hope you don’t mind me butting in
the actress has spoken against the Hong Kong protests and supports the HK police which
well
let’s just say police brutality is a worldwide issue
3 Likes
No worries, I don’t mind. I just wanted to know so thanks telling me.
1 Like
alright i have some more time so i can actually state my opinion on this
i have not watched this movie, and i don’t think i will
as @/WritingWithStars said, the fact that Disney supported the government officials who have put people in concentration camps and who are… well to put it bluntly committing crimes against humanity… yeah that puts me off, and i do not want to give them any money for doing that
now, this raises an interesting point:
yes, it’s important to separate the art from the artist
but there’s a difference when it’s like Lovecraft or Conan Doyle (both racists) who are dead, compared to supporting someone (or a company) that is actively gaining money from their sh*tty actions like Disney with this movie (or miss terfling, if you may)
if they are alive and actively gaining something from people consuming their things, things that are actively hurting others?
that’s where i say people should not, under any circumstances, support them, since doing it is being (if unknowingly) complicit with their misdeeds and it’s passively adding to the hurt that people are suffering by their hands
3 Likes
This is my own opinion, not the opinion of the ShanniiWrites Forums!
Alright, I’ve got to say my part now. Yes, the area the movie was filmed in was a poor choice indeed. It is unfortunate what is going on in that region with the camps. I didn’t know the actress agreed with the Chinese Police during the riots, but I also have to say this. We can easily say it’s a bad situation since we don’t live there, which is different for people who live there. We are looking into this from an outsider’s point of view. It’s a very different situation than we have no experience of understanding fully. I’m not justifying what she said or what Disney did by crediting and filming in a controversial area. Now. I need to say this part because it seems people are overlooking that not everyone feels the same way about movies and real-world crises. You can’t expect people to stop watching or supporting a movie they like just because it goes against your morals. You’re basically saying stop reading that Harry Potter book because it’s a blasphemy that has magic in it. The more you start accusing people of being complicit in the horrible acts being made, is not helping your case!?! You are basically pushing away the people you are trying to convince when you say stuff like that! Not everyone has to go by your rule of morals if it makes them feel like they are being forced to do so! Disney is known for not making accurately portrayed movies. That is nothing new. Remember, the Chinese audience hated the original Mulan as well. The fact we are even debating on this subject shows the different ways we all think. As I had stated before on another thread when this subject was brought up, you can’t force your opinions on people. You can rip apart everything I’ve said, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are hurting your own case when you insult the people who watch the movie by telling them they are complicit in the crime. That’s not right at all. It’s actually very disrespectful because you make the person feel like their opinion doesn’t matter. After all, it goes against your opinion. Go ahead attack what I just said. It doesn’t change the facts.
This is also my own opinion, I’m speaking for myself, not anyone else.
It is a bad situation, confirmed by those who live there themselves as people have spoken out about the Hong Kong riots. Although we don’t need to live there to understand that. I only learnt about Disney’s link to the concentration camps through this thread but the idea of concentration camps in itself should indicate how severe the matter is. Even if these were simply allegations, these are serious allegations and for a company like Disney, with such a young and easily influenced target audience, to be wrapped up with that is frankly disgusting.
We can still understand and sympathise with situations without experiencing them first hand, this is empathy. We are privileged outsiders, we are fortunate enough to not experience this kind of suffering which is why at the very least we shouldn’t enable it/turn a blind eye by supporting such productions. I’m not forcing anyone to not watch Mulan, pirate it or whatever, but acknowledge that by paying tickets for it you ARE supporting the company and it’s just enabling the company to not address these malicious actions.
You may ask how? Well, if they’re still making a lot of money after all of this, they’ll normalise it or at the very least never address it. Anyone is free to watch whatever movie they want but know by paying for Mulan you are giving your money, and indirectly supporting, a company that enables these controversies.
Just as we cannot help how others may not care, people also overlook how serious this is to some people. I can’t change other people’s opinion on it, if you don’t care, you don’t but we should downplay the severity of this just because these situations don’t directly affect us. We might not be able to stop such things from happening but at the very least we can take steps that show we do not support it.
You also can’t expect people to not try to educate others on this because it may not mean something to you but it could to them and many other people. Fair enough if it goes over your head and whatnot but raising awareness about this is important.
As I said, I don’t expect anything from everyone. But you can’t expect people to not criticise the production of the movie because yeah you got a cool movie in cinemas but at what cost? Yes people watch controversial movies often but they are controversial for a reason. The severity of what went on behind the production should not be downplayed just because we did not experience it first-hand or because we don’t live there or share the same morals. As my friend Cam often suggests, we don’t need a reason to care about other people. Once again it is up to people whether or not they support these movies but whether you care not, do not ignore what went on behind the scenes because it is what happened.
This is similar, I understand that people enjoyed the contents of Harry Potter for it was part of my childhood but that isn’t what people are implying and they’re not the same movie and circumstance. We can’t compare apples and oranges. And even though people enjoy Harry Potter, many people have stopped supporting JK Rowling, the author not the book. We are criticising the production not the contents of the movie. We are encouraging (NOT forcing) people to not give them money because these people will get PAID and ENABLED to allow these things to occur. Honestly, this is such a circumstantial thing you can’t really compare it to other controversies.
I’ve already explained why paying to watch Mulan = indirectly supporting the production. I’m not calling anyone a bloody criminal and saying they deserve to be punished, I don’t think anyone here is. I’m just explaining HOW this leads to supporting because people may think it is harmless but it’s not. Ultimately it’s their choice whether or not they watch the film after having this knowledge but it is important to pass on this knowledge. I don’t think anyone here is going to hunt down people who watch Mulan and personally attack them or anything but there’s nothing wrong with them saying “hey you know it’s not the best idea to support that film”. At the end of the day I can’t force you to care if you don’t but you can’t expect people to not be affected by people not caring about something like this. Because it’s sad that people think some things need to affect them directly to care. Sure, there’s plenty of people in the world that don’t but there’s plenty that do and if we can at least get some people to care then that’s a start for me.
I mean, I don’t think anyone is really forcing anyone but tbh if the problem with concentration camps and police beating people up isn’t self-explanatory then idek what to say. I guess I can’t make people who don’t care, care but there’s no way this should be normalised. Also, this is more than just controversial or problematic, as @Cam mentioned to me, it is downright awful and a human rights violation.
Apples and oranges yet again. That was culturally insensitive on Disney’s part and created in 1998. Cultural insensitivity is also an important topic but many people supported that movie without having the knowledge that it was. At least now we have more knowledge about the production and ultimately when we spend money on these movies the money goes into the producers’ pockets so yeah. We didn’t have the broad communication network back in 1998 where we could’ve learnt that it was offensive to Chinese culture. But this issue was brought up even years later, showing how important it was and though it wasn’t exactly resolved at least we took steps towards changing this.
It’s not a personal attack to say that someone is supporting a controversial movie when they are paying to watch it, it’s just a literal fact. No one ever called anyone names for doing so they just said it means you are supporting it. I didn’t say you are pro-concentration camps or supporting the police brutality in Hong Kong by doing so I’m saying you are financially, literally, supporting the cast and producers who are.
I mean hey, you can disagree with this. I’m not forcing you to agree with it but I can also put my opinion out there. I mean I’m not really trying to make a case? I’m not attacking anyone personally, these are just my beliefs. I don’t agree with supporting the movie but I’m not going to lose sleep over people who can’t see eye to eye with me or anything.
I’m not saying other people’s opinions don’t matter, just that we also have the right to disagree with this opinion just as how you disagreed with ours. It’s not disrespectful it’s just that we do not see eye to eye. The production of this movie seriously clashes with some of our morals and there is scientific research that proves people can experience mental distress when they witness something that goes against their morals/personal beliefs. So of course people will be emotional and deeply distressed by this, which is why many people speak out against it even though they have not experienced it personally.
As I said, this isn’t an attack but a counter-argument. Debates don’t have to be so aggressive that it transcends to attacking something beyond the topic but I don’t agree that all that was said are “facts” after stating it was your opinion. Facts are things that are proven to be true and due to the subjectivity of this topic, we can’t exactly say that.
Adding to the other comments, I can’t exactly speak for everything but this is what I vaguely recall reading about at the time all of this was revealed:
Liu Yifei (the main actress) isn’t even from Hong Kong, she’s from Mainland China, who have constantly been trying to oppress the independence of the Hong Kong government but that’s a whole other political issue. The issue with her going against Hong Kong is that it is further proof of the Mainland trying to suppress their rights and really it is sad. I could go on and on about why this is important but I did some research when I was writing a story and ultimately, she should not be trying to prevent their protest against the bill when she is in fact not from Hong Kong because though Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, they have a limited democracy and their own legal and judicial systems.
5 Likes
I agree with everything ghostea said in her reply but I also want to add that I haven’t seen anybody say that if you watch this movie it makes you a criminal, I have seen people say that in their opinion it shouldn’t be supported or promoted which frankly I think is fair enough. Even looking away from the atrocities (which I’m going to have to do to get this point across) the movie kinda sucks. Like every live action remake Disney movie. In my opinion it isn’t good enough to be even worth defending (I’m not saying that if it was amazing then that’d make it okay to defend either). But looking back at the atrocities, as we should, it’s common sense to me that by supporting this movie financially as many people have it’s adding a fuel to the fire. Albiet a small amount of fuel. I’m not blaming people for the actions of the company, the company need to change and the only way they will change is if we make it clear that their actions are wrong, which they objectively are.
Disney are a huge company, they have an enormous amount of money/power/influence. They changed copyright law at one point, this is known as Lobbying and it’s a highly unethical abuse of power. I’m making this point to show that Disney is a highly controversial big company that have a scary amount of influence. This article here shows more information about Mulan which shows a more recent example that Disney are still making incredibly poor/harmful desicions despite the fact they have the money and ability to not make these decisions. They could have easily filmed in a different location and hired a different lead actress it’s not like this information was a secret, all they had to do was some research on what was actually happening. This article also details the Mulan controversies within this article it states that in the film industry it’s common to acknowledge filming locations and to film in China you need permission, this is why they say they thanked the Government. But research would have told them this wasn’t the right thing to do and that instead of using their voice/power/influence to support an actress who supported the Hong Kong police and thank a government who were putting people in concentration camps (which again, wasn’t a secret, the information was out there at the time of filming as stated in the second hyperlink) they should have used their power and influence for good.
It’s not harming anybodies case to present facts and state that in their opinion they don’t want this movie to be supported. Nobody can stop anyone from supporting it, all we can do is raise awareness about why supporting and defending it is harmful.
Mostly I blame the company, especially if they have people brainwashed into thinking they’re perfect. However, it’s not a movie I will encourage people to promote or promote myself.
5 Likes
I don’t want to promote the movie but I just got annoyed about the whole if you watch or continue support money wise to the movie it would mean you were complicit in the atrocities that happened outside the movie. I was not meaning that they were saying you are a criminal. I agree with everything you said but I was just getting at is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the matter even if it might not be someone who doesn’t care for that about what is going on. Yes, there is a lot of bad behind this movie which they are notoriously known for doing. I actually liked some of the live action movies. The movie was okay but not the best.
That’s not what I was meaning. The facts of what Disney did, the actress actions, and the people are forcing those into the camps. I just meant that the facts of what has happened were already mention in the above posts. Also, this was written at midnight before I was about to fall asleep.
Again, I was not saying that your opinion didn’t count. I was just meaning that telling people who were supporting the movie by watching it and promoting it that they were complicit in the actions behind the movie was disrespectful. I totally respect your opinion on the subject. I do like the movie but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have issues with what went on behind the making of the movie. The reason I said to go ahead an tear this apart was because I wanted a good debate to start. Which it technically did happen. Sorry, if that makes anyone mad but I felt like bring more attention to the matter is all.
Another, thank you for going more in-depth on the subject!
I wasn’t meaning that at all. I just meant that somethings said could be read wrong to those who do not understand what is going on. You have a right to educate people on the matter which is why I made this thread for others to help. I’m not disagreeing with you on what happened. I was only meaning don’t be surprised if some people don’t openly accept those reasons for shunning the movie. I’m not going to argue on whether the things that happened behinds scenes was bad or not because they were horrible. No one should go through that ever. I fully agree with how bad the situation is surrounding that movie and crediting the area where the camps are at.
Thank you for adding on to the information that some of us asked about!
@pomme @Cam I would of never made this thread if I actually didn’t support what you are trying to do.
I mean, I DID watch the movie. Which I shouldn’t have. My friends told me bad stuff went behind the movie and I didn’t really listen and watched it anyway since I already had Disney plus. I think I actually learned why it was bad for me to watch the movie from the whole Sia controversy. Let’s say that I decided to watch the Sia movie. Well, it’s not that I would be giving money to Sia - I would be miseducating myself about autism and hurting those in the community that are autistic. I can’t really watch the movie to critic it or even to laugh at it because it really isn’t my place since I’m not autistic and I barely know anything about autism.
In my opinion, we should be trying to watch things from communities themselves. Instead of watching a movie about Mulan, watch a better movie about the culture possibly made by minorities. This was definitely a fault on my end but from now on if I know a movie is bad, no matter how much I want to watch it- whether it be a remake of my favorite movie or not, I won’t watch it. It’s even better to watch cultures or minorities depicted in that movie critic it instead.
Like, I’d be mad if someone made a whole movie about emetophobia and got the whole fear wrong. Then on top of that, instead of attracting more light to good art about emetophobia/anxiety - there was all this attention on the movie about emetophobia and how it was controversial.
1 Like