Ruth)
Unconditional Love (which I only own as I worked as an extra in it - though buying the DVD was a bit useless as our scenes were cut)
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
To Wong Foo, thanks for everything, love Julie Newmar

There are a handful of others with minor LGBTQQ characters or scenes or themes: The Shawshank Redemption, Dude, where's my car?,The Constant Gardener, American History X, etc. I have however watched a gazillion other movies which would broaden my meagre collection of ten if I should ever find them in that Age Concern charity shop.

My thought of the day is that racism and gender/sexuality/queer issues are rarely tackled together. Now I am either guilty of not watching enough movies (possible) or there really aren't many ethnically diverse queer characters and themes. East is East and To Wong Foo stand out - and it is only the latter that actually seems to tackle the race issue by making sure the comedy and clashes, arguments and insults are usually centred on the ethnic differences - racial slurs being bandied about maybe was designed to distract from the LGBTQQ issues and make it more accessible to a wider audience (men in dresses, ooh, no; men making jokes about swaybacks, honkies, etc, whilst wearing dresses, hmm, yeah, okay). There actually wasn't any real intelligent discussion about racial differences and what they meant to one another - maybe that was the point, to make it a non-issue as if racial dissimilarities within the queer world were not a problem so not worth talking about - which I think is codswallop - there is no rule to say those that are non-straight will ignore all other differences and bond together as one queer group - just see the mention of the black lesbian bars in that episode of The L Word (Life Cycle? - bike ride)...

Racism for me is about how one is judged badly, denied goods and services, treated less than others because a physical difference - manner of speaking, accent, skin colour, nose or eye shape, hair texture. This might be because of ethnicity (one's biological heritage - mine is mostly Scandinavian, I think) - but such differences might just as well be a result of illness, disability, accidental injury, as deliberate surgical enhancements and 'beauty treatments', random chance and natural gene pool diversity. I guess it is easy for me to comment on what it means to experience racism, as most would think it has never affected me. On census forms I would tick (if forced - for I hate labels and pigeonholing) white/Caucasian female (I guess I am genetically female, though I've never had a DNA test, and I feel mostly female - what ever that really means - and have done for the past 27 years). But I have dual-nationality, was born in a country that is 'traditionally' unpopular with its geographic neighbours - went to University in a country where being from the country that my accent sounds like it originated was a occasionally a desperately unpopular thing (only a few weeks back another blonde like me was beaten up because her accent, like mine, was not local - it was not the colour of her skin, it was the mere fact that she sounded like she had spent time, lived, was born, or had parents from another nearby rival country).

Why are there no significant black characters in movies? I have read that non-hetero lifestyles are taboo in many African-linked communities, either in the continent itself or in those Americanised families in the USA. I have African friends for whom homosexuality is a puzzle - they cannot understand why anyone would do that, they think it is a deliberate political/fashion statement rather than a genuine lifestyle choice (let's not argue here about whether living a non-str8 life is a choice or not - you can see this website for more information), they speak of men from their home village who never marry and do not have kids and they are seen as strange outsiders, unlucky in life, but not as having different romantic and sexual desires (see The Constant Gardener for a taste of this taboo and news story of people married to supposedly hide their gayness are being dobbed into the police in Zambia). I have read articles (research by man undercover about hip black homophobes actually being gay) and websites (see my comment after the video) that suggest that there is a not-so-subtle challenge to being queer in an ethnically-diverse neighbourhood/family. Though there are websites of support!

...and we are not talking about religion here - nothing about liturgical bans on queer behaviour and identities, there have been these issues (the Pope, the recent Iran survey and their President's opinion as expressed in USA about the lack of homosexuality in his country). This is not about a profound belief in morality based on faith in a higher power who has decreed what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in human behaviour. It is not about morality in the most part - when asked to identify why LGBTQQ issues are taboo in their culture/ethnic community/neighbourhood I don't imagine many would offer reasonable moral evidence about it innate evilness or intrinsic unacceptability. I expect the answer would be mostly, it is wrong, gross, not done, weird, unnatural, etc. There might be suggestions of it being offensive to look at (well you don't need to watch queer couples together - don't buy that sort of porn, don't hang out in the pink district if you don't want to see same-sex pecks on the cheek, holding of hands or snogging that obviously has a romantic or sexual meaning to those involved), you fear it will corrupt others into joining in or copying them - what is your worry that the species will die out if we are not all heterosexual and reproductive? Many straight couples don't help populate the earth, whereas many queer couples do. Are you worried that you will be asked or expected to join in? Are you fearful that you would be overpower and forced to engage in acts you find so distasteful? Do you think the likelihood of you being a victim of gay assault or rape is high?

I just don't understand what people are worried about. If it is simply the 'natural' instinct to heard with others who are similar and fear/avoid those who are different, then that is silly. We are not a planet of clones, we are all different - that is the beauty of us. Even monozygotic twins fancy different people, prefer different ice cream flavours, laugh at different jokes .

What is this obsession with labelling, then identifying with and huddling together those that are like us, and disregarding and fearing those that are not. In the end we are all on our own, we are all our own island, as we are all individual, there is no-one exactly like us to form a huddle. Why base these categories on physical differences? Black, fat, tall, bespectacled, big chin, dressed like a goth, mohican hair, posh accent, camp manner, feminine habits, etc.

It is all very confusing to me.