Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1021376
D E PA R T M E N T 25 KEYFRAME "Marvel's philosophy is our stories are characters who are just like you and who live outside your window, and so they should reflect the diversity of the world." - Cort Lane themed Moana immersed themselves in that culture. "The more you learn about the Polynesian culture, the more you realize how stereotypes have kind of undersold it," says David Derrick, who was on the story team, and has his own Samoan ancestors. "They had the largest cultural footprint of any culture prior to Western expansion … it was a culture defined not by how they lived on the land, but how they navigated from the islands." Research included hiring a choreographer to teach their staff the art of traditional tribal haka (or war dance)—even blessing artists in order to allow them to depict the dance—and debating with anthropologists and scholars on the potential anachronisms of their tribal characters' wardrobes and color palettes, but producer Osnat Shurer says they had a big ask for consultant Fiona Collins. The Samoan actress and playwright let the staff douse her with water so they could see how her long wavy black hair dried. THE PAST AND PRESENT Of course, these progressive attempts at representation are fairly new practices. It's a well-known fact that racism, sexism and other issues are shameful parts of animation's past—even if they were invoked in good faith at the time. Tom Sito, an animation historian and former Guild president, says just look at the 1943 Bob Clampett cartoon Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. He says there's no arguing that it's "unbelievably racist," even if Clampett was a huge jazz and swing music fan and was "doing his homage" to the people he idolized. Similarly, the Looney Tunes character Speedy Gonzales is cringe-worthy now. Sito says it came about in the 1950s and was made in tribute to Frank Gonzales, a ladies man in the Warner Bros. animation department who garnered the nickname because he could draw so fast that he could finish in time to flirt with the single women in the Ink and Paint department. left: A panel from the comic book inspiration of Marvel Rising's animated transformation. FALL 2018 25