Meanwhile, much as I enjoyed the Pirates flick...

[annathepiper]

I'm seeing that this ain't so much the case for quite a few folks out there. Interesting and thought-provoking commentary by lavendertook here and oyceter here, and here is a link to a blog post found by pinkdormouse which appears to have some good background data on the whole brouhaha. hederahelix raises an interesting question on the matter here.

I'm finding myself really rather in accord with lavendertook's and oyceter's commentary, particularly in regards to this quote of oyceter's: "Part of me doesn't even want to keep talking about this because it's so uncomfortable, because it causes such defensiveness in other people, because I am tired of being told that I am wrong for seeing these things. And that's the very reason I am making myself post this, making myself confront the nidginess and the squirminess, the problems that I have in just acknowledging that something that I am enjoying is racist."

Which is pretty much dead on the money. Because as I posted before, I pretty much had a rollicking good time with this movie, and a big, big part of me still thinks that it's certainly something you hardly want to think rationally about... and yet.

As a white chick, I suppose that one might argue that there's only so much I get to say about racism. But I think that specifically because I am a white chick, that makes it doubly important for me to say something, to acknowledge that this is there, because only if the problem gets acknowledged can it be confronted and dealt with. As an aspiring writer, I also find myself heavily in accord with the commentary that so many of the racist bits of this movie could have been eliminated by tighter writing, or hell, even by paying just a touch more attention to the casting. What the hell happened to Anamaria from the first movie, for example?

I could go into more detail, but that'd go into spoiler territory. So I'll stick with saying that if y'all do go see the movie, go in with eyes open about this. And think very hard about what you might do in your life to counterbalance the problem--whether that be avoiding the movie on principle, sending a protest letter to Disney, spending your bucks in support of movies that don't perpetuate racist stereotypes, or what.

Me, I find myself a bit sheepishly amused that in both of the novels I've finished so far, the main female characters have turned out to be girls of color--Kendis with an African-American mortal father, and Faanshi with a mother out of a dark-skinned culture as well. This isn't something I deliberately set out to do, like unto Ursula K. LeGuin's very deliberate choice to make most of the folks in the Earthsea books be people of color... but I'm finding myself kind of happy that I've done it. It's a small gesture, but it's definitely one I can do.

Kind of like making this post.

ETA 12:52pm: There are a few small free-floating spoilers down in the comments, so proceed with care as you read them!

Comments

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

As I've said elsewhere I'm hardly qualified to say that much about racism from the inside. But I notice and I comment, the same way I notice on people's attitudes to any other issue, whether it affects me directly of not.

My first comment on leaving the cinema after the first Pirates... movie was 'where were all the black people in Port Royal?', but no one much else seemed to be talking about it at the time. And we had Anamaria and no one was arguing that she wasn't a good representative of black *and* female characters (we could have done with more, but she was COOL).

So I went into the second film expecting not many black characters but hoping for more Anamaria. And I got a big raft of issues instead.

I like Tia Dalma. I suspect she has an agenda all of her own and isn't just a stereotypical 'mystic negro'. But everything else people are ranting about? Most definitely in agreement.

I've got plenty more to say on the subject, but it can wait until I post on it again myself.

[annathepiper]

*nodnod* Thanks in general for your pointers on this over to oyceter's and lavendertook's posts; I'm glad I read them.

I may have to doublecheck the tail end of the first flick. shadowhwk mentioned below that she was cool with thinking Anamaria was off on her own ship doing her own thing, but I don't remember that she actually got a ship?

I'm hoping Tia Dalma does indeed have that agenda all her own, 'cause it makes her so much cooler if she does and if we'll get to see that in the third film. I'm a little dubious, just because I have a hard time imagining how she will be a huge factor in the plot unless she comes along with Our Heroes, but maybe we'll be surprised. :)

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I kinda figure that you don't really find that many really native people from the Caribbean who are white, so it's not racist, it's geography. Cannibals are just incidental. If you're in the Caribbean and there are cannibals, they're most likely not going to be white because most natives there are not white. If they were in a white-majority area, I'd expect the cannibals to be white, like . . . Norway or something. Norwegian cannibals? Never heard of them, but if there were, they'd be white, to be sure.

I can't remember very many of Sparrow's pirates, but I do recall at least a few black pirates. I remember particularly the smart black woman in the first movie. BOOYAAAH. Not only a respectable black pirate, but a WOMAN too!

If you ask me though, the cannibals are living much more honestly than pirates. When it REALLLY comes down to it, pirates are scum. They live off of stealing things and killing people. The cannibals, however, live in in a community and only eat people who invade their space. They don't go out of their way to steal things and eat people.

Did I just write an article in defence of cannibalism? Oh dear.

But I think what it really comes down to his geography and history. If you look at pirates on wikipedia, you'll find most of the famous pirates were white guys anyway (hence the pirated Irish accents), and most native peoples in that area are going to be black (hence the Caribbean accents, or whatever accents they really are).

Personally, when I'm watching the movie, I don't even notice skin colour. They're all so dirty and/or painted it's hard to tell what colour any person really is anyway.

[annathepiper]

I think that the complaints about the cannibals are not that they are people of color, but more than they are portrayed in a stereotypical fashion that makes them look like fools, strictly for the sake of getting the audience to laugh. And I have to admit that if I were a chick of color, I'd find it a lot more difficult to find anything in that sequence funny--especially since we've seen the "bumbling black natives" stereotype all over the place in movies for decades. (Not as much as we used to, granted, but I can certainly remember seeing it all over much older movies--it's cropped up a lot in MST3K fodder, for example.) As it was, I still think it was pretty stupid, and IMO the movie would have been much stronger without it.

Anamaria is a favorite character amongst the folks I've seen talking about this, in fact. I thought she was quite cool myself and I miss her--I wish she were in this movie as well. shadowhwk points out below on the thread that there's no real reason for her to be back if you buy that she got her own ship and is off doing her own thing by the time of this movie, though.

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

I would have liked her to be back anyway. Well, at least we've got Tia.

Personally, I was impressed by the cannibal's ability to build suspended cage-balls made of bones. That was very resourceful. It would have been equally as funny were it a bunch of Scandinavians. This whole movie is based off of stereotypes. Pirate stereotypes, native stereotypes, British stereotypes . . . and I think in that it makes fun of the stereotypes; they're so unreal that in addition to be funny, you sit there and kinda go "yeah, right!"

Would we be berated for finding the movie "Canadian Bacon" or "Strange Brew" funny? You want to talk about stereotypes . . .

[annathepiper]

Indeed, we have Tia. I'm really hoping that the various folks who have commented upon her coming across as having her own agenda are on the money--and that we're going to find out what she's up to in the next movie. As I've mentioned to pinkdormouse above, I'm a little dubious just because I'm having a hard time envisioning how we'll get to see much of said agenda unless she goes along with Our Heroes, but hey, it might happen.

As for Strange Brew... heh. I have to admit I'm one that doesn't find that movie particularly funny either. ;) I haven't seen Canadian Bacon, though.

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I never considered her having an agenda after she accepted the un-dead monkey. Now you've made me think about that more.

Aaah, Strange Brew humour is pretty funny. Canadian Bacon, though, aaaah, GREAT movie. It was John Candy's last movie. It was done by Michael Moore, in fact.

Re: oooookkkkaaayyyy...

[annathepiper]

Depends on whether or not you think that implementation of Lois is a strong female character, I suppose. I liked her well enough, though I've seen several people bitch that she came across as a dishrag.

Thinking about it, it's a pretty lily-white cast overall. I can't recollect a single non-white person showing up even briefly on camera.

Though it occurs to me that 'a totally lily-white cast' is a different flavor of annoying than 'including people of color, but doing so in a stupid fashion'.

[shadowhwk.livejournal.com]

Erm.

Okay. First, I begin by acknowledging that, as always, this trend toward screaming "OMFG racist" at the drop of a hat just gets me riled up.

Second. Yes, the island of cannibals was silly. That the descendents of the people who lived in the area are offended by that is unfortunate. They were there for comedic value. (I also note that the extras who portrayed them seemed to be of various ethnic stock, Caribbean, South American and Pacific Islander equally scattered. So I'm not sure who, exactly, they were supposed to be racist interpretations of.) Before we get all het up about 'omg why is making fun of the funny colored people allowed?', I likewise point out that we had the return of the buffoon!pirates from the first movie who are not "characters of color". We also had ineffective English soldiers from the first movie, who were comedic and not "of color". Comedy seems to have been doled out across the board.

Third: The other two character people complain about, apparently, are the fisherman with the net, and Tia. Me? I'm not entirely sure what's racist about a fisherman with a Jamaican accent. Maybe I'm missing it.

As for Tia. I loved Tia. I thought that they handled Tia beautifully. I thought they handled her magic beautifully and while they did sexualize her a little, we didn't have to see the never-ending series of 'let's slap someone as a gag joke' thing from her. She was powerful, she was intelligent, she was important and her accent sounded to me (and I'm not a pro but I do know a few things about dialect) sounded pretty authentic to me, regardless of whether it was easy to understand.

Fourth: The cage thing. Really. Now we're reaching. Was it a conscious decision to kill off all the non-white characters to push forward some subtle "we hate darkies" message? Reaching.

Fifth: Where was Anamaria? Good question, to which I answer: The movie's not about Anamaria. The movie's about Jack and Will and Elizabeth and their adventures. If the movie had jagged off to check in on Anamaria and see what she's doing over on her side of the ocean, would that really have made it a better movie? Does willing suspension of disbelief mean nothing anymore? Believe that she's sailing around, doing her thing.

Sometimes, a movie is just a movie, no message intended or implied.

[ruwhei.livejournal.com]

A lot of the cannibals were played by white people.

Now whether this is 'black face' or not is matter to interpretation.

[annathepiper]

Ah yes, spazzkat mentioned on the way out of the movie that that tribe of cannibals was awfully multi-national. :) I still found most of that sequence stupid, though.

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

I think the sequence was funny at first, but it was TOO LONG to the point where it wasn't funny anymore. Kind of like over-doing the rum jokes.

[annathepiper]

Sometimes, a movie is just a movie, no message intended or implied.

Sure, I'm with you on that. And I certainly agree that it's hardly likely that Disney execs and writers were thinking, "Now how can we make this movie annoying to people of color?"

But see, here's the thing... regardless of artistic intent, if a story is one of many stories that falls back on lazy, over-used tropes to portray characters of <fill in your group of choice here>, I find I can't complain much if members of that group get cranky. I'd certainly be getting cranky about a movie that made lazy choices about female or queer characters.

Which now makes it a question of which of the choices were the ones I think were lazy. ceallaighgirl up above makes good points about some of this stuff being simple matters of geography--that if you're going to set a period piece in the Caribbean, it's totally reasonable that a voodoo witch is going to be a black chick. Same with the fisherman with the net.

The part that makes me stop and think though is the part about which members of the crew were in which cages. Again, I totally agree that it's hardly likely that Disney was trying to make any sort of deliberate point. But I can also see that if you see group A in one cage and group B in another cage, and group B is pretty much all the dark-skinned people and the ones who seem more inclined to cheat... then yeah, that's annoying. All the more so because it's a problem they could have easily fixed by rearranging which extras were where and otherwise leaving the scene exactly as it was.

Good general points about the cannibals and Anamaria, though.

Thanks for chiming in!

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

I agree very much with your summary here.

I doubt very much that the cannibal tribe was meant to be representative of any true historical tribe of people. This is a comedy based on a theme park ride... not a documentary on the reality of the Caribbean pirate and peoples. I think that a lot of what I've read on the 'overt racism' is a) knee-jerk reactionism, and b) making things a heck of a lot more deliberate than they ever likely were.

Tia is a strong character. She has minute amounts of screen time and yet leaves quite a lasting impression in the viewers' minds. If she didn't, there wouldn't be so much bruhahah about her being a stereotypical mystic negro. Perhaps that lack of screen time is what makes it so easy to label her as a cliche. Personally, I expect that she's running some much deeper game and I hope that we get to see that in the third movie.

The ball full of POC crew members... also contained unnamed white crew members. I don't think that was a color thing so much as it was a 'red shirt' thing, to steal from Star Trek. Would it be nice if there had been a more diverse crew? Sure. Most of the crew in the first movie was white. Were there outraged accusations of racism with that one? That's an honest question, by the way. If there were, that's interesting. If there weren't, then why is this crew (which had /more/ diversity, not less, in it's red shirt victims) the more worthy of cries of racism? And if the entire crew in this film had been white, would it have been okay for the half of the crew in one hanging ball to die then? We all knew, when we saw two hanging balls with all of the named PCs in one ball that the other one was going to fall. Why would it have been okay if the unnamed PCs were all white, but not when the ball contained a mixture of skin colors?

I'm not trying to say that racism doesn't exist, because it's pretty well documented that it does. I am saying that I don't think any of this was an intended thing. The writers/producers/etc were not all sitting around thinking "How can we advance the white agenda over the darkie in this scene?" If anything, I think that they tried to make a more diverse world in this movie... and that now they're being slammed for it. And yet, if they had made this movie with as few people of color as showed up in the first... they'd be slammed for that, as well. It's a no win situation.

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

er, that is I agree with shadowhwk and I managed to hit the wrong link to post. bah! :)

[annathepiper]

No worries, happens to the best of us. :)

[annathepiper]

The ball full of POC crew members... also contained unnamed white crew members.

Did it? Serious question, 'cause I don't remember any. I remember the camera lingering on the dark-skinned dude leering evilly over at the ball chock full o' Will and the main crew members.

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

*nods* There was at least one white (or at least non-black, it's hard to tell with all the dirt) crew member in the ball.

[annathepiper]

Okay, I missed that. I therefore downgrade some of my commentary above in this regard, but I won't retract it entirely--since clearly, it wasn't just me who came away from the flick with that impression, so it still strikes me as a Problem. Maybe if they hadn't had that one obvious lingering shot on said evilly leering dark-skinned dude, that could have been a way to improve matters.

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Hmm, did the shot linger on him, or did your eye linger on him because he stood out among the rest? (He was leering evilly, after all, maybe the directors found that he had evil-leer skills than anybody else, too, so focusing on him made more sense.)

[oyceter]

I think that a lot of what I've read on the 'overt racism' is a) knee-jerk reactionism, and b) making things a heck of a lot more deliberate than they ever likely were.

My problem with this is that racism doesn't need to be deliberate or intended to be racism nonetheless. I don't think that Disney execs were sitting around in a room thinking about how to offend people. But I do think that the director of the movie made certain artistic choices, either through intent or through negligence, and that those artistic choices reflect a racist society, don't attempt to undermine stereotypes, and furthermore, perpetuate stereotypes.

So as such, yes, I do think it's racist.

I don't think it's a no-win solution either. I think the win solution is to have enough people of color in the movie(s) (and in movies and pop culture in general) that having a single minority character no longer bears the weight of having to represent an entire race or minorities in general. But since we're not at that point yet, the representation of people of color in popular culture is still a fraught subject, and I wish there would be less of this unintentional yet still existing perpetuation of stereotypes.

[oyceter]

As a white chick, I suppose that one might argue that there's only so much I get to say about racism. But I think that specifically because I am a white chick, that makes it doubly important for me to say something, to acknowledge that this is there, because only if the problem gets acknowledged can it be confronted and dealt with.

*hugs you*

I think it's important to have people of all races and ethnicities and sexes and classes speaking up, especially since historically, the subject of racism has largely been delegated to men of color. And especially since when people of color speak out, it's often dismissed as "Oh, playing the race card again" or "crying 'racism' at the drop of a hat" or something. Of course, that's a whole 'nother problem and issue all together, but it just emphasizes the fact that we need more people speaking up and making gestures, and thank you thank you so much.

(typing this not as a representative of Asian Chicks or whatnot, but as me)

And because racism is something that affects everyone, though obviously to very, very different degrees, it is something that everyone should talk about, imho.

So thank you again, and I'm very glad you posted!

[annathepiper]

You are most welcome, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to put some thought into it and to see the thoughts of others on various posts! *hugs!*

[lyricae.livejournal.com]

I think I may be a bit sensitive on this subject after having just spent two terms in a college that basically teaches that if you are white you ARE racist. You are either openly racist, or you are hiding your racism, but you are definitely at heart a racist. I think that the message they are teaching is a lot of crap. I KNOW how I feel about people and I have never once in my life reacted to someone because of their skin color. I recognize that people are going to read this and make claims that it is just so ingrained in society that I am unable to see my own faults, but folks, I'm telling you for sure, I am NOT a racist. I'm also not classist, sexist, or homophobic. I give anyone a chance to prove to me that they are a good person and I don't care what they look like or what their life choices are (providing that they aren't serial killers). So here's what I have to say about the movie. I would like for any of the people out there to tell me please if they have any documented evidence of a white cannibalistic tribe in the area the movie takes place in. Or anywhere else for that matter. I know that there were cannibalistic tribes in Africa. I am aware that the Aztecs engaged in some forms of cannibalism. I know that some of the native tribes in Tahiti were practicing cannibals. Please, if you can show me one source that is credible that shows a cannibalistic tribe that was not made up of people of color I will sit down and write a nice long argument against the movie and post it on the site of your choice.

[annathepiper]

Oh, I'm totally with you on the point that just because one is white, this does not mean that one is automatically a racist. I think that's an annoying attitude as well.

But as I understand it, the objections being raised aren't quite that "here's a tribe of cannibals, so of course they must be black." It's more (at least from the POV of the Dominica Caribs, who are actual native folk who live down there) like, "Um, look, we actually live here and we know what our history is, and we weren't like that, and we're annoyed that this movie is perpetuating the idea that we were."

The less geographically specific objection I've seen pretty much translates to, "Ugh, do we have to have yet another movie where the major focus on the non-white people is to show them as laughable savages who are only there because the white people in the cast need an amusing way to get out of a jam?"

Other folks on the thread have made a good point, which is that since there are still comparatively few people of color in popular media in general, the burden falls on a small number of characters to represent those groups. And when the small number of characters in question keep being stereotypes, it can't help but be annoying to those folks.

I compare it to, say, the number of times you see sensitive, effeminate, limp-wristed queer boys who are good at decorating in popular media... or butch, man-hating lesbians who by the way also happen to be witches... or even worse, stories where the bad guy or girl turns out to be queer so of course they must be psycho (as happened when I recently read an otherwise excellent suspense novel)... and I can really kind of see where they're coming from on this.

Does that make sense?

[lyricae.livejournal.com]

It does make sense. But I guess the thing that still jabs at me about this is that almost every character in that movie was a caricature of who they were representing. Do the folks in that area who are descended from pirates believe that their pirate ancestors behaved the way the pirates in the movie did? When the English took over Port Royale, was every leader they brought in an avaricious twit who was only out for his own gain? For that matter, the women in the movie are portrayed at being much more strong willed and independent than I believe they were in the period the movie covers. (Yay! Strong women). My point is that the whole movie was portraying exaggerated and not necessarily accurate depictions of each of the characters, but because ONE of the groups they are choosing to portray is of color, that's where the focus is.

Does that make sense?

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

I think strangely that it's not at all just an American problem. For example, a computer game I play, Skies of Arcadia---made presumably in Japan by a company called Overworks (I'm guessing Japan because they only have a .jp website)---features largely Caucasian/white protagonists, and the characters of color primarily only end up coming from the various satellite nations of the game world, which are mash-ups of everything from the colonial imperialist nations (one faction resembles a mash-up of Spain and colonial-era Britain, with Victorian-era Britain and various other flavors thrown in), to a tribal mash-up (includes the meso-American cultures, small bits of native American cultures, small bits of African tribal cultures, etc.), a faction that basically resembles an all-around ancient Asia mash-up, an India/Arabia/etc. mash-up makes up another faction, and the others (now largely defunct) are/were high-tech societies basically summarizable as alien-ish if anything. And whilst I doth love the game, I can't help but feel a twinge of guilt...

On a related note, I can't seem to bring myself to read anything that has a gay/lesbian/bi/transgender/etc. character (or for that matter any kind of minority) character in it just for the heck of it. I feel that that sort of thing is writing primarily for protest, and not from experience, which I feel is what the best kind of writing is drawn from.

[annathepiper]

That the vast majority of anime characters are lily-white--even in such masterworks by Miyazaki as Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro--has more than once raised my eyebrows, I have to admit.

Re: minority characters as "protest"... speaking as just a reader of books and viewer of media, the times this works best for me is simply when those characters are there and participating as equals in the plot, without there being any kind of a big deal made about "look look, a minority character here!" For example, I really liked that Tanya Huff's fantasy novels have a high likelihood of having queer people just right there in the plot and having perfectly valid plot things to do, it's just that the characters happen to be queer.

Of course, Tanya Huff is herself queer, so that doesn't really surprise me much. :)

What makes me stop and go "now wait a minute" is a situation where you'd think there'd be more non-white people than there actually are, and you're not seeing them. For example, much as I love me some Firefly, the vast majority of the characters with major speaking parts in the various episodes (as well as the movie Serenity) are white. And yet, the entire background story of the universe is that the culture was founded by a joint effort of the U.S. and China pushing out into space, and that the culture is enough of a fusion of American and Chinese culture that every character is effectively bilingual. In that kind of a scenario, you'd think we'd be getting at least one obviously Asian person with a speaking role, you know?

Welcome to my journal, by the way! Glad to see a new reader around. :)

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

@ the Tanya Huff bit: Gotcha.

@ Firefly/Serenity bit: Aye.

@ welcome: My pleasure! I was just todding around when I was looking through the LJ search results for people who had 'Han shot first' as an interest. I derive perverse pleasure from putting oddball interests in my userinfo and seeing if anyone else has them listed (though when I tried this with 'Arcturian poontang' I had one of those moments where I realize that two people can be from the same planet and still be worlds apart. Oh universe, every extraterrestrial I know is right next door to me....)

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

@ the Tanya Huff bit: Gotcha.

@ Firefly/Serenity bit: Aye.

@ welcome: My pleasure! I was just todding around when I was looking through the LJ search results for people who had 'Han shot first' as an interest. I derive perverse pleasure from putting oddball interests in my userinfo and seeing if anyone else has them listed (though when I tried this with 'Arcturian poontang' I had one of those moments where I realize that two people can be from the same planet and still be worlds apart. Oh universe, every extraterrestrial I know is right next door to me....)

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

@ Tanya Huff comment: Gotcha.

@ Firefly bit: Yeah. That sort of thing doesn't get me as often as minority-characters-in-semisecondary-roles, though, because I'm not as adept at noticing that the cast is just blatantly all-white (or something like that, I think). A friend of mine was criticizing Peter Jackson in her blog for supposedly sniping off all the minority characters in the Kong remake. =^/

On another note, the sheer whiteness present in anime bothers me. Asians have a skin tone roughly in the same half of the fleshtone spectrum as Caucasians do, and their differences are primarily morphological, as you and me would notice in their shorter average height and differently-shaped eyes (hope I don't sound racist typing this). So why is it that in anime characters tend to look distinctly WHITE? Not merely non-Hispanic/AfroMerican/AmerIndian/basically non-darker-skinned, but plain out Caucasian instead of simply Asian? The character's eyes tend to look, I've noticed, more like that of westerners.

I worry that the Japanese have sort of a fear-worship thing that they associate with America because we dropped the atom bombs on them during WW2, and consequently imagery of us sort of permeates their society to some extent. A more optimistic theory is that they simply make the characters more Caucasian than Asian because thanks to Walt Disney and others animation primarily got its bigger start stateside.

What say you?

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the triplepost, the connection on the terminal here at work is most buggy.

[s]We're[/s] I'm not schizophrenic, I swear!

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

I see that you already have Bear on your watchlist, so you've probably beaten me to the punch of what I'm about to post, but just in case...: http://matociquala.livejournal.com/849174.html

Sometimes the things I say and do make me worry I'm a hypocrite, though. Watch my main journal page, I'm about to post something there and you'll see what I mean.

[annathepiper]

I missed eBear's post, but mostly because I was sick yesterday and hardly glanced at LJ at all. Thanks for pointing me at that. And I did see International Blog Against Racism Week come up elsewhere on my Friends list today; I'm still pondering something pertinent to post about.

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

Also, Private Vasquez from "Aliens". Methinks it'd probably be too easy for someone to interpret her as an unflattering portrayal of Hispanics.

But personally, I think being portrayed as being able to take out a xenomorph in a vent shaft with only your foot and a dinky pistol is QUITE flattering.

[annathepiper]

Not being Hispanic, I can only say that Vasquez was definitely one of my favorite characters from that movie. Hell, she's got one of the very best lines, with her comeback to "Have you ever been mistaken for a man?" "No. Have you?" ;)

And see, I'd think that she was every bit the equal of her male and white compatriots as well, since she was very clearly a competent Marine.

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

Aye. More than I can say for Gorman...Book schmook. When there are freaking ninja bugs coming out of the walls, I don't care if you're in the middle of a nuclear plant---you SHOOT for cripe's sake if it means that more of your squad will make it out alive than won't.

Ditto with you on the "Mistaken for a man" bit. My favorite line of hers was "Whatevah y'gonna do, do it fast!"

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links.(-:

It's a shame some of the posters above are so dismissive of the complaints of people of color and that they seem to think the indigenous people who are protesting the film are doing it for jollies. If being called a racist is threatening, can they imagine how it is to be a minority who is targeted by racism on a regular basis? /-:

Good for you for speaking out.