Why Diversity is Important in Media

I am an Indian human (technically Bangladeshi—but is that nationality? (Is it even my nationality since I was born in Canada? What IS a nationality? (I think my nationality is either Canadian or American and my ethnicity is Bangladeshi, but that is probably incorrect)). What even is the actual term for my race [I just did some minor Googling and I couldn’t find anything. There are multiple races from Bangladesh] I always just went with Indian (Bangladesh is on the Indian subcontinent) or generic brown).

So I have the average black hair, black eyes, and brown skin combo. But when I was a kid, I thought I was blond with blue eyes.

Seriously.

This wasn’t a color identification issue. If you gave me paint swatches, I could tell you black, brown, yellow, smaragdine, blue, etc.

This was because I had no idea what being blond with blue eyes actually meant. (Or what an Indian person was.) I thought it was a unanimous characteristic for hair and eyes. All hair is stringy, and all hair is blond. All eyeballs are round, and all eyeballs are blue. I watched a LOT of Barbie movies (and Dora the Explorer) and Barbie is blond with blue eyes. Therefore, all humans are blond with blue eyes (or they’re talking animals [thanks Dora]).

Person trying to teach me colors: What color are your hair and eyes?

Mini Arachnid: Blond and blue. (Note that Mini Arachnid has a giant mass of tangled black hair and giant, unblinking black eyes.)

I remember in kindergarten we had to fill out a questionnaire with our eye colors. I don’t quite remember what purpose this served. The options were brown, blue, and green. I chose blue.

When my parents corrected me…

Mini Arachnid (jaw drops): WHAAAAT?

So I asked them what their eye colors are, and they said black. This ensued in another round of dramatic gasping because black wasn’t on the list of options. But their drivers’ licenses listed their eye colors as black. So clearly someone was lying.

So, in conclusion, diversity is important because it prevents confusion among young children.

 

Why The Greatest Showman Is Not The Greatest Show

If you like The Greatest Showman, I suggest that you leave this post. This is a list of all things I despised about the movie.

1. Flaky plot
2. Just waiting for the next song
3. Listening to all the songs and thinking, “That’s a generic pop song.”
4. How PT Barnum used the weirdos for profit while telling them they would be famous
5. CGI ELEPHANTS
6. Glossing over the fact that Barnum probably abused animals
7. Glossing over the part of movie where the weirdos were abused by people on the street
8. Glossing over how the Zendaya and Zac Efron fell in love in the first place
9. Glossing over the personalities of the weirdos
10. Glossing over the personalities of Barnum’s family
11. Glossing over Barnum’s actual personality
12. GLOSSING OVER EVERYTHING
13. The opera singer did not sing opera, but a stupid pop ballad thing
14. Insulting Hannah Montana with “This Is Me.”
15. Insta Romance with Zac and Zendaya
16. The argument/agreement song between Zac and Barnum was so bland I forgot it right after it was sung
17. Most of the songs were so bland I forgot them in the same way
18. The beginning sounded like something from Fall Out Boy
19. There was this beautiful scene with Barnum and his family on the roof of their apartment with all these moving sheets and this beautiful night sky but it was wasted on terrible characters and a failure of a plot
20. How Barnum’s manipulation was seen as good while the ballad singer’s manipulation was seen as bad
21. A BUNCH OF OTHER THINGS

Mellow Yellow Episode 8: Chaos

MASTER tries to furiously eat another BREAD SNADWHICH. All the BREAD SNADWHICHES hurry into an open grave, afraid. Master is now completely green.

MASTER (to the SNADWHICHES): Wait! Come back! You are so tasty!

MARY and MAN WHO WAS EATEN MY MARSHMELLO laugh.

MARY claps a hand over her mouth as MASTER glares at her, still green.

MAN WHO WAS EATEN BY MARSHMELLO (still laughing): You look like the moldy pieces of bread you claim to love.

***

ARA looks up from her cell phone with an odd look on her face. LENA and JOHN continue to argue. ARA disappears and reappears in the graveyard.

ARA: I will never tell you my secrets (taps Master and he turns into a ghost)

Master: MY FEET!

***

ARA walks in through the wall. JOHN screams. His scream is oddly high-pitched. QUINN walks in in a wedding gown holding a SNADWHICH screeching California Gurls.

QUINN: CALIFORNIA GURLS, WE’RE UNDENIABLE. EIFFEL TOWERS ON TOP!

JOHN and LENA join in, “singing” different parts of the song. TICK enters, her hair now purple, a sobbing ZHAN chasing her.

Tick: Roar!

 

~~~~END

My Favorite TV Shows as a Small Person

This post (obviously) discusses my favorite TV shows as a small person.

For all of you nonexistent readers out there who don’t know what a “small person” is, I’ll elaborate after the colon: A small person is a human being who has not existed as many days as a medium or large person.

When I was a very small person, my absolute favorite TV show was Dora the Adventurer. I just couldn’t get enough of it. All of my things were Dora-related, as well. My bed, my backpack, my clothing, my pencils, my toothbrush, my plate, my silverware (which was actually plastic, not silver), my placemat, this cushion thing that I put on my dining chair so I could reach the table, a little chair/couch thing, my bike, my bedspread, my toys, my shoes, my socks, my hair accessories, etc. But then, one day, I decided that I hated Dora more than anything else and I kicked all my Dora-related material possessions down the static escalator.

But before I hated it, I adored it. Back in the olden days, we used this big, boxy television set, not the thin flat screens that small people today get, and I thought that Dora lived in the television and she would come out at specific times to have an adventure.

Dora the Adventurer is one of those small people-shows where the characters ask the TV-watchers for help to answer questions. When I was a small person, I thought that I was actually communicating with Dora and that she really needed me to help her answer the questions. Until one day, when I wasn’t quite sure what the answer to a particular question was and I was still thinking when the allotted time to answer the question ran out and Dora started speaking again. She told me that I was right and that I had done a good job, even though I hadn’t said anything. My small person heart was crushed. Dora couldn’t really hear me. She was a liar. (Although this does not correlate with my future hatred of Dora the Adventurer.)

When I was a slightly less-small person, my favorite TV show was Danny Ghost and after that, it was Generator Dex.