 Disney's new Little Mermaid just flopped at the South Korean and Chinese box offices But is it for the reason that this article suggests? I don't know. The internet is debating it Yeah, and the discussion got spicy Of course some people are accusing, you know, Chinese and South Korean moviegoers of being colorist Because the movie relatively did perform better in the Philippines and Indonesia Other people are like, dude, to call countries racist because they didn't like one movie that may not even have been that good to begin with It's ridiculous. Those countries also love Black Panther And of course the discussion just went to like 6,000 other places We're gonna get into the comments section, give our own takeaways Make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications and why is this such a big deal? We're talking about a Disney movie starring Holly Bailey who used to date DDG They just broke up. She's great at singing, but everybody's using this to discuss the world The Little Mermaid was supposed to unite us all. Disney movies are what they're supposed to do Under the sea Oh, why is a Disney movie and box office numbers from Asia being used to divide Asians and Black people in America? I don't understand it What was the angle of the writer we need to know? By the way, I'm not completely discrediting the articles like perspective or tone or viewpoint I'm just questioning it because it did seem a little ultra selective to be honest Um, so let's just go through the numbers real quick Okay, so it did 3.5 million in China opening weekend, not very good, right? In South Korea did 4.4 a little bit better in South Korea is a lot smaller of a market in Indonesia and the Philippines It did respectively like 4 and 4.1 million So I think it did relatively better in those countries, but not like amazing amazing, right? But the article that was posted on next shot. We don't know if the writer was Asian or white There's a lot of speculation. There's almost conspiracy theories if you read through the comments section We're basically saying they went through some of the netizens Reactions in China in South Korea and there that's where some of the comments were a little bit Into the problematic zone. No, there were some racial comments But the comments that they highlighted basically said, oh, yeah, you know, I imagine that Ariel is this white woman And that's what I grew up knowing. So this switch up is too much for me to relate to I Cannot handle the dissonance with my childhood. Yeah, I just watched a little mermaid ten years ago And then ten years later. She is a completely different person. Um, yeah But basically anyways guys we want to get into the comments section But I want to leave you with one question before we get into the comment section, which is very spicy What if the movie did well in South Korea in China? Are we gonna hear positive news about that and it's saying like oh look East Asia's not colorist And they're not racist because people love the little mermaid over there or is it only because they didn't do well That's why we're hearing this news and it's being kind of this narrow This narrative is being spun using a movie as a litmus test is so ridiculous Oh, they didn't put Finn on the Chinese Star Wars poster China's racist Oh, they worship Kobe almost more than any other country on earth including America. Oh, they love they're not racist You know what I mean like to look at these hyper little minutiae things and then draw sweeping categorizations It's very much just what the internet likes to do in 2023. It's very tough. Yeah. Alright, so David Let's get into the comment section. Alright, so the comment section was we have to take a look at the data set This is what David Choi music said. Listen would have CRA or Asian movies have done really well in Africa How did movies like Black Panther do like we said it's all about the data set I think Halle Bailey did a good job, but to draw conclusions from this is kind of ridiculous and a reach, right? Yeah, I don't like how Basically global statistics from Asia are being used to divide Asians of black people in America to me It's very weird, you know, that's what makes you question the aim of this author because they don't mention that spider-verse with Miles Morales whose black and Latino did really well in Asia and a lot of Will Smith movies do really well and Black Panther I believe got the most of its money from Asia and China market of all the markets in the world Oh, yeah, and as far as black women woman king is supposed to be releasing in China soon, too So obviously they see some appeal in that movie Also Shang Chi and Mulan which are Chinese American or Chinese led movies they flopped in Asia So it's not only because of race, but but I will say race could be a factor, right? I mean also China makes up 40% of the NBA's global profits However, this was a pretty good counterpoint Andrew. This is from a black guy He said it is because the idea of hyper masculine black men whether in IRL as athletes or as Action figures have been globally accepted However black women are more so struggling because of the perception that they are more masculine than your average woman And I can empathize with this because I feel like as an Asian guy We get perceived as more feminine than your average baseline I guess male in the world whereas Asian women they get perceived as extra extra feminine But obviously in the women lane, that's a better quality than it is amongst the it basically it's the mirror problem It's the vice versa problem that Asian men and black women have so I can empathize with this comment Yes, somebody said guys the majority of black fled films such as black panther men and black Spider-Verse they've done really well like you said. I mean somebody else said this is not even surprising though to be honest because Considering how much of a problem colorism and racism is throughout Asia. So this is somebody basically pointing out I'm not surprised that this movie failed in South Korea and China. Yeah, I think that There is colorism and here's the thing we talked about on our channel before where colorism I guess by the way that we define it in the West it does exist, but it's not for the same reasons It's not between this like white European and like black African kind of colorism spectrum It's actually just between different shades of Asians and that other different types of Asians obviously have different bloodlines and stuff But it's really not for the same reason this more about like oh you worked out in the farm So you're tan and then that makes you like a lower-class person or something that's kind of where it's more I'm not saying it doesn't exist I'm just saying it's different and it's like kind of weird to use the Western terms to describe Asia if you don't study Asia Study its own unique history and blah blah blah the ebbs and flows Somebody said brother movie was just not appealing in general stop making false correlations black panther had the highest box office in China Yeah, so currently little mermaid is 67% of rotten tomatoes. That's actually a decent score But it's not like an amazing score. So I mean I think there is debate on whether people actually like the movie or not Yeah, I guess in China on the two major movie rating sites that are similar to rotten tomatoes They got a 7.0 and a 5.2. So that's actually not that bad considering how bad it performed You know what I mean plus they bootleg a lot in China Who knows maybe a lot more people saw it, but they watch it on a hacked iPad with a camcorder Let's be honest somebody said yes us dark-skinned Asians like Filipinos support this I don't know about East Asians though. They might be more colorist shout out to the Philippines showing up and supporting the film And then this other guy this black guy came in and said Southeast Asians and black people have always had strong ties So this kind of goes back to more of the spiciness, right? Because now we're sort of like deviating into the the branches off of what the tree trunk original discussion was What do you think of this? Oh, man? I love that the idea of splitting up Asia is really really interesting to me Yeah, I do think listen if you have tanner skin and you see someone else on the screen that has tanner darker skin You're more likely to relate to them. I get that I think that is true So I think there is some relatability now I think where there it turns into racism is if like an Asian person's like oh like oh, I don't want to watch this cuz She's black. Oh my god, like, you know, and if that's really how they feel in their heart Then that is definitely a racist feeling but at the same time, you know Those countries are like 90% plus Asian like East Asia like Korea's like 95% Korean China's like 92% Han Chinese So it's like they are like, yeah, it is just maybe you could say it's like is it I think they're used to more of a spectrum of looks in Southeast Asia to be honest. I will say that that is for sure I mean, I would say anecdotally growing up my East Asian friends more so Acted white as generalized as that sounds and my Southeast Asian friends more acted black Right if we were to use the white black binary that America often exists in right, right, right, right? Somebody said man The point is their netizens just didn't make the same commentary on skin color that we saw that pop up in the article Yeah, I could see that being true. Like I said guys I don't think that all the dynamics that were pointed out by this author in this like piece Against the China box office in South Korea box office were wrong, but I just don't know how far you can extrapolate it from these numbers Somebody said Mulan flopped across the globe. Maybe it's not just race is the biggest issue guys There's a lot of other factors that people don't like to consider. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah from a lot of blue checkmarks They were saying Halle Bailey is was the perfect casting choice. I agree. You know what my always ultimately thinking Andrew I was thinking as messy as these discussion and comment sections and long as these threads and debates are getting Hopefully Disney out of plan to spark something that even though it's messy right now in the long term They can be more something productive coming out of it Yeah, you know I think a lot of movies that end up making a big impact in the world are heavily discussed at the time of release Right and it's good that this sparked such a discussion because that means the story in the movie is Actually influential and impactful So I think that even Asians in Asia like in China and Korea having this conversation right now Right and maybe our conversation gets back to them or maybe this American conversation gets back to them or them Questioning their own reasons on why they didn't like that movie. Maybe they find out. Oh, yeah It is because like I don't like that or like, you know, whatever reasons it could be for They're gonna think about it now. Yeah, if that happens who knows guys like I said man Sometimes I think these articles people like people don't really care what's happening in Asia They just care when it's like something in a weird niche roundabout way related back They try to extrapolate something about the relationship between this group and this group a lot of people There's no correlation, but it just seems like there's a lot of other stuff We could be going off of a lot of people in America tend to only look at the negative news out of Asia not the good news not the Unifying thing not the bridge-building things because obviously good news doesn't travel as much as bad news Divisive news is the most interesting Somebody said I'm personally black and I work at the NAACP who cares about making Disney richer There are so many bigger issues in society than this this movie being successful or unsuccessful Isn't going to change anything. So that was a comment from a black woman who works at the NAACP This is a comment from a I guess a little bit more conservative white guy moderate conservative white guy said the world isn't California guys, why are we taking LA Hollywood? California standards in China judge the rest of the world these things are really layered. They're really complicated They don't even think about it. We they might end up with a certain result and have got the math behind their solution It's completely different. Right, right, right And then one last comment was like oh well, you know like thanks for covering this because I lived in Asia three years And it's not as easy for a black person to live there and then someone responded that saying well What if an Asian person moved to Africa West Africa? What is their life going to be like? How are they going to get treated right? This is a interesting argument I guess it shows you how global the world is getting because a lot of people have like traveled to other continents now Obviously our parents our grandparents wait, so so let me tell you this so I guess there's two Americans that are arguing About how an Asian person or a black person gets treated in Asia and how an Asian person gets treated in Africa And these are two Americans arguing about this. I Don't like I need to see the box office receipts for CRA in Zambia I need to see the Ghana box off right. I mean, we don't know. Yeah I guess it's just interesting to be bringing up Africa in China when you're arguing about things in America I guess I do I actually realized that a lot of people cannot disconnect like just like looks of people even people who theoretically should know better Or or maybe it's just going off your skin tone who knows man. Anyway Andrew, what are our final takeaways? I do think that race played into the box office aspect a little bit I do think so I would agree with the author to a very limited extent in the sense of like yes You're pointing out something that very melt well may be true But as far as like this and this and where it zigged and where it's agged and where you know the whole the whole discussion went I don't know I just think it's weird the way Americans always need something so trivial tied back to like access Hollywood to talk about much more structural things Yeah, and also like Considering the comments that you got from fellow Americans about little mermaid and they were way worse than some of these comments You know what I mean? So I'm just like I guess I guess I'm not like I guess I'm not like super shocked But I hope that you know, hopefully this discussion reaches back over to some of those Asian people who left those comments And maybe they can have this discussion in Asia and honestly I do think that everybody is tribalistic, but when your country becomes more powerful There's like talk about this talk about that global north versus global south and like all these like splits that kind of like end up sort of like Like I said there here's the discussion, but then the branches go everywhere So anyway guys, let us know what you think in the comments section below guys keep it civil Is it a big deal? Is it not a big deal? What can you take from it? If anything until next time we to hop out boys We out