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The comic may be a joke, but I feel like this is an issue in diversity.
Take an author who has three characters. They want better representation, so one white character becomes black.
But, it turns out that character gives a third-act betrayal. Now it’s playing up the theme that black people are deceptive and untrustworthy.
Or, they try making the second character a woman. In a key conflict, that character pulls a very stupid move that lets the bad guys get away and results in an exciting chase scene. Now it evokes the idea that women are stupid and ill-suited to detective/enforcement work.
I really want a world where we can safely set up characters for moments of failure, evil, etc, without large crowds either feeling offended, feigning offense, or worse, taking it as validation of their bigotry.
Weirdly, there’s a relevant XKCD that summarizes this really quite well:
when hasnt there been a relevant xkcd 😂
The movie Tallulah, I watched it completely hungover and one thing I noticed is that there is only 1 guy in the movie and he solves EVERYTHING by just being the only rational person. There’s a lot of things happening between all the girls in the movie but there is one angle where it really looks like “girls crazy, man rational”
I don’t get why it’s always assumed that a particular character is intended to represent an entire gender or race.
One of the ones I remember the most is in the original COD4: Modern Warfare. A blog highlighted so savagely the fact that your squad is sent down to rescue a female chopper pilot who’s been downed and wounded. Then, a nuke goes off, killing everyone, suggesting they could have gotten out of the blast radius if they didn’t save her - meaning a woman in distress was the death of the whole squad. The blog lambasted Infinity Ward for giving such a horrible treatment to the game’s only major female character.
Of course, that’s a relatively disingenuous interpretation. That same mission has you rescuing whole squads of pinned soldiers moments before (all men). The chopper pilot gets her great moments of heroism in the process. And it’s very likely the writers intended for the squad to be killed by a nuke no matter what happens.
And there have probably been COD games out there with NO notable women in them. So somehow, the move to include one in this particular game struck them as worse than if they’d done nothing at all.
That’s crazy. She was a woman combat helicopter pilot? That sounds pretty bad-ass to me. I don’t see how that’s “horrible treatment”.
COD is disgusting imperial propaganda. Absolutely zero surprise that it’s also misogynist.
Sounds more like the player that wrote the article is a misogynist, not the game.
If you’re saving dudes and the last rescue is a woman and you use that as a sign of misogyny, that says more about the speaker than the game.
I think his point was that it WASN’T misogynist. The character is a combat helicopter pilot. That means she’s intelligent, highly trained and skilled and of course brave. Those are bad things?
The fact that she was shot down doesn’t reflect on her gender, it could happen to any pilot in that situation. It’s war, it’s inherently dangerous.
I really want a world where we can safely set up characters for moments of failure, evil, etc, without large crowds either feeling offended, feigning offense, or worse, taking it as validation of their bigotry.
It’s a real Heads-I-Win / Tails-You-Lose game, because the White Male Anti-Hero gets the exact opposite treatment. If you make a Sopranos or a Wolf of Wall Street or a Fight Club, the very obviously corrupt and villainous lead character somehow ends up being this celebrity icon for reactionaries.
The same people complaining that John Boyega and Daisy Ridley ruined Star Wars will come out cheering for Adam Driver while claiming Imperialism is cool now.
Anything that makes a story exciting or different - the ups and downs of the story arc, characters with personal flaws or quirks, foreign settings and distinct cultures, non-English languages, non-CisHet romances - become at once implicit indictments of the out groups and charming complements toward the in-groups.
And a lot of that just boils down to the critics themselves. Far-right media amplifying its megaphone year after year, until we’re deaf from their screamed opinions. There’s no right answer for a film maker or story writer when the designated state-sanctioned censors and corporate flaks are all patriarchal white nationalists.
I really want a world where we can safely set up characters for moments of failure, evil, etc, without large crowds either feeling offended, feigning offense, or worse, taking it as validation of their bigotry.
Yes, the world would be much better without racism, sexism, etc. That’s why we resist.
I don’t know if resistance should be restricting creative freedom to the point where every character MUST be considered a representation of millions of people.
That’s less equality and more just a new form of racially-based control.
Yeah this tends to also create the problem a lot of writers fall into when having a more diverse cast where non white cis male characters come off as too perfect. They can’t make mistakes, big or small, cause they’re worried about the examples you gave (not saying you’re implying this). I know I’ve heard from a lot of people on the topic of representation that they’d loveless perfect representation, but that’s a hard thing to walk especially if funds aren’t allocated to maybe get a consultant on the team that could help represent that group without it being stereotyped.
Great movie for describing the reality of “entrepreneurship”.
Fuck them puppies I need morh money
Also didn’t Cruella employ two career criminals and literally stole the puppies and even complained that there were cops all over the place looking for her and her two stupid henchmen?
Yeah, sounds like capitalism to me
Yeah theft is illegal under capitalism.
Capitalism is theft.
It’s only illegal for you because you’re not in the owner class.
Capitalism is theft.
Grow the fuck up, dude.
It’s only illegal for you because you’re not in the owner class.
No, stealing 101 puppies is not “legal” if you’re rich. Fucking embarrassing.
Grow the fuck up, dude.
Oh, I have. Maybe try reading a book.
No, stealing 101 puppies is not “legal” if you’re rich. Fucking embarrassing.
Oh hey look wat 3 seconds on google found me: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/george-santos-puppy-theft-charge-from-2017-resurfaces
Dude literally stole a bunch of puppies (among like a thousand awful things), and is now out free.
lmao oh precious child.
Spare me your fake condescension covering your utter lack of argument.
Stealing people’s property is illegal. Prove otherwise.
THIS. Honestly.
I wouldn’t call her entrepreneurially minded. She fully intended just to make a single coat and keep it herself. If she were intending on making it a business, she should have been setting up a Dalmatian farm with the 101 puppies and then mass produce the coats. Inbreeding health defects don’t matter all that much when you’re just gonna be skinning any puppies born within weeks.
Ah, a player of Dwarf Fortress.
Or Rimworld
Gotta genocide anybody who opposes… That’s real entrepreneurship.
The most shocking thing in this comment section is that there are people here who think the Emma Stome remake was “excellent”.
No wonder Hollywood keeps getting away with making slop.
Cruella DeVille, Cruella DeVille,
If she doesn’t scare you,
No evil thing will!
She is one of the best movie baddies, and her name is marvellous.
I recently rewatched the original and had forgotten just how well they portray her evil. Even as an adult I was actively repulsed the same way I would be if I met her in real life. Classic Disney definitely had some incredible villain writing.
I haven’t seen the movie since I was a kid, but I did rewatch clips of it and she does genuinely come off as an extremely unpleasant person.
You might even say that she’s somewhat cruel.
The cartoon or the live action
Cartoon is the one I rewatched. I remember the old live action also being good though.
Glenn Close is flawless and Horace and Jasper are played by the Weasley father and Dr. House. Names escape me today
Glenn Close played it flawlessly.
Didn’t they make one recently where they tried to spin the villain solely known for turning puppies into purses as good?
Yep and they do that by making it not even believably the same character.
They explore an alternate story. Sometimes they do that and explore fun scenarios like “what if Cruella DeVil was a somewhat decent person” or “what if all the heroes lived together and operated a magical ghetto and also brought their enemies back from the dead specifically so they could force them to live in squalor in the ghetto forever”. Fun little alternate stories.
Sorry, which movie is that second one?
The Descendants series. The setting is basically as I described, except of course that the ghetto is heavily romanticized and the squalor mostly amounts to people having a vaguely punk aesthetic (as opposed to the preppy good guy kingdom). They’re Disney movies for kids, after all, but they do acknowledge that their own setting is fucked up.
The premise of the story is that someone realizes that the villains had kids in there and that punishing the kids for their parents’ misdeeds might possibly be kind of cruel so a few of them are selected to attend school in the good guy kingdom as an experiment. This results in a lot of choreographed song and dance routines, a romance plot, and some semi-self aware criticism of the “villains get punished harshly, heroes live happily ever after” trope.
The first one was pretty decent, the sequels were okay even if they effectively sidelined three of the four protagonists. They also made an animated series, which was a complete dumpster fire.
Right, I saw the first 2 movies (there’s 3 right?). They just completely slipped my mind.
I’m struggling to see the link between that and 101 Dalmatians.
The link is “Disney movie that recycles old characters in ways that have very little to do with their original story or characterization”.
It’s probably how the real Cruela would tell her backstory, making herself the victim
I think the real cruella would be too proud to make a sobstory about how much of a victim she is. She’s the kind of narc who would brag and totally own how awful she is because in her mind, she’s not doing anything bad and she’s the best and coolest person ever.
In the original animated version, sure. Because that version had good writing, especially for villains.
Most well written villains are unapologetic and just naturally evil. They know they’re evil and they don’t care. For some reason, most movies nowadays (particularly Disney) now insist on their villains having some tragic backstory and thinking they’re good
I blame Maleficent for that trend starting, lol. At least it was kind of and interesting new take on the old movie even if the movie wasn’t all that good. Considering what it helped spawn, though… urgh xD
I also disagree with your take on well written villains. A well written villain can totally believe itself to be a big victim who is in denial about how evil they are. The well written part comes in the form of exploring what can lead a person to become a villain and how that can relate to ourselves. Joker is a great example of one such movie. The entire film he wallows in self pity and justifies to himself the hurt he causes others. It works because he is so relateable and a lot of people who watch that film will be able to draw parallels to their own dark periods in their life. Where most of us differ from Joker is that we aren’t narcissistic psychopaths who justify hurting others in order to feel seen. I sure as shit have been in a mentally pitch black place in my life that Joker dragged me straight back into when I first saw it in cinemas. The movie made me deeply appreciate the strength I had back then to get through all that shit without listening to those dark thoughts of wanting to take it out on others like mean comments or stuff like that. Joker was a reminder of what I could have become if I had been weak and that is what makes the movie so good.
The Disney remakes are ironically enough a lot more sinister than Joker - which caught so much undeserved hate that the director went back and made a sequel to trash the first movie. The Disney Remakes what take the Maleficent route flat out just takes the side of the sadistic sociopath in question and basically justifies all their crimes and blames the world for how they turned out. That is why they suck. It’s not because they feel sorry for themselves and don’t own their villainous nature. It’s because the script, studio and director forces the message of “cruella didn’t do nothing”. The point of view that we as viewers are encouraged to sympathize with is the delusional view of a vulnerable narcissist. And Personally, I find that incredibly sinister. It has happened so often in movies lead by Disney these past many years that I have stopped thinking it is incompetence and more so have started to believe it is by design. Not that the big evil plan is to make us sympathize with evil bad people. I just believe that the actual talents in disney have been weeded out by bullies and the bullies have replaced them as writers. But the bullies have no talent, no ability to write from a larger scope with wisdom, curiosity and a will to enrich children and young adults with good storytelling. The people at the helm are money grubbing psychopaths and they can only write what they see in the mirror, so all we get are fiercely unlikable, selfabsorbed and empty characters who are great at everything and any pushback against them is a sin.
I also disagree with your take on well written villains. A well written villain can totally believe itself to be a big victim who is in denial about how evil they are.
Please note that I said “Most well written villains”. I wasn’t trying to speak in absolutes.
fair enough. :D
Gotta make content for new fascist taking over America. Everybody else will be in the famous American prison system in a short while, no need to make content for them.
Cruella was excellent, in my opinion of course 😁
Yeah and it’s pretty good I thought. Shits on the old story but I care not.
The movie itself is excellent. However there is one horrible almost meme like scene where dalmatians run into a fancy party and kill Cruella’s mother. If you ignore that scene, it’s a great movie.
It might actually be a good thing that they made the dalmatians seem very mean/vicious.
The original movies were so popular that it actually caused a big problem for the breed. Many people got dalmatians without doing their research first. They’re a very active breed, and require lots of exercise. Without proper exercise and socialization, they can become quite the trouble makers and this kind of gave them a bad reputation…
Without proper exercise and socialization, they can become quite the trouble makers
that’s pretty much true of any dog… but I guess dalmatians even more so?
Not really “more so” just “more likely to become” as the minimum requirements are higher and thus easier to fail to meet.
This is something Christi Noem would say about 101 Dalmatians….
Just 100 Dalmatians for her
You miss 101% of the shots you don’t take.
same with Ursula
I understand their liking of her. Ursula basically makes a living taking advantage of insecure and/or highly vulnerable people and giving them extremely disadvantageous contracts and approaching them in their most vulnerable moment.
In short, she is everything what every grifter is to a T.
I like how the recent movies had Cruella step on another villain-coded woman to get to the top.
How else are you going to do another pre-prequel where we find out the villain-coded woman of that movie was herself just a strong female and a product of harsh circumstances?
I’m so glad that I haven’t met a single person who’d say that. Cause it seems so specific, almost nonexistent.
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