In the article “Brandy’s Black Cinderella Made The Impossible Possible”, the author Vicky Mocham is a writer, editor and journalist where she has written for StarMetro, Washington post, VICE, Globe and mail. As a current columnist for the Globe and mail blog site the main topics she enjoys discussing in her articles are race, gender, politics and culture. The genre of her writing is mostly feature and op-ed pieces. This particular article was published on Feb 12, 2021. Throughout her article she also appeals to her credibility by mentioning her ethnic background being Black and as a woman of color she feels that the Brandy Cinderella movie did a good job at portraying many cultures as well as her own. To go into greater detail, Vicky Mocham uses pathos and ethos when discussing her personal relationship with Brandy’s Black Cinderella. Hence, she mentions that as a young girl she identified with Cinderella because she loved pretending to be a princess that desired to be loved and had a fragile heart. However, she learned to have internal strength when she watched the Brandy Cinderella movie where she declared Cinderella as her role model to combat against the brutal Western world. She also uses ethos when describing the legacy of film and how there was few representation but iconic Black sitcoms and TV shows in the 1990s. Vicky Mocham asserts that “Black television shows like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Family Matters had been popular, but a multi-camera sitcom is much cheaper to make than a blockbuster movie. And that’s where the production hit some roadblocks before it even began” (pg 3). Her intended audience was mainly people who watched the Brandy’s Black Cinderella movie when it was first released in 1997. Her extended audience are people who haven’t watched Brandy’s Cinderella version yet but have heard about it after its air date on Disney + and even those people who felt mixed feelings about the film. In consequence, the context behind her article is to celebrate the 20 years anniversary of the “Brandy’s Black Cinderella” movie and also resurface the film because Disney + streamed the movie in their movie platform around Feb 12, 2021. Vicky Mocham effectively showcased the purpose of her article because it was clear to me that she intended the audience to be people who share the same reminisce feeling when coming across the Brandy’s Black Cinderella that left a grand impact on their childhood. Even so, the author did a good job at comparing and contrasting the film with modern day and past tv shows that had made it big. Which shows how the readers can trust in her argument and it establishes her claim strongly of how “Brandy’s Black Cinderella made the impossible possible in Hollywood.” The main purpose of the article was for the author to describe how Cinderella arrived during a time of reshaped and expanded pop culture. By the production team taking advantage of the trends it is to my understanding that they had the creative freedom to really get to know the characters through a cultural perspective and told stories differently without a worry about controversy. If Brandy’s Black Cinderella existed during our current time where social media has a big presence, it wouldn’t be well received. Social media has become a toxic platform for people to express their opinions without any immediate consequences so people act rashly. On the contrary, when it was first released people were being introduced to new ways where diversity was being portrayed in the film and music industry which people found more artistically appealing and engaging visually. Only a few amount of people publicly stated their dislike for diversity representation but they were paid little mind too because newspapers and news channels were the main forms of media back then, but they found criticizing diversity in occasional movies an irrelevant topic to discuss. This is more evident as well in the article when Mocham says,“It’s also easy to draw a straight line between Black Cinderella’s diverse cast and Shonda Rhimes latest success, Bridgerton, which stars Black people in Regency-era England and is being hailed for its inclusive casting”(pg.5). In other words, the reason why nowadays representation in movies causes a scandal is because people have mean things to say on the internet and they act rashly knowing if they were in an outside environment they would be more self conscious of their words. As a result, when it comes to representation it has become a controversial topic where people argue on whether or not it had any racist intent and amongst other ideas influenced by their beliefs or experiences. All in all, Brandy’s Black Cinderella was a film where producers did right when creating a representational film since they focused more on the storytelling and was revolutionary during its time since Cinderella wasn’t treated as unusual or remarkable even though different races coexisted. 

In “I Don’t Want a Black Ariel — Why We Shouldn’t Be Satisfied with Race Switching” by The Final Cutback, the author has a blog on the Final Cutback website/blog site and his profile is an image of himself. His article was published on June 27th, 2020 and the rest of his personal information is not easily identifiable. The genre of his blogs are mostly feature and op-ed. He mainly writes about his interest in football and he also does movie reviews. The author appeals to their credibility by giving direct examples of movies and shows that showed good representation. He also uses it to make his argument stronger that Hollywood should step up their game and produce better cultural diversity moves. They also hint by their profile picture and directly in the text they emphasize themselves as being a black man which means that even as a person of color they cant help but critique the Little Mermaid film. The context of the article is that Disney casted an African American to play the role of the Little Mermaid live action film and a lot of people had something negative to say about their original Ariel being race swapped. Specifically people in Twitter were using the hashtag #NotMyAriel reacted to the Little Mermaid movie and it caused a divide on whether it was racist or justified. The author also has a colored background like Vicky Mocham, but he goes more towards a critiquing approach of the Little Mermaid film to discover what it was about the film that made it controversial. The Final Cutback uses The Oscar winning Indie film ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ as an example when he says it, “Was a film that featured a half African-American, half Puerto-Rican kid from Brooklyn. Can you imagine if in 2011 rather than create a new story with new character Miles, Marvel Comics decided to just make the original Peter Parker Black ? We would’ve been robbed of this great movie and wouldn’t have the chance to expand the universe “ (pg 4) The purpose of his article is that representation matters and he believes in educating others about the right way that movies should be represented. In addition, he thinks that new stories should be made that embrace people’s culture naturally and not forcibly just for a film industry to generate revenue. His targeted audience are pro race switching people as well as the general audience that includes people against race switching. Part of his argument throughout the essay is that he feels that they aren’t creating original characters that embody the character and they are taking shortcuts by giving the characters the short end of the stick when it comes to personality. In other words, he is saying the characters feel more sugar coated and fabricated which categorizes them under the unrelatable and fiction-like form of storytelling characters. As explained in the reading The Final Cutback says, “Personally I prefer characters remain as they were created, or in this case, as they’ve manifested on screen; they became popular and loved as they are” (pg 3) Furthermore, this shows his hope of hollywood creating future characters that have a unique story to tell which sets them aside from other well known stories instead of race swapping a character for no apparent reason. Also, I agree with his other argument that Hollywood writers are getting lazy since representation is forced and considered the main objective where it becomes too obvious to the audience up to the point where it’s irritating. This part of his argument is where I believe more of his biased voice is used which can also be a form of pathos because it attracts an audience that either strongly agrees with you or the opposite. 

Similarly, both authors of the articles compare and contrast other TV shows and movies when representation was done right with Disney’s live action versions of the classic. In “I Don’t Want a Black Ariel — Why We Shouldn’t Be Satisfied with Race Switching” by The Final Cutback, the author however is unhappy with the way that Disney approached their storytelling and he is advising they change their ways of forcing representation onto an audience. Meanwhile, In the article “Brandy’s Black Cinderella Made The Impossible Possible”, the author Vicky Mocham mentions how Disney was able to capture the magic of fairytale storytelling (following their motto) and managed culture inclusively well by creating a new story to go off of it. Hence, the Final cutback mentioned that he was impacted greatly by Brandy’s Black Cinderella as well since they did exactly what he felt was missing in the Little Mermaid adaptation. Last but not least, they both use logos by stating real time information like the date that the Disney live actions were published as well as other notable representational films/shows and briefly went over the background that led to the films making.