Reflective Post: Race Representation in Disney Movies

After reading a piece by Giroux, we discussed in class about some of the racial problems in Disney movies. Giroux mentions how the evil characters in Aladdin all have features of someone from the Middle East, yet Aladdin and Jasmine have more caucasian features, such as lighter skin, suggesting that evil comes in the form of being different or foreign. Giroux also describes a lyric in a song in Aladdin that originally stated: "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but hey, it's home," but was changed to "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense" after extreme backlash. These cultural and racial problems also exist in The Lion King, where the sneaky hyenas are given inner city ghetto sounding voices to further portray them as bad. Also, Pocahontas has dealt with some criticism of how accurately the Powhatan culture was portrayed. See this link for more details. Another example that I never really thought about until reading it here was the cultural implications behind the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp. The cats are known for causing chaos and in their song they sing with broken English and a Chinese accent, along with the slanted eyes that the animators gave them. The idea of having the villains be different than the heroes makes sense because they want children to be able to recognize which side is which. However, the characters should be made different through size or hair color rather than racial features because suggesting that evil is rooted in cultural ideas other than our own is teaching children to not accept others whom are different. 

Take a look at this timeline of Disney princess movies, keeping in mind that it leaves out Tangled, Brave, and Frozen.

One thing to notice here are who these princesses are and why they are considered princesses. Some of them marry princes, some of them were set to become the princess. Pocahontas, however, is considered a Disney princess but never actually becomes a princess. They do not even have princesses in the movie, nor does she marry a prince. The same goes for Mulan, who is named a Disney princess, yet does not get married (at least in the first movie) at all, nor does she come into any sort of power. My guess is that Disney realized that all of their past princess were caucasian, and anticipated some sort of controversy if they did not create princesses of other cultural background. I can tell this because neither of these characters fit the mold of a princess, yet they are lumped in to create diversity. Don't get me wrong, there does need to be diversity in our group of princesses, however I think the characters should fit the mold more than the do. It's interesting how readily Disney hands them the princess title yet still is trying to figure out what to do about Anna and Elsa from Frozen. You'd think they would expand the group accordingly. 

Princess Tiana is notably the first African American inducted into the elite princess squad. As shown in this article however, Disney was criticized for this move as well. While I do think it took a surprisingly long time to have a black protagonist in a Disney movie (and you could argue that Barack Obama becoming president is what signaled to Disney that the middle class was okay with this transition), some of the criticism Disney has to deal with is unbelievable. Apparently, not having Tiana fall in love with a black man is racist. This is where I draw the line on the Disney criticism. It is easy to constantly find errors in Disney's judgment, but couldn't you just as readily argue that Tiana and her prince represent a strong interracial marriage? There are some arguments that are simply taken too far and I think it is important to stay somewhat objective when analyzing the race relations in these movies. 

Lastly, I would like to comment on this new phenomenon of artists changing the princesses races. Here we see an example titled: "If Disney Princesses Were Different Races."

While I think the intention is to show how beauty is not only in the form of Caucasian characters, I do not see how changing their skin colors and adding a few details can all of the sudden change a race. With race comes culture, and I think by changing these characters, artists are simplifying the meaning of race and taking away from its deep complexity.