October Blog-post #3

For my October blog post for this class, I wanted to focus on the cultural differences and controversies with Disney movies. For many of my communication classes this semester we have examined the culture of Walt Disney and the empire that he built, along with the most recent films from Disney. There are a few examples that I want to touch on from what we discussed in class.

The first example is the portrayal of ‘evil’ or the ‘bad guy.’ The characters who are always touched on as the ‘bad guy’ are always portrayed with darker skin and darker hair. There was a point in class where we discussed a little girl in a mall who saw a group of children who happened to be African American and she compared them to the hyenas in the film, The Lion King. She saw the children in the mall and automatically associated them with the evil characters in the popular film. This is a scary realization to see children associate those two things because it brings out the racism issues in our country. Obviously, the film was made a long time ago and our world has changed since then, BUT that still does not excuse the fact that children’s minds are so influential by the little details in a film.

The next thing that I want to discuss is the idea of feminism. I am a white female, so I cannot personally connect with some of the racial issues, but I am a female and do not think that it is right for Disney to portray the women in their films as individuals who have no flaws and who need a man to rescue them from their problems. The more recent films have done a little better at creating strong female characters, but that does not mean that they are doing much better. There is still always the aspect of the ‘damsel in distress’ idea. That is just how films made by Disney are done, they will always have the sense of the woman needing rescuing. It is something that will probably be around for the remainder of the Disney empire (which is probably going to be a very very VERY long time).

These issues do not make me want to boycott Disney films and they do not change my love for these films that I grew up with. But being opened up to these ideas that I didn’t see when I was a child made me realize the problems in our society and that going forward we all need to be aware of these problems and try to improve these areas of cultural sensitivity.