Recently, Disney sales have been cutoff after a Moana costume was considered racist. Moana is a character in an upcoming movie titled, "Moana", a movie showcasing the Polynesian and Hawaiian traditions through a teenager who is on a mission to save her people. The costume was a body suit that included a skirt made of leaves and a body lined with deep meaning tattoos from Polynesian culture. A woman, from Polynesian and Hawaiian descent was uncomfortable seeing the costume due to its lack of true elements of the culture and how a child could potentially dress up as another race. Disney has come out with a statement since then, stating that they regret making it and are sorry if it had offended anyone.
Before reading this article, I had never heard of this situation. This article puts Disney is a bad light and automatically the negative feedback might put Disney's Halloween costume sales down this year due to people boycotting this 'racist' situation. Even though Disney has apologized for the controversial outfit, some people may hold a grudge still and not want to give them more sales. This article is important and was written to inform others about this mistake and that an apology has been stated. This situation connects to when slaves were forced to work in plantations in the southern colonies and a racist ideology began to form in the minds of Europeans due to their thoughts of the Africans being inferior. Though Disney probably did not purposefully create a racist costume, in the end, it was, and therefore connects to the racist trade of african slaves in the 17th century.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/22/media/disney-moana-costume-racist-polynesian/index.html
Although I see how this can be taken as very racist, I do not think Disney had intentions of it being racist. I'm sure the designers of the costume were not educated completely on the Polynesian culture. I hope people can be understanding of the mistake they made.
ReplyDeleteI agree with ava, i don't think that this was intentional whatsover.i hope that people understand that this was a true mistake and they aren't very offended.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Ava and Devyn. I believe that some are taking it the wrong way, and that Disney's intentions were most definitely not to be racist, but just a fun costume from an animated movie for kids to wear around Halloween time. I hope that they realize that this was just a big misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the costume was removed because it may not have been true to the culture. However, I feel Disney should try to improve it and re-release it. I think it's important for people, especially young kids, to see their culture being represented in media and in the world. Moana has a culture that is not well represented in America, so I think we should work harder to showcase it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ava, Devyn, and Emma. I believe that this was unintentional and i hope people will not take this out to the extremes and realize that it is not a big deal
ReplyDeleteI like to see big corporations realizing faults in their products, and, instead of scrapping the idea, figuring out how they can re-work the product to please the masses. I hope Disney tries again with something more pleasing.
ReplyDeleteInteresting article, I think it was a honest mistake on Disney's half; how did it pass prescreening at Disney though?
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