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Disney fans like their princesses like their coffee: hot, skinny and white.....

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Elsa from Frozen has been chilling in her ice closet for a long time: the hit Disney musical was released in the UK in 2013. Since then, like passive-aggressive Christmas carollers who won't go away, fans have taunted her with the loaded words, "Do you want to build a snowman? ... Come out the door," while she stalks through her fortress of solitude like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, or US first lady Melania Trump.

Elsa may soon be building a snowman without shame or secrecy: the film's director and writer, Jennifer Lee, is considering bringing the ice regent's homosexuality out to thaw in a Disney dawn of acceptance and financial profit in the Frozen sequel.
Elsa from Frozen could be a lesbian? Cue the outrage | Arwa Mahdawi
This seems in step with its audience's views. According to a YouGov poll of people happy enough to answer a YouGov poll on Disney princesses, 49% of British fans would be "comfortable" with a gay Disney princess, and even more would be comfortable with one who was overweight, a feminist, more than 40 years old, non-white and even a parent. Great! I'm nearly all those things. I say we play those excellent odds, bundle them together and introduce a full roster of non-white, middle-aged, body-positive separatist feminist single mother lesbian queens. You know: the way Wonder Woman's Amazon island should have been. We can call it Disney: The Collective.

When it comes to desired characteristics of Disney princesses, the usual things come up in YouGov's poll: independence, confidence, intelligence, ambition and bravery. Nobody wants a protagonist who is a needy, dim, mousy coward with no life goals. But the top quality? Kindness. You're joking. Disney princes should be kinder - like that manipulative hostage-taker and groomer the Beast, or the prince in Sleeping Beauty who sexually assaults a drugged-by-magic princess. These are the Disney douchebags who need a kindness makeover, or a prison sentence.

This poll, while seeming to probe the wokeness of the Mouseketeers, is just another Miss World beauty pageant for assessing and ranking women. Who is the nicest, the fairest, the sweetest in the land? Which girl-woman, tiny-waisted fantasy figure, exotic or not, occupies the impossible sweet spot of nice face, true heart, great hair, good humour, fine mind, high spirits, brave soul and strong resolve?

No woman, real or cartoon, can match up to that. What I want to know about Disney is this: how does it treat the women and people of colour in its own company? How much does it pay us? How does it treat its cleaners and support staff, its new mothers and the young women who want to work in the industry? What are its pitch meetings like: 10 rich, loud-talking men around a table, inventing poor "diverse" heroines? Is it time for Disney to hear a #MeToo song?

In the YouGov poll, Moana, Mulan and Merida from Brave (a lovely and strange matriarchal story based on Celtic myth) won in the best role model category. But of all the princesses, only Moana escapes being presented as lithe, nubile, big-eyed and sexually alluring to straight adult men (in a cartoon for little children!). And of the many producers, directors and writers of these three films with their great role models, 90% are white and male. So, in Disneyland head office, you and your team of bros feminist-wash or brown-wash a film, the global audience feels a lovely glow - and all the profits seem to flow to white men.

In life as in fairytales, the truth comes out in the end. The kicker is when YouGov asks people to rank their favourite Disney princesses. Out of 14, the top six chosen are white. Of the non-white women, Tiana from The Princess and the Frog is rock bottom and Pocahontas second from bottom. Jasmine, Moana and Mulan cluster behind Merida, Rapunzel (fun girl, great hair, hostage), Cinderella (domestic slave goes to party, meets a foot fetishist, marries up), Ariel (gets a boyfriend, loses her athletic ability and her literal voice) and Belle (trafficked by her father, sold to a dog). The winner? Snow White, the ultimate masochist. Finds her bliss cleaning seven men's toilet.

Disney reaches a huge, young audience that is absorbing and internalising white supremacy, the tyranny of femininity, female isolation (few of the princesses have prominent female friends), ageism against women (so many Disney villains are older women), the class system (if in doubt, marry rich), bullshit romantic myths and US cultural dominance. Disney is the western patriarchal capitalist industrialist complex in cartoon form and its female characters are overwhelmingly beautiful, feminine, sexualised, nubile, Aryan, thin, young and adorable, like snack items modelled out of refined sugar. When its fans aren't carefully answering poll questions to make themselves look open-minded and just list their favourites, they reveal that they like their princesses just like their Starbucks coffees: hot, skinny and white.

* Bidisha is a journalist and author
Topics

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Disney fans like their princesses like their coffee: hot, skinny and white | Bidisha

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Elsa from Frozen has been chilling in her ice closet for a long time: the hit Disney musical was released in the UK in 2013. Since then, like passive-aggressive Christmas carollers who won't go away, fans have taunted her with the loaded words, "Do you want to build a snowman?

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See all the wonderful things emmalouise_shaw1 has made

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this is a good website to look for examples for the other weeks as well!

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The centaur scene in Disney's highly acclaimed cartoon Fantasia (1940) clearly communicates gendered expectations for men and women, but there are also racial politics. First, note that, in the film as released, all of the centaurs end up in color-matched heterosexual pairs. Second, most people do not know that the original centaur scene included a pickaninny slave to the centaur females and exotic, brown-skinned zebra-girl servants.

Here's a link to the whole thing (embedding disabled, but it works as of Feb. '11).

A clear still in black and white:

Fuzzy color stills from the youtube clip:

Don't miss our post showing bugs bunny in blackface, too.

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Racism In Disney's Fantasia - Sociological Images

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The centaur scene in Disney's highly acclaimed cartoon Fantasia (1940) clearly communicates gendered expectations for men and women, but there are also racial politics. First, note that, in the film as released, all of the centaurs end up in color-matched heterosexual pairs.

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playlist with the full examples from the lecture

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All the clips shown in the week 3 lecture - Ethnicity and Race in Disney Films

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The poem is in Polish and the translations online are not great as they tend to censor the racist parts or write a new poem all together. I’ve attempted to translate it as closely as I could.  
Murzynek Bambo  -  Negro Bambo

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The poem is in Polish and the translations online are not great as they tend to censor the racist parts or write a new poem all together. I’ve attempted to translate it as closely as I could.  
Murzynek Bambo  -  Negro Bambo

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https://imgur.com/gallery/0BOy1

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Post with 27 votes and 1001 views. Tagged with Movies and TV; Shared by BriBlossom. Orientalism in Disney Films

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How the Disney remakes address its history with gender and race. TLDW: Gender is addressed because it can be made profitable, race cannot be made as easily profitable, so is simply removed

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Outrage Over Halle Bailey's Black 'Little Mermaid' Is Racist | Opinions | NowThis

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CULTURAL VIEW

IN JULIE TAYMOR'S TRIUMPHANT Broadway reinterpretation of the Walt Disney Company's ''Lion King,'' the movie's shamanesque baboon, Rafiki, is transmuted into a Zulu-chanting priestess, an African griot-storyteller, hooting and hollering, grunting knowingly and guiding the young lion Simba to his destiny. In the show, Rafiki is thrust to the story's center, just as the generic African background of the animated feature film is thrust into the foreground by Ms. Taymor, with muscular dance and music, ritualistic images and carnivalesque ensemble pieces.

With this new ethnic emphasis, Rafiki's closest Disney ancestor may be James Baskett, who starred as the black plantation-style storyteller Uncle Remus in ''Song of the South'' 51 years ago. That film has never been released on video and probably never will be (it is available only on laser disk from Japan). In it, Mr. Baskett, whose voice was known from the ''Amos 'n' Andy'' radio show, charmed the movie's post-Reconstruction Southern children with Joel Chandler Harris's vernacular tales of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. His performance won him a special Oscar, but the charm had its limits. The New Yorker said that the film consisted of ''the purest sheep-dip about happy days on the old plantation.'' Adam Clayton Powell Jr. said it was an ''insult to American minorities'' and to ''everything that America as a whole stands for.''

The ethnic romance of the Broadway ''Lion King,'' with its mixture of Zulu chant and songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, might also have turned into caricature. But it was saved by Ms. Taymor's genius, along with something else: the show's attitude toward ethnicity is not patronizing because ethnicity is no longer being treated as the mark of an outsider. Instead, ethnicity defines a society itself.

This represents a major change in the Disney vision of ethnicity, which is no small matter. Disney films may be the only cultural experience shared by American children, while ethnicity and race are probably the most charged words in American politics.

Ethnically defined characters have been a crucial part of Disney films for many years, both before Walt Disney died in 1966 and after. These characters include the broadly sketched black-American crows of ''Dumbo'' (1941) singing ''I be done seen 'bout everything''; the alley cats of ''Aristocats'' (1970), who break out into an infectious jazz rendition of ''Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat,'' led by the voice of Scatman Crothers; and Sebastian the crab in ''The Little Mermaid'' (1989), sung by Samuel E. Wright, who gives advice to a calypso beat (''Go on and kiss the girl''). Isn't there also a hint of caricature of black Americans when the Ape King in ''The Jungle Book'' (1967) yearns to learn the secret of civilization and sings (in the voice of Louis Prima), ''I wan'na be like you''?

And not just black culture has preoccupied the Disney empire. Throughout the films -- pre-Walt and post, animated and live action -- ethnic types abound, sometimes associated with national caricatures and even social class. ''The Three Caballeros'' (1945) is a veritable tour of Latin American stereotypes. ''Peter Pan'' (1953) has an ''Injun'' powwow, ''Pocahontas'' (1995) an American Indian potlatch. In ''Mary Poppins'' (1964), the middle-class Banks family comes up against the Cockney chimney sweep Bert. ''Aladdin'' (1992) offended some viewers with its references to Arab culture. ''The Hunchback of NotreDame'' (1996) has the magically beguiling Gypsy Esmeralda.

Why is ethnicity so central to the Disney oeuvre? The word ethnic, which comes from the Greek word ethnos, meaning heathen or pagan, is a title given to an outsider and implies condescension: the ethnic heathen has rejected the civilized mainstream and has also been rejected by it. And the Disney ethnic character has tended to be interpreted as evidence of racism and insularity shared by Walt Disney and generations of Disney animators, writers and directors.

But while American racial attitudes have changed dramatically over the course of Disney history, the nature of the Disney view of ethnicity has been remarkably consistent until recently. And despite whiffs of condescension (and rare mean-spiritedness, as in the portrait of the Siamese cats in ''Lady and the Tramp'' in 1955), the ethnic character is treated with unusual affection. The Disney ethnic characters are loaded down by cliche -- in accent, character and mannerism -- but are also admired, even envied (they also get the best songs).

The crows in ''Dumbo,'' for example, are more knowledgeable and witty than any of the flying elephant's circus colleagues. The alley cats in ''Aristocats'' turn out to be the heroes, possessing far more important skills than the upper-crust ''white'' kittens. Esmeralda, the Gypsy of ''Hunchback,'' comprehends the trials of Quasimodo because of her own beleaguered ethnic status.

This is no accident. Ethnicity involves complicated relationships between an outsider and a supposed center, between an immigrant and the mainstream, an aspiring lower class and a complacent middle. And these relationships are often the very subjects of the films themselves. Disney movies do not just incorporate ethnicity; they are, in a broad sense, about it.

This is true even if the key characters are not explicitly ethnic. Dumbo is a misfit, Pinocchio a boy without a purpose. Ariel the mermaid is out of place in her underwater world, yearning to be human. In ''Beauty and the Beast,'' Belle is ''so different from the rest of us.'' The outsider -- the hunchback, the child, the disenfranchised princess, the beast -- struggles to join the center or change it.

Meanwhile, the identifiably ethnic characters aid in those struggles: Geppetto tries to help Pinocchio become a boy; Sebastian helps the little mermaid become human; the dwarfs help Snow White; the inner-city cats help the Aristocats. The typical Disney film presents a joint triumph: the ethnic character ends up becoming mainstream, and the mainstream ends up learning from and accepting the ethnic character.

IN THIS LIGHT, THE DISNEY oeuvre seems an embodiment of old-fashioned liberalism, something that seems bizarre given Walt Disney's reputation as a man of the right (any chance of his obtaining true liberal credentials ended with his anti-Communist testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947). Still, until the recent past, when their view of ethnicity began to shift, Disney films -- reaching back to ''Dumbo,'' and even encompassing the paternalistic ''Song of the South'' -- proclaimed a melting-pot liberalism. The dominant idea was not conformity but mutual accommodation.

Walt Disney's latest biographer, Steven Watts, points out in his forthcoming book, ''The Magic Kingdom,'' that in the 1950's the Disney studios also engaged in an almost radical celebration of American self-reliance. But this tendency, too, became a celebration of the melting pot, in which ethnic characters, like the Mexican-born Zorro, were heroic iconoclasts. In Disneyland, Disney envisioned an idealized America that incorporated exotic lands and foreign climes. Even the star of ''The Mickey Mouse Club'' on television was the young Italian-American Annette Funicello.

In fact, in contrast with many other popular forms of entertainment, few ethnic characters, even in the early Disney films, are villains. In ''Bambi'' (1942), which in its eco-pieties anticipates ''The Lion King,'' the enemy is man himself, the hunter and fire maker. In ''Dumbo'' the most unlikable characters are the other elephants, who dislike anyone different from themselves. In ''Hunchback,'' the villain hates Gypsies, the poor and the crippled. Evil is far more often associated with pretense and social climbing than with being ethnically different.

THIS THEN WAS THE CENTRAL myth of the Disney entertainment empire, a variation on the American dream that tapped into children's fantasies and adult political hopes. In a way, it was almost opposite of the grandly popular myths of opera that dominated 19th-century European culture.

Opera, like Disney genre films, came into its own with the efforts to create unified nations out of disparate peoples. But in opera, the outsider often threatens the social order, and the conflict between the ethnic character (think Carmen) and the mainstream (think Don Jose) often ended in tragedy. No triumph came without pain and complication. Disney's optimism allowed none of this; the view of society was ethnically rich, but it was a civilization without discontents.

Such optimism couldn't be sustained. In the 90's, the Disney myth started to dissolve, leading to a string of meandering, strained films. Ethnicity remained prominent in ''Aladdin,'' as if out of habit, but was unrelated to anything else in the film. ''Pocahontas'' signaled the first real signs of change, overturning Disney liberalism and exchanging it for assertions of ethnic independence. The film ''The Lion King'' rejected the Disney myth more completely by focusing on a new notion of ethnicity: its hero was not an outsider yearning to join the center or thriving outside it but a disinherited heir who had to recapture his ethnic kingdom. ''The Lion King'' is not about accommodation and influence but about ethnic identity.

This means that the outsider is not someone to be admired or learned from, like the Tramp or Uncle Remus or Sebastian. He is a villain who threatens the ethnic future. Scar is literally a heathen, a pagan who rejects the Circle of Life and African animal society; he is portrayed as an ethnic caricature who is really an anti-ethnic. Simba tells Scar he is strange; the villain replies in a precious drawl, ''You have no idea.''

Partly because the film never makes much of Simba's native culture, the ethnic stakes never seem very high. But Ms. Taymor has fully uncovered the new Disney myth with her production's African-style celebrations and chants. The film's subtext comes to the surface. The ethnic world is being threatened by Scar; it is that world that Simba must preserve by accepting his identity and celebrating its centrality.

This transformation of the Disney myth reflects changes in the larger society as well. The melting pot is out; ethnic identity is in. Accommodation is no longer the issue; self-assertion is. But nuance is hardly more plentiful. It will be revealing to see what happens if Disney comes through with its proposed version of Verdi's opera ''Aida.'' That opera focuses on the demands made by ethnic and national identity and their conflicts with personal desire. Private and public clash; tragedy emerges from the fray.

Will Disney allow itself to reveal the dangers behind its new myth? Is there room in the Disney universe for a sense of complication, or even for old-style reconciliation? The issues are not Disney's alone.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section 2, Page 37 of the National edition with the headline: CULTURAL VIEW; Ethnicity and Disney: It's a Whole New Myth. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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CULTURAL VIEW; Ethnicity and Disney: It's a Whole New Myth

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CULTURAL VIEW IN JULIE TAYMOR'S TRIUMPHANT Broadway reinterpretation of the Walt Disney Company's ''Lion King,'' the movie's shamanesque baboon, Rafiki, is transmuted into a Zulu-chanting priestess, an African griot-storyteller, hooting and hollering, grunting knowingly and guiding the young lion Simba to his destiny.

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Pocahontas - The Tragic True Story - YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com › watch

Although this focuses on the historically ignored elements of the film, I think it's a great start to breaking apart representations of culture and ethnicity in Disney films

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'Murzynek Bambo', children's poem written in 1923/24, by Julian Tuwin, a Polish Jewish author.

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'Murzynek Bambo', children's poem written in 1923/24, by Julian Tuwin, a Polish Jewish author.

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The poem is in Polish and the translations online are not great as they tend to censor the racist parts or write a new poem all together. I’ve attempted to translate it as closely as I could.

Murzynek Bambo  -  Negro Bambo

Czarna ma skórę ten nasz koleżka -  He has black skin our friend

Uczy się pilnie przez całe ranki  -  He studies diligently throughout the whole morning

Ze swej murzyńskiej pierwszej czytanki.  -  From his first negro book

A gdy do domu ze szkoły wraca ,  -  And when he returns home from school

Psoci, figluje - to jego praca.  -  he misbehaves/mischief/plays tricks-that’s his job.

Aż mama krzyczy: "Bambo, łobuzie!'  -  Until his mum shouts: “Bambo, you rascal!”

A Bambo czarną nadyma buzię.  -  While Bambo puffs up his black face.

Mama powiada: "Napij się mleka"  -  His mum says: “drink your milk”

A on na drzewo mamie ucieka.  -  But he runs away and climbs a tree.

Mama powiada :"Chodź do kąpieli",  -  His mum says: “Come have a bath”

A on się boi że się wybieli.  -  But he’s scared that he’ll turn white.

Lecz mama kocha swojego synka. –Despite that, the mum loves her son.

Bo dobry chłopak z tego murzynka. -  because the negro is a good boy.

Szkoda że Bambo czarny , wesoły -  It’s a shame that black, cheerful Bambo

nie chodzi razem z nami do szkoły. – doesn’t go to school with us.

Written by Julian Tuwin 1923/24. Own translation.

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Fantasia is an extremely interesting movie that also fell victim to having racial stereotypes in it too. In the original release, there is a centaur called Sunflower who plays the servant girl to all the other, beautiful, fair skinned centaurs.She waits on them hand and foot and once the racial implications were realised this scene was quickly scrubbed from all future releases of the movie.

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Fantasia is an extremely interesting movie that also fell victim to having racial stereotypes in it too. In the original release, there is a centaur called Sunflower who plays the servant girl to all the other, beautiful, fair skinned centaurs.She waits on them hand and foot and once the racial implications were realised this scene was quickly scrubbed from all future releases of the movie.

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Can it be argued that some of the analysis regarding the portrayal of racial stereotypes in some Disney films are a bit exaggerated?

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The Disney company has been around a very long time and here are some of their older movies that have been slammed for being racially insensitive.

Racially insensitivity can be done in a number of ways. With a lot of these movies, the speech is often over-exaggerated but also the characters adhere to the stereotypical traits and personalities.

Here's the list of Disney's most racially-controversial movies:
8.THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967):
The Jungle Book is a fantastic movie that follows the adventures of Mowgli and the wonderful animals that have a role in his life.

Most of the animals are depicted with a posh English accent or a sophisticated American accent. Even the vultures in the show are based on The Beatles!

But the monkey, Louis has a heavy African American accent. But it's not just that. He is lazy and demanding and adheres to the stereotypes that were in America during the 50s and 60s.

Surely it can't be a coincidence?
7. DUMBO (1941):
In Dumbo we are introduced to the gang of crows who, again, speak in a very heavy 'southern African-American jive'. That on its own is quite racist but then you learn the name of the crow leader...Jim Crow.

For those out of the loop, the Jim Crow laws were laws brought in that introduced segregation of people across America.
6. PETER PAN (1953):
In this scene in Peter Pan he meets some native Americans who perform a song. The song is called 'What Makes the Red Man Red' and has met some serious controversy over the years.

Have a look at the lyrics:

"Why does he ask you, "How?"
Why does he ask you, "How?"
Once the Injun didn't know
All the things that he know now
But the Injun, he sure learn a lot
And it's all from asking, "How?"
Hana Mana Ganda
Hana Mana Ganda"

They are singing gibberish and when coupled with the scenes in the movie this was considered very offensive to the Native American people.

The song was changed in later versions to 'What makes The Brave Man Brave'.
5. FANTASIA (1940):
Fantasia is an extremely interesting movie that also fell victim to having racial stereotypes in it too. In the original release, there is a centaur called Sunflower who plays the servant girl to all the other, beautiful, fair skinned centaurs.

She waits on them hand and foot and once the racial implications were realised this scene was quickly scrubbed from all future releases of the movie.
4. THE ARISTOCATS (1970):
There's not really much to say about this one except for it's a Siamese cat, playing a piano with chopsticks shouting 'Fortune cookie always wrong'.

Yep...
3. THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989):
The Little Mermaid also has a few dodgy references. Firstly, the crab character of Sebastian has a heavy Jamaican accent. There is also a 'Blackfish' who has very 'full lips' which can be seen as adhering to racial stereotypes of the time.
2. ALADDIN (1992):
There has been widespread discussion regarding skin tones in Aladdin and how the hero is so fair skinned and all the villains are very dark skinned.

This is all speculation but it's hard to deny that the lyrics to the opening song sound a bit dodgy. Speaking about the world Aladdin is based on the lyrics say:

"Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric but hey it's home"

This was met with criticism and Disney changed the lyrics for their DVD release to:

"Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense"

This movie tops the list because it's a movie that you still can't purchase in America today.

It hasn't been available to purchase since 1991... It's never even made it to DVD.

The reason it's thought to be so controversial is that the whole movie is based around two black actors as they are completely subservient to a white family.

The problem that a lot of people had with the movie is that it glorifies slavery and make it look like people are happy to be slaves... Not exactly an opinion you want out there.

Weirdly enough this is one movie that Walt Disney tried his best to NOT be racist. He hired special people to scrutinise the movie and make sure that audiences wouldn't be upset.

He also cast James Baskett, an African American actor, as the lead character. This move was very rare in 1940s America.

We've come a long way since the movies of the 1940s but who knows how the movies of our generation will be perceived in 70 years!

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8 Disney movies that have been criticised for "being racist" | Buzz.ie

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Racially insensitivity can be done in a number of ways. With a lot of these movies, the speech is often over-exaggerated but also the characters adhere to the stereotypical traits and personalities. Here's the list of Disney's most racially-controversial movies: 8.THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967): The Jungle Book is a fantastic movie that follows the adventures of Mowgli and the wonderful animals that have a role in his life.

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Whitewashing in recreation of Disney Princesses

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Whitewashing in recreation of Disney Princesses

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From the trailor 'Ralph Breaks the Internet', there is a scene which how Mulan and Pochontas have been given Westernised features. Both of them have been given whiter skin than they need to have been which suggests white to be the norm and more beautiful. In addition, their features such as their eyes and noses have become been altered to seem more Westernised.

The reactions to this have further supported this, with people thinking by including Mulan in the film is asian representation. However this lacks accurate representation. The characters are hardly recognisable as their ethnicity.

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A brand new Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer was released on Monday (June 4), and while the whole Disney princess gang was present ( including Mulan), there was a lot of discussion surrounding the physical depictions of two of the characters.

Many people on social media discussed how Native American character Pocahontas and Chinese character Mulan look to have had their skin tone whitened and facial features altered.

A lot of Twitter users took issue with how much lighter Pocahontas appears in the trailer:

But others said the issue wasn't clear cut, as her portrayal in the original 1995 movie was problematic in the first place.

As for Mulan, she also has gone through a number of physical changes in her redesign which seem to soften her East Asian features.

And that didn't go unnoticed, with one person saying that Mulan now looks half-Asian:

However, there were others who appreciated the representation:

Digital Spy has reached out to Disney for comment.

Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 sees Ralph (John C Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) leave the arcade world behind to explore the uncharted world of the internet, filled with websites, apps and social media networks, in order to save Vanellope's game Sugar Rush.

You can watch the trailer below:
Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 arrives on November 23 in the UK and two days earlier, on November 21, in the US. Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Twitter account and you're all set.

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Does Wreck-It Ralph promo whitewash Pocahontas & Mulan?

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A brand new Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer was released on Monday (June 4), and while the whole Disney princess gang was present ( including Mulan), there was a lot of discussion surrounding the physical depictions of two of the characters.

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How disney 'white washed' Tiana (the first black disney princess) in Wreck It Ralph 2".

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White, essentially 'Aryan' doll comes down the chute standing perfectly, is able to learn and repeat the words of Santa.
In contrast, the black doll follows, lands clumsily on its face, screams 'mammy' and then stamps itself with the 'OK'.

MAY be problematic because of:
1) The clear difference in the 'advancement' of the white doll, in comparison to the black doll
2) The black doll saying 'Mammy' could be considered a reference to slavery where black women were enslaved in the homes of white people
3) MAYBE also santa's stamping of the white doll as 'OK' whereas the black doll did this on their own - whiteness is accepted, blackness is not out-rightly accepted ??

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Stuart Hall and Annalee Ward- chapter 4 

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Stuart Hall and Annalee Ward- chapter 4 

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key ideas:
Interrogate representation in media
Duality between heroes and villains.
The construction of difference is simplistic and reductionist, based on meanings constructed from binary of oppositions - linguistic aspect
construction of self - psychoanalysis
stereotypes - constructions of race (the Other)

intersectional representations of the Other
Annalee:

Disney powerful story telling
Difference between moral and morality
limitations to how children/ people see the world

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Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2006) 

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Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2006) 

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Check 5:12-6:30

Directors: Jeremy Earp, Sut Jhally
This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged form the earliest days of silent film to today's biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs--from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding "terrorists"--along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today. Shaheen shows how the persistence of these images over time has served to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture, in the process reinforcing a narrow view of individual Arabs and the effects of specific US domestic and international policies on their lives. By inspiring critical thinking about the social, political, and basic human consequences of leaving these Hollywood caricatures unexamined, the film challenges viewers to recognize the urgent need for counter-narratives that do justice to the diversity and humanity of Arab people and the reality and richness of Arab history and culture.

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How Hollywood Vilifies Arabs!  - Documentary

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Criticisms of Moana and portrayal of Demi-God

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Criticisms of Moana and portrayal of Demi-God

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https://nypost.com/2016/11/30/why-moana-is-drawing-criticism-in-the-south-pacific/

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Singer and actor Halle Bailey will play Ariel in the live action remake of Disney's The Little Mermaid.

The original 1989 animation told the story of 16-year-old mermaid, Ariel who is fascinated with life on land. After falling for a human prince she makes a dangerous deal with a sea witch, Ursula to become human for three days.

The live-action remake is following in the footsteps of other classic Disney animations re-invented like The Jungle book, Beauty and The Beast and Aladdin. Other live-action films planned include The Lion King and Mulan.

The Little Mermaid will be directed by Rob Marshall and will still include many of the beloved songs from the animated classic, like Sebastian the crab's 'Under the sea' and 'Part of your world' by original composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, as well as new songs from Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Who is Halle Bailey?

Getty Images

Halle Bailey is part of musical duo Chloe X Halle with her sister Chloe which means she has a great singing voice, an important part of playing Ariel.

Director Rob Marshall says she was cast after an extensive search.

"It was abundantly clear that Halle possesses that rare combination of spirit, heart, youth, innocence, and substance -plus a glorious singing voice - all intrinsic qualities necessary to play this iconic role."

Bailey tweeted 'dream come true' on Twitter in response to the news with a picture of how her animated Ariel might look like.

Chloe x Halle

Production of The Little Mermaid is expected to begin in early 2020. Disney says there will be more casting announcements in the coming weeks, so we will have to wait to see who will play characters like Ursula and Sebastian.

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The Little Mermaid: Halle Bailey cast as Ariel in Disney's live-action remake - CBBC Newsround

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Singer and actor Halle Bailey will play Ariel in the live action remake of Disney's The Little Mermaid. The original 1989 animation told the story of 16-year-old mermaid, Ariel who is fascinated with life on land. After falling for a human prince she makes a dangerous deal with a sea witch, Ursula to become human for three days.