Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20150428200304/@comment-25926288-20150501125716

GothicNarcissus wrote: Sorry guys, fighting an unseasonal fl, but I'm here.

Some have kind of got my starting point on regards of ethnicity, which is not the whole point. The Mulan question is a little insight on how we put Western culture at the centre of the world, as we consider it something we can apply to anyone, while still thinking of other cultures as something "exotic", not applicable to ourselves. We are fine with toying with our own tales but we still don't perceive others as something we can treat the same. That is actually building a cultural boundary.

My point being: except for Mulan, so far all of the source material on the show are traditional European fairy tales (which, by the way, predate Disney). "European" as in centuries-old, pre-multi-ethnicity Europe. They are tales written by caucasian people for caucasian people in times and places where there were only caucasian people. Christian Andersen was a Dane: what do you think his Sea Witch looked like? By the Mulan logic, only caucasian people should play those parts. Now, THANKFULLY this is not the case on OUAT, because our society has evolved a lot from then and the show reflects that. The are actually demolishing that kind of boundary. The fact we have a multi-ethnic cast to me automatically rules out there is any form of racist subtext in the show. We are dealing with universal messages in the fairytales and they are shown to include all of humanity in them. This is a very uniting thing in my opinion. Had there been any racism, we would have had an all-caucasian cast to begin with, as in the source material: instead, they clearly only look for actors and actresses who can bring life to those characters, regardless of anything else.

On the other hand, the fact that we as the audience are not ready to have other cultures' tales played by other ethnicities than their own tells us we still need to work on ourselves and bring down our own mental borders before we can go out and point the finger. Those are the same universal messages of our own tales, but we still lock them up in the culture we feel we have borrowed them from rather than accepting them as a global heritage. This doesn't put us in a place where we can judge this perceived and supposed unfairness of the writers towards POC, because we still haven't sorted out the thing ourselves. The very fact we are addressing the matter shows we still consider that a point of difference, while the show is trying not to focus on that and embrace our worldwide heritage, the way it should be. Just my thought. I agree! Not saying their was a racial subtext, because I doubt they were being racist, just something there.

Not current and I disagree with some points, but they do have some good points (take the timeframe in consideration.:

http://persephonemagazine.com/2014/05/is-once-upon-a-time-the-most-accidentally-racist-show-on-television/

http://racism-sexist-ableism-ohmy.tumblr.com/post/85945884363/the-problem-with-ouat-and-poc

http://racemash.tumblr.com/post/16782775752/last-nights-once-upon-a-time-was-extremely

http://oncepodcast.com/forums/topic/congrats-to-ouat-on-becoming-one-of-the-most-racist-shows-on-tv-rn/

http://feministfiction.com/2013/03/26/diversity-in-once-upon-a-time/

The argument can't be: Once puts POC in particular roles that are pretty much crap vs Once luckily has POC characters, Wrong vs Wrong = Wrong

My argument or rather the argument isn't that Once has Poc characters, but the POC characters are ....well, you see if you read the links.

We have like three categories: Dead (bonus points if they were a white lady in disguise), Was/Is evil, and Mulan (discussed in the femistfiction link)

I can assure you > 90% of the POC characters fit in to those categories and even the entire cast of characters of non-POC would be less. Problem is that there are not many outside those categories for POC.

Out of the Disney Princess it goes like this:

Non-POC

Cinderella given a solo episode about her problems, happy

Aurora given an arc with her problems, happy

Snow given everything (lol), happy (for the most part)

Alice (if she counts), given a spin off, happy

Wendy given several episodes, happy

Elsa and Anna, given a half-season, happy

Ariel, given a couple of episodes, happy

POC

Rapunzel shares hers with Charming (heavily focused), happy

Mulan, given a number of episodes, unhappy

The point is that Once made POC characters or did so; however, they have them and they are treated differently.

Even in one of the articles, it says how Ursula's exit first is like the "The Black guy dies First" from pretty much every horror or whatever movie ever.

Not saying I agree with all of those things but there are several good points.

World-wide heritage and everything is fine, but can we have a POC character that is relevant, never evil, not dead, not given the shaft and happy? Well, that's why I look forward to seeing Mulan (hopefully) return. I thought I could have that with Marian, but well, we know what happened to her.