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Locating Americ Revisiting Disney's Lady And The Tramp

Decent Essays

At first glance Disney’s Lady and the Tramp released in 1955 is a classic romantic love story between two dogs where the upper-class girl falls in love with a lower class boy. It follows the struggles they encounter when trying to be together. However, after reading Locating America: Revisiting Disney’s Lady and the Tramp by Daniel Goldmark and Utz McKnight it is clear that the undertones of the film tell the viewers a different story. The film depicts how American culture should be and what is socially acceptable in America. This has been made clear by different sections of the film that will be examined throughout the paper.
In the article the authors, Goldmark and McKnight argue that, “the film implicates us in a particular vision of an imperial America. It provides a description of American membership and belonging that depends on specific discourses of a post-colonial whiteness and a racialized Other” (Goldmark & McKnight 101). Throughout the article they discuss different points to prove their argument. Some of these points will be examined one by one as we go on.
The timing of Lady and the Tramp is of …show more content…

Although Lady is animated as a dog she is clearly represented as white. Her shape, voice, and the way she moves and how well put together she is embodies what it means to be white. Her counterpart, Tramp, on the other hand is not considered white, or black or Asian. Tramp is described as ultimately a mutt. The authors describe how this plays a part in his roll as an ‘American.’
“He is definitely not black, Asian, Native American, or a Latino; instead he is a multiethnic white classless individual with a talent for survival, such as might find acceptance as a full member, with some regulation, into the American world of Disney. In this way Tramp is a social inheritor, undomesticated, to Lady’s owners’ own white American identity” (Goldmark & McKnight

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