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ivyeight6
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06 Oct 2021, 6:32 am

I heard Disney doing an anthology show with African animators. It's called Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire. A great idea for Disney to do a show about showcasing work from Asian, European, South American and Caribbean animators. What do you think about the idea?



shlaifu
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08 Oct 2021, 9:26 pm

a friend of mine is actually directing one of the African shorts for Disney.

I think it's a marketing thing that happens to have the positive side effect of promoting some African artists - but since promoting African artists is merely the vehicle for Disney to sell its product, the question is whether any other marketing concept can be as effective at selling a thing. - I'm pretty sure "European" doesn't cater to the same audience as "African", so feom Disney's sales team's perspective, it's very, very different.
The marketing argument would be something like "giving a voice to marginalized cultures", i.e., cultures that were suppressed due to colonialism.

Marketing is incredibly cynical, so the following paragraphs are necessarily going to be cynical as well and do not reflect my personal views on things and are not meant as value judgements by me - I'm trying to think this through from a marketing perspective:
Caribbean and South American could work, and Asian, too, except Japanese.
You have to think about target audience: in case of African animation, it's African Americans and woke westerners.
It's not clear if Mexican animation would have a wider target audience than just Mexicans - a pan-latin-American compilation might have a wider target audience, again, and could maybe ride the woke-wave.
Chinese animation would have a large enough audience, because you could then also sell it in China.
But imagine: Laotian animation ? - that would be very special interest..... Indian animation could be a thing, or, part of the pan-Asian compilation.
Afghan animation would be a thing! - or a middle eastern compilation. Also worth thinking about whether Israel should be part of that or not....


I'll ask my friend how it was, working for Disney, once it's done.
My guess is that it'll a draw a very positive picture of Africa which is on the one hand good, because non-Africans tend to only know about African misery. But it'll also be disingenuous, Disneyfied.


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ivyeight6
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09 Oct 2021, 7:28 pm

Okay. What if a big studio like Disney won't do it?