That Duckfan's Eponymous Animation Review Series
Jul 22, 2020 18:32:46 GMT
Matilda, duckman87, and 1 more like this
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jul 22, 2020 18:32:46 GMT
It's not wrong to say that this is much more superficial than Saludos Amigos in the way it delivers its "isn't Latin America neat?" pitch, but I think you're a bit unkind to it on the "political" side. It clearly comes out with the mission statement of making people like the various South and Meso-Americ cultures (in a loose sense of the music, the artstyles, the aesthetics, etc.), not of being a documentary about what those places are really like.
The overabundance of attractive women without parsable personalities is of course a bit uncomfortable, but reads, to me, as just part and parcel of a general problem with 20th-century art of the "big fun spectacle" kind. The reason there are scores of non-individualized, generic "attractive young women" in the background of so many scenes it hat The Three Caballeros wants to make you like Latin America, and decided to do so through a showstopping Broadway show of Latin American aesthetics, and showstopping Broadway shows in 1943 just involves a "back chorus" of underdressed female dancers, no questions asked. I definitely wouldn't speak of it as orientalism. There's some exoticism in Caballeros (of course!), and while it edges closer to orientalist-style flanderization than Amigos did, I don't think it's done in the disrespectful way that "orientalism" implies. The two José Carioca movies were, after all, meant to appeal to the countries being represented, and did. It's all a bit surface-level, but I don't think the actual Mexican, Brazilian, etc. audience looked at it any differently than the good-natured exasperation I get, as a Frenchman, when an American movie reduces France to tourist shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Marseillaise playing in the background, and lots of street painters wearing berets.
On a totally different point, I would also disagree with you about the effects/lighting in the Baía pop-up book sequence. It is, again, set inside a pop-up book; the way I see it, there is never meant to be a sense that the animated fowl have entered the genuine live-action world. It is supposed to feel artificial.
The overabundance of attractive women without parsable personalities is of course a bit uncomfortable, but reads, to me, as just part and parcel of a general problem with 20th-century art of the "big fun spectacle" kind. The reason there are scores of non-individualized, generic "attractive young women" in the background of so many scenes it hat The Three Caballeros wants to make you like Latin America, and decided to do so through a showstopping Broadway show of Latin American aesthetics, and showstopping Broadway shows in 1943 just involves a "back chorus" of underdressed female dancers, no questions asked. I definitely wouldn't speak of it as orientalism. There's some exoticism in Caballeros (of course!), and while it edges closer to orientalist-style flanderization than Amigos did, I don't think it's done in the disrespectful way that "orientalism" implies. The two José Carioca movies were, after all, meant to appeal to the countries being represented, and did. It's all a bit surface-level, but I don't think the actual Mexican, Brazilian, etc. audience looked at it any differently than the good-natured exasperation I get, as a Frenchman, when an American movie reduces France to tourist shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Marseillaise playing in the background, and lots of street painters wearing berets.
On a totally different point, I would also disagree with you about the effects/lighting in the Baía pop-up book sequence. It is, again, set inside a pop-up book; the way I see it, there is never meant to be a sense that the animated fowl have entered the genuine live-action world. It is supposed to feel artificial.