October Blog Post

My favorite thing we have discussed so far was the movie Mickey Mouse Monopoly. It was the one thing that resonated most with me because I grew up watching these movies over and over again. Personally I felt that the scholars in this documentary read far too much into the messages of these movies than they should have. As a child it gave me something to believe in and expanded my imagination. I didn’t know the difference between characters due to their race. The characters were different because of their personalities and behaviors, not because they sounded like black people or Mexicans.

The one line that amazed me most was of the child who was at the mall with his mother and shouted that a group of black children playing and laughing “were” the hyenas. Of all the critiques on feminine sexuality and race this comment was the most outrages. In the Lion King the hyenas fall backward with laughter and are so extremely exaggerated that I couldn’t believe this child’s mother agreed with him. The hyenas spit and have trouble breathing from all the laughter, they basically choke from it. The scholar said it was a friend of hers and that she tried to correct her son’s perception but I have a hard time believing a child could make that connection from watching a movie.

I was astounded that these scholars were being so defensive against Disney movie characters. The Siamese cats, monkeys, and dogs were nothing more than interesting characters that added some excitement to the movies. In Aladdin, when the princess takes the apple for the child to eat, the writers aren’t going to display that it’s actually okay in real life; they want to cause suspense in order to caption their audience. I doubt there was any harmful intent in scenes like that; it’s all for the sake of giving a child some magic to believe in. I also don’t think that children watching that movie associated people of their kind to be hostile and merciless. We want to teach our children not to let others prejudice against us cause us shame or be prejudice towards other because its hurtful but that comes from talking with our children and leading by example, not watching movies for mere entertainment.