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Perspective 1: Authors like Joyce who don’t value making or keeping POC representation

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William Joyce made or approved changes to Toothiana’s character, including removing her cultural context, likely because he didn’t see the importance of her heritage while making the film. Moreover, taking away her background is a form of cultural erasure, as detaching her from race fits within Western culture. When film adaptations fall short of the source material, many authors may claim they had no hand in the film. For Rise of the Guardians, it could be easy to explain away Toothiana’s Eurocentricity by claiming Joyce had not made the character changes. However, in his interview with MediaMikes, he explained that he “also worked as the executive producer, so [he] collaborated on all aspects of the film[, including d]esign, story, and casting” (Joyce). His emphasis on “all aspects of the film” shows that he made a lot of the choices, especially the ones that were changed for Toothiana of “[d]esign” and “story.” Of course, his use of “collaborate” shows that he was not the only one making decisions, but he still had the final say. Authors may also claim that it may be very challenging to cut down a book series to fit an adaptation, but this only explains the erasure of Toothiana’s background, and not the changes to her design. Making her easier to animate does not make the run time shorter, and there are ways to make her animator-friendly without desecrating her cultural heritage. Because her lore had also been cut, her physical differences were completely erased, leaving the last aspect of her heritage. This distance from her South Asian race reflects a greater distance from race as a whole, which is strengthened by her separation from humanity in the films. Authors may also claim that it is very challenging to condense a book series for an adaptation, but this only explains the erasure of her background, not the changes to her design. Her physical design differences are deeper than just a change in animation, as cutting her lore completely erases the last aspect of her heritage. Furthermore, removing “the characters’ contexts reveal a lot about how the cultural imperatives of whiteness as it is wedded with neutrality provide a mechanism for readers to ignore elements that do not reflect and affirm their lived experiences” (Nasara 240). So, removing her cultural history aligns with and teaches white readers that cultures that are not their own are irrelevant. The word “imperatives” means ‘duties’, which implies that continuing whiteness is seen as a duty for white authors. Additionally, using “wedded” shows that whiteness is combined with neutrality to the point where they become synonymous.

I added these images because they were the depictions I had in my head when hearing the word “wedded” used to connect those two. The first image is one that came up when searching for a wedding picture with no cultural or racial characteristics attached. This shows me that weddings between a white couple are the typical example in America when talking about weddings. Additionally, having a white dress as a “neutral” or pure colour is a Western custom. This practice is why I added the second picture of an Indian wedding to show that not all cultures use white dresses or follow the West, which is why Western couples should not be the forefront example. I argue that when race seems to be invisible, it simply means that it has been replaced by Anglo-American values so normalised that they have been looked past. And, by taking away Toothiana’s “context,” she has been labelled as white by default, highlighting that whiteness becomes a baseline to a problematic extent. So, by taking away the fact that Toothiana was born and raised by South Asian parents in a village in the Himalayas, her culture has been erased. This cultural erasure is due to William Joyce's choices, even if he was not the sole decision-maker.

#perspective 1 #one of the perspectives #rise of the guardians #rotg #guardians of childhood #toothiana

Perspective 1: Authors like Joyce who don’t value making or keeping POC representation

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Though Eurocentric authors may want to shield kids from learning or experiencing racial discrimination, this often means not writing about race, which is counterproductive, as kids are bound to be introduced to such topics. Additionally, when not writing about race, whiteness as a default becomes even clearer and more problematic when rooted in history. Many authors, especially those who are parents like Joyce, may believe in not talking about race or racism in children’s literature to protect kids from deep topics. However, all children will encounter race and culture at some point in their lives. Children of colour may also encounter racism earlier, whereas white children will first encounter white privilege, which the author Nasara is reviewing attests to (Nasara 241). Because of this nature of society, it’s clear that “encountering painful situations [around race] is inevitable” and even if ““[r]acist texts can inflict real psychic damage on children of all races,… the child who is a member of the targeted group sustains deeper wounds than the child who is not”” (Nasara 242-3). The phrase “of all races” ties back to the testament earlier from Philip Nel, who Nasara is analysing, that even white children will encounter the unpleasant side of race. The decision to use “targeted” shows that eliminating culture “targets” people instead of being some blameless, harmless act. Using “targets” also creates a victim and perpetrator narrative, where those that hid race are "targeting" those whose race is hidden. So, by eliminating race, authors are not erasing racism, but in fact, reinstating it in a new way. This subtle racism may also persist in the erasure of a community’s history. Joyce’s story, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, is set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and centres on a white character witnessing the restoration of New Orleans (Nasara 243). Because of this white main character, “the story of how black people experienced the hurricane is absent, and the story is changed to one that suggests New Orleans has always been a predominantly white community. This distortion in the retelling of history is one way that black characters are rendered invisible or whitewashed in children’s books” (Nasara 244). The issue with this book is not as simple as choosing to highlight how white people experienced the hurricane or how black people were completely “absent” from experiencing the hurricane. By making the white character the main or only example, it implies the reason black people were “absent” was because they didn’t experience the hurricane enough to become the representative example. This “retell[s],” or frames the narrative of the hurricane differently, thus implying that the community that experienced this hurricane was a “predominantly white community.” The use of the word “absent” is also meaningful due to its double meaning of missing from a place and non-existent everywhere. Though this word may seem to only be used in the first way, I argue that using “absent” to mean non-existent ties back to how not mentioning race explicitly erases the representation of racial minorities. Additionally, this equivocation of “New Orleans” and “predominantly white community” is so starkly untrue that it points out how unusual it is that The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is centred on a white character.

This picture of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina depicts a group of people waiting in line for a shelter. I felt this photograph was a good representation of the local communities in New Orleans affected by the hurricane. I also liked that it showed a large group, which makes it less likely that the photo was simply cherry-picking one racial group. It shows a diverse demographic, including people of many races, making it clear that the community was not all white. This “distortion in the retelling of history” has also occurred in The Guardians of Childhood, erasing the South Asian roots of Tooth’s hometown of Punjam Hy Loo. So, Joyce's removal of history and culture in his other stories reveals a pattern in his works that I argue is present in The Guardians of Childhood towards Toothiana. In The Fantastic Flying Books, the white main character implies that New Orleans itself has always been a predominantly white community, rather than a vague location with a vague history that pretends to be detached from race. Toothiana's Punjam Hy Loo rides a thin line between these two, being a fictional place with history only established in Joyce's lore, unlike New Orleans, which has centuries of history that is "ret[old]." However, with an explicitly stated location of the Himalayas and plenty of ties to Hindu and Buddhist mythology, I think erasing all of these references rewrites Punjam Hy Loo to be a place of a "predominantly white community" instead of one that was deeply centred on South Asia. This twisting of history connects to how some Western authors avoid race to keep children’s literature neutral, but it is often unrealistic, as kids will eventually be forced to confront their community history and racial background.

#perspective 1 #one of the perspectives #rise of the guardians #rotg #guardians of childhood #toothiana