Those girls’ faces. The eyes that can’t believe it. Their smile when it turnsout to be true. A week or two ago, Disney showed a teaser of their newmovie, a remake of The little Mermaid , not a cartoon, but one with realpeople. Immediately after that went on TikTok videosviral that mothers made oftheir daughters watching themovie. “I think she’sbrown,” says oneI thinkshe’s not even four years old yet. Another, eight at most, is taken aback bybewilderment. “She’s brown, like me.” At about the same time, the hashtag#notmyariel came to life online, because there are always people who thinkthat Ariel should have red hair, white skin, and blue eyes, or green, purpleif necessary, but certainly not brown.
I had to think about it when I went to Talking about color watched, a seriesthat HUMAN broadcasts every evening this week. At an impossible time, wellafter noon, film and television makers talk to each other about diversity andrepresentation in their work. I translate that as: do we see color on ourscreens and if so, does that color match how people of color see themselves?In sets of two, a “color maker” and a “white maker” watch a film clip andthen, according to the broadcaster’s press release, “respectful exchanges takeplace.”
Actor Daniël Kolf showed actor Jacob Derwig a piece from The East , in whichtwo Dutch soldiers execute five Indonesians. Kolf thinks it’s great that the’black pages of history’ are now material for film makers. Jacob Derwig mustfirst admit that he thought it was quite a “masculine” film. Two female roles.bit parts. “One is a whore, the other a mother.” His eyes for the role ofwomen in theater or film only opened five years ago, he says. That was whenactress Jacqueline Blom damned to star in his adaptation of a play by Chekhov.Also in it: two female roles. A prostitute and a mother with little or notext.
They never see themselves on TV
The conversation between writer Manju Reijmer and Pieter Bart Korthuis onTuesday evening was overflowing with benevolence and mutual understanding. I’mnot saying that to be lame, but the people in this series already seemedpretty awake to me about where their blind spots are. That does not mean thatthe scales can still fall from your eyes. On Wednesday evening, culturalentrepreneur Hui Hui Pan and actress Jennifer Hoffman sat opposite each other.A piece was shown from beef funk, in which a Chinese meal delivery lady istaunted by a customer and keeps smiling silently. But this was a satiricalprogram anyway, the scene was meant to be cringe-inducing, it was a joke.That’s not the problem, says Hui Hui Pan. The problem, she says, is that thereis no counterpart to that image of that silent Asian woman who allowseverything. “I have three small children, they never see themselves on TV.”She used to wish herself blond hair and blue eyes, and now her daughter doesthat again, or: still.
And suddenly I was back at that ballet performance, at least sixteen yearsago, it was Christmas. In the main hall of the Muziektheater in Amsterdam,broken expensive tickets, packed hall. Sleeping Beauty, with all thetrimmings. One daughter next to me, the youngest of three on my lap. At firstshe loudly noted that there was no talking on stage. Stupid. Then SleepingBeauty came dancing on stage. Dead silence on my lap that I held for rapture.But it was utter amazement, or rather: disappointment. Her childish voice rangover the back of her heads. “Sleeping Beauty is Chinese.” And princesses mayhave hair as black as ebony, but the skin is always white. How easy is it tocolor those faces?