10 Comments

1. Hello there ,
   I’m sorry I don’t speak Italian but I think I can help your users.

   I was browsing your page when I saw that you mentioned The Big Bang Theory here: shelidon.it/?paged=31

   The 11th season is premiering next week, and I’m so excited about it! But since I’m outside the U.S., I spent a lot of time figuring out a way to watch it. There is a good article that I think will help your users watch the new season, and I thought you might want to share it with them: [LINK EDITED OUT]
   This way, we’ll all be able to see how Amy answers Sheldon. : )

   I hope I helped your users,
   Sophia

   Reply

   1. Hi Sophia,
      unfortunately, my nickname doesn’t have anything to do with that show.

      Reply

2. Hello,

   I am Business Development Manager at Ingedata. We are an Asian-based company that offers high added value services in the field of technical data management and 3D modeling at competitive costs.

   I am going to the European BIM Summit this week and I would be glad to meet you there. I am available to organise a meeting between the 8th and the 9th during the congress.

   Have a good day,

   Sincerely,

   Lionel Kamakoué

   Reply

3. Hey, darling, are you feeling alright?

   Reply

4. What’s up with your Twitter profile picture/avatar? It’s black. Also you’ve been somewhat quiet on Twitter, so just making sure you are ok or haven’t been hacked

   Tom

   Reply

   1. Thanks for reaching out, Tom: I’ll answer you via PM.

      Reply

5. Ciao,
   sono una grafica che lavora nell’architettura.
   ho una domanda sull’esportazione da revit di piani in cui ci sono elementi raster (é un piano con le immagini dei materiali).
   potresti contattarmi per favore?
   mille grazie!

   Reply

6. Hi there, I stumbled across your ‘Dancing Mushrooms: More Fantasia Backstories’ and I found it important as a Chinese-American person to urge you to communicate to your audience that these mushrooms, while its history and design present fascination, they are actually racist depictions, i.e., yellowface.

   Unless someone grew up around the performing arts or have taken to it in their adulthood, The Nutcracker is a ballet that people have heard of, would recognize its score, yet likely can’t recall any of the storyline. For folks like you who are familiar with its narrative arc, Act II contains a series of divertissements (short technical dances) that flawlessly propagate Spanish, Arabian, and Chinese stereotypes. And the dancing “Chinese” mushrooms with slits for eyes? As you’ve pointed out, they’re dancing to the famous Tchaikovsky number, “Chinese Dance”. It’s 2022 and apparently production companies across the globe still need catchy petitions like “Final Bow to Yellowface” to remind people to stop using racist representations in modern renditions of historical works that were problematic even during its contemporary conception. That was a euphemism for blaring racist propaganda.

   Yes, everything is political – even a seemingly benign toadstool mushroom. This is for myself, all the AAPI individuals paying their therapists thousands of dollars to find peace within their tumultuous cultural identity crises, and everyone else who has a role in the way these ideas are shaped. This is a conversation about the United States’ history of misrepresenting non-White races in order to keep them from power. It would be really great to see this represented in the thorough research you already compiled. These yellowface mushrooms are akin to Sunflower, the blackface equivalent (actually much worse) centaurette now omitted from The Pastoral Symphony. Thank you for listening and considering what I’ve said.

   Reply

   1. Dear Cin,

      thank you for your comment, and I’m sorry you couldn’t post it under the original article because of someone else’s rudeness: I’ll post a permalink to this, because I think everyone should read it.

      I’m a firm believer in what you wrote, down to the part where you state that “everything is political”. It indeed is.
      And you’re absolutely right and the problem lies in both the original music piece, filled with the exoticist quirks in vogue at the time, the way Disney decided to implement that, and the contemporary depictions.

      I’ll try and break down what I think, starting from the premise that I 100% agree with you and I think you’re 100% right.

      I think the music falls short as the so-called Orientalists painters did: it depicts something exotic for the sake of the exotic, with a vague allusion of what the author thinks the flavour of the culture is, but without any consultancy from actual people involved and without a real study into the musical culture of the countries involved.
      It’s true, even if it doesn’t make it right, that the ballet features *sweets*, and not people, and if Tchaikovsky is mocking other cultures he’s also mocking his own, since there’s a Russian Dance between the Chinese dance and the Danish one. Still, the so-called Russian Dance is “Trepak”, which is a traditional dance, while all the other dances are made-up and flavoured pieces.
      One usually says that “it was a different time”. Was it, though? The Nutcracker was performed in 1892 and all it takes is a brief research to find out that Russia and China were in a splendid relationship, back than, and a person like Tchaikovsky could have easily reached for Chinese musicians, if he really wanted to get it right. He didn’t. He didn’t recognise the need to.

      Disney has even less excuses. The Studio could have done what the ballet is originally depicting, and put sweets on the screen: what we call the Chinese Dance is in fact the Tea Dance, the Arabian Dance is the Coffee Dance, the Spanish Dance is the Chocholate Dance. They decided to do otherwise and enforce the stereotype, and I have no sources on whether the conversation even occurred.
      I can only imagine how people like Wah Ming Chang might have felt and what they might have gone through in terms of bullying, while working on the same production.
      (for those who are not familiar with Wah Ming Chang, he was a Chinese-American designer, sculptor, and artist working at Disney and he designed the snowflake fairies: I talked about him here.

      Regarding contemporary depictions, it really is beyond me: why can’t we break free from the “Chinese” part and simply stick to the “Tea” part? Do they want something funny and light? Yes, they can use the very same music to mock the British and their obsession with tea. The Dance Magazine has a beautiful 2019 article by Phil Chan And Georgina Pazcoguin titled “A Fresh Cup of Tea: How to Make Nutcracker More Inclusive”, with some ideas on the matter. People can find it here.

      For those who are not familiar with the controversy, here’s a brief selection of articles:
      – “As ‘Nutcracker’ Returns, Companies Rethink Depictions of Asians”, published on the New York Times in November 2021 here;
      – “Toning Down Asian Stereotypes to Make ‘The Nutcracker’ Fit the Times”, still by the New York Times but published in 2018 (note how the tone changes) is available here;
      – “Sorry, ‘The Nutcracker’ Is Racist” published on The New Republic in 2014 is here;
      – “Op-Ed: ‘Yellowface’ in ‘The Nutcracker’ isn’t a benign ballet tradition, it’s racist stereotyping” published on The Los Angeles Times in 2018 is here.
      And I could go on.

      Once again, thank you for your comment and for bringing to the attention this important subject.

      Reply
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