/ᐠ - ˕ -マ

23 | they/he | queer + disabled | scotland #1 frederik vesti defender | i like birds

[unbotheredmuse]

[barbiehelmet]

the zendaya thing isnt even a new phenomenon by any means!! the article mentions margot robbie wearing the taj mahal diamond as well, and in addition to that i also want to remind people that diljit dosanjh's request to wear the patiala necklace for the 2025 met gala was denied by cartier because they said it was in a museum and could not be loaned. however they had no issues at all loaning it to emma chamberlain, a white woman, for the 2022 met gala, while they turned down the request of a punjabi man who wanted it to honor his heritage.

this behavior is nothing new. the global south and everything in it - the people, the culture, our heritage - is seen as nothing more than a decoration or commodity to colonizers. i don't even need to bring up the koh i noor or the entire british museum; these examples are recent and egregious enough on their own.

of course this is not to imply that any of the people involved here - zendaya, margot robbie, or emma chamberlain - had any sort of malicious intentions. but the ignorance is just as bad in my opinion. the ignorance is just as harmful, if not more. because it means we are not even an afterthought. it means that the real people and histories and heritages of the global south do not even register when these people are putting together looks for their movie premiers and met gala appearances. everything is just reduced down to a shiny piece of jewelry whose history they need not bother with. it's just a continued reminder of the way colonization affects us all even long after independence, of how barely-healed wounds keep being reopened even decades later. even now, we are being denied connections to our histories and heritages while they are freely being given out to those that have nothing to do with it and don't care for it. and i'm sick of it.

[thewickedbohemian]

I know how we can stop it, have some decently-popular urban-fantasy-y series (like first thing I thought of was The Librarians: The Next Chapter because I'm me though I'm not sure if it's popular enough) do an episode where some fictional star pulls that stunt at a premiere with something they don't know has powers-or-at-least-a-curse-on-it (perhaps that episode could even fulfill the trope with the regular ensemble of contrived-excuse-for-formalwear-esp.-if-done-while-sorta-undercover-and/or-means-contrived-excuse-for-ship-dancing-together) and chaos ensues that the heroes have to clean up the mess of, especially if the artifact in this story could be from some culture considered exotic enough to play on certain prejudices within the potentially-viewing-demographic this is trying to reach to make them scared without having it be too exotic that it makes it problematic or at least boxes casting into a corner over who you cast as the fictional actress to not have an even worse problem

As for why, well, if I could find a gif of it easily I'd cite that Parks & Rec line about how white people love Matchbox 20 and are terrified of curses if I wouldn't feel racially weird about citing that if it wouldn't be a Native artifact (that's why it matters that it'd have to be a reasonably popular series to give it a platform) so prejudices we sadly haven't extinguished could make actors too afraid of magical blowback to do it again

[barbiehelmet]

are you implying that people stealing from the global south will only stop if they watch a hypothetical movie? that the only incentive to stop stealing our shit is to imply it's cursed?? how about maybe people stop stealing from the global south because it's fucking evil to do so?

[thewickedbohemian]

Leaving aside how I was talking about a TV episode not a movie I wasn't saying they would only stop if they watched it in that sense nor was I talking about the broad trend of anyone stealing from the global south in any sense I was saying if nothing else works (though ideally something else should but ideally yada yada they wouldn't be doing this thing in the first place) we can scare the crap out of if not stars who otherwise would wear artifacts like this to premieres at least enough of their fanbases by taking advantage of sadly-currently-existing prejudices and superstitions (hence why my "hypothetical movie" as you put it would attach some kind of negative supernatural consequences to wearing such a thing) to motivate them as fiction can get people scared of things they otherwise wouldn't be even if it isn't portraying realistic consequences, y'know, how many people were turned off AI by Terminator

[barbiehelmet]

i genuinely don't even know what to say to this. what makes you think the idea of artifacts from the global south being cursed - which is an insanely gross concept to begin with, we're people too, our shit isn't cursed and our cultures and heritages were not "alien" or "other" in any way - is enough to stop the greed and imperialism of the people i've described in my original post?

i think you really need to examine your response to my post, which is about the bone deep exhaustion that this sort of injustice brings to people of the global south. i want you to think about why you thought "we should have a tv episode about a celeb wearing a cursed artifact from an 'exotic but not too exotic' culture, that'll scare 'em straight!" is any kind of solution at all, or why it would be a valuable addition to a post addressing a deeply pervasive issue (that is, the dehumanization of the people of the global south and the systematic looting carried out of our cultures and heritages which we are prevented from connecting to even in the modern age while people who have nothing to do with those cultures have access to them). even the example you've given - people being turned off AI by the terminator movies - is not a good one considering how pervasive AI is. a movie or tv episode about cursed artifacts won't do shit to stop people from looting us. it's frankly ridiculous to think it would and it makes me think you're not approaching the topic with the gravity it deserves. this situation is not fodder for a tv show. it's a real thing happening to real people. there is a history here. please try to respect that, and if you cannot, then at the very least think about the responses you leave on others' posts.

[l-ile]

[gremlininho]

looking. at you

[oscunt]

tumblr needs a "i love my mutuals and i don't wanna unfollow any of you but if you put that man on my dashboard i'm gonna have to kill both of us" button that i can press after every race and undo it monday morning

[dimecordero]

and fuck charles leclerc and his dog too

[telemarcs]

100 000 people gather in Oslo to welcome the Norwegian team home 🇳🇴

📷: nrk

[telemarcs]

Since people are reblogging this i want to say they adjusted the number of people to be around 157 000 🥹

[maqpiesfc]

[pridehelmet]

watching messi crying on loop. actually blessed i hate him so much.

[princemick]

oh my god

[princemick]

it got worse... somehow

[p8dris]

they treat trump like a make a wish kid

[pridehelmet]

please show m*ssi crying please please.

[pridehelmet]

LETS GO!!!!

[pridehelmet]

please show m*ssi crying please please.

[p8dris]

all this performative bollocks about 'love' and the world being one as if they haven't been killing people in every corner of the planet and keeping people in concentration camps

[p8dris]

"the best part was when they finished" the first and last time i'm agreeing with wayne rooney

[wickedthing]

legend ⭐🐧💙

[pridehelmet]

tough luck 😭😭 & he never tags kimi. this man can’t stand mercedes