12
votes
Pixar's dumpling short "Bao" is polarizing audiences with cultural themes
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- Title
- The polarized reactions to Pixar's 'Bao' are rooted in culture
- Published
- Jun 26 2018
- Word count
- 1182 words
I may not count since I live in a very Asian community, but I don't think that the reason why people didn't get it was because of some cultural coding. People didn't get it because they didn't understand how the short was trying to communicate the message. I've been to movies in the past where I was crying while others in the audience were laughing at a tender moment. You have to understand that when a mainstream audience watches a movie, you're going to have a lot of people who don't have great familiarity with the language of film. Those people aren't likely to understand everything that happens if you do more complicated reveals like this. How many people understood Mulholland Drive on the first view?
It didn't help that it had some unintentionally (?) disturbing imagry. And the scene where the mother eats the bao child is also very ambiguous, as the article mentions.
In other words, people's brain cells have been roasted? If there really was a lot of such reactions, probably, but I doubt it is justified to push all responsibility to Hollywood in the age of the internet.
Anyway, there is absolutely nothing in this short that requires any awareness or knowledge of foreign culture, just the ability to connect dots and empathy.
I can image groups of teenagers planning to watch the Incredibles wouldn't care much about a sentimental short, but there is no excuse for not understanding what was going on. So talking about a polarizing cultural divide serves merely as an excuse and there is no need to support that notion any further.
Yeah, I'm with you. If that argument was true, then Coco would've had similar problems.
I haven't seen Bao and I generally trust Pixar. I'm just saying Coco is proof American audiences can be receptive to non-white perspectives. Hell, I'd argue Black Panther is also proof of the same. As for the female perspective, I'd throw Wonder Woman and Frozen in there.
I just saw Coco yesterday, and I gotta say it's solidly a low-tier Pixar film. Didn't Up prove that we don't need ten-minute narration bananzas to introduce the story? Why did theygo back to narration?
Another article that tries to drum up controversy by cherry-picking from idiots on Twitter.
I think it's interesting that one ten-minute film brings some to tears and causes bewilderment tinged with mockery in others. Our cultural backgrounds shape our reactions to the world in ways both large and small.
That's because people care too much about the very little.