Disney + politics?

There's this class that's offered in the Honors College here on a regular basis called "The Disney Mystique". I'm kind of sad that it slipped my mind to sign up for it for the spring semester, because I have some interesting ideas about Disney, the main one being that everyone out there seems to either worship the Disney company as a god or decry it as a menace to society. There doesn't seem to be that much middle ground there.

Of course, like all debates, both sides of the issue tend to see and hear what they want to see and hear in the movies, articles, etc. I'm an avid Tumblr blogger and I see at least two or three graphics a day that fall on either side of this issue. Personally, I think there can be middle ground here.

Let's start with the unavoidable: yes, the Disney corporation outsources much of its labor to overseas countries where workers are paid far too little for the amount of work they do; at least with their merchandise. This is definitely a problem and something the world should not be happy with. However, since I doubt people are going to start completely boycotting Disney anytime soon, I think a better way to address this issue is with awareness.

Another thing people tend to bring up often when they're arguing against Disney is their portrayal of minorities and women. This is somewhat of a problem, but not quite as large of one as people make it out to be. For one thing, many of the movies cited for racism (Peter Pan and the deleted scene from Fantasia, for example) are old movies; they were made during a time when those kinds of portrayals were commonplace. Same thing with many of the portrayals of women; the majority of the anti-feminist plots in Disney movies were pre-women's lib, when feminism wasn't even a concept.

Just as a discussion point, I'm going to look at a sampling of Disney movies from across the ages and look at how they approach women and (sometimes) minorities. (If there wasn't much treatment at all of either one, then I'm just going to skip it.)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - Personally, I think Snow White is an annoying and atrocious movie, but again, it was made in 1937. Not gonna fault it for its horrible treatment of women because it made sense for the time period. It's still annoying.

Fantasia - The only real scene in this movie that involved women in any sort of substantial way was the Pastoral Symphony number. Sure, it showed the lady centaurs as superficial bimbos who only want men, but it also showed the male centaurs being nothing but huge horndogs, and the androgynous cupid-babies as being voyeurs. I'd say there's about equal sexism here. And yes, there is that one scene that they cut out of the film at some point where they have a black centaur happily polishing the white centaurs' hooves, but again, this was made in 1940. And they did cut that out eventually.

One thing that interests me about this movie is the fact that it has a couple of instances of nudity in it. "Night on Bald Mountain" is the most obvious example, with the bare-breasted harpies flying around on All Hallows Eve, but I'm pretty sure there's at least one topless scene with the lady centaurs as well. Obviously, you'd never be able to get away with this today, which begs the question of why they were able to get away with it then, in what we think of as a much more conservative age. Was it because this was before Disney was regarded as just a children's company?

Anyway. Moving on.

Cinderella - You know, this isn't a half bad movie for 1950. I mean, yeah, you've got the servant girl who runs into the arms of a prince, but really, if you think about it, it's not the prince who ultimately saves Cinderella. It's her fairy godmother.

Alice In Wonderland - I wonder if anyone has ever theorized that the different Wonderland creatures are supposed to represent minorities in any way? I bet there's an article about that somewhere. Anyway. Alice is a pretty decent heroine; plenty of curiosity and spunk. She does have that line about not wanting to read a book with no pictures, but she is a child, after all.

Peter Pan - Okay, this one's kind of a tough one. The most obvious thing to look at here is the portrayal of the "Indians", which is...painful. It's blatantly racist and is a popular example of Disney racism. But...well, once again, this was 1953. Not exactly an age of tolerance and enlightenment. I think we just have to acknowledge this one and move on. It's unfortunate, but you can't change the past. And it's not like the Fantasia scene that's just a few seconds long and can be cut out.

Lady and the Tramp - it's been a while since I watched this, so forgive me if I miss anything. We've got two things here - the relationship, which is more about class differences and the nuclear family than it is about gender, and the Siamese cats, who are portrayed as very stereotypically East Asian, with buck teeth and almond-shaped eyes. I think I'm just going to stop talking about time periods here, though; the point should be obvious until we start getting into the 70's, 80's and beyond into a time when the racism should theoretically be getting better.

Sleeping Beauty - I...don't remember much about this. I always thought it was a boring movie. Of course, I do remember thinking Aurora was stupid for going after that spinning wheel, but if it comes to that, why couldn't her parents have just told her "Hey, you know those three fairies who take care of you? Well, there's an evil one, too, and she's fixed it so that if you touch a spinning wheel on this specific day, you'll die. So just...stay away from them, k?"

Or maybe they did do that. I don't remember.

101 Dalmatians - The only real problem I see with this movie was the scene when Cruella tries to run a guy off the road and he says something like "Crazy woman driver." But...that's one thing. And it could just be that character's a jerk, I don't know. (By the way, I also happen to love the live-action version of this movie. The sequel, not so much.)

Mary Poppins - See, now there's a fun and powerful female protagonist. Although they did tone her no-nonsense attitude down considerably from what was in the books. Also, we have Mrs. Banks as part of the English suffragette movement.

The Jungle Book - I'm not sure what to say about this one. I feel like there's something to examine there, but I don't know what it is.

The Aristocats - We have the tom's tom Thomas O'Malley rescuing the females and children, and then we have the caricature Siamese cat again. (Seriously, what is it with Disney and using cats for Asian stereotypes?)

You know what, I got tired of writing. I might finish this up later, but I might not.

Just a note:

I think a large part of Disney's "race problem" is that a lot of the time they seem to refuse to acknowledge the fact that racism or race relations even exist. I remember being very surprised the first time I saw Princess and the Frog, because the movie was supposed to take place during the Depression and shortly thereafter, and was set in New Orleans, and yet they showed an obviously integrated trolley car. I feel like Disney could have used that movie as an opportunity to make a good point and they didn't. Buuuut, at the same time, I also feel like if they had made race relations a part of the plot, they would have been vilified for using that in a movie with the first African-American princess. (That's another question; why the hell did it take them until 2009 to do that? Disney is very whitewashed and that's a problem in and of itself.)