by Nabil Bakri
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| (SOURCE: https://www.flickr.com/photos/21652490@N06/33303313180 uploaded to flickr.com by meeko_) |
Nabil: “Criticizing or Nit-picking?”
Kristina Wong, in her YouTube series Radical Cram School aiming for preserving
social justice and encouraging children to become social justice warriors, a
series dedicated to combat racism, gender and sexual inequalities, toxic
masculinity, and basically anything considered as ‘harmful for children’ might
itself be the danger it pledged to combat. Not only has it (the series) brought
up adult conversations such as sexual fluidity and transgenderism to children,
it normalizes double standards and nit-picking. In one episode, Kristina asks
the children to observe a picture of Hello Kitty. She then asks the children to
find what is missing from the character and when a child answers that Hello
Kitty has no mouth and it represents how the West do not allow Asian women to
speak up their minds, Kristina proudly nods and suggests that it is the correct
answer (“Very profound, very profound!”). Such an analysis is not only
misleading because her idea of why Hello Kitty does not have lips is
objectively incorrect, but also underlying the post-modern tendency of nit-picking.
Nit-picking means an action means to criticize but in reality it is more of a
‘complain’, an unnecessary one, instead of criticism. It is actually harmful to
have prejudice instead of critical judgement, and that is exactly the point
being encouraged by nit-picks such as Kristina Wong or the so called critics
demanding for ‘diversity’ in media including films. Claiming that Hello Kitty
somehow has a dark-hidden-subliminal meaning bearing racism and gender
inequalities beneath the cute surface is a form of nit-picking at its best
simply because the ‘criticism’ has gone too far, beyond the reality of the
subject. Hello Kitty was created by an Asian woman, so how come an Asian woman
wanted to silence Asian women by not giving Hello Kitty lips? And furthermore,
is the design bear sinister meanings or it is just the best way to design a
cute Hello Kitty character? The character also has no toes, no hair, no shoes,
and why she’s pink? Why she’s white? Why she’s a cat? Why it’s a ‘she’, etc., all
are forms of ‘possible questions/criticism’, but as a matter of fact, these
questions are acts of nit-picking. (A lot of people complain about American
tendency of stereotyping but in all criticism against stereotyping, they are
using Disney and McDonald over and over again as if other companies are
innocent, they are criticizing stereotypes and colonialism by stereotyping
America with Disney and McDonald, they become what they aimed to counter (here
comes double standard). Now, are Disney movies successful because they are
Americans, or because they are good? Is McDonald popular because it is America
or because the leaders of McDonald are smart businessmen? Indomie is very popular in African countries and it is not because Indomie is America).
Many adult scholars feel entitled to disclose all the
hidden messages in animated movies. They were aiming for, say, ‘X’ to begin
with and therefore, during the analysis, all they could find was the ‘X’. This
is what we call as bias, subjectivity, a plague in an academic analysis,
nit-picking instead of criticizing. These scholars brought up issues that
children would not notice or might have a different opinion about it. The Aristocats (Disney) shows a scene of
a Siamese cat playing piano with chopsticks for less than a minute and
WatchMojo, a popular YouTube channel with millions of subscribers, consider it inappropriate
for being racist. The funny thing is that the animators might just want to have
fun and in the end, children would not stop watching and accuse the scene for
being racist, but it is the nit-picks who brought the issue of a ‘racist’
scene, less than a minute, in a humorous scene in an animated musical made in
the 60’s. The problem is that nobody cares about the scene being racist until
someone made a big deal out of it. I remember being a child watching The Jungle Book (Disney) and I can
clearly remember not thinking of it being racist. Children are not offended by
these movies and the filmmakers might have no intention to offend people, but
people these days are easily offended by everything. Are these movies political
propaganda to discredit certain race, or are these movies simply ‘movies’.
There are, of course, children movies plagued by sinister intentions such as Donald Duck shorts during World War II, Looney Tunes series throughout the 50’s-60’s,
early Tom and Jerry shorts, etc. When
scholars criticize the ‘negative stereotypes’ of Blacks and Asians in those
shows, the criticism would be understandable and they would have objective
foundation that the many episodes of those cartoons were indeed created based
on negative stereotypes and meant to deliver those stereotypes to the audience.
However, even such obvious analysis concerning, say, racism in Looney Tunes, the critic should consider
the ‘time’ when those episodes were made.
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| (A scene from 'Brokeback Mountain'|||This picture belongs to River Road Entertainment and Focus Features|||It is okay to introduce gay characters as long as their presence is meaningful. Studios and LGBTQ community should NOT demand old characters to be gay (LeFou, Ice Man, Dumbledore), but instead, just make NEW GAY CHARACTERS) |
We are living in the world that forces the media to
‘diversify’ their products. J.K. Rowling, in 2007, announced that Albus
Dumbledore is gay. However, any attempt to find clues of Dumbledore being gay
in all 7 books of Harry Potter is a
failure and readers started to question whether Rowling created Dumbledore as
gay to begin with or she just wanted the credit for being ‘diverse’ because
2007 was just moments away from more LGBTQ movements and the year 2011, when
the US legalized same-sex marriage. She claims that Dumbledore is in love with
Grindelwald despite readers could only find that these characters ‘were’
friends and just like LeFou from Beauty
and the Beast, he might fancy the other guy, but being a fan does not
automatically mean gay. In 2017, Disney announced that LeFou would be the first
openly gay Disney character. And just like what happened to Harry Potter readers, critics failed to
seek any gay traits in the original 1991 LeFou. Even if he is gay, is it (the
fact that the character is gay) really necessary? Is his sexuality ‘that’
important to the story? Is ‘diversity’ more important than a good story? Was
the idea of novels and books is to promote diversity? In 2016 The Ghostbusters was remade with all
female characters and in 2018 Warner Bros. released a remake of the popular
heist movie Oceans 11, Oceans 8 with all female (and look, a
lesbian) characters. These movies were box-office bombs and studios claimed
that the reason these movies failed is that people are racist and gender
inequalities remain strong to this day, while audience simply claim that the
story is not as good as the predecessors. Even Kathleen Kennedy had gone too
far by claiming that The Force in Star
Wars is female, resulting in fans ditching Star Wars Episode IX and Solo
(Because, apparently, the majority of Star
Wars fans are men, and the point to claim The Force as female is actually
pointless and dangerous. The Force is not personified in the original saga and
it should remained not personified because what is the point in exaggerating
the sex of ‘the source of everything’ much like Eywa in Avatar?). It is not that studios and feminists want to ‘diversify’
the film industry, it is that these agendas eventually shift the intention of
the movie which was to deliver a decent story, into a political machine.
I am honestly concern about these new kind of
criticism of nit-picks, especially when such criticism gains millions of
followers like a cult, just like the infamous Cinema Sins, a self-proclaimed
nit-picks who are nit-picking movies that despite of their multiple confessions
that they are ‘nit-picks’ instead of ‘critics’, people seem to view their
nit-picking videos as canon criticism. Yes there are issues in animated movies,
hidden agendas need to be dismantled, but unless it is objectively accurate, do
not force a criticism that leads to false accusation, and then public duping
that prejudice, opinion, and hatred, are objectively facts.
IN A CASE
In The Lion King, there is a frame that shows
particles of dust resembles the word ‘SEX’ in the air. Disney animators then explained
to the media that the word is not ‘SEX’ but ‘SFX’, a homage to the SFX studio
that helped the production of the movie. This strong clarification from Disney should be enough to put the
‘criticism/nit-picking’ problem to rest, but even if Disney did not publish the
statement, people should know that movies are made of frames, single images
that if being moved quickly, would show the illusion of movement. This movement
is the final product that the audience can enjoy. Audience is not supposed to
enjoy separated frames/images of a movie. The Lion King, being an animation, is
made up of approximately 12 frames per second. It is possible that in a
particular frame the word SFX resembles something completely different, but
when played in a normal speed it actually shows SFX. Picking one frame from a
movie consists of 12 frames per second is like accusing the lifeguard a sexual
assailant for kissing your wife simply because you do not know that he was just
giving her a respiration assistant after drowning, hence the expression nit-picking.
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| (both The Lion King pictures belong to DISNEY) |
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