<b>Film: Kirikou and the Sorceress ("Kirikou et la sorciere" I think)</b>
French animation based on an East African traditional narrative. Very beautiful, with very beautiful characters (I'm not just talking about the character designs, but the personalities as well). And traditional.
Inspiring and will promote intelligence, kindness and heroism in adults and kids. Nice also to see African faces in animations, and characters of all ages too. And of course it has a lovely heroic and romantic storyline.
Meanwhile, apparently Disney is coming out with a story about an African-American princess. They skipped African people (even though they did an African setting at least twice: Lion King about African lions and Tarzan about a British man and his Gorilla family.)
This new African-American princess is placed in the "jazz age".... (I didn't know there was royalty in the US let alone any African-American kind). And the Jazz 'age'? Wasn't the jazz period the times when African-Americans were only to be seen and heard - heard singing and playing instruments for the amusement of the settler population - but they were stictly <i>not</i> to be associated with? You'd always have these clubs where Africans were performers and American settlers would be dancing or lounging, yet while Africans were allowed to <i>perform</i>, they weren't allowed in as part of the <i>audience</i> <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo--> Christologic: always made to play the servants, in this case, their role was to entertain with their superb music.
Maybe the Disney cartoon will conveniently skim past the racism of that time and pretend the rest of the nasty stuff back then never happened (US is good at falsifying its history). Is it supposed to make little African-American girls feel better to imagine things were better when reality wasn't.
But what would really make the kids/adults feel good is <b>Kirikou</b>. Recommended! It's been dubbed in English as well.
French animation based on an East African traditional narrative. Very beautiful, with very beautiful characters (I'm not just talking about the character designs, but the personalities as well). And traditional.
Inspiring and will promote intelligence, kindness and heroism in adults and kids. Nice also to see African faces in animations, and characters of all ages too. And of course it has a lovely heroic and romantic storyline.
Meanwhile, apparently Disney is coming out with a story about an African-American princess. They skipped African people (even though they did an African setting at least twice: Lion King about African lions and Tarzan about a British man and his Gorilla family.)
This new African-American princess is placed in the "jazz age".... (I didn't know there was royalty in the US let alone any African-American kind). And the Jazz 'age'? Wasn't the jazz period the times when African-Americans were only to be seen and heard - heard singing and playing instruments for the amusement of the settler population - but they were stictly <i>not</i> to be associated with? You'd always have these clubs where Africans were performers and American settlers would be dancing or lounging, yet while Africans were allowed to <i>perform</i>, they weren't allowed in as part of the <i>audience</i> <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo--> Christologic: always made to play the servants, in this case, their role was to entertain with their superb music.
Maybe the Disney cartoon will conveniently skim past the racism of that time and pretend the rest of the nasty stuff back then never happened (US is good at falsifying its history). Is it supposed to make little African-American girls feel better to imagine things were better when reality wasn't.
But what would really make the kids/adults feel good is <b>Kirikou</b>. Recommended! It's been dubbed in English as well.