Bugs, why does it always have to be Bugs

Here are my honest thoughts and reactions to watching Disney's Wreck-It Ralph: 

• Just from the start, I love Ralph. Is that supposed to happen?
  
• It says a lot of the animators to successfully portray animation in an animated movie, like the video game characters and such
• It’s interesting how they make the bad guy really the good guy in the movie
• OMG Bad-anon: a bad guys support group. Brilliant
• Really great message there to really love yourself and that labels don’t define us
• This whole movie is such a creative idea, props to whoever thought of it initially
• Loving Ralph even more because of his sarcasm
• Wow, do I hate Gene.
• Qubert is adorable !!
  
• Love the strong female character. Especially how the voice actress is Jane Lynch
• Ralph is reacting the same way I do when I see a bug: scream and run
• I definitely ship Felix and Sargent Calhoun
• NOPE BAD BUG EW
• Now I wouldn’t mind living in Sugar Rush, all the candy and such yumm
• Poor Ralph, don’t you know that the medal won’t help you? You’re making it define you, thus making it take over your life
• “are you a hobo?” classic. Side note: how do game characters know what a hobo is?
• Not a fan of Vanellope. This whole movie would be able to end if she hadn’t been so annoying to take his medal. But I guess in order for the characters to grow and change, there needs to be a dilemma. Oh Hollywood
•  “Cybugs will chew up that game faster than a chicken hawk in a coop of crippled roosters.” I need to start using this saying more often!  
• Why does Disney have to go and do that now. Gosh that’s so sad! Her husband was eaten by one of those nasty things!!
• WAIT is this what hoverboards were inspired from? If so, I’d rather have the one in the game than those flammable ones created here
• Ok, scratch wanting to live in sugar rush. Too much sugar gives me a stomach ache
• These sugar rush avatar names are so strange. Whoever wrote them must’ve had a great time figuring out those haha
  
• Is it technically murder when Ralph throws the “towns people” around and smooshes some of them? Do they just reprogram ?
• Wow, I LOVE the little details they put into this movie. The Oreo soldiers chanting “O-REO, O_REEEO” is brilliant
• GREAT Darth Vader and Indiana Jones references
• People to add to my dislike list in this movie: pretty much every character in Sugar Rush.
• When they were tearing apart her car, there was some parallels to the movie Cinderella, when the stepsisters were tearing apart her dress
• AH so close. Come on Calhoun accept the romance
• Way to make lemonade out of lemons Vanellope
• “are you hurt sire?” “no, he just glazed me.” Yet another example of the comical genius these writers are
• The scene where Ralph is teaching Vanellope to drive is so wholesome, and yet, reminds me a bunch of when my brothers were learning to drive/ride a bike --> lots of starting and stopping and crashes haha 
  
•  That greedy o’l king candy needs to stop cheating. Cheaters never win
•  Oh Felix, ya need to turn down the obsession just a little bit to not appear creepy
• The grammar stickler in me appreciates how she spelled “you’re” right on the medal
• Poor Ralph, just trying to do the right thing and he gets pushed down because of it.
• Gosh Felix your so blind to your surroundings!
• Ralph and Vanellope’s relationship is so cute, with nicknames and everything haha
• Thinking back to my old Mario Kart days
• NO BAD BUGS
• King Candy’s reaction to seeing Vanellope is priceless
  
• Yet another line I need to use more often, “Sweet mother of monkey milk.”
• IT MAKES SENSE NOW! Dangit turbo, don’t ya know cheaters never win?
• I’m so nervous I’ve completely forgotten how they solve all these problems and I hate that I don’t know
• Of course turbo returns. And even worse AS A BUG
• YES VANELLOPE
• YES FELIX AH YES
• Wow only Disney can turn an outsider into a princess and then take a jab at monarchies all in one swing 
  

Cultural Appropriation and Halloween (part 2)

Referring to my earlier post about cultural appropriation and halloween, I came across a BuzzFeed video relating to this idea. In this video, Asian-American BuzzFeed coworkers are given "Asian" halloween costumes and are asked to give their thoughts about them. The cultural insensitivity is astounding, and its interesting to see their reactions and thoughts about what the makers could've done better, if anything. Its a great video that reminds people to "check their motives at the door" and I recommend watching it if you have a few seconds in your day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeuQNAv4SN4

Cultural Appropriation and Halloween (part 1)

In class the other day, we discussed halloween costumes and if cultural appropriation should be applied to children dressing up as Disney princesses. For instance, say a little white girl wanted to dress up as a Disney Princess for halloween, would she only be allowed to dress up as, say, Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty? What if she wanted to dress up as Pocahontas or Mulan? Seeing this from the flip side, what if a black girl wanted to dress up as a princess? Would she only have to option to be Tiana? What happens if she was born before the movie Princess and the Frog was made, and there was no black Disney princess represented? A lot of debate has gone around recently about parents letting their kids dress up as Moana or Maui for halloween if they are not of  Polynesian decent. When I was younger, my favorite outfit was my Pocahontas dress and I wore it all the time, but I never got in trouble for it because 1) I was just a little girl, and 2) I wasn't trying to represent the Native American culture as a whole in my outfit, I just really loved Pocahontas. Issues arise when people have the wrong motives when choosing/designing their outfits. Children's motives, in my opinion, are purely innocent when choosing their outfits. Others, though, I cannot advocate for because there are people out there who have the wrong motives or just don't think when designing costume's and violate many, many cultural rules.

Guess the movie off of these clues: "talking mouse, character shaped hole"

How confident are you in your skills to guess a Disney movie by just a simple clue? For example, if someone showed you a clip from a film, could you guess it just by that one scene? From a photo? Do you think you could guess the movie still if someone were to give you key parts of the plot? In this BuzzFeed quiz, they give you five key phrases from the plot of a Disney movie and ask you to guess it solely based off of those clues. As an avid Disney movie watcher, I thought that it would be easy, but I was sorely wrong. The clues are strange and very vague, making it feel impossible to guess and even think of a movie to enter in the box. I challenge you to see how well you can guess these movies, and wish you the best of luck in the process!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/sarahwillson/half-dressed-cartoon-animal?origin=filqui&utm_term=.vgyzl3B1K#.sl4JZV6p0

"The Lion King" - battle of class uprisings or family issues?

Ever since the release of Disney’s The Lion King, historians and others alike have been trying to figure out what exactly the representation of the elephant graveyard and its hyenas really mean in relation to Pride Rock. Many have come to the conclusion that Pride Rock is meant to symbolize “suburbia”, or where the white elite live (the lions), whereas the elephant graveyard is the inner city, where the blacks and Latino’s live (hyenas). Robert Gooding-Williams agreed with this idea in his essay called, “ Disney in Africa and the Inner City: on Race and Space in The Lion King”. He argued that Disney “marked the elephant graveyard as inner city” through the hyenas in their voices and actions. Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin are the voice actors for two of the hyenas, giving them a “black English and Latino slang”, whereas the majority of the characters living in Pride Rock are voiced by white actors. By placing the black and Latino characters in a place where ‘the light doesn’t touch’, this is signifying the divide between the two places, the dark and dismal elephant graveyard versus the beauty of the Pride Lands. In the scene where Scar is singing “Be Prepared”, Gooding-Williams states that as the hyenas are goose-stepping before Scar, which symbolizes Hitler at Nuremburg overseeing his troops, a connection to the inner city projects is made. “It depicts the building in which the hyenas live in as a bleak-looking and overcrowded hi-rise, the unambiguous image of a housing development in the projects.”  Gooding-Williams goes on to describe Scar as a “political revolutionary who thinks historically”, and as someone who wants to “end the otherwise endless reproduction of a natural course of life”, aka, the ‘circle of life’.

             Arguing against the views of Gooding-Williams is John Morton, who believes that The Lion King isn’t depicting a political battle of the classes, but is strictly showing a familial battle. In his essay, “Simba’s Revolution: Revisiting History and Class in The Lion King”, Morton begins by actually agreeing with some of the points Gooding-Williams made about the representation of class and how The Lion King’s Africa “is a natural paradise articulated by a stable social order benevolently dominated by lions and excluding a ‘ghetto’ containing an underclass of scavenging hyenas.” But, that is the line where Morton stops and begins his true argument against the ideas of Gooding-Williams, that the battle being fought is not based upon class upheaval and does not make Scar a historical figure. Gooding-Williams implies that those living outside of Pride Rock, namely the hyenas, are the social outcasts who join with Scar in his “historical revolution” to usurp the oppressing elite of Pride Rock (Mufasa). Morton disagrees with this, and states that Gooding-Williams’ argument about those living outside of Pride Rock being pitted against those who live in it crumbles when Timon and Pumbaa are mentioned. They are two primary characters who Gooding-Williams failed to mention that don’t live at Pride Rock, but who are perfectly content with their lives and even pair up with those of the supposed “elite” class (Simba).

For this story to be a true historical class rivalry, it would have to be a battle of a lower-level food chain group trying to usurp those at the top of the food chain, when really it is just against two characters who are both at the top of the food chain. If Scar wasn’t depicted as a lion, and was maybe a hyena, and wanted to raise the station of the hyenas, then yes, the conflict could be defined as a historical revolution, but because he is in the same class as Simba and Mufasa, and because he did not have any desire to raise the hyena’s status, then it remains simply a familial battle. Personally, I agree with Morton rather than Gooding-Williams because his argument was convincing enough to disprove all of Gooding-Williams’ points, and because Scar’s motives were purely to reign over his brother and nephew, not having in mind to raise the status of the hyenas.

Sven and Mushu for the Win

With every great Disney princess or prince, there is almost always a bumbling and hilarious sidekick right by there side. They are supportive, loyal, a tad air-headed, but when the time comes for it, they can be fighting machines. For instance, Timon and Pumbaa are some of Disney's most famous sidekicks, and while they are clue-less at times, they were still able to defeat and throw the hyenas out of the cave.  So, who is your favorite pair of sidekicks?

Is it Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King?

Is it Olaf and Sven from Frozen? 

Is it Mushu and Cri-Kee from Mulan?

Is it Maximus or Pascal from Tangled?

or is it Cogsworth and Lumiere Beauty and the Beast?

Misheard Disney Lyrics

Have you ever listened to a song and were convinced it said one thing, when really it said something completely different? This happened to me with the song "Replay" by Iyaz ft. Sean Kingston. There is a line that says"

"Na na na na everyday

 Like my iPod stuck on replay, replay-ay-ay-ay."

But, I thought it said "like my eyeball stuck on my face." Yes, I know that is VERY wrong and every time I sang that song I would question that line (because, yes, your eyeball is on your face, where else would it be?), but, the point is, is that I was convinced that even though it was weird, those were the right lyrics. In this BuzzFeed video, they sing popular Disney songs that have commonly misheard lyrics in them, and it is delightful. I know I am not the only one who has mixed up lyrics before, so this video is very relatable and very funny. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlmsM7RtsIM