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Disney and Racism

In: Film and Music

Submitted By princessxxx
Words 408
Pages 2
Not until I started researching racism in Disney films did I understand this was even an issue. As a little kid you most likely don’t pick up on these things but as an adult being aware of it, do we allow our children to continue watching such films? My dice identity role was in perspective of an African American person. Disney does a great job of stereotyping against this race in several movies, the Jungle Book being just one. In this particular movie, they have portrayed gorillas and orangutans to sound like black people. In their slightly ever more popular film, The Lion King, they made the hyenas speak in a clear street manner such as an inner African American dialect. (“Stereotypes”) Another issue came into light once the film The Princess and the Frog was released. Why had it taken Disney so long to come out with its first African American princess film? This film’s original story line had the princess character named Maddy who was a chambermaid. This caused uproar about the character starting the movie as a slave and having the name Maddy that sounded too much like Mammy and changes were made. Mammy is defined as a black woman engaged as a nurse to white children or as a servant to a white family. (Evans) When it comes to gender, Disney does another awesome job of drawing a distinct line between female and male characters. The female characters were typically shown in a position of queen, homemaker or princess such as Cinderella who goes from a maid to a princess. Male characters play the forceful, powerful, dominant type such as Hercules. Women characters are often portrayed as a commodity. They most often go from being under the power of their fathers and passed off to their husbands. Just one of several examples of this is Jasmine being passed on to Aladdin. Disney can be seen as a prime suspect for racism and sexism but yet we still allow for their

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