Likewise, suppose that the Disney animated film Pocahontas (1995) features American Indian characters that do not look American Indian but instead look only brownly Caucasian. Although I take it that this constitutes a ceteris paribus aesthetic defect for that film for precisely the reasons previously mentioned, this clearly cannot be a case of actor-character mismatching. Moreover, I take it that whether or not the American Indian characters were voiced by actual American Indians (they were) isn’t an aesthetically relevant consideration with respect to the work qua film fiction (assuming that, for example, Irene Bedard, an Inuit and the speaking voice of Pocahontas, sounds no more American Indian than does Judy Kuhn, a Caucasian and the singing voice of Pocahontas). That is, though I quite readily endorse the claim that failure to have Native actors voice Native characters constitutes a ceteris paribus moral defect, I take it that the defect rests not on some fact about the film fiction itself but rather on some fact external to it, namely facts about the film’s production and the studio’s hiring practices. Although there is a temptation to claim that Pocahontas is ceteris paribus better (morally or aesthetically) for having Natives voice Native characters, such claims fail, upon closer scrutiny, to find any plausible purchase, appearing no more plausible than ones claiming that Pocahontas would ceteris paribus have been a morally or aesthetically better film had there been more Native pencillers, inkers, or colorists on the animation staff.
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