cultural stereotypes & tropes in Disney movies || 11/11/2022

I found that the data collected from these Disney movies was surprising and thought-provoking. One particular point was that out of 371 characters, with speaking roles, 259 or ~70 percent were male. Also, the setting of these movies was ~85 percent in western countries (US, Europe). And that SAE English made up about half of the languages spoken and British English roughly the rest. I wasn’t surprised that due to the time and place of these movies many contained racist, discriminatory, or stereotypical themes, however. These views reflected the times and although we wish better decisions were made, they were marketed towards a mass audience. As with accents similar things could be said. These are western films depicting other cultures with a monolithic view. Even up to recently these changes have been slow. One example is Aladdin which had an offensive line in the opening song. The time of the movie’s release was right after the Gulf War in Saudi Arabia.

Our in-class discussion went through the article but mostly focused on the impacts and efforts of accents. We discussed how women, villains, and sidekicks often have accents to express their “otherness” or are afforded few to no speaking roles. We watched several examples and discussed common tropes, like villains having British accents. We also analyzed some modern examples, like live-action movies, and how they were different from the original films. Some accents were changed but there were still clear stereotypes.

I think I would have liked to talk about the positive directions or aims these movies could strive towards, in wake of all the controversy. While it is good to recognize the flaws, I think that resting the whole argument on accents is not the best use case scenario. This can lead to monoliths, like everyone speaking SAE English, and then where is the place for diversity? I think that having several types of characters and accents in a movie is important but should be done with consideration and awareness to greater contexts.