Bad Asian Culture Representation on Media

 Bad: 

• RAYA and the last dragon 2021

Raya and the Last Dragon is an animated movie produced by Disney intended to represent Southeast Asians but failed miserably in doing so. The movie poorly presented different Southeast Asia cultures by merging every tradition possible, making it seem like every one of them is the same culture and people. This caused difficulty in seeing the representation of Southeast Asians as the main nations in the fictional land "Kumandra".  Since Southeast Asia is full of culture and traditions, there should've been a chance in which a country could've been selected and fully represented rather than creating a whole other set of fictional worlds that the audience can't even see themselves in. In comparison to Frozen, where the location is clearly set in Norway, it is possibly analyzed from how it is presented, which is by not having a variety of Western cultures mixed altogether.

An example would be how Princess Namaari, the main antagonist of the movie, has short hair when royalty in Southeast Asia cultures have long hair as a sign of wealth, importance, and status because it was more difficult to maintain back in the day. Another comment from this movie is that its character designs are bland and generic. It does not symbolise nor represent a specific nation from how different they are to the audiences' expectations—that is even if they can tell at all from the movie's vague settings.