The original text of “Peter Pan,” as J. Barrie wrote more than a century ago, provides his other local people with a word no longer used in well-educated corporations, or even a day soon, through the Washington NFL team, which announced this week that he “withdraws” that call after 87 years.
HBO Max put “What the Wind Took away” on the bench for a few weeks last month, while proposing a new advent that praises the film’s importance and condemns its intolerance. Isn’t it time Disney Plus did something with “Peter Pan”? As things stand, the only precaution attached to the 1953 animated harvest is tobacco use.
It does not matter that the real challenge with the scene in question is not the so-called peace pipe: it is the overtly racist description of an organization of Aboriginal peoples. Disney portrays these tribe members as Native Americans with stereotypes of comedians, even though, since Neverland is a fictional position, they cannot be American at all.
These natives who sing and sing “What Made the Red Man Red?” Examples of letters: Once you didn’t know / All the things you know now. / But, in fact, learn a lot / And all this by asking: How? »
Disney is preparing a new live-action film called “Peter Pan – Wendy.” The Disinside informs that an unscheduled Native American or First Nations actress will play Tiger Lily, who plays a “central role” in this version. The site says the reinvented character “is a fierce warrior and a serene and benevolent leader.”
Isabella Star LaBlanc, who is Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, played Tiger Lily in the same way last winter in a moving production of Peter and Wendy, a play aimed at the public at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. where the team’s call that mocks others has long been used braided.
“It’s amazing to think of a world where I can see that professional football has to worry about that word again,” he says on the phone from his home in Minneapolis.
When he arrived in Washington for rehearsals last fall, LaBlanc surprised that he was “in a town where that word is everywhere.” That word carries a lot of weight for me. He has a violent history in our country. And in Washington, it’s being used informally.
Playwright Lauren Gunderson sought out an Aboriginal woman like Tiger Lily in this fashionable edition of “Peter Pan,” in which Wendy needs to grow up to win a Nobel Prize, and Peter, as always, doesn’t need to grow up at all.
Most of us grew up with the peter pan story. LaBlanc didn’t. Her parents never let her watch Disney cartoons. Nor did they read the ebook to him, because Tiger Lily of Barrie talks about gibberish, smokes a peace pipe and puts his ear on the floor to hear who’s coming.
Gunderson’s play puts all that petty burlesque to rest in a tale that cleverly puts Tiger Lily in the middle of the play’s high-flying act.
“Tiger Lily gets tough and regains her firmness and her voice,” LaBlanc said. “And I had this moment when I realized how great it is to be able to show this side of Aboriginal history to the other people in DC.”
That moment came to him on a Sunday morning at the start of the series, when LaBlanc saw a boy in third place dressed in a Washington NFL jersey.
“I looked at the audience and identified her immediately,” she says. “In Barrie’s original work and in so many westerns, the word R is used that way.”
LaBlanc grew up in Minnesota, where protests opposed to the Washington team’s call have not been unusual for decades.
“The biggest NFL enthusiasts I know are my Aboriginal family,” he says. “I’m a big fan of the Vikings. But if I have the idea that the team calls to hurt other people, making them feel uncomfortable and despised, I’d say, “Well, let’s fix it.” I love football, but other people love it. more importantly. “
Just the beginning: white people like me will have to not give in to ”anti-racism attention deficit disorder”
The first season of the Washington NFL team took place in 1937. In fact, it was the year of Barrie’s death, at the age of 77. He wrote “Peter Pan” as a play in 1904 and as a novel in 1911. Peter Pan, in Barrie’s words, is “the wonderful white father,” and the tiger lily tribe are “piccaninny warriors.”
The NBC television broadcast of the 1950s Broadway version, starring Mary Martin, featured Sondra Lee as a blonde Tiger Lily. In 2015’s “Pan,” Rooney Mara played Tiger Lily complaining of putting a white actor in an Aboriginal role. Some versions – “Hook” through Steven Spielberg, in 1991, for example – solved the challenge by leaving Tiger Lily completely out of the story. Gunderson, the playwright, had another idea: to put her story in the middle of the scene.
The strength of the stories is at the center of all versions of “Peter Pan.” He believes Neverland is a land with no stories, so he flies every night for them. That’s how Peter hears Wendy tell stories to her siblings through the window. And that’s why she takes Wendy to Neverland to tell those stories to the Lost Children.
In Gunderson’s version, Tiger Lily criticizes Peter for not understanding that Neverland has had stories, if only he knew where to look.
“There were dreamers here before you, Peter,” says Tiger Lily of LaBlanc. “You fly every single night in search of more stories, but have you ever asked for mine? My other people have generations of stories and you never thought about asking.”
On the page, it might seem too waking up to watch a children’s show. On stage, I didn’t play like that at all.
“It’s crazy to think that other Aboriginal people don’t have their own stories,” LaBlanc said. “I grew up listening to them. So it’s really this concept that Peter Pan didn’t ask for those stories because he didn’t know them.”
America has been like this for a long time. The same goes for the WASHINGTON NFL team. Daniel Snyder, the owner of the team, once told USA TODAY that “NEVER” would replace the team call (capital letters are his) and insisted that the call honors his team’s decades of history and tradition.
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In this way, he promoted the history of his football team about the stories of indigenous peoples who have been here since time immemorial. He is a lost child who would not grow up, trapped in a land NEVER of his own conception.
Now, Snyder, finally, that script is over. Isn’t it time Disney Plus did the same?
Erik Brady is a former USA TODAY reporter and one of the founding members of the newspaper. Follow him on Twitter: @ByErikBrady