EVERY YEAR, HOLLYWOOD Reporter hosts a series of panels with movers and shakers from the film industry to coincide with awards season.
Yesterday they published their annual animation roundtable, which featured contributions from the people behind the likes of Zootopia, Trolls, Moana and Sing.
Oh, and Seth Rogen.
However, the headline of the piece raised quite a few eyebrows.
@SethRogen and 6 more on avoiding ethnic stereotypes and how to break the mold of princesses
People thought it was more than a little ironic that six white men would be tasked with talking about ethnic stereotypes and female characters in animation.
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Particularly when Sausage Party, which Seth Rogen wrote and produced, was littered with stereotypes.
In his defense, Rogen stated that Sausage Party was “directly about racial stereotypes and how religion divides us” and argued that it made sense to feature broad ethnic characters.
They don’t use it to the same narrative effect, but you look at Cars and the Fiat is Italian and the [VW van] is a stoner and the tow truck is a Southern guy. It’s very much a part of the animation vernacular, and so we thought if we’re going to do an animated movie and it’s about these things, then it seemed like a perfectly organic opportunity to really lean into all those things and not just do them, but to really talk about them and confront them as head-on as possible — to really make it part of the overall narrative of the movie.
Still, people felt the whole panel was a missed opportunity to have a constructive conversation about diversity in animation.
Even Seth Rogen acknowledged that it wasn’t exactly a good look.
Do better, Hollywood.
