The Firelfly Fairy

I mean are we going to tell THEM they can’t dress up as Aurora or Rapunzel or Elsa or whatever? It’s stupid. Dress up as whoever you want.

To dress up without understanding what she represents for Pacific Islanders, without understanding the history of Pacific Islanders, without understanding a culture or cultures within the Pacific, and without understanding symbolic motifs and is DISRESPECTFUL. Do you know why it’s more disrespectful than the “average Joe”? Because PASIFIKA is also STEEPED with and in western colonization, imperialism, and COMMODIFICATION. This is not a NEW topic. This issue goes way back and in a manner of speaking is quite talked about academically by Pasifika and non Pasifika academics.

Since when do cultures have boundaries?

Cultures do not have boundaries, they never have, and anyone who says they are is perpetuating a racist segregationist ideology that basically says “If you are from one race, you are simply not allowed to celebrate any of the people or achievements of another race.”

also

ANYONE CAN COSPLAY ANYBODY THEY WANT.

Especially if they’re little kids.

Again, Disney movies like Frozen, Tangled, and the Little Mermaid are all directly or indirectly based off European folklore. But literally no one gives a shit if you cosplay any of those CHARACTERS because you’re not dressing up as “a Dane” or “a German,” you’re dressing up as “Elsa” or “Rapunzel” or “Ariel.” Or is it ok for all “white people” to cosplay those because “white culture” is the same everywhere there’s white people? And are POC allowed to dress up as those characters? If you can’t separate a character from the culture they’re representing, then POC shouldn’t be allowed to dress as Elsa/Rapunzel/Merida/Ariel/etc. if “white people” aren’t allowed to cosplay Moana.

Many Disney movies are “steeped in cultural influence” because they are based off of fairy tales from different cultures. One of the great things about Disney movies is that they introduce these stories to people and cause them to be more interested in the folklore of these other cultures (even though classic Disney movies have quite distorted the source material). But I can tell you I would have never heard of many “classic fairy tales” were it not for Disney.

This is kind of moving away from the specific topic at hand (culture and movies), but culture is something that NEEDS to be spread and shared to survive. Isolating cultures from each other creates very clear “us vs. them” lines between groups, while spreading different cultural values and practices is a way to bring people closer together by sharing experiences that mean a lot to them, and to enable different groups to better understand how the other thinks.

Separating people based on “culture” and saying “you can’t enjoy/participate in X because you aren’t X” is how you make people racist, because you are inhibiting them from understanding another group of people and forcibly “othering” them from a specific group of people.

Edit since I’d initially queued this: I saw geek-baits response regarding the commercialization of pacific islander culture and the specific mention of the “hula girl” costume. I agree that this could be seen as racist. But the reason it’s racist is because it’s genericizing a group of people and boiling them down to a stereotype. If you are dressing up as a specific character, it by definition cannot be racist* because it is specific, not generic.

is that….?