44: Ariel, Stef, and special guest Chance Calloway discuss Juneteenth, media representation, and Disney’s portrayal of Black characters. They highlight Juneteenth’s significance and embodiment of “we’re not free until we are all free.” The episode promotes authentic representations and diverse voices in future Disney projects and teaches audiences about The Transformation Trope, Projection Representation, and Black coded characters.

Summary of HPOE 44:

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Ariel Landrum: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the happiest pod on Earth.

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I’m Ariel, a licensed therapist who uses clients’ passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental development.

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Stefanie Bautista: And I’m Stef. I’m an educator who uses her passions and fandoms to educate the kids that I work with.

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Chance Calloway: I’m Chance Calloway. I’m a producer, filmmaker, musician, writer, all around multi hyphenate. Creativity is my passion.

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Stefanie Bautista: And happiest pod is where we dissect Disney mediums with a

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Ariel Landrum: critical lens. Why? Because we are more than just Stef, and we expect more from the mediums we consume.

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So, see, so I have a guest today. Chance, what are we talking about?

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Chance Calloway: Today we’re talking about Juneteenth, and we’re talking about representation.

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Stefanie Bautista: Yeah. Yeah. Chance, as you all know, if you’ve been following us on our podcast and also have seen us at Comic Con or WonderCon,

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Chance is 1 of our very good friends, 1 of our most talented friends, like you said, multi hyphenate.

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And, you know, I feel even when this podcast was coming to its conception, we would organically have a lot of really good

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discussions about the way we consume media and the different things that we expect from it and also want to see from it in the future.

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So I hope that today’s discussion is gonna be very enlightening for those of you aren’t familiar with Juneteenth. So, Chance, would you be

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Ariel Landrum: able to explain what exactly is Juneteenth?

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It became recently a federal holiday, but just because it wasn’t a federal holiday, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a holiday.

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Chance Calloway: Correct. Yes. Juneteenth, basically, is the embodiment of the term, we’re not free until we’re all free.

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So when, the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, some, black Americans were still enslaved.

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Some black Americans did not know that freedom had arrived.

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And on June 19th, that was the day that they did basically the final, like, enforcement, and made sure that the enslaved people were made free.

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And that’s when a lot of, people in the black community started celebrating it as a holiday.

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Ariel Landrum: I think it’s important to note because it’s hard for people to fathom not getting information immediately.

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Chance Calloway: Sure.

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Ariel Landrum: There’s an acknowledgment that we get media so quickly.

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We get news so quickly, especially, like, breaking news, reactions to it, that there isn’t this time to, like, digest and

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understand before you’ve moved on to the next thing.

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And I think that the fact that it became a holiday amongst the black community just shows, like, how important and informative it was.

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Chance Calloway: Absolutely. Suleens. Yeah. And I think, for a lot of people, there’s a a hitch that comes with thinking of American holidays,

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you know, and the American flag, things like that.

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We’ve seen you know, it’s been the media a lot because of the cover of Beyonce’s new album.

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A lot of, black Americans kind of don’t respect, like, holidays like the 4th July.

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So then when something like Juneteenth came along, that I can respect. That feels like a celebration.

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Ariel Landrum: And I think

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Stefanie Bautista: when it comes to holidays, there are diff there’s different layers of celebrating and even the word celebrating a holiday.

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Because, essentially, this is 1 of those holidays where it was a realization of something that hadn’t been realized, fully.

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When you’re talking about people celebrating the 4th July, they normally talk about barbecues and doing fun stuff and not,

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you know, the actual reason for the holiday.

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This is 1 of those holidays that kind of wakes us up to the different ways we celebrate and the different ways we honor certain

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