The consensus at this time when it comes to the whitewashing issue that for some reason has been leveled at Big Hero 6, one of Disney’s better-animated movies in the past decades, is that it really doesn’t exist. If one wants to take a look at the comic that inspired the movie, y’ know, the comic that very few people knew about until the movie was actually out and ready to be viewed, there’s less diversity there than there is in the animated version since Honey Lemon is white, Fred is white, Hiro and his older brother are definitely mixed race since their Aunt Cass is very white, Wasabi is black, and Gogo is Asian. Seriously, whitewashing? Baymax is the only solid white character in the movie and that’s because it’s how he was created, while even Fred and Honey Lemon might actually be a mix of different ethnic backgrounds for all we know. But to even bother saying that Big Hero 6 was whitewashed is kind of ridiculous since it’s one of the more diverse movies that Disney’s put out, and to be certain, the Mouse House has definitely put out a lot of animated movies over the years, some of which have been a lot more accurate than people want to admit.
Anyone remember how some folks actually wanted to state that Moana didn’ depict Polynesian people accurately? There was an argument that all the men were huge and barrel-chested, which wasn’t true, while the women were all small and diminutive, which also wasn’t true if people would actually watch the movie and not just the most prominent characters. Whenever stuff like this gets mentioned it feels that those doing the arguing are just spoiling for a fight either because they’re bored or they want to make certain that they’re not just being paranoid and that others might agree with them. But to start pointing out these kinds of things in animated movies is enough to make a reasonable person shake their head and wonder just when the double standards are going to become too heavy for those that love wielding them to lift. Seriously, animated movies use voice actors, and so long as the person can play the role as they need to, then it shouldn’t be an issue. One thing that is easy to agree with is that if there aren’t any white faces in the crowd it’s not much of an issue, and in some movies this is true. Using Moana as an example again it was a definite must to not show any white faces in the story since otherwise, the movie would have been a lot different considering how white folks treated the islanders a long, long time ago. Yeah, that wouldn’t have been so great.
But getting back to Big Hero 6, the movie was set in the fictional city of San Fransokyo, a fictional city that plays on the cultures of San Francisco and Tokyo, and therefore is bound to be incredibly diverse. The fact that people would call for more diversity in a city setting such as this is a new level of ‘wow’, and not in a good way. One has to really wonder what is going through the mind of an individual that has to look at an animated feature and start counting every little thing they can see that might be problematic since simply enjoying the movie is easy considering that it’s a lot of fun and it does have a few very memorable characters that are definitely inspired in a big way. Gogo is definitely a feminist, though not a third-wave feminist it would appear, while Fred is that goofy guy that just hangs around and is suddenly revealed to be someone important despite still being kind of the geek that people don’t know what to do with. Wasabi is the uptight and kind of anal-retentive individual that has to follow the rules, and Honey Lemon is that sweet but crazy individual that just kind of does things and is hard to bring down since she’s so upbeat. Hiro on the other hand starts out as the risk-taker and the troublemaker but ends up becoming the heart and soul of the team that still has a lot of growing to do but is essentially the guy that ends up being the designer and the tech wizard of the group. Everyone has their place in the group and everyone comes from a very different background, which makes the group work since they’re not the same, they’re not all white, and even the two that are white are entirely different from each other.
At the end of the day, if there’s any whitewashing going on in Big Hero 6, it would be that the sleaziest guys in the movie, the main villain, and the guy that everyone thought was the villain, are both white. But hey, the folks calling out the movie for whitewashing probably missed that one.
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