Is Disney Teaching Our Children to Discriminate?

Is Disney teaching our children to discriminate?

        For the past 80 years, Disney has certainly received a lot of love and recognition from many people all over the world, especially from young children. However, on the contrary, there is another part of our society condemns Disney animated movies with racism and discrimination for fear that they can have bad influence on how children view the world. Rosina Lippi-green happens to be one of them and also one of the most prominent voices about this topic. In her article "Teaching Children How to Discriminate - What We Learn From The Big Bad Wolf" (2012), she points out the methodical pattern, the noticeable relationship between certain types of languages, accents and certain set of characters, which according to her, indicates and promotes stereotypes and discrimination. Along with that, she criticizes Disney for imposing surreal physical features and social roles on its characters. In my opinion, as much as I agree with her that there are problems with the way Disney often depicts its characters, I do not totally agree with her on the point that Disney can teach children how to discriminate because Disney isn’t the most influential source and also Lippi-green hasn’t considered other factors that might contribute children’s early discriminating attitudes.

        Among many points that Lippi-green presents in the article, I agree with Lippi-green that there are issues related to the pattern in Disney’s characters’ accents and the physical standards that Disney imposes on its characters. According to Lippi-green 100% of characters speaking Southern English are animals or not in human form and characters, who speak with AAVE, often portrayed as unemployed, entertainers or have no purpose in life while the good or main characters speak American. Take Aladdin as an example. In the movie, bad Arabians are portrayed with heavy accents while Jasmine, Aladdin and the king have SAE accent. I find Lippi-green argument convincing because I realize that after years of watching animated movies and most of them are Disney’s, I often have a certain expectation of how the protagonists and antagonists would sound like, even though I do not have much knowledge of the varieties of accents. Another point I think it’s reasonable for Lippi-green to criticize is the fact that Disney has surrealistically standardized the physical features of its main characters: heroines with slim body, tiny waist, big eyes and thick hair, heroes with “bulging necks and overly muscular thighs” (Lippi-green, 2012). Because most of Disney’s audience is young and naïve, these obvious stereotypes might have a potential negative effect on children’s confidence in their own appearance. In my opinion, since America is known as country of diversity and inclusivity, the fact that Disney, which can be considered America’s representative, has this kind of pattern in its movies seemingly goes against what America embraces.

        As much as I agree with those previous opinions of Lippi-green, I do not believe that Disney is the most dominating force that contributes to children’s discriminating or stereotyping attitudes. In her article, Lippi-green refers to Disney as the “dominant culture reaffirms its control over subordinate cultures and nations by re-establishing, on a day-to-day basis, their preferred view of the world as right and proper and primary.” I disagree with her since in my opinion, Disney, in this case, is not the most powerful force but we are; our society is the most powerful. Therefore, the fact that Lippi-green criticizes Disney for constraining its heroines in a traditional view of women does not make sense. The roles of men and women characters depicted in Disney animated films have epitomized the cultural view as well as beliefs of social standards and biases on gender roles and identity. Our society often defines what it means to be a male or female, and then impose what depictions and traits, which are considered to be “normal behaviors” on them. What Disney has been doing is reflecting our society through the animation glass. If we pay close attention to the timeline of Disney movies, from the 1900s up until now, it is noticeable that there has been a gradual but major shift taken place in Disney’s representation of its heroines. The first group of Disney female characters: Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950) and Aurora (1959) are epitomes of typical damsel-in-distress. After that, a second portrayal emerged and shifted the roles of female characters: more rebellious and determined, of which the characters of Ariel (1989), Mulan (1998), and Rapunzel (2010) are exemplars. Lastly, a final shift has taken place and the female characters are portrayed as independent and free spirited, which can be clearly seen through Merida (2012) and Elsa (2015). It is undoubtedly obvious that Disney has come a long way from a fragile Snow White to strong, independent Elsa in Frozen (2015). This evolution happened was because our perception about equality, about the world in general has changed throughout the course of history; this necessitated Disney to adapt to our society’s new point of view and change as well.