@tangledbea / tangledbea.tumblr.com
Needed some Ruthless Ruth in my life after my son requested to watch this episode the other day. He loves her song ‘Listen Up’ and I do too. Had a lot of fun with this. AND I ACTUALLY COLORED IT! I’m learning just doing flat colors like this is so much easier than doing all the shading crap baha. It was a good exercise for me with her nose as well. I don’t think I’ve ever drawn a round nose like this before?! All in all, Ruthless Ruth is a bad bitch. I like her.
“Here’s a sequence I boarded for Tangled the series” ~via Tom Caulfield on Instagram
🎶 “Listen up, all you goons, listen up and hear my tunes! Every line, boys, is mine, so listen up!” 🎶
Listen Up to Ruthless Ruth for @alchemyinitiative’s #Spooktober Day 4 prompt: Ghosts 👻
I had so much FUN working on this submission and am really happy with how she came out! I hope you love her as much as I do 💚 (I was gonna do a background but then got lazy lol)
Thank you Alan Mencken for the best composition, as always! 💚
Thank you Glenn Slater for these catchy lyrics that stick in my head all day 💚
And thank you to the stars and back Danielle Brooks for bringing Ruthless Ruth to life! Your voice is phenomenal! 💚
Snag your own PenTips for a quieter, smoother, more controlled drawing experience on iPad! And be sure to try out @procreateapp, cause it’s the best!
Hello I can't remember the last time I watched Tangled the movie as well as the tv series but was shocked to find out about the controversies surrounding Chris Sonnenburg and the accusations from the former staff of a toxic work environment. I also read a post that you confronted him about racism within the series and movie. Would you mind telling me what the racist moments were in the series and movie that you pointed out? I want to understand the situation better, thanks.
I'd first like to clarify that I didn't confront him. I wasn't even talking to him. I was having a conversation with someone else, and he commented on it something like, "And here's where I bow out." And then we never saw him on Tumblr again.
As for racist moments, the movie has an all-white cast. Even background characters. There is not a single POC in Tangled, even though there are crowd scenes with hundreds of people in them.
And while there are POC in the series, the Black people are all pretty trope-ish. While I adore Lance, Xavier and Quaid (and Ruthless Ruth), there is still a sense of tokenism to them which I wish the creators hadn’t let happen. Lance is the token black guy in the main cast, who is mostly comic relief and doesn’t get much of a character arc of his own, on top of which, he begins the series as a criminal. Xavier is the magical negro trope. Quaid and Ruth drift away from the tokenism a bit, but they’re still each only there for an insignificant amount of time. (It’s kinda badass that Ruth was a proprietress and Quaid is basically Tangled’s answer to Bass Reeves, though.)
Then there's Madame Canardist. She was created for the movie, but not used (you can spot Vigor in the credits, though), so I can't even blame this entirely on the show (though they could have done something to make her less of a racist caricature). Madame Canardist is a harmful stereotype of a Romani person, frequently and negatively called a g*psy. (That word is as taboo as Esqu*mo and neither should be used.) They are not all fortune-tellers. They are not all mystics. They are not all swindlers. They do not all live in painted wagons. And they are a people who are alive today who are still being persecuted.
Vigor, himself, is a racist stereotype. Psychic monkey in a turban was an oft-used racist caricature for Indian people, back when the mysticism and glamor of the East was all the rage in the US and the UK. The fact that such imagery has persevered to this day shows how little people know or think about the stereotypes.
And then there's the Separatists of Saporia. I have seen people criticize them for being Middle Eastern-based (if nothing else, they are all POC, regardless of what race they are), and having a group of POC take over a predominantly white kingdom in a terrorist move... well, I hope you can see why that's a problem. Even Petunia (the Daylight Thief pretending to be Kiera's mother) is a villain.
The series definitely did better than the movie, in that it included POC at all, but as the saying goes, "They did better, but there's still room for improvement." I acknowledge that there has been progress in the Tangled franchise. But a lot of the issues are a complete tonedeafness to societal issues. I don't think the decisions were necessarily made in malice, but that doesn't mean we can't criticize them.
Before I close this out, I would like to bring up Gothel, and by extension Cassandra. Many people think Gothel is an antisemitic caricature, but I disagree, primarily because her design is based on the looks of Donna Murphy (her voice actor) and Cher, neither of whom are Jewish. Not to mention, the movie was written by a Jewish man, and I find it hard to believe that he would have deliberately written antisemitic tropes into his movie. I think Gothel is an unfortunate coincidence. However, I am also not Jewish, and I am not at all attempting to say that Jewish people who feel slighted are wrong. I have seen convincing arguments both for and against the idea, all from Jewish people, so it's not as if there's a unified front.
I have recently remembered how there are eleven, maybe twelve, total characters of color in Tangled: The Series (out of a total human cast of 100+), and nine/ten of them are portrayed as some combination of criminal, villainous, or untrustworthy for a significant amount if not all of their screen time. And everyone hyped this show up as being so progressive for Disney.
I am so tired. Hire people of color to work on your damn show. And stop making excuses for creators who do this. Yes Disney-the-company strangles good rep but they’re not forcing the show to be racist.
Do you think Rapunzel deserves to have a life outside Cassandra and Varian?
A life outside of Cassandra and Varian?
She definitely has a life outside of Cassandra and Varian.
(I would have given more examples but Tumblr has a ten-image limit.)
the glass sipper should have been called the jaunty moose there i said it lol (the glass sipper isn’t inherently a bad name but yk) also considering the two storybook puns do you think they’re both apart of the same pub/restaurant chain?
I agree with you about that. XD Missed opportunity.
And no. Restaurants didn't really have chains or franchises back then. Especially given that we know that the Snuggly Duckling was founded long enough ago by Ruthless Ruth that no one alive today really knew her, just stories about her.
My honest thoughts on why there aren't black people in the movie is because in kind of set time period, black people were probably slaves and they wanted to avoid that. The Series had the oppurtunity to show black representation and reject the idea of slavery. I enjoyed being abke to meet characters like Lance and Xavier, as well as the great representation of Quaid being the sheriff of a town.
No, you’re not right about that. First of all, Tangled does not have a set time period. Its fashion and technology span hundreds of years. Secondly, it doesn’t take place in America. In fact, it doesn’t take place in our world at all. It takes place in a fantasy world that isn’t even a direct parallel to our world. And the minute someone tells me that the world can contain magic, but not black people who aren’t slaves, is the minute I call bullshit.
There are no black people in Tangled the movie because they didn’t think to put any in. To them, white is the default, so that’s all they bothered to create.
While I adore Lance, Xavier and Quaid (and Ruthless Ruth), there is still a sense of tokenism to them which I wish the creators hadn’t let happen. Lance is the token black guy in the main cast, who is mostly comic relief and doesn’t get much of a character arc of his own. Xavier is the magical negro trope. Quaid and Ruth drift away from the tokenism a bit, but they’re still each only there for an insignificant amount of time. (It’s kinda badass that Ruth was a proprietress and Quaid is basically Tangled’s answer to Bass Reeves, though.)
How do you feel about ghosts like Ruthless Ruth and Eugene's ancestors depicted with torsos trailing off into ethereal… tails (for lack of a better word) rather than proper legs? Yes it adds to their weightless, floating feel and from an animation point of view it is simpler to draw rather than fleshing out (ooh, bad pun) the details of their legs, but I'd like to see ghosts with their bodies complete. Mulan's First Ancestor was at least shown sitting cross-legged underneath his garments.
I don’t have a preference either way. I guess if I had to choose, I’d choose the ghosts having the ability to manifest legs or not, depending upon how they feel, like Genie.
Reminder: The Snuggly Duckling was originally owned by Ruthless Ruth, this making it an official Black Owned business
I’ve always wondered: The holes on Ruthless Ruth’s shoulders. Are they from when her body was decaying? Or were those from whatever incident that ended her life?
Neither. They were holes in her soul because she was not being true to herself and following her dream. If you look at her at the end of the episode, the holes are gone, because they healed up.
Do you ever think about Ruth trapped in her secret chamber during the movie, hearing the echoes of I’ve Got a Dream through the wall and thinking that maybe, just maybe, there’s someone out there who can help her achieve her own dream and lift the curse? ‘Cause I sure do.
The karaoke version of Listen Up is particularly spooky, with all the disembodied voices brought to the forefront.
Lance says Black People Matter and Eugene and Rapunzel and all his friends and family in Corona support that.
So does Xavier, Quaid and Ruthless Ruth. Vex and the citizens of Vardaros agree and support Quaid, and the Pub Thugs support Ruth. (Xavier’s friends and family overlap with Lance’s.)
Hey there! I wanted to thank you once again for making the Through It All karaoke. Anyways, think you could do a "Listen Up" instrumental?
I’ve actually had this made for a while, and it’s one of my favorites, because with the vocals stripped out, it’s kinda spoopy! ♥
