#race representation

@themousefromfantasyland @adarkrainbow @thevampiricnihal @the-blue-fairie @princesssarisa @professorlehnsherr-almashy @obufalo @soviet-supersoldier

‘Excellent visual storytelling and narration, definitely recommend this film for the archive.’

Vera Lackova

Synopsis

The story of the Cigánymesék / Romani Tales cartoon series started in 2013 at the Kecskemétfilm Studio under the direction of Ferenc Mikulás and Mária Horváth, who wanted to share Romani folk traditions and combine them with contemporary Roma cultural values. The story of the animation cartoon series contains three episodes: The Romani Woman and the Devil (2014), Kalo (2015), and Doja, the Romani Fairy (Doja a Cigánytündér, 2015).

In order to create the three animated short movies, the director cooperated with the same Romani artists who are close to their own Romani roots; Magda Szécsi a Romani writer and illustrator, Teréz Orsós, a Romani painter, József Oláh, a musician, and Erika Varga, a fashion designer. This innovation allowed the artists to represent Romani myths and oral heritage while also illustrating tradition with contemporary art through their storytelling skills, fusing drawings, paintings, and traditional music.

As a result of their work, the animation presents loveable and complex Romani heroes and heroines and helps to create a positive representation of Romani communities and their traditions.

Myths and fairy tales have a high relevance to Romani history. Furthermore, the Doja the Romani Fairy episode clearly illustrates the poverty and exclusion that Roma face. They are dreaming about their own land, and the fairy gracefully strolls down a rainbow to be amongst her community and to help them. Clinging to her long, jet-black hair, they fly with her to a wondrous island, where they can build the Romani land in freedom and live happily in peace. But then, one day, terrible monsters called szülláks attack the village.

The animation series is a combination of modern techniques – the director uses 2D and 3D animations – and contemporary Roma art visuals accompanying the folk tales. Teréz Orsós, a painter and graphic designer, designed the visual background for the animation. She mainly creates warm, earth-coloured genre paintings about the traditions and everyday life of Romani people. The main theme song and background music is in the traditional Roma music style, written and played by musician József Oláh, the frontman of the band Parno Graszt. In the Doja, the Romani Fairy animation episode by Magda Szécsi, we can find the ‘bitter fate’ motif of wandering when the community cannot climb on Doja’s magical long hair; instead, they remain scattered throughout the world, and it is their destiny to find one another.

The Romani Tales series received several international and national awards: the Doja, the Romani Fairy episode received an award at the 12th Kecskemét Animation Film Festival (2015), the special prize of the Hungarian Lutheran Church Lutheran Diakonia. In Stana, Transylvania (2016) it also received the first prize at the III International Ethnographic Film Festival.

What does this mean? To be clear, I said don't racebend white characters unless you belong to the community of colour you're race-bending them into. Because you have no idea what makes them representative of the lived reality of that community, and being forced to accept a white character whose creation or writing in the canon source material, has in no way been impacted or shaped by their non-white roots is fucking violent for fans of colour. White-passing PoC are not blank canvases for your tokenism.

Do make OCs of colour! Do encourage DC writers to make more characters of colour! We want representation! We want diverse stories! And far more importantly, we want writers of colour writing our stories! Creators of colour getting work and empowered to make changes (two different things) signifies real material systemic change!

I'm not Black, I'm a white woman, but there is a sympathetic pang in the chest whenever you see a character go through what you know is polite courtesy from someone who clearly thinks of them as ~inferior~.

So the fucking euphoria I felt when I saw this happen and instead of the usual helpless anticipation of what's to come, I was sitting there in anticipation for sweet sweet revenge and catharsis. I automatically knew of what's to come, and the power Louis truly held over them. It was a comforting, smug feeling.

SO MUCH representation it’s crazy. An episode with a trans woman at a time when it was much more taboo. Teenage Veronica being self-sufficient and smart and not having to rely on a man. More racial diversity than most tv shows today, tbh. Explaining the pains of what divorce can do and feel like. Teen relationships, everything was narrated on.

Stop this bullshit "well I dont want it if it's there to just check a box". Check all the boxes. Normalize all races, sexualities, genders, and body types in media. I'll take the bad and the good. Media evolves and sometimes we have to endure the cringe to get to the treasure.

Even cishet white males have had awful representations (see basically the entire genre of romcom). I want my turn at terrible games and movies about my gender and sexuality! I want good ones! I want to normalize seeing people "like me" until no one remarks upon seeing diversity because it's not strange!

Looking mixed race isn't really a thing lmao. The biggest argument that Shotet are PoC is how they describe their languages and the use of scarification. The practice of scarification has been viewed as wrong, primitive a/o barbaric and is mostly associated with places in West Africa. And the descriptors of their language being "harsh" are so odd. Why would someone describe their own language that way? Even if everything in the book isn't so black and white, it's delivery is suspicious (2)

Also, the act of referring to people as "looking mixed race" has, for a long time, been considered fetishistic (and racist) because, again, PoC are not monoliths and genetics can be tricky. I'm just amazed that when different PoC, mostly black women, tell a white author they missed the mark on something, somehow the white person has become the authority of what does and does not constitute racism. Alright, I'm done (3)

I forgot to publish this ask after I made my Carve the Mark bonus post, so I’m doing it now.

I’m really sorry it took me almost a year to get to this topic, and I didn’t want to include your ask into the post proper because I wanted to stick to my own insights on the matter.

That said you do make some good points…although I’m always wary around things like “white-passing”. In fact, while I agree there’s no such thing as a mixed race look, I’d argue the issue here is the opposite of characters being white passing, since Roth’s argument is essentially “well these characters have ‘pale skin’ [sic], therefore they are not people of color and the Shotet at large aren’t a ‘barbarian PoC’ trope”. There is no such thing as white passing/white passing privilege, and so the Shotet characters who were meant to be white—even if she describes it poorly—would still read as PoC to us, the readers, especially when, say, Ryzek is contrasted to his (biological…maybe) sister, who is clearly not.

And yeah, it makes no sense for someone to describe their own language as “harsh”, because typically, your native language is your norm. I can tell you for sure that whatever impression of French a non-French speaker has, it will sound wrong to me and I’ll probably be able to provide counterexamples. Of course, the issue here is again more of a failure in Roth’s writing: she wanted something that sounded harsh to us, the readers, but couldn’t figure out how to get in the head of someone to whom it wouldn’t sound harsh. She had a similar issue in Divergent, where Tris’s priorities betray that her values are not the ones she should have grown up exposed to (the whole “faction before blood” thing).