How Disney Commodifies Culture - Southeast Asians Roast Raya and the Last Dragon (Part 1)

you ever make an offhand tweet about doing a quick review of a movie only to end up organizing a nine-month-long project scrutinizing every little detail in said movie that's me that has somehow happened to me with raya and the last dragon so i'm actually recording this at a weird moment in time because my fellow video essayist lindsay ellis has recently announced that she is quitting youtube because of the harassment that she has continuously received since she made a controversial tweet comparing raya to avatar the last airbender nine months ago those exact tweets are actually what led to this project because during the discourse people were asking me to dissect the movie however i am east asian not southeast asian so i tweeted that while i did plan on doing a review of raya i wouldn't be analyzing any cultural aspects because i felt out of my depth when i watched it then i got an email in my inbox it was from an indonesian writer ordres kandra who was basically like hello no offense but we don't really need another lukewarm take on raya by a non-southeast asian person those are getting all the attention while actual southeast asian voices are getting drowned out could you please consider using your platform to amplify those southeast asian voices instead i mean the email itself was a lot nicer than that but that was the message that i realized after reading it i was like you know what you're right so i replied asking if they were interested in getting a bunch of southeast asians together to do a roundtable discussion of the movie then we made a discord server and i put out a call for participants on twitter it turns out southeast asians have a lot to say about the movie so much that we eventually had to scrap the live round table idea and go for individual pre-recorded presentations instead which took many many more months to put together than originally planned but i am so proud of what our team produced in the end these presentations definitely enlightened i felt like i was ascending to a higher plane of existence as i edited them i was humbled educated touched and i am so excited to share these presentations with the rest of you bit of a disclaimer though although we had quite a few participants in the discord server discussions we didn't manage to get people from all 11 southeast asian countries sadly we didn't find anyone from brunei or timoleste and not a lot from myanmar laos cambodia and thailand were pretty heavily skewed toward indonesia malaysia singapore vietnam and the philippines we had a pretty even number of diaspora and natives though which made quite an interesting discussion also keep in mind that although we tried to credit everyone who helped with making the presentation slides many of the ideas in the slides were brought up and snowballed through community discussions in the server so all the presentations are bigger team efforts than they seem now to start off i had to ask the discord server how they felt about the lindsay ellis situation do you know that this presentation was recorded months before lindsay announced her decision to leave youtube and the presenters will not be commenting on that they're simply going to talk about what happened during the controversy and their opinions about the situation during and shortly after it this is what they had to say hey everyone we're just entering let's talk about avatar the last airbender raya and the lindsay ellis discourse chinon's guiding question for this section is prominent youtuber lindsay ellis was blasted on twitter for comparing raya to avatar the last airbender can you describe what happened in your opinion of how the discourse evolved so to give context on march 26th of this year video essayist and author lindsay ellis made two tweets about raya and the last dragon comparing the disney film to the classic nickelodeon tv show avatar the last airbender a southeast asian author who we've chosen not to name to prevent further harassment caught lindsay out for holding avatar as some kind of standard they also said that it was unfair to compare one asian fantasy story with another since they pull from different cultures this author has not yet watched raya when tweeting this by the way ellis then doubled down and tweeted a thread clarifying her points the southeast asian author then deleted their tweets and many locked their accounts following the discourse non-southeast asian people decided to have a field day digging up ellis's past mistakes to cancel her ella's trended four weeks people who hadn't watched raya or hadn't watched avatar or didn't know who ellis was before this or had any context of this discourse started joining the conversation to snowball it to something else later on april 15th ellis uploaded a video titled mask off on her youtube channel addressing her tweets cancel culture and her previous mistakes here are most not all of the tweets for context i'm going to read them out so we get a better idea of the situation the first tweet reads also watched ryan the last dragon and i think we need to come up with a name for this genre that is basically avatar the last airbender reduxes it's like half of all why a fantasy published in the last few years anyway the follow-up tweet reads oh and one other thing saying a thing is structurally similar to another thing is not a dig why do people immediately get defensive and think it's a dig no story is truly original there was a lot i didn't like about raya but its similarity to avatar wasn't it after the discourse blew up she added i wasn't referencing the similar setting of raya and avatar raya more than anything reminded me of a few y a fantasies from the last few years namely children of blood and bone and blood hair which are not based in asian folklore but the authors were openly inspired by the last airbender so here's just a handful of reactions from the rya round table some felt that while her original tweet was somewhat thoughtless it didn't cause anything more than just the slight impression that asia was being viewed as a monolith again others felt that works of media influence each other all the time and that even southeast asian creatives use avatar as a comparison title for their own work they also feel that both pieces of media can exist without constant comparisons meanwhile others felt like the issue would have been resolved if ellis didn't double down when corrected by her southeast asian fans ultimately avatar and raya are western people's takes on asian culture it's not hard or reductive to compare the two especially when you're familiar with southeast asian stories so how do we feel about the discourse that followed what ended up happening was that any valid good fate criticism towards ellis's tweets got drowned in the flow of accusations and receipts that resurfaced on her past behavior the topic of southeast asian representation was unfairly weaponized by mostly white bad fate actors who were looking for a reason to get alice canceled ellis was harassed by people engaging in bad faith and many southeast asians who disagreed with her opinion were harassed by ellis fans it's important to note that southeast asians didn't have the same reaction to her tweets regardless of whether they agreed or not the wave of harassment caused many southeast asian people to delete their tweets and lock their accounts non-southeast asians took over the discourse that followed they spiraled the conversation away from the original concerns southeast asian people had with elsa's tweets some even went as far as weaponizing anti-asian hate crimes against her saying that her words were the cause of violence i can't stress enough how disrespectful it is to victims of racist violence to have their debts performatively wielded to harass someone for comparing a movie to a tv show what was also particularly annoying was how the discourse against ellis propped raya as being better than it was in order to make ellis look worse this is where i started seeing a bunch of claims that because raya had two southeast asian writers on its seven rider team meant it was an asian film made by asians with an asian cast people wanted to simplify the discussion so that it was like an evil racist white lady was criticizing the beloved authentic asian movie when really it was some white lady making a bland tweet about a corporate movie are we really defending this american corporate product just to get back at some youtuber disney is not an underdog a situation should not have to be made black and white to be understood but that's part of the reactionary nature of twitter also calling raya an asian film made by asians is frankly an insult to actual existing asian filmmakers and film industries that claim is also an ironically monolithic statement to make since the majority of rya's cast is east asian anyway ellis's tweet about raya may have been thoughtless but what good does it do to drag up all the other stuff she did what's this hope to achieve how does it help southeast asians no one deserves to be harassed and especially not re-traumatized over a half-hearted tweet did people who brought all those receipts up actually care about southeast asian representation if so how come they couldn't focus on the issue at hand people kept saying listen to poc and that's obnoxious to hear when people of color who weren't southeast asian decided to speak over us on how we feel about our own representation in this discourse also it's obvious that people only say listen to poc when our opinions lined up with theirs or validated harassment just to make it clear both ellis and southeast asians were harassed over this so in terms of ellis's video response she deserves some credit for recognizing multiple things she recognized that non-southeast asian people were using our voices to hurt her and how ultimately our opinions didn't end up being heard at all she called out people for treating our opinions as a monolith under saying listen to poc she also mentioned that she was far from the first person to make the avatar comparison as honest trailer made the comparison before her and did not get dragged for it several people also favorably made the comparison when the disney trailer came out including southeast asians so let's have that conversation in good faith should the disney film raya and the last dragon be compared to the nickelodeon tv series avatar the last airbender most people's arguments against ella's comparison were because they felt that while avatar is a fantasy world based on mostly east asian and inuit cultures raya is based on southeast asian ones this argument though is inherently flawed because again ellis never brought up culture in her tweets they were about narrative similarities in response to the narrative comparison some people have said ryan avatar only shared general tropes common in lots of fantasy and sci-fi stories the claim is that ellis was making it sound like avatar was the originator of these general tropes and she only made the comparison because they were both asian-inspired worlds therefore viewing these stories as a monolith do they share just general fantasy tropes though or is it more than that let's do an honest comparison in avatar the four nations water earth fire and air once lived together in harmony in raya kumandra a kingdom consisting of five nations heart talm tale spine and feng once lived in peaceful unity then everything changed when the fire nation attacked then everything changed when the drone a mindless plague that spread like wildfire interesting choice of words by the way attacked only the avatar master of all four elements could stop them as the dragons magical creatures who brought rain and peace fought for kumandra's survival sisu saves the world by concentrating all her magic into a dragon gem but when the world needed the avatar most he vanished everyone that turned to stone came back through cease to sacrifice except for the dragons all that is left of sisu is the gem because she vanished when the initial trailer for raya came out many viewers compared young raya's design to korras from the avatar spin-off series the legend of korra banjo's mask also reminded them of the blue spirit mask from the original series this unfortunately made it so many non-southeast asian people assumed raya was based on the same cultures as avatar was many of the comparisons then were favorably made though and none of them were met with backlash this is honestly on disney for marketing the trailer in a way that drew these comparisons so outside of the opening and the trailer let's look at the movie's actual plot points ryan avatar both feature an elemental somewhat religious savior who is awakened by a girl who still believes they can save the world after being in the suspended animation for over a hundred years the savior is also the last of their kind as the title of the story dictates the savior and their friends hop to different nations to gain a power that helps them bring harmony to the world as the group travels they adopt a member into their found family from each nation they travel with hybrid animals a large one that the protagonist rides on and a small black and white monkey lemur-like animal sidekick the harmony between the nations is disrupted by one of them the child of the antagonistic nation's leader is a duty-bound haunter who ultimately redeems themselves and joins the found family of heroes so after all that are the comparisons between avatar and raya founded honestly yes the comparisons aren't just about shallow details but structural similarities between the two stories if enough people including fellow southeast asians felt that the story reminded them of another story then there's merit to it that's just how comparisons work several strongman arguments have been brought up to discourage the comparison so let's debunk them raya shares a combination of similarities with avatar not just a few general fantasy tropes sure other fantasy stories asian or not have nations with different terrains traveling with an expanding found family elemental saviors and redemption arcs but the comparison was drawn because avatar and raya shared multiple combined similarities ellis never argued that avatar originated these tropes or that it was the standard this was misinformation spread by people engaging in bad faith she only stated in an elaboration that avatar was influential to americans which it was reminder avatar was a cult classic from 2005 that informed a generation of media from shira steven universe dragon prince and children of blood and bone to name a few the show won prestigious awards including the genesis and peabody award among many it's not just some show netflix added to their roster a year ago i can't stop emphasizing this because people keep going back to it but ellis never argued that avatar and raya were exactly the same story-wise or culturally either all she did was make half-hearted tweets about their similarities another strongman is when people say that asian stories will inevitably share similarities with avatar as if the asian-inspired work by americans can be comparable to stories by asians southeast asian fantasy epics are not like raya or avatar raya was intended to be an east asian sci-fi esque fantasy story titled dragon empire from the start southeast asian representation was only added as an aesthetic afterthought and it shows southeast asian fantasy epics like southeast asian interpretations of the ramayana epic or timon mas are informed by ideals cultural upbringing and storytelling techniques unique to southeast asia while raya and avatar are both asian inspired works made by americans a variation of this argument that i personally find annoying is when people say you need to expand your consumption of asian media if all you know is avatar journey to the west was the original world saving quest adventure or actually raya was more like isekai or rpgs like final fantasy like you don't sound smart for trying to call someone out for comparing a mostly east asian inspired fantasy to a southeast asian inspired one only to bring up other east asian fantasy stories you personally feel suit the comparison better is that not also monolithic comparison by your logic to make and by doing this you're outing yourself as not knowing what specifically southeast asian fantasy media is like so how far does listen to poc go on whose behalf were people being offended at ellis's tweets for back before the film even released all the way in january the raya crew put out a statement that they welcomed comparison between the film and avatar specifically they released this statement because so many people made this comparison when the trailer came out in multiple other articles the vrya crew had also compared their film to game of thrones and arthurian legends things that aren't even asian at all despite the fact that the statement has been published long before ellis's tweets they rarely surfaced in the discourse because they just didn't align with validating harassment ironically these are the poc they don't get listened to now let's put some more context as to why some southeast asians reacted the way they did as mentioned before they were already a lot of comparisons between raya and avatar when the first trailer for raya dropped because people didn't know what the plot of raya was yet some found these comparisons distasteful because they were only based on the setting being asian young ray's design and how martial arts was marketed in the trailer overall the comparisons felt shallow back then around that time anything remotely asian was compared to raya be it kung fu panda or mulan then it moved on to comparisons like kubo and the two strings moana and even pocahontas then a particularly racist review of raya was published on march 1st describing raya as animating a china of myth and basing the entire review on how the movie was chinese inspired this is not permission to dogpile on the reviewer by the way that's not a productive way to deal with racism we'll talk about what you should do later the review got some traction obviously not as much as ellis's tweets mostly by southeast asians that were angry at being turned into a monolith this discourse wasn't gracefully handled either since i saw a couple of southeast asian diaspora say that chinese people can't be southeast asian so don't mix us up which is not true southeast asian demographics and culture intermingle more than you'd expect if you don't live here i a chinese indonesian and proof of that another review was published from vox that compared raya to avatar it also didn't get as much attention as ellis's tweets but either way tensions were already high for southeast asians before ellis's tweets after dealing with all these shallow comparisons a lot of especially southeast asian diaspora retired so is the comparison between raya and avatar racist to make if a comparison between two culturally and narratively different stories was made solely on the basis that they are both asian inspired fantasy worlds then yeah that would be racist superficial and shallow comparison to make just like all the comparisons to kung fu panda mulan pocahontas hugo and two strings that was racist but if a comparison was made on narrative structural and thematic similarities then it's not racist just because they both happen to be asian-inspired fantasy stories it's understandable that for some southeast asian diaspora after dealing with microaggressions leading up to ellis's tweets reacted defensively to seeing their one mainstream piece of representation could compare it to the mostly east asian world of avatar but this doesn't justify engaging in bad faith even if your anger is justified it's irresponsible to misplace that anger on someone who made a founded comparison based on having already watched the movie again the comparison wasn't cultural it was about narrative and structure if the comparison is racist to make if it was then where do we draw the line for southeast asian creatives in the industry comparison titles are common for pitching stories and publishing and animation shiran's own why a book has been described as pacific rim meets handmaiden's tale set in sci-fi fantasy china are we only allowed to compare our work to non-asian things for fear of the monolith my own graphic novel has been compared by others the steven universe the little prince princess cavia svetlana chmakova's berry brooks series and the manga our dreams at dusk things i very consciously drew inspiration from should we only compare our titles to existing southeast asian media which there's already so little of internationally to begin with if i describe my book as memories of my body means nini ante no one outside of indonesia would be familiar with what i'm referencing isn't it actually reductive to police southeast asians on what they're allowed to compare their work to along with how people engage with their work what's wrong with pitching southeast asian witcher or vietnamese sailor moon or indonesian game of thrones or filipino avatar many of us in publishing are already doing this it's a pointless line to draw in the end it's also important to remember that southeast asians made the avatar and raya comparison both since the trailer and after the movie was released ignoring this adds to the rhetoric of only listening to poc that reflect the opinion that validates you it's unfair to frame the issue as a comparison only white people brought up southeast asian sourceland especially is previously mentioned can recognize what southeast asian fantasy stories are like when it comes from our own communities seeing the similar story structure to avatar and the east asian lens raya had on our cultures made it so that a lot of sourceland even said they weren't surprised that non-asian people thought raya was east asian because it looked nothing like our cultures as this is our representation we have the right to make the comparison ourselves and we won't always share the same opinion so let's talk about how the discourse evolved many southeast asians realized that the discussion was a clear example of how we subconsciously elevate non-southeast asian especially white's opinions on things that don't concern them i take issue with how the most casual and lukewarm takes on raya by non-southeast asians get highlighted while southeast asian criticism of raya just stays within its own circles people forget that online you can platform someone through your disagreement with them because of how algorithms function it's better to uplift southeast asian people's opinions than give non-southeast asian people's takes on our representation any attention this includes east asians many of whom were quiet about raya but then suddenly became very vocal about asian representation after ellis's tweets thinking that because they were familiar with how their culture was represented in avatar means that they could talk over southeast asians about the comparison by the way just because you're east asian and didn't see your culture represented in raya doesn't automatically mean its southeast asian representation by process of elimination also again the comparison ellis made wasn't cultural don't join in conversations you don't have the full context for because it adds to misinformation why would east asians think they were best suited to talk about this over southeast asians because while people don't view ellis as an authority on culture many ignorant non-asian people will look to more visible east asians as an authority on the matter further silencing south east asians now thanks to this discourse all discussion surrounding ray on the last dragon is latin 2 is it really like avatar the last airbender instead of the many complicated issues we as southeast asians have with the film ultimately i'm disappointed but not surprised that the internet decided a white woman's half-hearted tweet was more worthy of attention than the many detailed reviews southeast asian people have made for the film so what should have happened in the discourse the next time you see someone outside of our community talk about our representation in a way that you find offensive instead of dunking on them elevate southeast asian people's opinions instead share reviews by us or retweet a thread by a southeast asian who watch the movie we've said far more insightful things about raya as southeast asians than ellis ever could as a white person dunking on bad takes gives them more attention and influence so don't waste your time on them also don't talk about things you're not informed about if you're not southeast asian or you haven't watched raya or you haven't watched avatar you don't know who lindsay ellis is or only heard about the discourse without getting the full situation you really don't need to say anything about it being uninformed spreads misinformation which people are quick to believe with the fast pace of twitter recognize that harassment is never justified twitter is designed to make people think that the only way to solve their frustrations with systemic problems is through a harassment campaign targeted at one scapegoat person but even people who are in the wrong don't deserve to go through that remember that southeast asians won't have the same opinion on everything don't weaponize our issues and treat our feelings as a monolith just to harass someone we can also have complicated relationships with the situation for example even though i enjoy much of ellis's content i'm still critical of her as a content creator i personally felt the discourse was blown out of proportion by people misreading her comparison as a cultural one but i also feel that while ellis's video response said some insightful things about cancel culture i don't agree with how she doubled down or addressed some of the accusations that came up it's not as simple as people standing or hating her and finally when all is said and done remember that raya is a movie written and produced by mostly white americans don't reframe it into something it's not just to get back at someone if you had a valid point to make you wouldn't have to change the narrative of the situation to get your point across we'd like to end this presentation with what you can tangibly do to help southeast asians as we've mentioned before very few southeast asian stories get mainstream international attention so if you're feeling hopeless about how our representation gets compared to east asian media like a monolith consume and share more southeast asian media by southeast asians you can even find some southeast asian movies on netflix do the work to find those underrepresented voices and share them with your friends lastly southeast asia consists of 11 countries with diverse cultures and communities one disney film can't even hope to capture our experiences so don't rely on them to be your introduction to underrepresented cultures even if it's your own wow that was a very powerful presentation and definitely made me rethink some of my own actions and attitudes during the whole situation i hope it gave you some perspective too why did raya cause such a heated discussion about representation though what expectations did disney's marketing for the movie create for southeast asians and how well were those expectations met in the end this is what the server had to say hi so i'll be presenting this topic marketing and expectations for raya or as we like to call it raya and the missing southeast asia so maya has been from the very beginning marketed as a movie featuring the first southeast asian disney princess but we've done a little bit of research and as it turns out raya and the last dragon wasn't exactly supposed to be southeast asian from the start beginning of the project may 2018 the hashtag show reported that walt disney animation studios was working on a not so secret project there'll be an animated film titled dragon umpire which was actually the directorial debut of story artists paul bricks and dean weddings and written by kale marie so those three people were at the very heart of the project and well it's pretty obvious none of them are asian and yet they were appointed to this project so august 2019 it's the big reveal so disney made this big announcement at the d23 expo which is an expo every year when they announce all their big projects for the future they revealed the official title of the movie reya and the last dragon we have the official logo first concept art of raya with her companion but we didn't have a name for back then and of course we see the first picture of sisu we already see that sisu is a very goofy character who are told that aquafina is gonna voice her and that didn't go quite well with everyone so disney establishes from this moment that raya is inspired by southeast asian culture and i'm literally quoting the article which is the team behind the film went out of their way to make the film seem as authentic as possible so from the very very beginning they were talking about authenticity of representation and to justify and prove that they did the research they say they travel to laos thailand cambodia vietnam and indonesia for research this is five countries out of 11 southeast asian countries they just go to five of those countries we don't know why they just lose countries specifically but they do say we are going to really focus on realism seriously you want to make us believe that you can represent all these vastly different countries right just visiting a few of them put all the sculptures together in a completely fantastical setting i mean disney is ambitious but we know how they handle representation that is not always the best so people were what suspicious we weren't sure what to think on this project like there was quite a few southeast asian people who heard about this because of the impact it was the first time we get representation in disney movie so as you can imagine it was already a kind of an aftermath thing where people who heard about this were talking about it in the community like look we're gonna have our first disney princess we want you to be enthusiastic about this project and yet we had all these things that make us wary we don't fully trust disney to represent us we have a coffee dragon voiced by a problematic comedian who's not even southeast asian we have a production team who's mostly white but we're pronounced good representation and we want to believe that because we don't get that often and really people were excited that even the dragon thing we wanted to hope because we don't know much about the movie even though a lot of people compared cco2 mushu because they're both dragons they're both goofy here for comedic effect but we wanted to believe in this project so disney was talking about having the movie released somewhere in november 2020 when it was first announced when it's august 2018 we're expecting the movie to be released really soon and there's been almost no marketing around it and well that's all these announcements about the change of cast and change of production team small additions that disney announces movie is going to be turned to march 12 2021 mostly because of delaying production because of the premium which well because when the first marketing in the west came up a lot of them captioned or the first thing you see was the term first southeast asian princess if you see even posters that were made by people and marketing and the first thing you google disney's first southeast asian princess would appear on your screen and it would be used everywhere for the marketing and again that's a yay right like finally a southeast asian princess and the marketing really pushes you to pay attention that this is big and how it's gonna be authentic or it's gonna be the first one ever from disney and the first teaser trailer that came out on the 21st october 2020 really evoked that south asian feel which promises this kind of representation in the movie a lot of people did repost it and were really proud of it but when my team and i dig through the song which is a great song by the way you're not sure if it's a c person that made it and this goes to show a little bit of our unsureness if this is made by c second channel is released january 26th of 2021 so just a couple months before the official release of the movie there's practically no marketing whatsoever between the first trailer and the second one which is okay fair i guess but yay we finally get official as it's been called because the first writer was actually like more of a teaser so we finally get more info on the story on the world we see all the characters and we get to finally meet the whole cast it's just never a disappointment like among the six main new characters we have only two southeast asian voice actors and one of them is voicing a baby who can speak quite granted she makes amazing baby noises like she's very convincing at being a baby but come on she's a vietnamese descent and the voice actors fall fool he is the last young american boy who's also a very talented but apart from that monster cast is again east asian we're tired it's just another disappointment after other disappointments and even this second trailer is not giving us any particular selfies asian vibes so before the movie is even out we're already disappointed we don't have much hope for representation especially with such a cast and it's sad and yet some of us we're hoping like because we don't have the movie maybe it's just the way the trail was made but still holding off lots of things could be an amazing representation who knows but the cast is a huge problem i know a lot of stuff is asian diaspora was exciting because the characters effectively look like us like this the hair texture the skin colors actually it's not enough we want more and we were closer again about the movie it is really obvious that the sea singers are creatives are sidelined in the marketing of this movie for example jean aiko was the main credit singer but why are the c singer sideline only two biggest c singers are used to market a translated version of lead the way well jean i think that's how you say the name i'm so sorry made it to the credits and these people did not the main lead away song is honestly pretty bland there was a lot of commander commander just sprinkled sadly and just a message on trusting each other and as much as i personally love jean she is a descendant of spanish dominican and japanese and her father is native american african american and german jewish it is kind of clashing on the sea rap so this is just sea singers you should have asked i mean they're all in la and of course if covert has taught us anything a remote recording is not impossible i would say we're killing it you know there's so many sea singers with even oliver rodrigo and her winning a grammy and don't tell me they just came in the scene we've been here we've been here all along and when you do decide to work with us please don't sideline us there was a c collaboration we feel that was sidelined it puts a question on why weren't they given the creative control some of these people who are singing in this trust against song that was inspired by raya and the last dragon that is one of the official songs were not even news in the trailer and a lot of the singers are very prominent in their country and the thing is why is the song mostly in english besides in thai why are the artists not given the chance to sing in their language or great creative control why was this song not using the credit song or promote it at all also again what's up with the lyrics show me with ghosts so everybody could see satay nasi lemak and some other decolletes i'm just gonna stop there because the thoughts that our team brought is too real a little bit out of the marketing topic since it's covered and all that so can see people actually watch this movie the answer is kind of like ha no so if you look at the distribution of where disney plus is raya was available on disney plus premium access on march which you have to pay extra money to see and a wider release to non-payment was just out on june 4. however as of may 2021 disney is only available in indonesia and singapore this just goes to show that disney plus was not really accessible and even if some countries had it in the cinema it's called with time and so now a lot of people got to watch it when it came out so how was the marketing after the movie came out most of the marketing that was done around the release with nowhere near as much as intention as there should have been for a disney animated feature film it feels messy and more like an afterthought maybe it's because kobe but the movie was presented as the first western animated movie to represent c and at the same time the void as such as the trailer seems to focus more on the fantasy rather than the culture it represented perhaps to make it more palatable to the western audience maybe but overall the red carpet talk was more of a behind the scenes making off and bits of interviews from screenwriters and voice actors and i'm not sure it was effective for marketing benedict wong quotes it's another monumental asian woman proud to be asian obviously this is a nice sentiment and i don't want to blame him for saying it harvard just selects the nuance needed to burn out south east asian and east asians have different cultures and this is another spot of east asian speaking over southeast asians the interview says that kelly marie tran you're the first southeast asian person this is a big deal and she was really proud as she said this means a lot to me and that we're breaking television but as seen in the actors on the screenshot here there were more east asians than there are southeast asians and besides the red carpet they're really not as much marketing for the movie the month that it was released and the most marketing we see was about kelly aquafina and some justin tren interviews in which in the right you can see that they're just trying sea snacks or they talked about how proud they were but there were really a lack of collaboration or marketing that came out or interviews and even in the official disney videos most of them are just remix cut off the red carpet so were there any marketing in the sea when we did kind of like a get-together of sea people that were in their native country there were little to minimal marketing that was seen in the sea countries throughout the tragedy mediums and they are mostly in the social media in some cases in a c disney plus it was reported that raya was only on the banner and the release date and then a couple days after like one of my friend in indo says raya was only available in the marketing for one day and it was gone and even in some countries the disney channel doesn't even exist anymore um yikes disney channel was one of the prominent ways for cable tv or disney to market their movies and some secretaries raya was released in the cinema but again to the cover not too long as a result there is less hype in the sea natives about the movie so social media has become the main source but most of the marketing that came for sea people came in later after the release of western movie with minimal sea people not to mention disney plus is kinda expensive and it's still a pilot in most of the countries it was only a few after the philippines for example disney in philippines tweeted about raya sort of and there was a disney via instagram there still is which where the marketing came from the most but i mean i follow raya and stuff because i'm just a movie geek and i looked forward to it but overall there is real marketing for c even in the social media and you know where is the sea celebration for raya raya has a connotation on celebration and i just want to show a few years ago when moana was released there was a huge collaborative effort to combine southeast asian people and celebrate it and i'm not saying that moana is the best movie but i am saying that moana had a huge c singer that sang how far i'll go in their languages and events to collaborate with c people in addition there was only two translation of the song on raya and there are no bonding with c committee about this movie as an indo haridaya is really used often they could have made a pun to hariraya like party celebration despite it all being in zoom and kovit there was not a lot of marketing and there's not a lot of efforts that was given to see people to collaborate remix to represent a song it was done for moana why could it have been done for raya and when it does happen actually these actual sea collaborations shown minimal effort is seen once again after the movie for example disney released a more collaboration with the sea creative which makes you suspect that the movie would be authentic however the collaboration should be more obviously highlighted once again we only found out this why in performance because one of us is connected to one of the performance artists yet they weren't really celebrated or credited as big as they can so shout out to the property or gibran nikolao but it goes to show again a lot of the sea collaboration you need to dig for it and they're not out and proud being collaborative in the movies marketing and here again the marketing nc sourceland there's a youtube video for campaign twitter and a few articles here and there but there are really not a lot of marketing in the sea sourceland so questions does ryan suffer from lack of marketing there was the two trailers a few teasers but then there wasn't much interview or like original content that disney actually made promote this movie so we've looked at the numbers and well we can't know for center how much has been spent on raya but as you can see we have a budget of 100 million dollars plus we don't know how much the plus is but if it was 150 you'd think they'd say it so we'll just go with 100 and every other movie like big picture animated movies fabulously has had minimum of 150 millions raya has one foot less butcher than the rest how do you explain that like you did not believe enough in this movie do they not care we can't know obviously we don't know behind the scenes but it certainly tells us fear very much like priya did suffer from a lack of marketing like the lower budget then the burden of marketing put solely on k maritran it doesn't feel right so yeah let's sum it up listen left up i was sad even if it's not accurate representation some of us do want it to succeed so we have more changes at representation if it does bad maybe people will think that our culture isn't marketable isn't going to make profits and it can anything can make profit as long as it's well made but i don't think that can be said but oh yeah but anyways it seemed it was set up to fail or he wasn't set to succeed so i'm gonna talk about what the reception was like with the general public so not talking about the specific selfish division perception despite a slow start the movie has seemingly performed well and western physical response has been largely potential praising to be the quality of the animation the visual stunning visuals and voice acting of kelly maritran and aquafina so it's positive actually very few western media addressed the lack of actual authentic sophistication representation and it's sad that even though it was one of the selling points of the marketing campaign of disney the critics didn't think of finding out what the southeast asian community has said about this movie there's even some western media who has been praising that southeast asian representation that we've been criticizing for a while now it's kind of upsetting and infuriating because once again we see we've been not listened to and yeah the southeast asian community was largely silenced by those western critics who were praising the movie of course you'll find reviews like the western media's addressing these issues i've found some but clearly there were very few when it should have been one of the main points of fridays and i'm not asking westerners to talk over us it's very easy to find southeast asians criticizing the movie it was very very easy to just reach out ask them about that relay what they said and while giving your positive critics still denounce this huge problem in a movie which was marketed essentially on authentics of at least asian representation now that i've talked about the general public's perception what was the reaction and deception for self-esteem diaspora because i'm dysport so i'll be talking from my perspective and relaying what i've seen so good number of diasporic southeast asians were actually very happy about their representation they felt represented it's the first time you actually see our hero and a whole cast of characters who look like us asian southeast asian not like japanese or chinese they do look like us and there's details here and there that we recognize in the food or practices or some bits here and there or clothing and for me was enough well not enough but it was something they were really happy to see but even among southeast asian diaspora there were others who were not so happy about the representation because we could see the faults in that representation we could see people who looked like us but were not necessarily like us and many of us also expressed regret in the fact that there wasn't much research put in the movie clearly not enough or even if it was in the movie it wasn't included in it and i think it's fair to say that in general it's more difficult for diaspora to tell if the southeast asian representation is accurate not and that's why maybe some of us some of the desperate is not as demanding or couldn't really tell that the representation wasn't what we should have gotten and it's sad because yeah as you can see i found actual diaspora who tweeted commented etc but how happy they were about the representation and there's even people from the cast and the production team for raya also die spur and they were really happy with their presentation or that's what they're saying in interviews anyways and i want to add it just reflects in the reception of this movie that both southeast asian diaspora and mainland were less than satisfied for most of us but we deserve and should demand better and this to me was less than the bare minimum and besides that the marketing which we've talked about it built up expectations that were just impossible to meet like how do you want to be authentic about representation of 11 countries with very distant culture even inside each country there's so many nuances it's unfair to make such claims and i think it's why the southeast asian community is so alienated with this movie some might argue that the movie badly or wrongly portrayed southeast asian cultures and that's a huge thing for diaspora who can't always know about this all right so i do want to talk about why was ryan so important to selfish eisboro because overall i think the marketing was aimed at us for some of the marketing stuff is the explorer as people of quarter we are discriminated against because of our race and of course mainland too but the diaspora we live in mostly white countries and the microaggressions the races and the whole system is rigged against us and usually we're also forced to abandon our culture our self-esteem culture in order to fit in my mom immigrated to france and had to chant her vietnamese name to a french one in order to get the french nationality more easily she was told by other vietnamese people not to wear vietnamese clothing because it would be badly seen we're told as modern minorities not to stay among ourselves because then we just don't care about whites we don't care about integration there's just so many things that we have to deal with that force us to abandon this culture and raja was an occasion for us to connect again this culture that we've lost and many southeast asian desperate have lost touch with their culture one way or another even if we want to connect with our culture it's extremely hard for some of us because we don't have access to southeast asian media we don't have the tv series the cartoons the news even because some of us don't even speak or read the language we don't know where to find all this information all these sources we just can't interact with our heritage so our only way to actually get selfish asian representation or the taste of our own culture is through western media we depend on western media to get this which is absurd but that's how things are so because things are this way southeast asian diaspora is starved for representation in what dominated world we want representation representation isn't everything of course but it's a start and it's even true for for some of us raya was our first introduction to southeast asian culture our culture because some of us are transracial adoptees or children of immigrants who have already lost touch with their culture because they were told to integrate there's just many reasons that we don't know about our own culture and knowing that ryan the last dragon was this first image that they get of southeast asian representation and it's wrong it's not right it's not authentic it's a shame and besides that no matter how much we dislike listening they are a major actor in pop culture and they have a huge impact on western media and that's why it was really important that they made my rights and they didn't ryan the last record could have been a meaningful challenge in the way that good representation can be raya could have been a positive representation to show that now our culture shouldn't be shame it should be celebrated it should be seen as what it really is and in the end it was just so washed out that we didn't get it it was so disappointing and it's even more disappointment for people who actually believed in this movie and who hoped that this movie would stop change we can't ignore the fact that disney is a cultural superpower and has been for many years now i mean anything this name makes will be watched by so many people around the world whether they make good or bite things will be watched and it's mostly due to nostalgia that people have for disney i mean i and many other people assume probably watching this video have grown up with disney so yeah anything that comes out from disney will have impact on pop culture and western media like the disney name is now synonymous with cultural landmarks in media disney now is even more of a superpower because it has transitioned into a monopoly with the example of their acquisition of 20th century fox studios which is still really sad and there's this perception of disney being the only possible source of representation because it's so big and it's everywhere but where else can you get it and it sets a very dangerous precedent especially because disney is an american company with american values they do not necessarily reflect or understand cultures that are not always exposed in the western media and disney is just super power in different aspects like social their the media that's constantly discussed like whenever you post social connection for example by with fandoms like so many fandoms grow from disney or take from disney then they are financials but but well as well i mean they have the money they have so much money they are significant enough to be able to acquire over media houses and all this communities communication so many things like this power allows them to make blockbuster movies with immense production and animation but they can create a freaking exposure on people and this exposure can unconsciously passive presentation of culture like the way we watch the movies there's disney world disney literature there's so many disney things that are just all influencing and inherently a part of pop culture today so disney possesses all this power and have such a significant presence in worldwide culture that they can and should be held accountable and should be expected to be responsible for the representations that they picked in their media they count as such a superpower make anything they want and not be held for mistakes or harm they cause because of carelessness because of greed and this is all things that we should keep in mind so in the end who is raya 4 with the little marketing and the film itself being unavailable in many southeast asian countries raya is not for native southeast asians some argue that raya is for southeast asian americans or diaspora but is that necessarily true the crew visited southeast asia to appropriate culture for an aesthetic and so few southeast asian americans were involved in the creation of the film raya doesn't even portray the southeast asian diaspora experience it's a generic fantasy decorated with appropriated culture although many have argued that southeast asians shouldn't expect authenticity from a fantasy film this directly contradicts the way the film was marketed to us with all the talk of raya being the first southeast asian princess and how multiple promotional articles emphasized the push for authenticity in the film it's no surprise that southeast asians came into the movie with those expectations diaspora shouldn't dismiss the criticisms nato southeast asians have for raya even if they felt represented by shallow superficial visuals their concerns for authenticity are valid when the film markets itself as striving for that so in the end rai is for white people the film caters to what they recognize as asian through mainstream media by flattening the diversity of southeast asian hunters so it seems that disney relied heavily on authenticity and finally representation for southeast asians as marketing hooks but then didn't really put much sincere effort into letting southeast asia's creatives shine during the project now i already know that there's gonna be some obnoxious people out there who don't understand power dynamics and they're ready to go all oh my god are you saying that only southeast asians are allowed to work on southeast asian projects and that is not the point the point is that southeast asian creatives have historically been underrepresented and this was a project that promised to finally deliver representation for them and yet disney chose to give most starring roles to familiar east asian celebrities and featured a theme song singer with no claim to southeast asian heritage as if asians are interchangeable it betrays how they see this movie as just another cultural adaptation on their checklist southeast asian disney princess done another geographical region added to the lineup sprinkle in some bare minimum southeast asians on the production staff so most people won't complain and then we're moving on to the next culture it's just shallow and gross so we know raya wasn't originally conceptualized as a southeast asian story then how did the story and themes end up feeling to southeast asians do they find it relatable or too western after all what are some differences between southeast asian story structure and western ones this is what the server had to say hello everyone my name is serat i'm an indonesian and today i would like to start presentation on raya and the last dragon specifically about the themes and story so first we're gonna talk about truss one of the themes that seem to be really the message of the movie in the movie raya as the main character is set up to be someone who is very untrusting she doesn't trust anyone around her and the only times when she tries to trust someone she is either betrayed with the story plot seemingly contradicting its own themes for example like when namari trick hurts children when noi rob her when sisu was almost kidnapped by tanghu sisu been killed or extended to those who have given every reason not to be trusted and in the story overall trust is preached but eventually when raya tries to extend the trust she's punished for it and what makes it really egregious is that it's preached by the privileged it's mainly preached by benja and sisu minja is the chief of the heart tribe and it seems to be the most prosperous nation the chief says that it's not because of the dragon gem but you know they seem to be the one who's doing the most okay between all the main tribes so what does this mean for someone like chief banja to preach trust when he's someone who is privileged and in reality trust in southeast asia is complicated the mere choice of the theme for this movie is really a bad move why because it walks on thin ice when southeast asia has never been united in anything outside of colonization some southeast asia has a really complicated relationship with one another for example when vietnam colonized cambodia both countries were still at war until 1985 and this is just one example among many this really complicated relationship and power imbalance just can't be portrayed truthfully in a narrative where different populations and cultures must become one again to maintain peace and maybe a two-hour movie is not enough to deliver the nuance of it but in the modern day southeast asia colonization influenced southeast asia culture whether we liken it or not and there's a way to talk and present pre-colonial southeast asia but the movie feels like that and to frame different cultures of kumandra is divided because of distress and having to unify again for peace feels extremely iffy in the movie they were divided because of distrust and their own greed when in reality southeast asia countries were divided because of colonizations frontiers were built by western colonizations china and japan also colonize many southeast asia countries all in all the narrative that southeast asia countries must be united as if we were a monologue it's extremely ignorant of the truth it's an imperialist narrative that has been pushed by western countries as well as china and japan it's really insensitive considering what we have gone through and in southeast asia realistically like in real life we have been culturally raised with the collective philosophy that encourage and practice to help one another we build trust in communities we extend our help to those who need it although we can still have some interregional dramas but our main philosophy our main beliefs is that we must help someone who is in need raya is so full of distress that it circles back to american museums does it make sense for aya as a southeast asian to just don't trust anyone even her own father she doesn't trust her own father's teaching of trust doesn't make sense if friar is not an authentic sausage asian movie it wouldn't be bad but just saying that it's authentic it's like eating spaghetti with chicken soup and colorful and what really bugs us out is that the specific form of transgenderia was pushed by non-suspicious agent in the interview with the head of story found fira santorum she says the theme of trust was really brought by don jal and carlos lopez estrada what does it mean to have non-southeast asian enforce this message i'm just gonna leave that question hanging pretty sure you can answer that yourself so moving on to unity in raya versus unity in real southeast asia in the opening they said that they were once one but what really divided them after the dragon's disappearances is it race is it culture is it language is it values or is it just the close colors because we can't really see what's similar between these tribes beyond like surface level appearance like clothes region seems to be the only similar thing but that's just not how people work and if you want to talk about pre-colonial southeast asia oh man our borders shifted a lot in just java alone the island of java i think there were at least 10 kingdoms and the borders always changed even just within one king's reign you can have a lot of work so it's not authentic to pre-colonial success egypt and the cast of secondary characters are supposed to be representative of each region but they never really share what it means to be part of the tribe they never share the culture or their language their values and they're just there for like oh this is how they band together to save kumandra their unity is really surface level it's just like that's not how southeast asians work like i cannot test it to myself like we can talk about food and then we will share our closure oh in this country we have this food in that country we have that food and you see how similar this is but it might be different when we can share what the philosophies between our cultures mean and these characters in the movie they never really give that to raya or to the audience they're just there and no one else sought to get the gems back even if iran is content with just the one she has she tells namari to chase raya for the dragon gym but it's almost like i don't know it's just wishes does it's just really weird and in real life unity is something that has to be constantly work on and does the dragon's returning at the end of the movie we really erase years of prejudice and animal city no i mean i'm an indonesian so i can attest to it myself like we chinese indonesian during the new order era was really really really oppressed a lot of racism and that's that sentiment carries over to this day it's been what like 20 years at least i still get racial slurs thrown at me i still get the weird looks i still get death threats it won't disappear just like that and the movie just really thinks that unity is something that you can just slap on it and just done mission done now our problems are all soft in reality what is unity in southeast asia this is where i feel like disney really hammered in when the western gates of south east asia or asia in general so for example if you say china is the same as japan that would be racist right it's the same for southeast asia we are not the same we might have similar culture we might have similar language but that doesn't mean we're a monolith indonesia alone has 1340 ethnic groups two hours alone are enough to represent all 11 countries more than a thousand come on disney you can do better than this we could have just chosen one country or region or make riot as a tv series they should have really take their time to explore one region like the cultures the values everything not just the color of the clothing you could have done better please circling back to my point before borders in pre-colonial southeast asia always shifted the idea of unite that southeast asia isn't new actually sriwi jaya during their time they really expanded but it's not the same as japanese imperialism or european colonialism because they still have their sense of autonomy they consist of smaller vessel kingdoms and within these kingdoms in these regions they still maintain their own distinctive cultures and in the movie they stopped trading once the gem broke but it's not realistic trading is in our blood we won't stop even there's war and our modern concept again our monitoring because of unity and nation is the result of retaliation against colonialism colonism wasn't there we probably would have had the same thing like yeah we wouldn't be like this and another thing that's really distinctive to southeast asian is missing the movie it's that unity means loyalty to family and how tightly knit our community is for example in indonesia malaysia and singapore there's something called gotong it's like love thai neighbor but you take it to like the most extreme way possible and i mean that in a good way it means that you'll do anything that you can to pitch into the community you help your neighbors who are sick and you stick with your family while this value might be degraded in urbanized areas you can still see it clearly in rural areas a village is one people will pitch in when there's a need to clean the area they take turns to patrol at night people do something called musawara which is like an open forum where people try to find a solution that will satisfy and fulfill everyone's needs now philippines also have a similar concept it's called bayanihan banihan comes from the world bayan meaning town or community and in a way the word in south generally means being in ibayan so it's more of a sense of community spirit during times of calamity no matter how little it may be as long as the community gathers together this was important and this could have been the solution and the theme highlighted in raya sadly this movie isn't really authentic at all it's racist as and we didn't see anything like this now let's talk about the southeast asian storytelling so what does it mean for a story to be thematically southeast asian the problem with how raya uses culture as aesthetics separate from storytelling is that the world of raya could be replaced with any other culture and the story could be the same because of how non-specific and generic the plot is our cultures are far too vast and varied to be represented by a single theme that thoroughly portrays all of us this article on raya summarizes it well to quote it better fantasy worlds make their cultural specificity essential to the hero's journey wakanda's representation of black excellence informs t'challa as a protagonist the asian cultures that inspire avatar the last airbender inform who aang is as a chosen one his plot incorporates buddhist rituals and themes of harmony he travels to four kingdoms not to pick up souvenirs but to learn from each nation's philosophies and lifestyles even though moana is its own monolith its narrative draws from polynesian mythology traditions like wayfinding and the heritage of voyagers none of our values or cultures inform raya's narrative outside of serving as aesthetic decoration it's just a taste of themes that would be relatable to us as southeast asians navigating familial and communal expectations what does it mean to chase your own dreams that might not match up with what people expect of you we see ourselves and narratives about protagonists adapting to things outside of their control we can like characters that are aware of their environment and surroundings we greatly relate to the fear of messing up the status quo there is often this pressure of conflict avoidance in many of our communities obviously this depends on the genre but we can relate to stories about the supernatural as well it would have been cool if raya pulled inspiration from cultural storytelling techniques too in why unkulit fate and destiny are framed through what's called spatial coincidences the idea can be that characters from different times all come together in the same place this way narratives can span generations while being tied to a certain location there can also be a sense of coincidence or inevitability with narratives influenced by this kind of storytelling even modern films like memories of my body employ the use of spatial coincidences to follow how the protagonist meets people on his journey to self-discovery it would have been interesting to see raya used this kind of spatial coincidence when meeting her found family or maybe as a way to portray generational conflict between the nations so what about what raya does give us as a narrative well because of the inherent collectivist culture most asian communities are based in our narratives tend to be more centered on community relationships rather than the exceptionalism of the individual in our stories this can mean more elaborate caste systems than you typically encounter in western stories protagonists who both inform and are informed by the relationships in their communities and stories that center relationship development as being the plot itself the protagonist's relationship with supporting characters is not a one-sided exchange to support the main character's development they often influence each other's growth for better or for worse relationships don't even have to revolve around the main character side characters could have fully formed relationships with each other while the protagonist acts as a thematic spectator i find that with the globalization of media the growing popularity of especially anime and manga a lot of western writers who grew up in individualist societies have tried to imitate what they liked about our stories without the awareness of how our culture informs our works i've noticed that when western writers try to mimic the community driven aspect of asian storytelling they tend to only capture a shallow imitation of it their protagonists still embody individualist ideals the supporting characters are usually undeveloped and reduced to exaggerated one-dimensional personalities and the protagonist neither informs or isn't formed by the relationships they have with their so-called community it's usually a one-way exchange of supporting character helps protagonists develop raya suffers those same missteps i find when i see western writers try to mimic collectivist storytelling much like with other aspects of the movie the community driven narrative was also marketed as being part of the movie's authenticity but when i actually watched the movie i just found a shallow imitation of community a caricature almost disney's twitter for example touted how raya features the communal aspect of eating something very dear to many southeast asian people but it holds no real narrative weight in the movie the characters in raya's found family are one-off gags that don't have any real bearing on her character other than helping her get the gem and hand wavy i guess this means she's learning to trust again message in collective stories protagonists form diverse deep and unique relationships with multiple characters that's not present in ray's relationships with her new found friends so with the general themes and character relationships covered let's look into the more antagonistic forces in raya and the last dragon yeah there isn't much to the drone the movie presents the drone as the not dragons in the world where dragons provide water life and unity the drone are born from human discord spreading like a relentless fire if not killing life then at least stopping it by turning people to stone they are the embodiment of human distrust it's revealed later in the movie that it wasn't the dragon's magic that cast out the drone but the trust that they had with each other but this doesn't really make sense since rune existed before kumandra was broken apart and they could easily be defeated by water like rain water that could have just gotten rid of them the concept of the drone isn't particularly southeast asian negative energy creatures feeding off of human faults is something you're more likely to encounter in japanese media at least as far as we know this can obviously vary from place to place but spirits in southeast asia are most likely to possess people they're featured in a lot of cautionary tales that might seem really gruesome to people who didn't grow up with them you could also just make the drone colonizers though considering how colonialism was handled and frozen too i wouldn't trust the big corporation depicting any of that properly at the very least it would have been a story about people uniting against a common enemy that rang true to at least most of southeast asia and i'm gonna say this mostly from how me and my friends who are sensitive to spirituality treats a religion and spirituality southeast asia is haunted people still believe in what the west calls supernatural you can't see me but i'm doing the air quotes our spirituality and religion is integrated in our daily life bali's full of says again offerings filipinos knock a door and say taopo to make sure that is a human not a spirit there are various traditions across the regions in order to appease the spirits and practitioners of indigenous beliefs still exist and their oppresses for example sunday and usually they are forced to identify as muslim or christians for assimilation purposes so even the concept of how southeast asian would treat a deity like sisu it wouldn't be how the movie shows that rayatri's dragon just as pulse despite being wondrous version of deity and namari even calls himself dragon nerd would it be really weird if he heard here someone says jesus nerd or buddha nerd i don't know this is so weird why would you do that the overall movie this depiction itself of sisu it's again it's really insensitive to our spirituality and how our deities actually act our ladies can be childish at times yes but they will know when to be serious they will have an air of command to them they will have dignity sisu doesn't have dignity at all this is like too childish for actual lady to be like that tired please well those themes and cultural storytelling techniques in mind let's analyze the actual story of raya and the last dragon the story suffers a lot from contradicting what they tell us and what they show us so is raya herself representative as a southeast asian protagonist or is she a tourist from what we see in the movie she doesn't travel out of her comfort zone and into each nation to gain an understanding of their cultures and perspectives she backpack hops to different villages to steal an artifact and tomb raid temples her friends don't make much for company either we never get a clear distinction between whether they're uniting for survival or for a true altruistic sense of community writer herself states that she's putting the dragon gym pieces together not because she wants to make kumandra whole again but because she wants to bring her dad back do the characters actually want to unite as a community or are they just doing it because they're threatened by the drone would they unite with raya if they hadn't lost anything the plot isn't particularly clear about this when it comes to portraying clan rivalries and the difference between doing something for personal gain versus altruistically building a community netflix's clause is a really good movie that makes that distinction clear i think that movie shows that raya would have been much stronger film if the drone was removed entirely from the plot that way we could focus solely on the community tensions and how to mend them maybe even remove the dragon gem too the drone are really just an impending doom element used to force people to unite because they don't want to be turned into stone and the gem is there so that they have a mcguffin to chase while forming shallow friendships so the drone don't make good villains then what about fang the way they're handled is a mess the people of kumandra know that breaking the dragon gem brought the drone back but they refused to put it back together because they think it might bring them prosperity we know that the dragon gem offers practical protection from the drone so that they can i don't know build an economy or whatever but other nations like tail got destroyed regardless of having a piece of the gem the narrative wants to portray fang as misunderstood baddies to set them up for redemption later we're told that fang and amari vaguely want things like a better world and how they didn't mean to hurt anyone but we're shown greed and selfishness there's something straight up american about how they are characterized in a time of prices they don't want to repair the dragon gem to free the world of ruin we're told through dialogue that they wanted to take the gem for themselves to safely expand miranda the queen herself says she doesn't want the people who turn to stone to come back because they'll blame fang for what happened she even goes to tell her daughter that she wants to steal sisu and the gem pieces for herself not to save the world because that's the right thing to do but to fix their image as a nation like imagine if your pride was holding you back from stopping a life-threatening pandemic overall there's nothing truly sympathetic about fang so if fang and the drone don't make great villains then what about namari if not a traditional villain then how was she as a redemption character despite having very smugly betrayed raya when they were kids to get a piece of the dragon gem namori claims that fang never meant to hurt anyone if they wanted the gem without hurting anyone why couldn't they have diplomatically talked it out with banjo like he was willing to do seeing the good in everyone sisu believes that numari wants to fix the world just as much as raya does but what are we actually shown about namari mari kills sisu instead of offering her gem to fix the world compared to the other nations she hadn't lost family or land yet at that point in the climax of the movie she even considers running away when she's given all the gem pieces does she eventually put the pieces together because she wants to unite us kumandra or did she put the pieces together because she was personally affected by the drone at that point her mom and a majority of her people had turned to stone by then and she was completely surrounded by drone with no home to return to would she have fixed the world if she hadn't lost anything mari getting over her pride to fix the world isn't the big heroic move the film frames it to be especially when she never atones for her actions and there's no repercussions to them everything amari has done is technically still for her own benefit so overall is the message of raya trust or is it gaslighting and victim blaming sisu's message is that giving trust to someone empowers them to do the right thing but this ignores how people can knowingly take advantage of trust something demonstrated in the film itself although cesa's thinking has never been proven to work her ideals are healed as what all the characters should strive towards when raya tells sisu that she doesn't know namari the way she did sisu recounts how her siblings had trusted her to save the world but this isn't the same situation your siblings trusting you isn't the same situation as someone knowingly using your trust to take advantage of you raya had followed both her father and ceases ideals at the start of the movie and she paid the price for it yet somehow the moral of the film is that everyone should be trusted the same way it's certainly not fair for raya to not trust everyone but she can't just trust anyone she meets either where can kids watching this movie learn to draw the line in the end this movie's insistence that everyone can be treated and trusted the same way is its own kind of monolith so the story and themes of raya clearly still feel american at the core honestly i don't know why they didn't just adapt an actual southeast asian folk story like they did with mulan i mean mulan the cartoon has its own inaccuracies as i've pointed out in a whole video but at least it's fundamentally a chinese story there are so many folk stories from southeast asia that could have worked better than whatever raya was what about raya's world building then i asked the server could they tell which southeast asian cultures inspired the five nations in kumandra this is what they had to say hi we're justin sin and we'll be identifying and analyzing raya's world building or lac nero so raya is set in kumandra a sort of post-apocalyptic world where the people have split into five nations before we get into the nitty-gritty of the world we're going to take a quick dive into what we could find about the work that went behind developing it from our research into promotion an indonesian linguist was consulted for the names in the world of raya this is not limited to character names by the way things like location names are part of that we go into this deeper in the language presentation soraya's own name comes from the word celebration in indonesian and malaysia komandra does have an indonesian vibe to it sounding really similar to sumatra noise name istai for little tuktuk is a vehicle in thailand for urban transportation tong can mean barrel or a type of drum in indonesian which matches the impression of the character but it's also a common chinese name benja could be based on benjamin a thai name and that's just an initial impression of names on the surface they really could have just gotten actual southeast asian names for characters even in a fantasy setting in terms of environment arts filipino artist virgil jean aquino served as environment modeling lead for the movie information on which southeast asian countries the raya research team visited is pretty inconsistent along with what regions in those countries they visited notably the non-southeast asian directors were part of the research team that traveled to southeast asia so let's look into what makes up the nations in kumandra fang's environment invokes bangkok thailand's grand palace the exaggerated roofs of the palace sort of look like spiky roofs of paddle houses but it does look goofy to have it high up like a tower meanwhile some of the houses that decorate the outer plaza of the palace look like batak houses the fang interiors further established that thailand grand palace feel with the geometric pillars and the golden roof maltese in terms of thing a society the way they govern is vague we have a chief a princess and an army so it's some kind of statehood what's the army for exactly the drone can't be beat by physical force do they hunt or are they going to declare war on the other nations it's odd we don't see what fang looked like before they got the piece of the dragon gem but their kingdom sits on the raised ledges of rice fields storylines this is strange because benja wanted to prove to the other nations that having the dragon gem doesn't bring heart prosperity but it's clear that fang suddenly has rice after getting the gem it's all vague on what the cause and effect for fang's prosperity is the world of raya much like avatar the last airbender is filled with hybrid animals i didn't expect researching the fauna of raya to be another source of disappointment for how this film fails to represent southeast asia because even the animals don't represent the biodiversity of our countries so fang's citizens are known as cat people they ride on what's called cerellots which are a fusion between servals and carcals wildcats that are not native to southeast asia southeast asia has so many big cats to pull from why not the clouded leopard the marble cat or the malayan tiger hearts lands are based on the hao long bay from vietnam the unique rock formations are based on the limestone rocks along ha long bay and the mekong river i get that dragons haven't been around but the lack of water does make it hard for the initial read to make us think of how long they we couldn't find a super close match for heart palace and there's not a clear shot of it but it certainly pulls from islamic architecture like istana nagara in malaysia hearts interior is a mix of thai temple interiors and an indonesian keratone recolored to match hearts blue and green color scheme then there's the heart temple i gotta be honest with you guys i feel like the lack of clear establishing shots for major landmarks in this movie is a sign that production was rushed because we never get a clear view of either the heart palace or the heart temple the heart temple is literally just a dome in the rock formation of heart kingdom if you look up the discover kumandra website they say the temple is based on ankarwat bayon and borobudur anyone has been to any of those places wouldn't catch that this is where they pulled inspiration from at all the interior is completely fantastical and exterior is a vague dome we never see clearly we get a stylized view of what the temple looks like during the opening puppet sequence that you could argue is more based on borobudur's platforms that lead to the central dome but it's certainly not the first impression i got from it for reference this is what angkor wat bayon and borobudur look like every platform wall of borobudur is lined up with relief carvings by the way all representing different stories so what are the relief carvings in the heart temple where are the stupas where is anything that resembles these many places to interpret these historically religious temples into generic booby trap temple for regarding iraq feels like something an indiana jones-watching tourists would pitch the flora of hearts is based on peach blossoms they can be found in northern vietnam not to be mistaken for cherry blossoms heart society seems to consist of a chief his daughter and ambiguous servants we vaguely see the kingdom is based on the feats of that large circular rock formation trade apparently happens for binja to have access to the ingredients that would make kumandra soup but how is this possible when they don't trust each other are these stolen goods it's a mystery although southeast asia is not associated with winter and snow three southeast asian places do have snow regularly in indonesia pageant stage in myanmar and sapa in vietnam according to discover kumandra website the architecture of spine is based off high roof houses in laos and indonesia these houses resemble almost houses from indonesia and traditional laos houses like la lu these houses are meant to be sturdy against earthquakes but they're not designed for the snow though so it's weird to see them in this setting so there's this weird gate-like structure that shows up when raya leaves spine and is heading all the way to fang i have no idea what it is it's so overgrown with moss and the reliefs are melted beyond recognition a great metaphor for the vague amalgamation of culture in this movie if they wanted to put something cool they could have put like balinese gates even in a post-apocalyptic setting the skate's silhouette and relief work would be distinct enough to be recognizable we don't get a clear idea of heresy and culture in spine outside of basically viking barbarian coated people dressed up in fake southeast asian aesthetic i think there are mammoths in the background of their introduction scene which is a new low for not knowing what kind of animals exist in southeast asia in terms of flora the black bamboo surrounding spine do exist they are in fact real obviously not as thick as they are fantastically portrayed in raya although they can be cultivated anywhere they're native to china thailand is based on the floating markets of thailand indonesia and vietnam we see many kinds of lanterns in thailand the star-shaped lanterns are parallel lanterns from the philippines they're also featured in the disney christmas short from our family to yours the lanterns in thailand also look like the ones you'd find in hoi an vietnam as a society talon has a chief and not much else we don't know what talon looked like before the drone attacks since dialogue in the movie notes that they built their livelihood on water to droon proof their village considering that thailand is based on floating markets does it exist as the center for trade and who are they trading with if the people of kumandra don't trust each other and how do they get access to the resources that they're selling it's cool that they've represented a water-based society but there's not much else to them the onges and talon are referred to in the discover kumandra site as being part monkey park catfish but they don't specify what kind of monkey they pulled from the closest approximation we found through research was the vervet monkey yet another animal not native to southeast asia one could argue that the ungis are based on the lar gibbon a monkey native to southeast asia but those monkeys come in a variety of colors brown black and white meanwhile the onggis are more consistent in color the most identifying detail though is the black patch on the smallest onggi's head that matches them up with the vervet monkey meaning once again the raya crew have failed to represent actual southeast asian animals in their so-called southeast asian movie also gibbons are loud way louder than the ongis were portrayed as a footnote on noe and the onggis a martial arts baby raised by monkeys is a really racist character pitch monkey stealing things from taurus is a common occurrence but what does it mean to take that behavior and apply it to a whole village of people in a southeast asian context it's particularly stings knowing that east asians have historically referred to us as barbaric monkeys the whole thing just feels like a caricature of us i knew white people only associated us with martial arts but i didn't know it was this bad and why couldn't they have brought visibility to actual southeast asian monkeys there's a lot to choose from and finally there's tail they're likely based on the white sand dunes in vietnam the only southeast asian desert we don't actually know what tail looked like before the drone attacks so there's very minimal architecture outside of broken ships and ports the only animals seen are the water buffalo which actually are native to southeast asia why are they in the desert nation though it's in the name they need water there's yet another vague gate this is shown at the beginning of the film as raya travels through what remains of tail they remind me of the archways between stairs leading up to budapur's platforms but without the symbolic motifs carved into them and just not attached to a temple as for architecture of tail we have some sort of butt crack booby trap tool temple not as hot as it sounds this also adds to my theory that production was rushed by an aesthetic visual overhaul because they're just like screw it the exterior of this place is just gonna be literally a crack in the wall the inside of place is literally filled with explosive art bugs further adding to the butt imagery inside the butt crack there's generic pillars and a tree containing the dead chief with a bunch of mini stupas surrounding it and people wonder why a story about a disney princess tomb raiding artifacts from southeast asian places felt so light to us there's also the tail pier the orange and gray color of the pier remind me of the female from thailand but with the upper half missing and replaced by tenths and once again we never get a clear view of this place i had to manually screen cap how fast they sped by that higher view of the place tail society is the least elaborated on since they were hit hardest by the drone attack we see hints of a water-based society with the red ship but not enough else to know anything substantial about them so now that we've taken a tour around each of kumandra's nations let's go over what we thought of raya's world building in terms of terrain where's the jungle and rainforest representation these are what southeast asia are known for so why not bring attention to these forests that are in danger of deforestation compared to the other biomes in raya jungles and rainforests feel unexplored in comparison we see hints of forest and jungle in fang and hearts but we spend most of the time indoors in both of these places the group also passed by the forest by boat never truly settling there southeast asia is home to so much rich biodiversity and so little of it is represented in raya here's just a taste of what kind of animals they could have featured as an honorable mention i'd like to point out the babirusa on the bottom left over there its name literally translates to pig deer because it grows tusks that curl like antlers the fact that they'd rather fuse two african cats together than feature a real hybrid-like animal in southeast asia is immensely disappointing as for the demographics of kumandra having tribes be completely closed off from each other doesn't ring true to southeast asian history it's hypocritical for the raya crew to constantly tout how their fusion movie is inspired by the commonalities southeast asian cultures share while creating a fantasy world where the tribes are completely closed off from each other sectioning off nations and then uniting them under some weird pangaea feels like an oversimplification of our history for non-southeast asian consumption speaking of demographic where's the diaspora and people of mixed ethnicities it's not like community tension never existed in southeast asian history so why not base conflict on that history instead of the threat of drone and baseless mistrust southeast asia is never one uninfluenced culture people bring over culture it gets reinterpreted through local styles populations merge where is that representation so if not by heritage religion or culture then what are the tribes in raya separated by this is actually revealed to us in dialogue early in the movie when raya is talking to her dad about the visiting clans the tribes are separated based on personality the people of tale are sneaky mercenaries who fight dirty talon is the place of fast deals and fighters with even faster hands meaning their pickpockets spine are filled with large warriors and giant axes fang is filled with logical cunning cat people hearts is basically gryffindor they're just the good guys i don't think i need to elaborate why dividing regions based on stereotypical hogwarts house personality traits could be offensive to southeast asians but it does beg the question are the personalities presented to us in the beginning of the movie subverted later in the narrative in any way benja does talk about how their mistrust is founded on baseless assumptions so let's look into that a little bone from tail isn't a mercenary he only wanted to start helping raya when money was involved his character is based around doing things for a price loy from talon is quite literally a thieving baby although tong from spine is shown to have a soft side he's still a big man with a big axe namari from fang is a cunning cat person who backstabs raya and never atones for her misdeeds so instead of subverting or adding complexity to these characters the narrative just reinforces these stereotypes about each nation with that aside let's get into the mythology of raya the drone turning people to stone does have some bases in southeast asian fables like roro jongrang and malinkundan but other than dragons that's it southeast asia has so much diversity in mythological creatures so why pick the most wildly recognized asian creature this is just scratching the surface for what kind of mythological creatures could have been featured in raya and the last dragon so why did raya decide to culture match their fantasy nation so much the writers confirmed that no one tribe represents one southeast asian country their justification was that they wanted to avoid labeling a specific southeast asian country as the antagonistic tribe when first watching the movie i saw aspects of indonesian culture in fang and hearts our cultures are spread throughout all the tribes so in the end it's pointless to try to identify something specific in the tribes when they weren't designed to be that way i'm so critical of this narrative choice because although we've seen this kind of culture mesh in lots of say european cultures they have plenty of representation compared to southeast asia what does it mean when a corporation with so much influence mishmashes under-represented cultures and markets it as authentic i personally think there's nothing inherently wrong with an informed culture mishmash in fiction so long as creatives are upfront about it being a culture match and the narrative being in the hands of people from those cultures the biggest gripe southeast asians have with raya is that it was marketed on authenticity and the southeast asian representation we've been waiting for or the first southeast asian princess only for it to be an unrecognizable fantasy movie with so little southeast asians involved avatar the last airbender and 1998 mulan were not marketed this way to paraphrase iran's earlier videos avatar the last airbender never set out to represent real live cultures the characters are not chinese japanese or inuit their water tribe fire nation earth kingdom and air nomads raya is actually the same way there are no vietnamese indonesian or filipino characters at all their spine fang hearts talon and tail people the difference is that raya isn't marketed this way the big mouse knows that marketing this movie has authentic representation gives them clout they do this as a means to exploit conversations surrounding representation raya herself has an indonesian and malaysian-coded name wields filipino and indonesian weapons was originally voiced by a filipina actress but was replaced with a vietnamese one and reportedly has her appearance based off a half white thigh actress she's not a vietnamese disney princess she's a vague asian commander princess from heart kingdom if her identity is so interchangeable with other southeast asian ones then she was never meant to represent anyone wow bravo that presentation gave some deep cuts deep amazing how all this surface level representation falls apart when people who know what they're talking about take a good look at it however many point to how this movie had two southeast asian writers on its seven person writing staff plus it's all asian cast to frame this as a southeast asian movie made by southeast asians and thus a movie that shouldn't be criticized so harshly what's the server's take on this what are their opinions on the writers and actors who were hired this is what they had to say so hi there we're justin and we'll be presenting on raya cast and production the case of the missing southeast asians it's disingenuous to frame raya as an asian film made by asian people disney is a corporation that hired a few token southeast asian creatives to performingly justify its exploitation of cultures they know how to performatively market themselves so that people can point to the diverse talent they hired as a shield from criticism however diverse employees don't exist to validate the racist actions of a big corporation when people bring up the two south east asian writers who worked on raya they're never specific about who these writers are the two southeast asian writers are adele lim a malaysian poo co-world crazy rich asians film and cui gwen a vietnamese-american playwright the rest of the writing team consists of white people and the mexican director southeast asians are greatly lacking in leading positions of the film they couldn't even get an asian director to be in charge of raya i also think it's important to consider that just because asian creatives are involved in a movie doesn't mean it's free of criticism or necessarily has authority on what it depicts asians are not a monolith we can internalize racist colonial or imperialist thinking we can be conservative none of this is a race just because we're southeast asian just because a writer shares an underrepresented identity with the characters or worlds they depict doesn't mean they're immune to criticism and criticizing their work does not invalidate their asian identity so let's talk about the writers involved it's transparent that disney picked up adele lim and akufina from crazy rich asians to do an asian fantasy film originally titled dragon empire if they wanted to make the film southeast asian from the start they could have brought in henry goldings over from crazy rich asians since he's malaysian who is very in touch with his culture inside we got chinese korean aquafina for context crazy rich asians is a movie set in southeast asia singapore specifically but centers east asians the film has pro-imperialist and pro-gentrification themes there's even a line where akufina's character tells the original inhabitants of singapore nothing but jungle and pig farmers there's also a notorious scene where south asian sikh men are treated as intimidating to the safety of east asian women the film was criticized by southeast asians and south asians for its erasure and racist betrayal of the few non-east asian characters in the film and for centering the chinese perspective as the definitive asian experience so actually knowing the background of adeline's work and the criticism surrounding it i wasn't exactly excited that she was writing the southeast asian disney movie i'm aware that film writing is collaborative so we don't know what the exact extent of lim's contribution to crazy rich asians was however much of the same attitude that informed the east asian-centric narrative of crazy rich asians finds itself in ryan and the last dragon when crazy rich asians received criticism for its monolithic casting the rhetoric that the actors were chosen were simply the best for the role repeats again as the defense to raya's majority east asian cast in terms of the creative team promotion for raya often referred to what they call the southeast asian storytelling trust consisting of supposed experts on culture among other southeast asian creatives their storyboarding department is headed by fawn verasanthorn a thai american artist rosenthort herself states in promotion that non-southeast asian crew have been respectful and inquisitive about southeast asian culture but the idea that a majority non-southeast asian crew can lionize a group of people as the authority of the cultures of 11 countries raises more concerns about treating us as a monolith two southeast asian writers along with some southeast asian consultants and crew cannot in any way represent 11 countries even a single writer from indonesia can represent the hundreds of ethnic groups and many subcultures from just this one country it's monolithic thinking to believe that these writers can speak over other countries they don't represent and while i sympathize with how these two writers were given an impossible task likely an idea pushed by their white execs i think it's unfair to frame discussion around them as if they could never misrepresent southeast asian cultures as southeast asians themselves the other thing is whatever expertise and experience they have contributed are still filtered through white american authorities whether it be studio execs directors or producers unless said studio empowered their employees more in the decision-making process it's clearly an impossible hill to climb so to return to the people involved in raya raya's indonesian cultural consultant livy zhang is a scam artist film producer universally hated by indonesian locals she has been criticized for having a bali-centric view of indonesian culture if disney actually cared they would have listened to local opinion and got an actual scholar to represent indonesia in terms of voice cast i'm very annoyed that east asians who have historically and still do consider southeast asians as inferior and barbaric are suddenly so invested in playing southeast asian characters out of the 12 main cast of characters only five of the actors are of south east asian descent that's less than half the cast by the way and out of those five actors three of them played minor characters with little to no speaking lines as a quick note upon re-watch i noticed some of these southeast asian actors had less than three spoken lines of dialogue i hate that the writers of raya consider the east asians they hired as the best for the role as if southeast asian talent aren't better at being southeast asian than east asians they also defended this choice because they wanted star talent to promote the film completely ignoring the many already existing southeast asian talent in hollywood the mcu and disney itself it's an excuse in the end since disney has fired new talent on films to kickstart their careers before it's ironic that many east asian voice actors are so vocal about whitewashing in hollywood only to take away opportunities from southeast asians in raya having cassie steele replaced by kelly mary tron is unfortunate as none of the main casts are voiced by a filipino actor this comes off as extremely disingenuous when paired with claims that the movie is for southeast asian americans when filipino americans are the highest population of southeast asians in the u.s filipinos are constantly ignored in discussions surrounding asian american representation often labeled as the forgotten asian american steel could have easily replaced the many east asian voice actresses in this movie disney has historically benefited from filipino talent robert lopez composed music for frozen and coco lea salonga sang from multiple disney princesses but when it's time to actually represent them as south east asians there's suddenly nowhere to be found the few filipino actors involved in raya did not have any prominent leading roles they only contributed to additional voices like background characters and group sounds even outside of disney there are so much filipino talents they could have hired there are more filipino voice actors in steven universe than there are in raya in the last dragon just let that sink in there are filipino artists involved in terms of art direction though regular john aquino is the environment modeling lead and mikey sevilla worked as an animator on raya as another note for raya's casting aquafina sucks sisu's design is based on akufina's appearance so what does it mean to make what's essentially a southeast asian sona of an east asian person and to place her character as a creature revered by southeast asian coded characters i'm tired of seeing aquafina's appropriation of blackness treated as what makes her universally appealing by studios stop rewarding and platforming her anti-blackness also ali wong could have replaced her role easily because she can actually voice act at the end of the day disney is not your friend they are a mega corporation that commodifies and exploits any culture it touches if you want to get a clear picture of how they feel about culture remember that they tried to trademark the phrase dia de los muertos for merchandising until they received intense backlash from the mexican community or criticizing a corporation not gatekeeping the identities of its two token writers oh another deep cut and now we're about to dig even deeper sisu's design was a major point of controversy among southeast asians when it was revealed i asked the server do they think dragons should have been the most revered mythical creature chosen for the movie does ceso represent a southeast asian dragon well is she too close to an east asian dragon instead here's what they had to say hello i am ac i am indonesian and the speaker for this presentation sisu or why nouns are annoying language was a mistake and why we should stop calling things dragons now firstly i would like to address the usage of the word dragon and how it is an example of what i like to call the problem of nouns this is where translation usually fails to capture the whole meaning of a certain word by using a similar but not equivalent word in the translation the term dragons have been popularly used to translate a dizzily diverse collection of mythological creatures and figures from different cultures around the world but it fails in describing the unique characteristic that each of those quote-unquote dragons have etymologically speaking the word dragon comes from greek and its use in the myth of jason and the agronauts where jason have to steal the golden fleece from a tree that's guarded by a creature called dracon cochos and over time this term spread around europe and it's now being used to refer to anything that is both mythological and snake-like which i will concede is a very useful term but when you use it you also lose a lot of the unique characteristics that each of these creatures have and it dissects the cultural context from when they're from and in my own opinion when you want to represent and adapt a certain mythological figure capturing its unique features is what makes another relation a representation of that figure good and this extends to problems in translations in my own language indonesian we call european style dragons naga which is a term we will dissect further down in this presentation and i am somewhat certain that other southeast asian languages have similar translation issues of describing the creatures we are about to discuss so to show examples of why the term dragons tends to be very overstretched outside of a european context here are some examples of various figures from various mythologies that have been at one point described as a dragon whether accurately or inaccurately and shows how the term becomes a term of necessity than one that reflects reality for example a pepfrom egyptian mythology is a antagonistic serpent that tries to swallow up the sun during its nightly wanderings in the underworld the feathered serpents uh known to yukatek maya as kukulkan and to the aztecs quetzalcoatl are considered deific figures that are ought to be worshiped and revered and yamato no orogi is described as an eight-headed and eight-tailed snake that according to the kojiki was slain by the shinto deity susano all of these examples show a rather different creature than what the term dragon tends to evoke which is a flying fire breathing serpent-like creature and there's two on the list that i want to go further on the long from chinese mythology and tanaga from indian mythology which is particular interest to us because these two are where southeast asian cultures get our concept of quote unquote dragons so what is the naga originally the term come from sanskrit and it was brought over to southeast asia during the indianization period about first century onwards the term generally refers to snakes or more specifically cobras and their mythological serpentine figures the line between mythical and real naga are blurred and deliberately so in festivals worshipping naga in india they would use live snakes as an object of veneration which is an example of this line being blurred in mythology they are associated with the water and the earth they have the capability to shape-shift on their own free will usually transforming into human shape and in many cases acts as a protective figure an example here of an image of the buddha from cambodia you can see the buddha sitting on a throne made from the coiling of a naga who protects him by shading the buddha with its hood next up which is the long this slide was made by a vietnamese contributor and i will be simply reciting the script verbatim to what they've written vietnam has a distinctive east asian dragon influence from passing lands so is isu based on the vietnamese dragon no sisu does not represent the vietnamese wrong it is understandable why one would come to that conclusion as one of the writers are vietnamese but we have such an extensive history and different interpretation of dragons earlier history of vietnam has people creating hybrid images of dragons with other animals result in animal dragons like a fish dragon a horse dragon a dog dragon a bird dragon etc etc until they change it into a more east asian-like dragon through influences in some dynasties but they still retain their own individuality they are distinct motifs from the most iconic to the earliest versions of dragon is that the dragon have always have two horns instead of one like sisu their body is scaly and they are extremely long they have sharp fangs unlike sisu sisu is a twisted amalgamation of dragons she does not have a single design quality that passes as a vietnamese dragon with disney's pursuit of marketable flash they have made a dragon that is distinctly unlike any southeast asian dragon so what does a naga look like from the depictions we have courtesy of southeast asian cultures well in many cases they have very fearsome appearances which is very in contrast with how sisu looks very friendly they don't have fur like sisu but they can't have manes or hair on their heads they have brutally colored scales and depending on the region they can also have horns and as with the depictions earlier they may have several heads as well also in many cases they are depicted wearing some form of jewelry that adorn their bodies and which is trying to show the mythological gravitas of a naga in contrast to the previous designs of what the naga looks like sisu is stark different to it her face is far too human and some would argue have delved into the uncanny valley furthermore she seems to have fallen to the overall trend of having very similar faces in disney animation in recent years and compared to what we've explained earlier she's very under design she doesn't have any embellishments she looks far too simplistic and does not capture a majestic fearsome revered being that is often portrayed in southeast asian art when we got a look of earlier incarnations of sisu design we can see a design that's very much more similar to southeast asian art than her incarnation that we see on the film from this graph it seems very apparent that the unique features that a southeast asian naga has have been sand papered off to a more simplistic and arguably much more marketable design that would sell well to children making the final design far too alien to be considered a southeast asian inspired naga in many cultures in southeast asia the naga is if not revered as a deity at least deity-like figure in kumandra sisu fills this role as a revered beauty-like figure in the setting where characters would show reverence when they meet her how is what the story the actions of sisu especially considering her powers seems to be rather underpowered to what she is supposed to be here are the powers that sisu receive when the group collects more shards of the dragon gem govern in the film she seems to only use her powers immediately after a retrieval of a piece usually as a means to escape and doesn't tend to show up in later scenes the only exemption to this is her ability to shapeshift into a human figure in comparison there are here are some examples of the supernatural powers that naga have in the mythologies of southeast asian cultures a lot of them are associated with water and can shape shift which is a direct line from the indian versions of naga something that is shown in the film with sisu one of the few things uh tsisu got correct there however compared to compared to kumandra where sisu's powers have to be gained from collecting these magical shards real-life mythologies do not have a hard magic system that well-tailored world-built settings have and so there are varying powers that are given to nagas some are actually human who were then transformed into their current dragon forms or some of them was a dragon but then transformed into a human and live as a human like figure an example for the former is a naga task chine from malaysia and the bakunawa from the philippines and example the latter is approaches for my pronunciation and in hindu mythology brought over to java they are associated deeply with the earth and in some cases thought to hold up the earth as pillars and they can bless kingdoms that have good rulership moreover their association with earth extends to agriculture they naga dizzy batara antaboga in javanese and tsunamis mythology is the father of daoistry the goddess of rice agriculture and this is shown further in how snakes are seen as protective figures against pests in the rice paddies they are figures that can bring fear and all to them naga tasik chinny has an agreement in the area surrounding the lake where they live and reaching that agreement will cause disaster such as storms floods and skin diseases and in some cultures they have a very antagonistic role the bakunawa from the philippines can eat the moon which is seen ostensibly as a bad thing lastly in some stories the naga may have limitations to their powers the bakunawa will be scared away with the sounds of pot and bang banging and pacific mantras can trap the nagas of the north panchala kingdoms onto sisu's name initially when sisu was unknown a lot of us were very perplexed on what her name would mean the closest we get is sisu means child in sanskrit and later in the film she is referred to as sisudatu dattu is a noble title referring to lesser of vassalai's monarch in the history of southeast asia after the film was released we discovered that the name sisu comes from a constructed language made for the film which many find very questionable in a film trying to represent southeast asian culture why would you choose to make your own language instead of using languages that are already present in southeast asia her name meaning quick water is further baffling since it's not how you would usually name something of that gravitas especially like an example of a naga being named and we can extrapolate their cosmological and mythological role is in the following from java bali and sundanese mythology is antaboga or anantaboga which when you break his name down is no never ending food meaning food that ever runs out or sustenance that ever runs out or blessing that doesn't runs out and as i've mentioned earlier he has a relation with the practice of agriculture and his name shows that relation further when cesar's final design was revealed naturally a lot of southeast asians are somewhat disappointed taking matters into their own hands artists then began to post redesigns of sisu that would show more southeast asian characteristics with the hashtag sisu redesign in twitter during the time many non-southeast asian artists also participated but we have elected to only show the designs made by southeast asian artists that we have permissions to share with credit of course we have now reached the end to our presentation but we take this opportunity to raise awareness what's happening in malaysia earlier on in this presentation we mentioned nagatasini which lives in a lake of the same name the area is classified by unesco as a biosphere reserve and many have thought that it is the inspiration to the dragon-shaped lake that lies in the middle of kumandra however currently the malaysian authorities have passively allowed exploitative resource extraction around it causing environmental damage to the region and this slide is here to raise awareness of this issue with that i end this presentation thank you for listening another amazingly informative presentation yeah after seeing the redesigns by southeast asian artists sisu is very disappointing indeed now let's get even deeper into the nitty-gritty did the server spot any culturally significant items or practices in the movie that might have been inspired by real ones here's what they said in part two of these presentations at least because the whole thing was way too long to upload as a single video it was longer than the snyder cut but i swear we have so many more interesting presentations coming up you're gonna learn so much about southeast asian weapons martial arts languages food and fashion it is not to be missed and we'll be uploading part two right away so just go there just click it there it's gonna be there

Channel: Xiran Jay Zhao

Views: 1,088,959

Keywords: lindsay ellis, raya and the last dragon, raya disney, raya, namaari

Id: Pwn8YD8sobo

Length: 115min 25sec (6925 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 04 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/PartyPorpoise]

These are great videos. One of the dumbest things about Rayagate was that a lot of non-SEA people were acting like Lindsay was dunking on a movie that was important for SEA representation... But most of the SEA takes I heard were at BEST ambivalent about it.

Side note, I like that they mentioned the wildlife. I know it's a minor thing, but SEA has a lot of really interesting wildlife that they could have taken inspiration from.

[u/AtabeyMomona]

Currently watching the video, I think the section on Lindsay is well-done and very insightful. I also love Xiran's channel (and really enjoyed Iron Widow when I read it).

[u/a-penless-death]

IIRC, weren't Lindsay and Xiran already planning a collab that they canceled?

[u/gandalftheballer]

i love their channel! lts a really good explanation of what happened, and Im glad they were able to highlight SEA voices

edit: fixed pronouns

[u/forbidden-donut]

I highly recommend Xiran's channel, particularly the ATLA analysid. It's very informative, insightful, and funny at exploring Asian portrayal in western media.

[u/Confident-Ad9522]

I am so glad they made these two videos. This was what should have captured the public attention to correct course in the Raya discourse, not the stupid harassments campaign against Lindsay.

[u/paulcshipper]

When people say South East Asian need proper representation... that causes me to pause for a second.

When it comes to minorities in a place like the USA, I get it why when it comes to black people in America, because for 200+ they have been slaved and ignored in when it comes to things like laws and shit. But when it comes a group that's basically ignored as... being something that exist in our society, I don't think we 'need' to care. It's good some of them are getting their opinions out about a movie that honestly doesn't matter, but it's not ground breaking or vital.

I think it's good to get their views, but after watching it... and I learn some things, but it's still trivial.