The Problem with Disney

I loved Disney movies growing up, they seemed so safe and family friendly. The good guys always won and the bad guys were always punished.  There was the just the right amount of singing and not too much mushy stuff for a young boy to suffer through.  Being a bit older though the subtext and the message of the animated films often horrify me.  A lot of movies have an unsettling thread running through the story  unintentionally so I could be overstating.

So what are some of these not so nice themes that seem to pop up in Disney you ask?  You don’t have to say it out loud just thinking in your own head will suffice.

How about racism?  Yeah, I played the race card, deal with it.  Disney created a movie so racist they refuse to even dignify its existence.  The song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” lives on but The Song of South most certainly does not.  If you’re ask yourself what the hell is Song of the South that isn’t abnormal.  It’s the live action film with three Br’er Rabbit shorts placed inside that Disney refuses to rerelease.  You can see Br’er Rabbit on Splash Mountain and few other places but his movie isn’t seeing the light of day.  They don’t use the term Disney vault lightly.  That shit it never coming back out.

Well, they obviously learned a lesson after that fiasco.  Disney would never again impugn African American culture by abusing stereotypes right?  Unless of course you count the crows from Dumbo, the African American satyrs from Fantasia (which have been excised from the original cut so good luck finding them), King Louie from the Jungle Book and most recently Sebastian from The Little Mermaid.  Sebastian at least wasn’t the kind of racism that make you squirm in your seat.  It’s just the kind of racism that you can explain away to friends by saying, “Oh yeah, Uncle John is alright as long as you  don’t talk about Asians.  But he’s really a nice guy, I swear.”

Any other stereotypes Disney perpetrated on our young, eager to assimilate any message, minds?  I’m glad you asked.  Remember the native American’s in Peter Pan.  Watch that shit.  I’m not even going to explain why it’s fucked up.  You don’t need me for that.  Or hey, how about the twin cats Si and Am from Lady and the Tramp (voiced by Peggy Lee who I’m pretty sure was not Asian, just a hunch)?  I wonder if they might be racist caricatures?  Yes, the answer is yes, put your good damn hands down.

Tying along with racism is well racism again but kinda of different.  Before we thought about stereotypes now I’m talking about color palettes.  Totally different right?  Your silence is good enough for me,

What am I talking about with color palettes?  Quick what did Hercules look like?  If you said blond with blue eyes and a fair complexion congratulations you relate closer to Disney than Kevin Sorbo.  Sorry Kev… well, not really.  Now think about the are the movie is set in.  The answer is Greece.   You can stop thinking.  I should probably give a space or something to let you have time before you eager eye can gobble up the information but fuck the extra work to do that.  Suck that Enter button.

So Hercules is pale as all hell when he shouldn’t be and Hades is dark grey.  There are quite a few other problems with this movie but I’ll get into that later.  Yeah light person is good and dark person is bad thanks for making things easy for me.

Or instead of color palette just switch in the term ethnic looking.  Fast forward any Disney movie to a random spot.  I’ll wait.

Ok, now look at the person on the screen.  Are they female?  Skip ahead.  Yes, there is a reason for this, and  no, I will not tell you why yet.  Okay is the dude super ‘ethnicy’ or something?  Yes?  Congratulations, you found the villain.

It so true that if you argue I will reach through the internet and slap your stupid face Kyle.  What about Aladdin?  The two main characters don’t look at all like white people who just happen to be living in Arabia.  And Jafar isn’t super Arabian looking at all or anything.  In Princess and the Frog, Disney’s latest traditional animated movie, the bad guy may have been just a wee bit darker than the African American leads.  Just a touch.  Or a shit ton one or the other.  Oh, and the country bumpkin lightning bug thing was super classy.  Like Transformers 2 classy.  Burn.

So there was a few not so great moments in relation to ethnicity that may or may not be getting any better.  But at least we are treating women like things right?  Right…

Yeah, so Disney totally thinks women are things.  These supposed love stories are not affirming.  Yeah, that whole thing with a Prince kissing a cold, cadaver-like lady is not at all creepy.  You know what happens in real life for kissing a sleeping women?  Bad things involving the police and losing the privilege to vote afterwards.

Outside of somnophilia there is still plenty of not so good sex and gender issues.  Like the message of young girls changing everything about themselves to please a guy they hardly know.  That’s healthy and couldn’t possibly have any repercussion on the psyche of young girls.  Maybe if I explain the situation it won’t seem so fucked up.  Alright, so you’re a pretty girl and you validate yourself through your looks and you beautiful singing voice (one of those things is better than the other, you figure it out).  You see some dude and decide hey, he’s awesome I wish I could ditch my worry free lifestyle ot be with this stranger.  He’ll totally love me even though I know nothing about him.  Swoon.  Hey this whole changing myself to be near him was a great idea.  It’s too bad I can’t FUCKING TALK.  That’s okay.  I’ll give up one of only two things I care about to be with this guy I don’t know at all.  And risk everything in the process.  Good idea right?  Swoon!  Fuck this is bad something went terribly wrong with this whole deceit thing.  Deceit is the best way to get someone to love me right?

That is part of the plot of The Little Mermaid.  Ariel, a teenager, gives up her voice to be a human.  Yeah, I know there are other factors involved like being an idiot teenager and getting away from Dad but to change everything about yourself for guy you fantasized about without meeting?  Fantasies are just that.  Of course it’s Disney so everything turns out just fine but that further ratifies the shitty message.  Don’t change yourself for others change yourself for you.  And for the love of god don’t negotiate with half squid half women.  Also shut up and listen to your father you’re like what fourteen?  That’s way too young to be obsessing about a life with some guy.  Kissing sure but… teenagers… stupid decisions… sigh.

So to round it out let’s throw in some Stockholm syndrome.  Goody.  So this Beast guy kidnaps you.  Then he imprisons you and yells a lot.  But he has this gentle side right?  No you fucking moron he kidnapped you and forced you to stay with him.  So what if Gaston can eat a shit ton of eggs he shouldn’t be the bad guy.  But Disney still swaps out the interesting part.  The fun thing about Beauty and the Beast is that Beast isn’t supposed to change.  You should love him besides his looks.  Him changing back invalidates that message.  So an important message if you get kidnapped and the dishes start signing jump out the fucking window, shit will not end well for you.  Belle is the exception.

So women do stupid stuff for love.  This isn’t unusual we all do stupid things for love especially if we’re young.  But at least when a woman proves herself to be equal to man or even better she can take over the role he filled right?  Not in the Lion King.  What am I tlkaing about?  How about the fact that Nala kicks Simba’s ass not once but twice.  And does so with the same exact move both time separated by several years.  Way to learn from your defeat Simba.  Why is this important.  Well if Simba was physically weaker than Nala why didn’t she kick Scar’s ass.  Why did they need Simba to help.  You can argue well they need a male for breeding purposes.  Well maybe not Scar so much for the job.  He was kinda typified as gay.  In Hamlet, the story Lion King follows (along with stealing from some Anime or other), the uncle kills the father and Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his father and he takes revenge blah, blah, blah… Mufasa, Mufasa, Mufasa.

So the straight male lion needs to grab power from the gays and the minorities because the woman are too weak and stupid to do it on their own.  Yeah, the hyena’s just might be typified as minorities.  Super nice that the grand kingdom worked awesome as long as the straight male ran things.  Then went to shit when Jeremy Irons and Whoopi Goldberg moved in.  Not the first time Whoopi Goldberg has ruined everything… cough Jumping Jack flash… cough … Eddie… Cough sputter choke… Theodore Rex.  Sorry about that.

There are some funky exceptions like you know James Earl Jones being all African American or Timon and Pumba being best buddies and rasing a son of their own.  I totally respect their lifestyle choices by the way, parenting skills maybe not so much.  Maybe a little less show tunes and little more maybe you should worry about one or two things now please don’t eat us.

Disney at times is racially and gender insensitive but at least they respect the material they remake and try to keep it historically accurate.

Everything about Mulan pisses me off.  The Chinese emperor would never touch anybody.  Also you don’t enter the palace with your stuff intact.  Also there’s the whole deal with the Japanese geisha makeup on a women on Chinese descent in a movie about… China.  Or the whole chronology being all screwy depending on what the story demanded.  “Huns sure, fireworks sure, great wall, yeah throw that shit in there.  What period is set in?  The period of shut your mouth and give me your money.” – some fictional guy at Disney voiced by my head.  I just Googled “Mulan inaccuracies” and came up with several useful sites.

Convenient links:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080227234644AAYlSkn

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/1232-hua-mulan/

Or then again there is Pocahontas.  Albeit the historical inaccuracy totally turns down the creep factor from Ariel’s misadventure by Having Pocahontas not be a teenager.  This may be the only time a article  about racism which involve Mel Gibson without saying he’s an asshole and why.  Yeah, creep factor just went back up to eleven.

There is also Hercules again.  Everything is wrong here.  Nothing about the myths were shown correctly.  I’m strangely okay with Paul Schaffer as Hermes for some reason though.  In the Greco Roman myths Hercules was a dick.  He committed the worst kinds of crimes possible and was punished with the twelve trials.  Also Hades wasn’t a bad guy.  He was just lonely.  Most of the other gods were far worse.  Hades was just a dude that lost a game of dice with two brother Zeus and Poseiden and got stuck with the shit job.  How did Hades deal with shitty lot.  He ran the fuck out of the afterlife and mostly stayed out of mortal affairs.  He didn’t do any swan rape stuff that resulted in horrible tragedies and a decade of war like a certain thunder god.  Rip Torn screen tested that voice over.  It totally worked.

So now we have racism (twice!), historical inaccuracy, horrid love stories that teach the wrong lesson, and stomping all over the idea of anything that isn’t the traditionally nuclear family with the male firmly as head of household.  You might ask, “Hey, what about The Sword in the Stone”.   Then I would say thanks helpful segue creation.

It is correct that Sword in Stone didn’t really have those issue but it it did have a hero who’s only  real accomplishment was being ‘the chosen one’.  That is not so fantastic.  It’s what I like to call “The useless protagonist”.  Harsh.

A lot of children’s stories have the problem of the protagonist just kind of being there.  The only skill they display is being special.  That’s not say as important as bravery of intelligence or a myriad of ways traditional heroes prove themselves.  But kids movies have a protagonists that the audience demographic csan relate to.  Themselves.  They want to be special (who doesn’t) but they lack to ability to be awesome somehow so the protagonists’ only skill is one any youngling can have.  Being special.  Two examples are  The Sword in the Stone and Snow White.  The issue here with the main character not really doing anything and relegating all the action or conflict resolution to other characters is there is no arc.  A good story should have this character arc.  Character should meaningful growth.  When there is no growth or the character does not overcome a flaw often times the story ends, intentionally, with tragedy.  This is a common device in noir films where the lead is normally damaged good to begin with and can’t overcome the tragic flaw.  Most often this flaw surfaces with drinking.

But these characters still end up with a happy ending after no character progression.  We as an audience feel cheated somewhat as the protagonist is almost as much of viewer as we are.  Who are we to relate to in order to feel satisfaction at the resolution?

But there are always exceptions.  There is one that is so good I’m almost surprised Disney made it.  I call it The Lilo and Stitch exception.  I really liked Lilo and Stitch.  On the surface it’s a movie about a girl, an alien and their misadventures.  The movie is really about being a in a broken family that is trying desperately to stay strong.  Lilo ends up teaching a genetic experiment about the importance of ‘ohana’ then ends up realizing herself how important her family is and how her actions haven’t been helping.  Oddly reminiscent of a character arc.  They treated Lilo like a real little girl: full of insecurities, idiosyncrasies (like feeding her favorite fish a sandwich) and correct childish mentality that at first inhibits her character growth.  Both Lilo and Stitch have the same growth over the film.  They made Lilo’s sister struggle but not be a martyr or a salve driving harpy.  It all too often happens that the older female is either treated only as the dotting matriarch or the evil stepmother.  Here we have normal characters going through normal relatable troubles we can see ourselves in.  Just in this case with some aliens thrown in as well to keep it fun.  Plus that dude from “Kids in the Hall”.

Here’s to hoping they make more Lilo and less Ariel.  But please, no more direct to video crap, okay?

Ben