And here's to you, Wilbur Robinson...
Let me get one thing off my chest right away. The Disney web site has the entire cast (pretty much) of its latest (and with any luck its last) non-Pixar CGI cartoon, Meet the Robinsons. First complaint is about the entire cast.
They're white.
All of them.
Normally, this is to be expected. Disney has always tended to ghettoize its minorities. Stick Fa Mulan in an all Chinese milieu, and nobody has to mention the fact that she's Asian. Create a movie set in Africa, with no Africans in it (actually, The Lion King and Tarzan both fall into this trap.) I had hopes that Lilo & Stitch would break the trend and showcase the ethnic diversity of the Hawaiian Islands. No such luck.
None in Meet the Robinsons, either. The Reverend Paul Mooney, a black stand-up comic, once led his audience through the theme song (well, barely a song) of The Jetsons. Everyone remembered the names of the wife, son, daughter, dog. But when he asked everyone to name the black family on The Jetsons, they had to realize: there was no family. The Utopian future has only white people in it.
Good one, Disney.
While this is potentially an interesting idea, which could have been used to the same kind of subversive political effect made in Monsters, Inc. (with its thinly-disguised attack on Enron), Disney here simply ends up repeating itself in the search by main character/science nerd Lewis for his biological family. So, given that the boy Lewis was put up for adoption some 12 years earlier, future by Wilbur Robinson shows up to take Lewis--back to the moment when he was deposited at the orphanage? No; on to the lily-white future. Finding the missing family is bad enough (Finding Nemo? Seen it...), but looking in the wrong place to understand Lewis's mom's reasoning is simply a bizarre choice.
The assembly of daffy relatives was done much better IMHO in You Can't Take It With You; this movie could have used some of that liberating spirit. As it is, it deserves a rating of UP-WTF.
They're white.
All of them.
Normally, this is to be expected. Disney has always tended to ghettoize its minorities. Stick Fa Mulan in an all Chinese milieu, and nobody has to mention the fact that she's Asian. Create a movie set in Africa, with no Africans in it (actually, The Lion King and Tarzan both fall into this trap.) I had hopes that Lilo & Stitch would break the trend and showcase the ethnic diversity of the Hawaiian Islands. No such luck.
None in Meet the Robinsons, either. The Reverend Paul Mooney, a black stand-up comic, once led his audience through the theme song (well, barely a song) of The Jetsons. Everyone remembered the names of the wife, son, daughter, dog. But when he asked everyone to name the black family on The Jetsons, they had to realize: there was no family. The Utopian future has only white people in it.
Good one, Disney.
While this is potentially an interesting idea, which could have been used to the same kind of subversive political effect made in Monsters, Inc. (with its thinly-disguised attack on Enron), Disney here simply ends up repeating itself in the search by main character/science nerd Lewis for his biological family. So, given that the boy Lewis was put up for adoption some 12 years earlier, future by Wilbur Robinson shows up to take Lewis--back to the moment when he was deposited at the orphanage? No; on to the lily-white future. Finding the missing family is bad enough (Finding Nemo? Seen it...), but looking in the wrong place to understand Lewis's mom's reasoning is simply a bizarre choice.
The assembly of daffy relatives was done much better IMHO in You Can't Take It With You; this movie could have used some of that liberating spirit. As it is, it deserves a rating of UP-WTF.
posted by Patrick Drazen | 11:50 PM
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