Mallory Mosner
2 min readJan 11, 2021

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Telling a Black femme that their perception is "overly biased" about content that is supposedly "for," "about" and marketed to people like them is as ridiculous as it is racist. White people constantly tell Black people that their perceptions of racism are over-inflated, and you are now part of that choir.

There's no "agenda" that the author had; what a nefarious way of putting a simple and righteous intention of wanting to see representation of yourself within a media empire that literally corners most of the children's media market (aka content by Disney, which deeply informs on a global scale how children-- who grow up to be adults-- think about who they are, what they should look like, how they should behave, what their morals and values should be, etc.).

Disney and Pixar are notoriously and flagrantly racist, so there's no need to be "actively looking" for problematic content.

There's no such thing as watching a movie "objectively for what it is supposed to be." What entitlement that you think your vision is the one that's "correct" or true; what preposterous nonsense that you think there's any "objective" viewing of art that exists. You know what some white people used to think was objectively feel-good content? Minstrel shows. Check yourself.

And by the way, middle-aged folks are well represented in media. Especially white ones. Often as having wealth and joy and abundance and families and adventure. Look at George Clooney. Middle-aged white folks have plenty of representation in media to offset any of the impact that an alleged "slam" against middle-aged folks would have--but there's a reason this wasn't marketed as a unique and unusual "diversity" movie about middle-aged people. It was marketed and discussed in media as some iteration of "omg Pixar has a movie featuring Black people!!! It's the follow up to the big 70-year late 'you're welcome' that Princess and the Frog doled out!! Hurray!"

You should've just left it as "Hopefully we're becoming more culturally aware and your points are food for thought. I still like the movie but your points are noted." That's all. No need to take the "hey Black person, you think racism is real here but it's not!" approach. Have a nice day.

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Mallory Mosner
Mallory Mosner

Written by Mallory Mosner

Queer non-binary (they/she) Jewish writer and Ayurvedic Health Counselor who loves puzzles, cats and meditation.

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