mrpeabodyandsherman: internutter: mrpeabodyandsherman: internutter: Maxxie03 Tumblr.: Translation trailer 'Mr. Peabody and...
Maxxie03 Tumblr.: Translation trailer ‘Mr. Peabody and Sherman’
Black man: Mr. Peabody, you’re nobel prize winner in physics
FROM THE CREATORS OF: HTTYD, MADAGASCAR, SHREK
Black man: Famous explorer
FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE LION KING
Black man: And Olympic champion in broad jumping. Are you ready for everything that needs to be done to raise a human…
I replayed the ad for a bit [ich kann nicht verspreche Deutche…] but I’m pretty sure the Princess’ name is Hatshepsut.
You know, famous historical cross-dresser. Who was VERY BROWN INDEED (cough).
Still… it’s miles better than Cleopatra, I guess 9_9
Mind you, given the limited number of famous Egyptian queens [Thanks, Manwashing!] they had to pick one out of Cleopatra, Nefertiti and Hatshepsut. So why pick the brownest of the three [If you check, Nefertiti was white-passing] for a BLONDE EUROPEAN-DESCENDED child to pass as?
I hope this is just translation errata or my deafness getting involved but… can we please stop trying to rewrite the best-known African civilization as No They Were Really White All Along? Or is that just too hard?
I am now praying that this is the ONLY historical inaccuracy in a film about freaking time travel.
It’s not actually Hatshepsut - it’s the blonde girl from Sherman’s class who’s pretending to be Hatshepsut. :)
You’d think the rest of the native time residents would notice the obvious skin disparity, no?
Plus I was complaining that a very white kid could plausibly carry off a disguise as a very brown princess by apparently putting on a wig.
Either paper-thin disguises are a thing in this film (very plausible) or someone very obviously didn’t do any homework (also plausible and rather irritating).
Also, can we talk about how Sherman’s classroom has exactly one token representative POC present while everyone else seems to be brown-haired brown-eyed cookie-cutter white kids? Or how Penny is apparently using POC as stage dressing?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m prepared to fully love the movie… but… I’m finding a few elements more than a little problematic. Problematic things coming from people who should know better only serve to perpetuate problematic thoughts and attitudes amongst the folks who see them.
I could go on and on about that, but I’ll wait until I see more than the few minutes of footage available.
This is more of a reference to the original cartoon series. Keep in mind, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show was very satire-based, so Peabody’s Improbable History was more satire-bent than educational (but it got you interested in the historical figures enough to want to learn more about them). So for the sake of comedy, most of the side characters in the original Peabody cartoons were very gullible. There’s one Peabody episode (the Bunker Hill episode) where Peabody manages to convince the British Army that Sherman (who’s about 6 or 7) is a doctor, for example. So Penny being mistaken as an Egyptian just sort of fits into humor style of the cartoon. Pretty much everyone but Peabody could be tricked, and this happened to characters of all races in the show.
And there was a lot of POC representation in the trailer! I don’t know what you’re talking about.
The judge (who was originally white in the cartoon, I should point out)
Yay. We have one mark of progress. Consider this point conceded.
There was more than one POC kid in the classroom
One token asian, one token african-american, one token probably-native-american, one token latin@ and one token heavy!brown girl. There’s way more generic white kids in this room than POC.
Plus all the people they’ll travel back in time to see, including the Egyptian ladies and King Tut
So no problems there! (And for the record, if you want to know, I’m a POC myself - Mexican American!)
Is it me, or do Penny’s headless ladies, here, look more like a backup chorus or decorative dancers than -idunno- characters.
[And for the record, I’m whiter than mayonnaise. If I don’t point out problematic white!folk things, who will?]
As I said, I am waiting for more material before going on a full-bodied rant about Hollywood Whitewashing.
Will they mention Tut’s wife, Ankusenamun(sp?)? Or at least lampshade the joke that a blonde white kid can successfully masquerade as an African Queen? Will this movie pass the Bechdel Test despite being primarily about another father/son relationship on the big screen.
Heck, will any of the POC kids in Shermans’ classroom have lines?
I have to wait and see.
Representation is important. Just ask all the folks who saw Nichelle Nichols play a ranking bridge officer in some kids’ show called Star Trek.