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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Fans customized the Wicked movie poster to more closely match the original Broadway poster.
Original Broadway Poster:
Movie poster:
Some fans, disappointed by the poster, altered it to be closer to the original, moving Grande’s hand and lowering the brim of Erivo’s hat to cover her eyes. The edits prompted Erivo to respond. “This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen
“None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us,” Erivo continued. “The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer… because, without words we communicate with our eyes.”
So, this seems like a completely reasonable reaction to fans making fan content.
And thus, by putting her face all over a piece of art than fans liked for not having a face, Cynthia’s hurt arises from her own actions of hurting the fans of the original.
Congratulations! You detected my sarcasm. But if you’d like me to engage seriously, I’ll bite.
Cynthia is allowed to be upset. She made some art and people didn’t like it. It hurts to put yourself into something - in her case literally - and have people not like it. But that’s the risk you run when you make art for other people. People are allowed to engage with art how they want.
What she is not entitled to do is pretend that this is degrading, or in someway offensive. If people were going round scratching out her face from random images, she might have a point. But that isn’t what is happening here. She engaged with the original piece of art by making her own version and putting her face in it. Others engaged with her art by making their own versions and taking some of her face right back out of it in order to make it closer to the original. That’s no more or less wrong than what she did. They’re both perfectly fine. If her feelings are hurt, that’s unfortunate, but it is incidental. And she is entitled to express that her feelings are hurt, but she is not entitled to pretend that that is anything more than incidental.
I daresay Peter Jackson might be upset when people make fan-edits of The Hobbit trilogy by removing a lot of his artistic vision to edit it down to a single watchable film. But if he came out and said it was personally degrading to him, people would call that ridiculous. If Evangeline Lilly said fans were “erasing women” by cutting out Tauriel, people would call that ridiculous. Everyone has their own visions when it comes to making adaptations of other works, and if people disagree with yours, it’s not a personal attack, even if it feels like one.
That being said, I have no beef with Cynthia. She is no doubt getting a lot of grief from racist and sexist weirdos mixed in with the more legitimate negative feedback, so while I think that her statement above is ridiculous, I understand her feelings are hurt, and she is “lashing out” in what is ultimately a very small potatoes kind of way. I hope the movie does well.
As an aside; I’m a fan of musical theatre but an un-fan of the cost of musical theatre tickets, so I was very concerned that no one would attempt to adapt a Broadway/West End musical again after what Tom Hooper did to Cats. I saw Wicked in London and enjoyed it, so I’ll probably watch this film if the reviews are at least halfway good.
“Cynthia’s hurt arises from her own actions of hurting the fans of the original.”
this is incorrect and more victim blaming.
when you are assaulted, it is not your fault that you are assaulted.
is the fault of those assaulting you.
"Cynthia is allowed to be upset. "
Yes, glad tp hear at least one person admitting that she is allowed to be upset.
“What she is not entitled to do is pretend that this is degrading, or in someway offensive.”
she’s not pretending anything, and do you alleging that is rejecting her right to be upset, invalidating her emotions, dehumanizing her.
she finds erasing her face from her portrayal of the character offensive.
That’s perfectly valid, as you finally agreed with earlier.
“That’s no more or less wrong than what she did.”
you mean making fan art in general?
do you understand fan art as morally wrong in some way?
“If her feelings are hurt, that’s unfortunate, but it is incidental.”
it is not incidental, it is a direct result of having erased her from the official artwork featuring her.
that was not an incidental action, that was a deliberate action to erase part of her face and her hair. and color the sky green. which looks terrible.
“if people disagree with yours, it’s not a personal attack, even if it feels like one.”
this isn’t a disagreement. this is a personal erasure. an erasure of her person.
It’s not the same as a fan thinking to themselves that “aw gee, I like the cartoon poster better.”
"I understand her feelings are hurt, and she is “lashing out” in what is ultimately a very small potatoes kind of way. "
this acknowledgment of her feelings are the simple concept that other people will not admit to.
If you now understand her feelings are hurt, there’s not much more to worry about.
people are saying Cynthia isn’t allowed to be upset, but she is because she is a real person with feelings.
other people do not understand that or are dehumanizing her by rejecting her feelings and upset it having her identity erased as invalid.
fans are allowed to make fan art, Cynthia is allowed to be upset by fan art that erases her identity.
I’m sure I’ll watch it at some point, but it’s number 700 on my watch list for now(I try to go chronologically).
I like musicals and have fond, if vague, memories of wicked.
they’re going to try and make cats again in the next 20 years also. no property will be left untouched.
but… she wasn’t assaulted…
correct, that was an analogy of how an attacker is not a victim, a victim is a victim.
when someone is attacked, they are the victim.
The attacker is not a victim because they feel bad or ashamed about attacking the victim.
The attacker is still the attacker and the victim is still the victim.