disney movies

Stereotypes are a form of prejudice everyone will once experience in their lifetime. Stereotypes are centered around an individual's race, gender, social class, religion, and age. They have been known to be elements people use to make judgments and subjectify people to one key feature. As Gordon Allport states, “ To state the matter technically, a noun abstracts from a concrete reality some one features and assembles different concrete realities only with respect to this one feature”(364). Mr.Allport’s words can be summed up to say stereotypes have been used as key fundamentals to associate one feature or aspect of a person with a group that represents it, typically in an unfavorable way.

Rosina Lippi-Green's article "Teaching Children How to Discriminate - What We Learn From The Big Bad Wolf" (1997) examines the discrimination and stereotypes toward different race, ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality and region that Disney presents in their animated films. Lippi-Green also points out the use or misuse of foreign accents in films, television and the entertainment industry as a whole. Such animated films are viewed mainly by children. Lippi-Green makes a central argument in which she says that children are taught to discriminate through the portrayal of the different accented characters in Disney films.

As far back as 1946, racial stereotyping of African Americans has been evident in Disney films. For instance, in the American classic Dumbo, the crows depict the typical southern African American with a slow pattern of speech. In Jungle Book (1967) the monkeys with African American voices are jiving in a crazy manner because they will never be real men and will always be animals. One of the most tragic examples of this racism can be seen in the movie Tarzan. In the original making of the movie, the white man comes to the rescue and tames all of the animals and natives. However, in the new Disney version of Tarzan (1999), the blacks that obviously inhabit Africa were completely eliminated and replaced by gorillas with African American voices. African American children whom view these films have no choice but to resort to relating to these often unintelligent, inferior animals because that is where they hear themselves. In Mickey Mouse Monopoly, children were asked if they could think of any black characters in Disney films, sadly they came up short of a single one. It

When comparing the two films you can delve deep below the surface and begin to question how much of what we perceive as racism is actually racist or just general bigotry and self-importance. And how much of what we perceive as innocent is in fact insidious by nature. Tarantino switches things around and makes Django, a black male; the main protagonist of the film. By the end of the film he is the sole male survivor and therefore superior to the white characters. While Aladdin, a film about Arabs, has white American voices cast for all of the characters. The villain is the only Arab looking main character, while the hero and heroine are drawn with more Western features or skin colour, “Aladdin looks and sounds like a fresh-faced American boy.” (Brunette et. al. 2006, p. 2).

An example of racism occurred at the beginning of the film when the Arab looking father and daughter attempted to buy a gun. The clerk at the gun shop made a few blatantly racist comments about the customers because he assumes they are Middle Eastern. There were several references to the September 11 attacks. It didn’t matter that the two were Persian, not Arab. Unfortunately, the reoccurring theme post 9/11 is that all Middle Eastern people became potential terrorists. It is amazing that people have the ability to interpret bad events and cast their own prejudices on different ethnic groups to mask their own feelings of anger and frustration.

For many parents, these Disney/Pixar movies are something nice they can show to their children, they grew up on many of them and they wish to share this joy with their kids as well. If one was to walk up and tell them “These movies are fairly racist, you should show them to your children lest they get the wrong idea!” in most cases, they will find them to be just a closet nutcase and ignore that like it never happened. Society and these movies have conditioned the people so much that people cannot even identify the racism present, because when they see it, those cases are not seen in there head as unnatural but the opposite so then it fades into the background and unless asked to focus they probably

Moving onto gender roles and ideas, these characteristics in genders are needed in any sort of story to suit the values and attitudes of the people of that time. Gender stereotypes are a major piece to the puzzle of a film. Women are generally seen as less dominant, pushovers, the cares of everyone and that they have no independence. Whist men are seen as the more dominant, masculine, heroes, brave and courageous. This is across all genres of movies, the girl is the damsel in distress and the boy ends up saving her at the end of it.

Disney has been known in the past to make movies that have caused controversial uproar about the characters and the message that they were trying to make without stating it directly. For example, in the move The Lion King, the actors who voiced the movie were mainly African American men and women (Breaux, page 412). When having people voice out the characters, Disney usually uses African Americans to voice them out so they sound a little bit different from the main characters that are usually white. The reason why Disney does this is because they believe that animals need to sound different and also if the animals are wile then they can be a bit scratchy at the voice and have a “dark” characteristic to them. This is controversial because kids

The princess, Jasmine, is a fair-skinned maiden in danger and is in need of a rescue from this dark-skinned character known as Jafar, so along comes her fair-skinned prince, Aladdin, to save her. This film along with many others demonstrates how racist Disney truly is. Another example is how every dark-skinned princess becomes paler and paler as each new design for films is created. Pocahontas begins her journey as a darker Native American but finishes out her movies blending in with those of European descent. Disney’s racist actions allow for racism to continue within the younger generation, even within themselves.

When it comes to the illustrations of his popular characters in Aladdin, Disney proves to be quite racist. Most of the small-part, background characters and especially “the bad guys”, such as Jafar and the palace guards, all have incredibly distinct Arabic appearances. Every one of them stereotypically consists of “beards, large noses, sinister eyes, and heavy accents, and they’re wielding swords constantly” (Giroux, 104). In contrast, Aladdin the hero, looks and talks like an All-American man. His skin is pale and he wants to be addressed as Al, which is an American name rather than Arabic. He does not have a beard, big nose, turban, or accent. The key point in this illustration is that Disney is establishing that Aladdin looks right for the part of a hero, while Jafar looks right for a villain.” Jack Zipes, author of the essay “Breaking the Disney Spell”, clarifies that “though the characters are fleshed out to become more realistic, they are also one-dimensional. There is no character development because the characters are stereotypes, arranged according to a credo of domestication of the imagination”

It was insulting enough for Disney to include the smiling servant stereotype to begin with, but to make matters worse, they started denying Sunflower's existence with the Fantasia re-release in 1960. How does that possibly make things better? A few angered African American communities said, "No, you misunderstand. In our perfect, Fantasia world, Africans aren't servants. They don't fucking exist” (Weinman 64). A contemporary film critic said, "What's fun though is that Disney says they never had such a character! We're all delusional” (Brunette 123). Maybe it was "acceptable" in the past to portray characters that had such blatant racist features; nevertheless, it is strange to deny its existence to audiences who had already seen the original version. This is how we deal with our ugly past: we deny it, trivialize it, gloss over it with pretty distractions and wishful thinking. Doing so, we deny ourselves a glimpse of the compelling reality of naked history. The well-meaning rush to unmake evil deeds by hiding them from the critical eye of modern sensibilities does nothing to honor the people

Whether it be deliberate or unintentional, there is no denying Disney Films demonstrate racial stereotypes, which to a certain extent misrepresent race and cultures. When evaluating Disney films for racial and cultural stereotypes it’s important to have an unbiased opinion and to use a professional approach. One Method that researchers use is called the

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary stereotype is a, “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing”. Society puts out a certain set of standards and roles of men and women and the way in which they should act, known as gender roles. According to these behaviour stereotypes, the ideal man is intelligent, physically strong, heroic, in charge and is ultimately there to provide for his family. In comparison, the typical women is portrayed as beautiful, delicate, inferior to men and are viewed as the housekeeper; taking care of the children and putting food on the table while the men goes to work. These gender roles start to be enforced at a very young age as a result of society and the media. A prime example of this is Disney and the movies they create for young children. Almost all Disney movies are based

Disney has come up with several great movies throughout the years. However, they do have there fails, where their movies are questioned. One of the most controversial movies, Song of the South, got so much negative attention on racial discrimination, it got locked in the disney vault, and is to never be sold. What of the other Disney movies that get looked over.For example Jungle Book there are some who say that the Jungle Book, has hints of racism. Well let us take a look

The theme of racial profiling was particular evident in the film when Tim Wise bought up the