(concept art by Scott Watanabe)
With all the promo stuff about Disney's upcoming animated film Wish, I can't help but think about Raya and the Last Dragon again. I spent a year intensively researching things about that movie and the discourse surrounding it for a series of videos on Xiran Jay Zhao's channel, and oh boy did that reveal a lot about the current way we talk about cultural representation in casual media criticism.
Lately we've grown a habit of looking at signifiers to culture, things like a cultural dish, a nod to a martial arts style, a piece of clothing, maybe a hairstyle, a weapon and so on, and then projecting a bunch of intentions onto the work regardless of authorial intent. I witnessed this a bunch of times in discussions surrounding Raya and the Last Dragon.
You basically get a bunch of 4d chess-style justifications for the lazy implementation of culture in Raya.
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The movie will do something like make the leaders of the villain nation women, and people immediately assumed it was some kind of bespoke reference to Minangkabau matriarchical society.
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the art book of Raya specifically stated that they purposely misplaced things as a stylistic fantasy choice "we could take something that is known and place it in an unexpected location, like coral in the desert and cacti in the snow". But when people saw a water buffalo placed in the desert they assumed it was some super clever environmental story decision.
The movie will tell you it includes things like Borobudur, Angkor wat, Keris, and most people will take their word for it without hesitation. Never mind that Southeast Asians could barely recognize these nods to our culture through how amalgamated the designs are.
(early concept art by Scott Watanabe)
Moving forward, I think we need to talk less about "what" parts of a culture are being represented in these movies, and more about HOW they're being included, we need to ask:
What is this piece of media's relationship with the cultures it represents?
Because Raya and the Last Dragon is not a cultural movie, it's a monolith film pitched and written by white people and a Mexican director with 2 SEA writers added later in production to avoid backlash. Culture serves the purpose of aesthetic set dressing in the film, as opposed to something that informs its themes and characters.
This is what happens when a corporation tries to put representational value on a shallow aesthetic. Because of the way Disney constantly marketed Raya as this big authentic cultural film, it primes its audience to read cultural intention in the most benign details. And when we get lost in the details, we lose sight of the bigger picture.
Contextualizing Cultural media criticism
We need to start demanding more context in our analysis. The next time we see a reference to culture in media we consume, take a step back and ask what purpose it serves in the narrative. And most importantly!! What Is Its Relationship With The Culture It Represents? We shouldn't just accept things at face value.
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through what lens is this cultural dish and its spicy flavors being presented to us? Are the customs surrounding the food being respected?
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If martial arts or dance is represented, how is it translated in the adaptation? Are you getting generic hollywood-fu or are you seeing specific movements with purpose and motivation? Are the philosophies or spiritual contexts of these traditions present in the text?
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Are the clothing, hairstyles, and presentation of the characters being de-yassified through a colonial filter? Is the non-conformity of the cultures' different framework for gender presentation being adjusted to fit a more recognizable binary?
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If language is present, what role does it serve? Is it presented as other through being exclusively used by villainous beings? Is it being made a monolith as one "non-English" language?
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is this temple actually a place of worship or is it just a set piece for a goddang Indiana jones booby trap action fight sequence
This way, instead of unquestionably defending a piece of media because a character wore a traditional outfit one time, or because some characters took their shoes off at a temple, or because there were Arnis sticks in that one fight scene, we can approach the text with a more nuanced and holistic understanding of how culture informs narrative.
