Tag: Emi Sperber
‘Mira, Royal Detective’ and Celebrating Diversity and Community in the Time of Social Distancing
This was supposed to be a different kind of article.
Two weeks ago, The Nerds of Color youth correspondents and their parental units were invited to attend the premiere screening party for Disney Jr.’s landmark new animated series, Mira Royal Detective (premiering on Disney Jr. today in the United States and India) and interview the cast of voice actors from the South Asian diaspora on the red (or rather blue) carpet at Disney’s Burbank studios. It was a celebration of diversity and community, of difference and commonality, full of music and laughter, of children of all colors and artists and craftspeople from all parts of Hollywood joining together to marvel that this milestone of representation was finally on-screen.
On Mirrors, Doorways, and ‘Abominable’ Snowmen
As a multiracial Asian American parent raising multiracial Asian American daughters in a media landscape much different from the one in which I grew up, I often think about how the images and role models, both fictional and real, to which they have access may shape their imaginations, aspirations, and ideas of what is possible. The decades-long discourse around diversity, and the lack thereof, in children’s literature and media, often starts with the idea of the importance of mirrors in which children can see themselves, their worlds, and their life experiences reflected back to them, especially in the form of textual and multimedia representations both performed and created by people like them. But more and more, as my children get older and become able to both converse with texts as fans and critics and become creators and producers of texts in their own right, I find myself thinking about the need to go beyond reflective mirrors or even windows through which different possibilities may be glimpsed. We need doorways through which we can step to create new realities. This may seem a slight distinction, but it’s one whose importance I’m learning from my children day by day.
Continue reading “On Mirrors, Doorways, and ‘Abominable’ Snowmen”
‘Andi Mack,’ Children’s Television, and a Future in Full Color
A lot of people of color of my generation who are passionate about diversity and representation in the media tend to point to the media we consumed as children as the reason why — to the absences, omissions, and misrepresentations, and to the token presences we latched onto like lifelines. Today, our childhood experiences are ever-present motivators in our lives as fans, consumers, and creators in our own right, trying to redress past wrongs by ensuring the existence of the mirrors, windows, and doorways we were denied years before.
As a father watching contemporary media aimed at kids, tweens, and teens with my own tween and teen daughters, I’m slowly getting the hopeful feeling that their future will be different — or, if it isn’t, there will be hell to pay. That’s not to say that there isn’t vast room for improvement — we haven’t solved it, not by a long shot — but the energy, the diversity, the mere and sheer presence in the media world with which my children interact and which they take for granted as normal is so far from what we grew up with, and so close to what we wish the media landscape at large looked like, that I can’t help but be a little optimistic.
Continue reading “‘Andi Mack,’ Children’s Television, and a Future in Full Color”
‘Smallfoot’ Layers Fun with Deep Thoughts; Common, Gina Rodriguez Talk Art and Activism
What if, instead of humans not believing in Bigfoot or the Abominable Snowman, it was the other way around? That’s the surface premise of Warner Brothers Animation’s Smallfoot, opening September 28, and if the humor inherent in that flip-the-script premise, plus amazing computer animation, a star-studded voice cast, and a bunch of songs by Broadway veterans, weren’t enough to make this the rare family film that family members of all ages can actually enjoy together, it gets a little deep, too.