Cross-Racial Casting and Cuisine Culture
My project focuses on the controversy and public opinion of cross-racial casting and the misappropriation of food from other cultures, especially in Disney movies. This issue has brought much controversy within the past year considering the movies like The Little Mermaid with Haley Bailey as a star and Snow White with Rachel Ziegler as a star. Another issue with cross-casting different races as a lead is a fact that it has gone on for the past several decades, but it's been with the voice acting rather than the traditional acting. For example, the woman who voices Pocahontas as she sings is white. However, this didn't cause much controversy because for one, she's not seen, and two, this happened decades ago. On the other hand, my project also focuses on the misappropriation of different cultures as they've been adapted in America as well as the fact that throughout several Disney movies, the food shown from other cultures is not appropriate as to what they truly are and what they serve in those countries. The different aspects of misappropriation combined with public reaction led me to synthesize public opinions and foods from different cultures.
Self in Modern World
The purpose of my research and product is to truly understand what is the reasoning behind people's beliefs when it comes to casting a person in a different role than their original race and ethnicity. While it's understandable that some feel it's time for more representation, public opinions have shifted to either completely support or disagree with the notion that originally white characters need to be replaced with people of color. The purpose of this research and the product is to reflect that public opinion is either completely changed depending on situations or prove the fact that people want their values to be reflected in television and movies and truly dive into what diversity and misrepresentation look like in Hollywood. For my product, I created a newspaper-like article based on the several interviews I conducted with students in Apollo to gauge public opinion.
Art
My project's goal is to have a strong understanding of why traditional food is important. I also researched the importance of the environmental and cultural factors that went into American society's renditions of food from other cultures. Many factors lead a person in America who is from another country to decide to change a recipe and misrepresent the dish's origin and nature. For example, accessibility: some ingredients in a recipe from a country like China are nowhere to be found in America, so substitutes are made. That said, I also decided to combine different cultures to represent the creativity of Americans and the influence of food. For example, Shwarma and Birria are similar dishes - they're both seasoned meat with toppings wrapped in some form of a tortilla or bread. That said, they're taste pallets vary greatly, so I combined them to create one byproduct of different cultures. I also combined Chinese donuts, Youtai, with New Orleans style beignets. Finally, I made Arancini with filling from different cultures like Puerto Rico, Mexico, and it's native homeland, Italy.