When I worked at Disney World, it always confused me why Beauty and the Beast had a restaurant, but Princess and the Frog didn't? Like, that's what they movie is about. As much as I loved the grey stuff, having Tiana's Place as an actual, visitable restaurant would make so much more sense than having her take over the slave ride. (Not that they can't do both. But it would be awesome to show some southern soul food in Disney)
I went to be our guest, and it was great! But I would soooo go to a tiana themed restaurant! I would LOVE if they added that! The look can be amazing, the louisiana themed menu, wonderful!
Yeeesss, and not just the southern soul food, but the entire restaurant could have that old 1920s feel that would make our inner art-history nerds go bananas!
I love Disney, but I hate when people pretend it’s all sunshine and rainbows and fail to hold it accountable for the problematic stuff it’s made and continues to create. It’s okay to call it out for its racism. It’s okay to demand it does better in terms of representation. You’re showing maturity and acknowledgment of your privilege by doing so.
My parents literally did not let me watch Aladdin for my entire childhood, on the excuse that it was 'hyperactive'. Found out later, the *actual* reason was Jasmine's hypersexualization and the fact that she only 'acts sexy' towards men she doesn't like (Ali, when she thinks he's full of crap, and later, Jafar). In other words, her sexuality is basically weaponized repeatedly, throughout the movie.
I didn't know that (although I have seen the movie). I actually think its a stupid reason because children wouldn't catch on to that anyway, the issue is only in the parents head. While I thought of jasmine as generally attractive, I actually never thought of her as being hyper-sexualized
@@zakosist hm I don’t know, as a child I definitely felt like the scene in the red outfit had a really different, sexual vibe. I didn’t really know much about sexuality, but that and the princess and the goblin’s hostage scene gave me weird feelings and I think this kind of thing is probably why so many get a thrill from fictional dubiously-consensual stuff.
@@MinimalistTheatre333 Hi, could you please give me your sources about Middle east doing more slave trafficking than America ? Because that's the first time I heard of it
I remember someone once pointing out how the only characters that get transformed into animals are characters of colour, and I remember my jaw dropping because they're so right and I never realised that before
@@gg-dg6rk both the white and the non white disney princesses looked idealized as hell (with the exception of moana and merida, who look more like ordinary girls next door). the golden era even put way too much focus on snow white and cinderella's appearance, which is unsurprisng, given the plot of the originals. if the poc princesses were portrayed looking like laney boggs (She's All That) and the white ones looked more like Regina George, that would've been a valid statement. but like i said, both are portrayed as attractive with the exception of the girls i mentioned earlier. also, like the user mentioned, odette is not disney.
Edit: poc people shouldn't baby white people about racism, it's getting annoying. Btw, we suffer racism and we are the ones that need to be "nice", wow. Edit: they deleted the comment No, it's problematic. Pocahontas sexualize indigenous women, and I'm not a woman, I'm androgyne man, and i myself have been experienced racism because of being indigenous with Pocahontas, and people love to use "Pocahontas" against my people, specifically our women. I've seen people literally makes lists with "biokinesis" to look like native women stereotype because of Pocahontas. Please tell me i misinterpreted your comment, because if not, then you really should look more into the harm it did to us.d
@@sure9019 As someone who has loved Pocahontas as a Disney Princess and the movie itself, this is really sad to see. I loved "Colors Of The Wind" and the message Pocahontas shared with the song. It's really messed up that the movie caused harm for a lot of Native Americans.
@@BratzRockAngels not only native Americans. I'm a indigenous person from Brazil and yet I'm still being attacked with this same thing, and Soo our women. It did more harm than turtle island
Makes me upset as a white girl that I didn't catch a lot of these things growing up. Hearing these points from a group of beautiful bipoc women hurts my heart because I've never had to think about these things.
Disney always seems to take one step forward and two steps back (and somehow three steps sideways) whenever they attempt representation. Howard Ashman's influence over the tone and themes of the Renaissance period were huge for young queer kids, but those movieswound up extremely YIKES in other ways. Now "Disney's First Gay Character" is basically a running joke in queer spaces. As a kid from poverty and abuse, Cinderella was dear to me, since she held onto hope and kindness through one of the cruelest situations a child can go through. Cinderella, even way back then, wasn't a doormat about it. She knew her situation was cruel, but held it together to ensure her survival until her chance at freedom came. Of course, when Tangled came out, Rapunzel shot right up to the top of my favorites. Seeing characters escape abuse is and go on to live full lives speaks right to my heart. Though the mice saying "leave the sewing to the women!" felt awkward even as a little kid. Having more representation and knowledge in the writers room, animation studio, basically the entire line of creation, is the only way I can think of for things to get better for every line of representation, because telling better stories matters.
i hate to break it to you, but with my country and china being disney's biggest markets, we won't be getting explicitly gay characters from them any time soon. and considering most creators treat us like boxes to tick with a checkmark... yeah, i'm gonna wait for them to get a conscience
When Princess and The Frog came out and showed Tiana's Restaurant, I was excited to see that become an actual thing in the parks, but instead they made Beauty and The Beast castle into a restaurant? I mean, I get the idea is similar to "Be Our Guest" song where the castle gets food for Belle, but even then, it would have made more sense to make the actual restaurant that Tiana dreamed of and got in the end a real thing, than a restaurant based around one song from the entirety of Beauty and The Beast.
I liked the discussion about Jasmine being confused as a black character rather than a brown one. I'm Maori so when Moana came out, it was a huge deal. It was one of the better representations, especially since they got people who spoke Te Reo to sing some of the songs. Unfortunately, because I am quite pale (one might say 'white passing') I am ostracised by many because I don't have tanned, darker skin. It annoys me that many people think POC means black- even if they don't mean to be rude, I've heard my brown and Asian friends be told they're not POC because that means 'black'. Also, with Peter Pan (take this with a grain of salt because I'm Maori, not Native American) but those scenes made me so uncomfortable because Maori culture and Maori people are so 'lost' outside of the Pacific. I have had people say I'm making it up because they never heard of it. And yet, kids would mock me with the dances and gestures that were shown in Peter Pan.
I'm pretty sure the term "people of color" is just a nicer version of saying "colored people". And when you say "colored people" do you really think of someone who is pale or even white passing? no u don't. I get where you are coming from but just because you're not white doesn't make you a person of color
@@telepups28 I'm not actually white, though. I'm full Maori with olive skin. Grew up with my people, speak my language. 'just because you're not white doesn't make a person of colour' literally doesn't make sense. If I'm not white or a POC, what am i?
@@telepups28 ummm. what is wrong is the term person of color, cause you can come from a different culture than white USA culture, be white (or almost white) and still be racialized or discriminated. Things are not so easy, is not like, every person from a specific culture has a tag in their skin color.
@@ghosty8193 you don´t have to explain your skin color to nobody. Keep doing you. I think that sometimes people may not understand. What is wrong is "person of color" term. You are Maori. And from my perspective the term person of color just points to otherness, cultures that USA white standars may not understand. Is not about skin color, is about culture.
@@shanhyuga6607 Honestly, it's stuff like this that hurts everyone in the situation. Categorizing people as 'colors' just seems strongly dehumanizing to me. Cultures don't decide your skin color after all, on top of the color coding being inaccurate. Not to mention, skin color can change over time, most people's do considering what dictates your skin tone in the first place.
This discussion was so valuable. The mice was something I had never even considered.... I'm gonna add my two cents as a native american. The relationship with Peter pan and Pocahontas is kinda complicated, because yeah, it is super offensive, but it was also one of the few places I saw myself. There was also a lot of cognitive dissonance. For instance, the word "savage" was thrown around a lot, but my family was more accurately described as "generous". I thought maybe it was referring to some other Indians, blackfoot were named specifically, but my best friend was Blackfoot. In that regard, it was very alienating from my indigenous heritage. And of course, Pocahontas really perpetuated the white savior, to the point where that's what I start with anytime I want to explain it. There's another costuber who is native who really goes into Pocahontas, Miah Grace. In summary, the book Disney's Pocahontas is based on was written by John Smith, a swindler and a loser, and who completely made up most of it. On top of that, the woman he called Pocahontas was a child at the time he knew her. The way the film Pocahontas tries to "both sides" it, having the native people join in on the "savages" song, is just really gross and contradicted by actual history. That just was not a mindset they would have had. The outfits, of course, are also completely inaccurate, and Pocahontas being quite scantily clad feeds into the idea of sexually promiscuous indigenous women. (Let me be clear that real women can and should wear whatever they want. Real women have autonomy. Pocahontas is a fictional character and this was a choice made by people who were not indigenous and not women.) The fact that tiger lily doesn't speak is pretty gross, and kinda feeds into the idea of WOC not having autonomy. And the colorism in the fact that she's considered the most beautiful and she's also the palest. My sister really struggled with whether she wanted to show her kids Pocahontas. Even today, there's not really any children's movies with good native representation. There's things to relate to in Lilo and Stitch and Moana, but obviously they're not native American, and even those have problems that I can't really speak to, not being Hawaiian or Polynesian. This was kinda stream of consciousness, there's probably mistakes, and I hope it made sense. TL;DR watch "Why I'm not going to make a historical Pocahontas costume and no one else will either" by Miah Grace
The only representation I saw apart from Disney about Native American culture was Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. I always loved it for the horses when I was little, but as I watched it when I was older I realized it was also about American colonization. It showed how the natives grieved when they were colonized and robbed of their home. The main native american character you see is named "Little Creek" and he shows such amazing compassion to the main character, Spirit the horse. You get a bit of insight into his way of life and his culture, as he introduces Spirit to it. I think the movie is amazing, there's limited representation but I feel it is better than these racial/ethnic stereotypes.
@@tabi2674 Spirit isn't even a Disney movie though. It's made by DreamWorks. The only Disney movie that actually does a good representing Native Americans is Brother Bear.
@@Jadedrock yeah and even then they made assumptions about talisman, and with spirit they made a spin-off about it that’s not even about native culture and the awareness of colonization. They made it about (mainly) little white girls riding horses competing, and trying to boost feminism. While I’m glad they’re showing that girls can a predominantly masculine thing, most cartoons have that theme. Them taking away what little good representation we had that showed pain and some of what really happened and then replacing it with a common theme is extremely hurtful and blatantly racist.
@@Jadedrock Spirit is a great movie though! I have a few minor quibbles with it, but still good. (the spin-off is very disappointing...) Brother Bear has a similar issue that I have with Princess and the frog, in that the main character is a POC and spends most of the runtime as an animal. It's still a good movie! But also, it's more Inuit than Native, so again, relatable, but not necessarily MY place to comment on. I was focusing on disney movies when I wrote my initial comment, and I often forget that brother bear is Disney because it's not really a musical lol (I apologise for this long comment, I am incapable of being concise...)
I never realized the mouses in Cinderella were black coded, it feels so wrong. I think the dubbed versions is more ok because they don't have a particular accent. But sometimes it's worst. I had to watch Moana in English because as someone who grew up in Polynesia I just couldn't bear to hear them be voiced without any accent... don't tell me they couldn't find any Polynesian to dub the movie =-= For the Siamese in beauty and the tramp, I'm not Asian myself and still felt the song was uncomfortable and racist as a child .... it's the worst.
unlike for example the mice, i feel like the big thing why the siamese cats in the dubs still translate very racist despite the missing accents comes from the eyes and the "asian music" they sing to, and possibly the melody of the speech
Is the mice being a mammy figure racist? I just googled mammy and it's a word for a mother. I don't really see how the mice or the way they talk as racist nor have I ever met a person who talks like that :/ im black and I don't see them as being black coded at all.
Whoa I had no idea about the original voices of Disney animals due to watching them in translation, and it's honestly horrifying. 😬Thank you all for making this!!
Same! I watched them growing up in Swedish and while looking back I can see some of the imagery being very racially stereotypical, I think because they didn't have the accents or voices it wasn't as noticeable. Like... I would never in my life have connected that the mice in cinderella had any racial stereotypes behind them. That's so wild!
seeing how Disney misses the mark even with European fairytales, I wasn't really suprised that 1998 Mulan isn't really accurate to the ballad. it's just really sad that the worst butchering of these fairytales is visible in Princess and the Frog, and then they give that butchered story to the black girl for the sake of """"subverting"""" stereotypes (while Tiana is the only black princess to this date?), while Tiana with the original storyline would have been much more powerful? like the original is about the princess (!) drawing a line and being well aware of boundaries while everyone else is guilting her into giving in to more and more ridiculous demands, to the point where the frog absolutely tries to violate her and is thrown at the wall (which then makes him transform back into a king instead of dying.) the original was never about "just work harder!!!!!!!", it is literally about "yeah we've had an agreement but you are more than crossing boundaries that I am uncomfortable around you, cut that crap" like tell me where girls, and especially black/brown girls, need to learn to "work harder" instead of "my boundaries have to be respected and it's not too much/selfish to demand respect and not be violated"
? How was the frog crossing boundaries, I do remember the deal being that if she kissed him (only so he would turn back I think), then he'd get the ball for her. She knowingly made the agreement and decided she didnt want to keep the deal.
@@ok.4322 she agreed to companionship to get the ball, not to kiss him, and at first, yes, she tries to not fulfil her side of the deal, and everyone reprimands her for that - and she complies eventually since she had made the promise and understands that she needs to be fair to him. however, the frog becomes more and more demanding of things I don't think are considered what companions do i.e. sleep in her bed, wanting a kiss etc. at that point he already was allowed to eat from her plate and drink from her cup while sharing her chair. it's no longer the princess needing to learn a lesson, and the fairytale acknowledges that since the frog transforms after he crosses the line where the princess can't take it any more and shows him that by throwing him at the wall.
There are plenty of people that work themselves to the ground similarly to Tiana at the beginning of the movie (and in some cases, even harder). Take a look at the effort Sakuri puts into video game development, especially for Smash Bros Ultimate. There have been articles about Sakuri hurting his hands developing Smash. People might see a racist stereotype from Tiana, but all I see is a workaholic.
@@inkythoughts I may be a little late, but I think you got the story in a bit of a mess. The frog asked her to sit next to her, eat from her plate and sleep in her bed. And that's how it stayed. The king's daughter threw him against the wall because she found him repulsive (on the outside). The moral of the fairy tale is that you should keep your promise and not judge from the outside. There was never any talk of a kiss.
I wish you could have discussed Coco, too. It's not about Princesses, but it's a strong example of taking a country's important traditions and remarketing it to said country. Every Day of the Dead after Coco I've had to dig really deep into things at supermarkets, specially walmart, to find non-Coco items. They are re-branding part of my country's traditions and reselling it to us... kids are gonna see it and think it's normal! Alfeñiques, which are sugar skulls, are already suffering from this because people don't buy them anymore because they "aren't like the disney ones". Don't get me wrong, it was a really well researched movie, they even used a lot of architecture that you can find in CDMX... But we already have a problem with Cinco de Mayo in the US being thought as our Independence Day and taken as an excuse by yt people to just drink. Now Day of the Dead is used as costumes in Halloween when it's not a 1'% secular celebration here... It's also incredibly centralised. Here in the far up north it's hard to find THAT representation of Day of the Dead. EDIT: And this is not even touching depictions of child labour, romantization of poverty, the stupid caste system we have and the classism that comes with it, the problematic idolization of Mexican pop culture figures, the use of a cenote as a place of punishment when that wasn't it's original intent... (that cenote was BEAUTIFUL, but Gods, it's use...), the chancla (yeah, it was funny to watch because, dude... we relate... but the trauma that comes with it, oof! We as mexicans use laughter to deal with trauma, and after the initial viewing of the movie you start to get flashbacks by the third viewing and it's not fun anymore..), the commercialization of Mexican traditional towns and villages (we have this thing called Pueblo Mágico or Magical Town, it's been around for some years now to promote tourism, but it's detrimental for the people living there and the national touists as prices skyrocket for us, and Coco's representation of Santa Cecilia doesn't... help at all. Plus it perpetuates this idea that ALL of Mexico is like this. Far north villages are different than central Mexico, and even Southern Mexico. I've had gringo tourists come to my city thinking it's a stereotypical Mexican village and finding we tall buildings and there's not much left of colonial era houses due to gentrification... they leave so dissapointed when we finally can get the point across that no, we aren't beggars and yes we do know Enlgish...) and the xoloscuintle (Dante was portrayed as a stray dog... yeah, Xolos are highly valued... they are expensifve af dogs both to get and to take care of, they have really specific needs because they really ARE bald dogs and because of the movie's popularity their prices skyrocketed. And they are endangered...)
Don’t forget about how Disney put in border themes on a literal tradition in the movie 💀 like, as a Mexican, why can’t we have a movie where we aren’t subjected to the trauma our people face? It’s rlly disheartening
That thing about the cities pisses me off so much tbh. I do know that yes, most of our population unfortunately lives in poverty, and the places they live in are in poor conditions, but that doesn't mean that ALL of Mexico looks like in Coco, and I hate that that's how most outsiders view it
The other thing that's just super bizarre about Peter Pan is that the Island they go to is supposedly magic right? But then there's just a bunch of native folks living there. And it's super unclear if the story/movie is implying that all native people are magic or if it was just an island that had been colonized. The native characters don't seem to have magical powers, but then this is also an island full of mermaids and fairies so it's almost implying that Native people are mythical creatures. It's such a bad movie.
Ok, so there is a story about them, about Tiger Lily more precisely. They are "magical", they are born and stop aging at different times. I don't remember the plot really well because I read it a long time ago, but I know I liked it. Title: Tiger Lily by Joli Lynn Anderson
The book implies that children's fantasies come to life on the island. There is a bit of a cliche about boys reading books a lá 'last of the Mohicans' and fantasizing about being the heroes siding up with the "noble savages". Could the Natives of Neverland encompass that? Just my guess, still problematic.
@@anitamihholap5926 I often read books in school about boys and girls reading about different topics, like pirates, indigenous people, hunting and everything else, and being inspired by these to play out the roles of the exact same groups So, yeah, I guess the Neverland is exactly about that, boys are inspired by pirates and Natives, you get those in Neverland, girls like fairies and mermaids, you get those But yeah, I look at the Native Americans in the movie nowadays and cringe, they look like racist caricatures
Can I just say as a white Virginian, when we did Virginia history in 4th grade we started studying the Powhatan tribe (a sub tribe of the Algonquins, as I recall) we studied their culture (as much as we could find because that culture was mostly lost) and the impact that the English settlers had on them. At the end of the unit (which took a few months of pretty in-depth work) we watched Pocahontas with the specific assignment to find all the things that were wrong/incorrect about how Disney put this story together. It was a really showing exercise. We discussed that particular song (which shall remain silent so as to not provoke or trigger unnecessarily) and how that was one of many ways that Native Americans were viewed. It was always taught that this is not in any way acceptable nor that Disney was advocating that type of thought. I always took it as a villain song, one of intolerance and meanness which served only to cement the need for the villain's downfall. It's a really cool song that does everything the plot (as rewritten/made up by Disney) needs it to. It should never be taken as advocacy for that way of thought. The magic "now Pocahontas speaks English" thing was also a necessary plot device simply so the story didn't have to cover years and so that Pocahontas could assume the role in history that she deserves as a peacemaker between the two very different cultures. Not to protect or serve white people or to serve up her people to white servitude or anything of the sort. She was a peacemaker and that's what she is remembered for. I've gone back to her through my life to look again and study her over and over. She's one of my heroes. I wish we knew more about her. I wish we had more records of her and her people the way we do about the settlers at Jamestown. Sorry for the novel. I just felt like I needed to speak as a writer, musician, and lover of history. Cheers everyone!
The movie Pocahontas came out while I was in 4th grade, I forget if we'd visited the Jamestown sites before or after, but that movie did not sit well (and I have no doubt it was really much worse than I was able to appreciate at the time)
As another Virginian, DUDE SAAME!! I remember learning about the Native Americans of our area, their culture, and Pocahontas. The real, actual story of Pocahontas. Right after our unit test, my teacher put on the movie Pocahontas for us and we were LIVID. I'm pretty sure everyone in my class left with a newfound anger for that movie.
I was falling down the rabbit hole of the real life of Pocahontas and stumbled on an article of what the ENGLISH teach about Pocahontas. It makes Disney look like a documentary. They don't even know where exactly she is laid to rest; but they have a sugary sweet version of what they think is her tale.
Story time: I took a class 8 or 9 years ago called Intercultural Communication, taught by a very dark-skinned Black man. He tried to do right by us, and my classmates were not as respectful of him as I wish they had been. Anyway, he played for us a documentary about the racial problems in many Disney films, such as the hyenas in Lion King, King Louis in the Jungle Book, the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp, and the representation of Indigenous Americans in Peter Pan. Then we went in a circle and gave our reactions, and I was the very last person in a class of about 50, so I spent the next hour silently fuming as every single white person in the class, and several of the non-white international students as well, said that they thought it wasn’t that bad, that these things were cartoons and wouldn’t affect children. One white person literally said that calling the hyenas racist was “grasping at straws.” I went on a rage-filled rant, and spent much of the rest of class singlehandedly arguing them all down, and my poor prof, stranded as he was all alone in the hecka white Comm. dept., backed me up as much as he could, but we both knew I could say all that shit as a light-skinned student, and he couldn’t say any of it as a dark-skinned prof. It was so hellish that I changed majors the next term and developed a panic disorder shortly after.
kids media should be held by a MUCH higher standard than adult media. kids are building their understanding of the world, and exposing them to stereotypes reinforces stereotypes! whereas, adults tend to already have their ideas set in stone and can think more critically about the media they consume.
I live near Roseburg, Oregon, whose high school mascot is the Roseburg Indians. That study is so alarming to me! If being reminded of Pocahontas makes indigenous students do worse on a test, imagine how they fare they going to a SCHOOL that makes them a mascot. Some of the older imagery of the school is very racist, too. Now it's just am orange feather, but it used to be a caricature that looked the chief from Peter Pan. They have been debated whether to change it for decades, and a lot of people don't want to. They are very adamant about it, very angry and emotional, and as far as I know, they're all white. Indigenous students just THIS YEAR got to wear tribal symbols, like eagle or turkey feathers, during graduation--in a school where they're the mascots.
I didn't realize that there were schools that still had Indians as mascots... back when I was a sophomore, we had our mascot changed for being a "representation" of our local tribe. Looking back on it, I'm glad we ended up not having a mascot.
More than the movie I think is more how horrible kids can be, calling them "Hey, you are one of those Pocahontas people, ha ha! :U" So yeah, no wonder some would ended hating the film.
It's crazy that Tiana didn't get a fairytale ending. She didn't get taken away to a palace (like the other princesses) where she could've continued with her dream of having a restaurant by choice. Instead, she got a five star SOUL FOOD RESTAURANT, that her and her "PRINCE" WORK IN. Guess that's as close to a palace as a black woman gets, huh??
To be fair, a huge part of Tiana’s character is her work ethic. And Naveen clearly needed to learn to develop a work ethic after living his life as a spoiled prince who only parties and has fun. It wouldn’t really make sense if they had her owning a restaurant and not working in it with Naveen. They SHOULD make a black Disney princess (one set in Africa maybe) where her dream isn’t to work.
I loved the ending to Princess and the Frog! Showing that you can find happiness by mistake but still work hard for what you want. Sure Naveen was a prince but he was cut off financially, and seeing how happy they were on the balcony made it amazing! What you love is your palace, a castle is only cold stone if there is no love
As a white woman, I had more than a "wait...wtf???" moment during this video! I had already heard about character coding of the villains (for example Mother Gothel, Ursula, etc) and recently watched a couple videos about Chinese culture representation by Xiran Jay Zhao, but you made me realise there's so many more issues with Disney that absolutely flew over my head 😅 Thanks for the quality content and for promoting education 😊
I am Arab-American and when Aladdin came out, I was so happy. Representation matters and I was so starved for ANYTHING that even attractive negative representation was welcomed. I was traumatized and physically threatened as a child by an old Popeye cartoon where Bluto was a villain named Abu Hassen (my maiden name) SWANA need better.
Dude I remember seeing this episode of Popeye as a kid where brown people were...worshiping something/someone?? Chanting "Salami Salami...Bologna Bologna" like bruh
@@carrieon2912 thank you. The cartoon itself wasn't so bad, it was the reaction of my classmates. My sister and I used to be chased and abused on the playground by boys screaming "Abu Hassan teach you lesson." and seemed to think we were responsible for Popeye being beat up. I would come home with my dresses torn and my tight ripped from the gravel on the playground. I would be shoved into the ground and face rubbed into the grit. I would come home and my mother would tell me to play more ladylike. I never told her or my father as I was so ashamed. I can still tell you 50 years later the names of those three boys. This was kindergarten and probably up to 2nd grade.
@@tiredoftrolls2629 I am so sorry you had to experience that. Children are cruel, and it's awful that episode exists and triggered those boys to treat you so poorly. It really is so harmful when media portrays these negative stereotypes and generalizations. I hope things are much better for you now.
First off: Louis Armstrong was a Victorian? Holy crap, does that gives some perspective on time! Second, Tatiana in Princess and the Frog was originally going to be the housekeeper/maid of the house Lottie. They changed that in an effort to be less racists, by not having her be the poor servant of her rich white friend. Points, I guess? Lastly, I hate Disney. The whole company is soulless. On top of not portraying race correctly, they also almost always portray female characters poorly. Their male characters are so forgettable that they don't even have a "Disney Prince" line to commemorate them by. Guess boys don't need kind and caring role models?
You forget that most of the Disney movies (especially those with the princesses) are from OLD fairy tales (brothers grim, 1000 arabian nights, Hans Christian Anderson ect.) and the prince don´t have any remarkable traits in there too.
@@lunamariahawke9320 that depends on the story you read. Besides the fact that Grimms tales are terrifyingly violent, most of the prince focused story are about being the best at trickery and twisting words, they are frequently about the underdog, youngest son winning over the toxic masculine over muscled older brothers.
I had never even considered that the mice and birds from Cinderella could be a racial stereotype. I always figured they were how they translated the birds helping out Cinderella in Tři oříšky pro Popelku (Three Wishes for Cinderella), which I grew up watching at Christmas Edited to add: as a european girl who watched the Disney movies in my native language I never realized how many strong accents there were in the movies
Same! We had a similar movie to three wishes for cinderella (maybe it was the same? idk), here it's called three hazelnuts for cinderella. But yeah I only heard the Disney movies in my language and there weren't any accents in there as I remember (I barely watched Disney movies even as I was a child)
Same, I never knew they had any specific accent in the original English language, because I've only ever watched the Norwegian and Swedish dubs of Cinderella. And yeah, I also grew up watching the Czech Cinderella movie a lot growing up (they show it every Christmas eve on TV in Norway), and there are a lot of animals that help her in that, so I just figured the Disney version was kind of the same.
Not gonna lie, I absolutely HATED Peter Pan and I'm not even indigenous. I hated all the themes in it. The messages in full were horrible. A young teen girl forced to play mommy or else. little boys have to grow up sooner than they should or else. A grown man trying to kill children. Peter Pan laughing at Wendy practically getting drowned almost to death by mermaids. Tinker Bell's don't touch my man attitude. It's all sick. I hated it with a passion and had nightmares from it. I thought it weird that no one in the Lion King had any type of African regional accents like Yoruba or something. Like why does the bird and the evil Lion sound like... What? I loved Dumbo but you aren't gonna like these factors. I researched it and spoke to many people to make sure I wasn't crazy. Dumbo and his mother, Mrs. Jumbo, and the other elephants were symbols of black African people being sent to a circus. The crows and "Jim Crow" were the symbols of the Jim Crow laws and black facing. Black birds with bright-colored beaks? Um? And even when the circus tent was being put up, they used black shadows in a thunderous stormy night. Etc. Etc. It took Timothy, a white mouse who can speak (since Dumbo was silent) to help Dumbo get to the top and save his mom by becoming the best at the circus. DUMBO AND HIS MOTHER WAS SILENCED! Not to mention, name stripping. His mother wanted to call Dumbo something completely different in naming and was bullied because of his ears (difference). Sad. Cinderella was always my favorite story and movie. Some of the adaptations were wonderful and more. The animation? It's sad hearing how you feel because I loved those mice and now I'm like darn... That hurts me to realize now why I also felt uncomfortable with them on screen. I loved those mice. They were cute and funny but it makes sense because... geez. For Tiana, if Disney doesn't give her a dang restaurant called Tiana's Place in Fantasy Land, I will find anybody willing to petition with me. AND a ferry ride! XD I'm glad this was talked about here.
@@King_of_Fools Considering I watched Peter Pan in elementary school, the part where Wendy was nearly drowning was traumatizing because I didn't know how to swim and Peter Pan laughed majority of the time instead of saving her first until he realized, "Oh they dragged her under water! Maybe I should stop this." When clearly she was being bullied by murderers. Unfortunately, it made me think of what my bullies could do to me because I had lots of them. I hated it and it was rage provoking all the time for me. It was a gross film.
@@mastermoonlightvariety I personally loved Peter Pan in my childhood, and, oh boy, you should see the original book It's so bloodthirsty, and Peter is pretty awful there, movie Peter doesn't even compare On the topic of him being this indifferent to Wendy's suffering, as a person, who also lived through bullying, he is supposed to be this immature kid who doesn't know any morals, doesn't know how to process his feelings, doesn't feel remorse, because he is still a kid going through emotional development Kids growing up usually don't know, which is right and which is good, unless taught by their caretakers, and Peter didn't really have that He was taken into fairyland as a kid, grew up all alone in the wilderness and wished to never grow up, and all of that stunted his development as a person He does feel to me, like my bullies, but still, I like the movie (even though I cringe at the Native American part nowadays, ugh)
@@artemismoore4176 But even children without parents still have some sense of kindness and morality. It's not always taught by the parents, because not everyone have them. But their lives and the people they love around them teaches them. He still had many friends so he had to have some form of kindness, but he acted like if he lost one of his friends in the past before the story we saw, who cares. That's not true. He did care but that's not shown. He had Hook to teach him what kind of person not to become, regardless of staying young. Plus he had some want to grow up because he longed of a mother figure due to missing his own. The one part of growing up that did matter to him, even though he still wanted his freedom. So the portrayal of Peter Pan being this heartless and merciless kid is still no excuse. If you listen to his words, the world he was thrust in made him rough because he was attacked and through those attacks he still became a strong loving leader taking in lost kids. He didn't want them to get hurt or live what he had to go through when he arrived. But strong leaders do no laugh in your face if you're drowning or treat people they way he did because he has been through that pain. It would bother him more than laughable to watch someone other than him and/or at least his age get hurt. The Peter they portrayed was a bully, not the miss opportunity they had to make him reasonably tough but still likeable. He was a jerk to me. But everyone sees differently so I understand your side but I simply cannot excuse that behavior even when I was in elementary.
@@mastermoonlightvariety I understand, at the same time, I've seen how cruel, merciless and cowardly kids can be, so I'm not surprised Everyone has their own opinion at the end of the day
I think the best representation of black people Disney ever gave us were the Muses in Hercules. Aside from Disney forcing black gospel into a Grecian story just because the muses are brown 🙄, they were very beautiful, non sexualized, and very entertaining. They were my favorite part of the movie. ❤️
Muse and Dionysus kind of touched on this with her comments about Jasmine being confused for a black character, but I'm Romani, aka the same as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and while she isn't great representation she's one of the better ones honestly and was important to me growing up and the amount of times I had people telling me that I couldn't be Esmeralda because I'm "not black", because people see a deeper skin tone and can't equate that with any other ethnicities - we simply don't exist. There's also still a lot of persistent racism to this day. Mother Gothel from Tangled is basically one huge racist stereotype of a Jewish woman, and there's blatant antisemitism peppered throughout the Disney canon. Even in Frozen with the way Indigenous Sami people were represented through Kristoff, which they tried to correct in Frozen II and still missed the mark.
Yesss! Fellow Roma here. I came here to say pretty much the same thing. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is usually skipped right over in these discussions but it deserves to be seen. We need to be seen! And I’m right there with you on having people tell me I couldn’t be Esmeralda because I’m not black. I love Esmeralda, Clopin, and the rest of their kin despite the stereotypes, and wish they would get more attention. Some of the stereotypes cast upon them are especially harmful yet we’re not viewed as an ethnic group because you know, they’re just g*psies… Opre!
@@coppermoth6069 Is this an attempt at sealioning? Kristoff has been described as being Sami by Disney and Jennifer Lee and was coded that way in his appearance, but there was absolutely no consultation with Sami groups, and very little of their culture was represented which actual Sami groups have complained about and was what the whole deal with the Northundra was in Frozen II, Disney trying to backtrack and appease Sami groups that they insulted the first time around. If you can't tell Mother Gothel is an antisemitic stereotype, then I really don't know what to tell you. Even her name is Jewish. Research Nazi propaganda and blood libel. Even her look is a Jewish caricature. Coding villains as minorities is literally nothing new, there are even tons of videos about it here on RUclips made by minority creators.
@@coppermoth6069 Jennifer Lee is one of the key writers of the Frozen franchise, it wouldn't exist without her. Kristoff being Sami is not a "theory" it's canon conformed by the writers on multiple occasions, and is obvious as portrayed in the movie from his clothing and career. The voice actress is really not relevant for a racist stereotype and doesn't invalidate all of the harmful things they did put into her character. What you're doing right here is sealioning - trying to provoke a debate by asking disingenuous questions under a guise of sincerity and expecting a stranger to drip feed you information instead of doing the research yourself if you're truly interested. It's particularly exhausting for POC and minorities who have to deal with this constantly in an attempt to invalidate their experiences. Google is literally free and all of these questions could be answered by looking at the first page of links, which you clearly have no interest in doing and exactly what makes this sealioning.
I didn't even know what the Sami people were until this comment made me curious. I had never realized that these things were harmful stereotypes about a minority group as I did not even know that the Sami existed. Thank you for teaching me something and helping me see something from a different perspective.
I LOVED THIS DISCUSSION. I think the more people talk about not just how marginalized groups are portrayed in popular culture but the personal impact those portrayals have the better it is for society as a whole.
I would like Tiana’s Palace as an actual, visible restaurant instead of PaTF replacing/retheming Splash Mountain. Splash Mountain and Song of the South are based on Black/African-American folktales.
With the name of the female hyena being 'Shenzi' which literally means stupid in Kiswahili and her being a stereotypically black character, I'm thinking Disney knows what they were doing there. I am from Kenya and I speak Kiswahili so I was always so put off with them adding that in even as a kid.
Are you referring to an animal as a "black character"? Could you elaborate, I don't understand what you meant at all. All of the characters are from Africa, since they are African animals. Animals, not humans. The only thing they were supposed to represent is a part of African wildlife and their role in it - villainous due to scavaging and vocalisations that resemble maniscal laughter. Some people just read to much into things. Racism existed in Disney for ages, stuff like Pocahontas and pretty much everything before 1980s, but this one is just a massive stretch. These hyenas are an archetype of dumb and goofy followers of a main antagonist.
This knowledge adds a lot of perspective. But considering the fact that they did do research when it came to naming the other characters (Simba = lion, Rafiki = friend, etc) maybe they were being ironic? Even though Shenzi was the only hyena voiced by a black actor, she was also literally the least dumb of the three. They also might have figured that those who don't know what Shenzi means would get the biggest laugh out of the actual stupidest one being "THE ONE NAMED ED."
the last time i watched Peter Pan, I got so fucking embarrassed when they were with the Native people because i had completely forgotten about all of that. i was so upset, especially because i had been super excited to watch one of my favorite movies that i hadn't seen in years.
I hate the argument of there being "not enough" racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia and other terrible things in media depicting minorities. I'm a sapphic woman, and hearing people say that media needs more homophobia to be realistic is infuriating. Like name one piece of media that is 100% realistic, I'll wait. Media is a form of escapism, so obviously people of all minorities would love to think of an ideal world where no bigotry exists. If I wanted to experience this shit I would just go sit in the back of my English class and listen to the boys say the f slur repeatedly. Also it's kinda showing people that this kind of mindset is normal. These people are not normal. Maybe we should just ignore the people who treat minorities horribly based on factors outside of our control, showing them how it feels to have little to no representation.
I don't think it's wrong to show minorities going through bigotry, because many go through that. But saying "there isn't enough bigotry in this film/show/book about [insert minority group]" sounds like minority groups don't deserve a normal life. And it also sounds like as if people who have never went through bigotry have the right to dictate how minority groups should live their life. And yeah, I agree, stuff like films are a way of escapism. So, imo, it shouldn't be wrong to make a story where stuff like racism, homophobia, etc. aren't present.
I feel like they should show struggle, but not because of who they are. These characters should go through struggles that develops them like any other character, but not because of them being of a specific minority group.
THIS! I'm an LGBTQ+ person who doesn't identify as my assigned gender at birth, and *if* there is an LGBTQ+ character it's immediatly shot down by media for not being "realistic." Often times there are no LGBTQ+ characters at all due to homophobia! It's downright frustrating.
Richie in IT is an amazing example of a well written LGBTQ+ character. It follows no sterotypes and people would have no clue if it wasn't shown in the second movie. It's not his whole personality, just part of him.
@@firebuggg7383 ikr it seems like we either get no representation or representation that just reminds us of how shit the world is for us. like I like the validation of seeing someone else go through my problems but let me escape it for once jeez
Ladies I really appreciate you all shedding light on this topic with your perspectives! But as a lady with autism, I wanna point out this question: why are all the Disney princesses neurotypical? Which leads into the topic of why theres no current disney princess with a disability, physical or mental. Not to be a snowflake, but I always wondered about why that is. And no I'm not saying all representation is a good thing. However such a lack of representation cant be good right?
If I ever live out my dreams and work for Pixar, one of my primary ideas was a princess story based around a girl with pure ocd and maladaptive daydreaming. I struggle with both on a daily basis and it’d be cool to see pure ocd, which isn’t just physical compulsion but mainly mental, on the big screen.
True, but I really liked Ariel as someone autistic myself and who becomes very quiet when I'm tired. I especially adore her collecting thing, as I use to have phases in my life I collected rocks, cards and tea. Now into digging up old bottles I just wish there were more female characters of colour who openly say they're autistic and had good representation. And no we aren't all super brainiacs who have no understanding of social normalities that adore terrorising the lives of our unsuspecting new guardians
Because people don't like having their heroes as "imperfect" and they perceive mental and physical disability to be "imperfection" its a messed up reality that people with disabilitys are still seen as lesser. They would also have to give genuine effort to do it correctly and despite the fact that diseny has the resources to do the "resurch" required (which could just be talking to people or disabled writers telling stories) I just dought diseny would do that. And if they did I don't trust them not to disrespect us all.
They tried making an ADHD character, it failed to the point where they just erased the whole character. It was a disgusting stereotype of people with ADHD, and didn’t even go in deep in the disorder and tried to make her as “normal” as possible, while the only “odd(?)” thing was that she was organized? I have ADHD and it’s VERY different from just being “organized”
I mean Mulan 2020 is also deeply misogynistic ,because nobody can achieve what she did because no woman has her superpowers. There have been so many historical documented occasions where women dressed up as men to archive their goal and even outperformed men and I feel like Disney spits on them. Basically Mulan 2020 boils down to you have to be special from birth or you will never archive anything. Also can female warriors have amour and tied back hair at least once?
Oh god I have SO many problems with Milan 2020, I REFUSE to watch it not just because of the film itself but of the controversies of the production and actors 🤮
As a white woman, I knew Disney did some racist things in the past but HOLY SHIT I didn't know it was that bad. Like I knew about the Siamese cats, Song of the South, some of the Aladin stuff, and just the really obvious things. But the Lion King, Cinderella, and the Princess and the Frog went way over my head. It is strange to see recent movies show these things without notice because of ignorance to the cultures they represent. You deserve better than this. Like I would have loved to see stories based on actual folklore from different parts of the world instead of **insert generic western tale** like I love those too but not when they are used as the equevalance of white washing or black face. idk if this will happen but I hope Disney will make some changes in the future especially since thay just keep growing. Now I'm gonna watch anime made by the people they represent.
The cats are definitely a problem but if you are watching it through adult eyes. I remember hating those two snots because they were mean to lady wreaked everything. Now I'm going "this didn't age well"
I'm Asian myself, but I never really considered the fact that the Siamese Cats were so racist, or even villains for that matter. They just seemed like two asshole cats that showed up for like five minutes. And me and my family always sung that song a lot because we thought it was funny and fit our own Siamese cat.
I'm half navajo and I loved Pocahontas bc I was never taught about the real pocahontas story. I got a watered down historical record from the public school system. Once I learned, it really ruined it for me... My native dad was never taught the story either since we were not raised on the reservation. Peter pan pissed me and my dad off quite a bit tho. That was bullshit. Aladdin is just so confusing because I thought it was supposed to portray medieval arabic culture-ish but like... I guess the palace does look like it's based on islamic architecture. The Taj Mahal is inspired by islamic architecture design which tends to be of arabic influence. There are plenty of Muslims in India as well. Although they shouldn't have plopped the Taj Mahal in an arabic setting bc that is weird and out of place. Also I guess I can see that some arabic people are light skinned Caucasian but... Why they gotta make all the bad guys more stereotype ethnically arabic- looking while the protagonists look more white and lighter skinned? Why is everybody a thief or a sex object?
In middle school I read a book from the perspective of a young white boy, which I think was done because no one’s sure exactly what actually happened since it was originally only John Smith’s perspective and doing it from Pocahontis’s perspective would require making decisions as to what actually happened. I don’t remember the name of the book, but it talks about how hard it was to live in pre-America without any help and the uncertainty as to what parts of John Smith’s story were true
Aladin is odd because the og may have been chinese and jafar was north african so wherever the story happen could be anywhere in the arabic world of back then but also maybe asia too? They pretty much just mixed a bunch of cultures into one and westernized some stuff, It's odd all around.
I really appreciate you all sharing your perspectives on this topic. As a mixed indigenous person who grew up seeing the movie Pocahontas, lemme tell you what an uncomfortable thing it was in my household. But it was all Disney gave us, so we just kind of grimly accepted it. It's amazing what minorities have to settle for when there's nothing else for us.
@@starrsmith3810 I really liked Little Creek. I have a bit of a soft spot for him because I have Lakota family members. So while Im of a different tribe, he reminded me of my extended family. In general the movie's portrayal of native people and the relationship with horses and protecting their land was a very welcome change from Pocahontas.
I’m half Native American, nohkôm (my grandma) REFUSED to let me watch Pocahontas. We only got to watch Brother Bear but nohkôm was so upset whenever Pocahontas was mentioned and I get where she was coming from, since she was a 2nd or 3rd generation Residential School survivor. This was the same with Peter Pan. And the first time I watched Pocahontas, I cried genuine and angry tears.
Also the whole thing with Peter Pan, the girl was given NO lines and was only there to give Pan the “Eskimo” kiss and be seen as exotic. It does hurt too because it pushes the “red skin indian” stereotype on us and it makes it hard for me, a Native American, to be seen as Native American since I am pale and not a “savage”.
I never give money to the Mouse because of its impact on US copyright law, which makes it impossible to provide digitized historical documents or books to the public. This review of the continuing racism in even more recent films makes me more determined not to give this billion-dolllar company any $upport. I remember the sexism from my childhood, but I haven’t seen most of these older movies in a long time, and I haven’t seen many of the more recent movies at all. Glad to continue spending my hard-earned money elsewhere.
I wasn't very into the mouse's movies as a kid but in the last few year I have become VERY anti-mouse! Their manipulation of copyright law is absurd, they are holding history hostage because they don't want to lose a couple dollars. All while they snatch up every single entertaining company and popular franchise! They need to be evaluated for anti-trust violations, and broken up.
I started hating Disney when they tried to copyright the name 'Loki', cause I have friends who believe in and worship norse Gods. Then I started down the rabbit hole of how terrible Disney is and I started hating them even more
Thank you, everyone, for your education on these topics! I admit, growing up white, in the South, these were not conversations that I even heard of until well into my college years... and even then, with some incredulous undertones. One of my directors in college liked to use the struggle of African Americans and their modern poverty as window dressing in her shows. It was never to say anything, but she believed that having it on the stage "said enough", and it was an aesthetic she enjoyed. The reason I bring this up is because in Muse's section about The Princess and the Frog and how they just wished to see Black people exist without needing to stand for something, it reminded me of perhaps the most egregious statement this director made... and it stuck with me. "Black theater is the theater of suffering." And that was where she left it. Her Black characters were always the ones suffering for one reason or another. Poor, downtrodden, ill, dying, whatever. It feels like so many people subscribe to that theory in creating media featuring persons of color - specifically African Americans - subscribe to that theory... and it really is time for a change.
Such a great conversation and so many important points made on the deeply problematic representation that exists in this company's past and present. As a latinx person, our representation in Disney has also had a history of being relagated to characters who are talking animals. The character of Jose Carioca from Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros was the ONLY Brazilian representation in US-made media I had growing up, and he's a talking parrot in essentially a propaganda film. I have a lot of complicated feelings about this character now that I'm older because Jose meant so much to me as a kid but I can see the issues with his character as an adult. Then there's Emperor's New Groove, which has it's own issues, including a predominantly white cast and a black actress playing the villain (love Eartha Kitt to death and she rocks it, but that's not great) to represent an indigenous civilization.
As a half brazilian and half finnish Jose was like.. A happy representation in our family. It is wild to hear about the character as an adult so I can understand a bit what kind of mixed feelings the green parro guy gives these days - I think in my own personal experience, as I started to grow up I felt odd how flirty and how much he was after ladies.. What started bothering you as you grew up?
@@k4r4k0 I am also half Brazilian; born and raised in America but one side of the family all is from Brazil and Bolivia. So when I was little Jose and The Three Caballeros was a way to connect to my family and culture. When I visited Brazil they even had comics with him (which I still have). But yeah, as an adult, the flirtatiousness and the over sexualization of pretty much every woman who appears in the film is uncomfortable. It also being basically war/post-war propaganda doesn't sit all that well with me either because it just doesn't feel genuine as an adult. "Look at our friends (allies) in the South! What beautiful places and people! Sure glad they are on our side of the war!" Thinking on this whole general topic of representation, it is such a low bar to say at least Jose and Panchito were voiced by Brazilian and Mexican actors (in *1944* and it's been really the last 20 years they've actually made any effort with casting for other films), but again, it's talking birds.
HECK, YEAH! As a Brazilian, I've always had a lot of consideration for José's character, as he's the only Brazilian character made by disney and a rare kind in North American media. I mean, the only other Brazilian characters in animation when I was growing up, were the ones from Rio - and that because the director, Rodrigo Santoro, was Brazilian himself. But that representation, even though kinda accurate, was so... wrong LMAO! Zé Carioca is basically the "Brazilian street-smart"("brasileiro malandro") stereotype, specially in the 40's movies. And for almost the next 80 years he would be voiced with a heavy Mexican accent. The only "good" representation of him on media, the one that mad me smile, was on DuckTales 2017 reboot. There no one mispronounced his name or made him speak spanish... there's even an episode that shows some *real* Brazilian food! Fortunately, the representation in Rio was way better, even though still heavily stereotyped. After all, Blue Sky had to sell it for the American audiences before everyone else. And what sounds more Brazilian, for foreigners, than Rio de Janeiro, Carnaval and samba?
I like Emperor's New Groove and in all Latam is loved. Like i know that may be somethings wrong but you are watching it from a USA point of view. Won´t judge but, I think the only way any of us may get a 100% accurate representation is by making our own movies. Is a movie done by a American studio, like you can´t expect it to get completly accurate. Tho, the allies part, yeah. You should check all the shortcuts Disney made after WW2 about Latam as allies. Uruguayos were mad haha. Lol.
Pocahontas isn't even drawn to look indigenous since they decided the voice actress Irene Bedard wasn't "hot enough" so they combined her face with Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington to make her "sexier".
One thing that I noticed even as a kid/teen was WHY WAS everybody in Lion King who was from pride rock like lowkey white or lightskin and why was everyone who was seen as bad from the outcast land INCLUDING Kovu, dark. Like wtf was that about
Not really tho, the female lions that aren't from the pride rock are not dark skinned and the male ones are heavily implied to be scar's children so they just took after their father
@@meatchips4936 Kovu wasn't Scar's son though, I think it was mentioned Zira found him or something like that. Would be weird if Kiara married her cousin
@@meatchips4936 The lions from pride rock where all significantly lighter and had more European features ..... eventhough they were animals?? All the "outsiders" where both darker and more aggressive. This was definitely racially motivated🤷♀️
I was a history major in college so much like you peeps, I can't say why it's problematic for indigenous people in terms of stereotypes. But I can definitely tell people what really happened to the real Matoaka in history (Pocahontas' real name). TW: For violence towards indigenous people, diseases, and kidnapping. When she and John Smith first met she was most likely 12-years-old and he was 28. So nothing romantic would've happened between them. And due to issues with supplies that the Natives had a shortage of, the English reaction was violent. At one point it got so bad the real Cheif Powhatan moved his people's village so they would be left alone. As for the put her head on John Smith's head part. Smith possibly made it all up or it was a ritual that he misinterpreted. Matoaka wouldn't have been able to do it at the time because she was too young for certain rituals. Later on in her life when she came of age around 15 I believe. Native Oral traditions state that she eventually got married to the warrior Kocoum and had her first son with him. But, at the age of 17-18, she was kidnapped by the British, Kocoum was murdered, and she was forced to learn English, convert to Christianity and then marry John Rolfe. Once she made it to London and soon gave birth to Rolfe's son, Matoaka was used as a marketing ploy all around England to stir up government-sponsored investments in Jamestown. But due to being indigenous and not encountering British diseases in her life, she contracted smallpox and died at the age of 20 she never saw her 21st birthday or her people ever again. Now take that information and think back to the movie and you can see more problems that way.
(not so) fun fact: they made a pocahontas sequel where they tried to be more historically accurate and romanticized her marriage to John Rolfe and her assimilation into British culture. So.... that was a thing. -_-
She was also SA’d and they told her they would take her back home when they stole her away, and they also RENAMED her Rebecca. Allegedly, she didn’t die from smallpox but was poisoned. It’s sick. A lot of what happened and still happens to our people (sooo many indigenous women go missing and the news pretty much just doesn’t talk about it) gets covered up or twisted so that the perpetrators (and by this I refer to people still alive who contribute to undermining the culture and history of indigenous tribes) don’t feel guilty or ashamed about what they did, so that people won’t know how awful the perpetrators are, and so that people don’t find out the real, bloody, horrific history of this country.
im a white latina, and even back in 2009 when i was still a teen i thought "wait but why does the black princess need to keep working even after she becomes a princess? why cant she just have a happy ending like cinderella, who also worked hard and landed a prince? and why is this one set in such a specific time period compared to all other princesses? and why is the dang story with the kiss before midnight and the blood and the contract and the body switch and the frog transformation so damn complicated?????" right now the more "modern" princesses dont have a prince, and are like independent and adventurous and stuff... but i Have Noticed that while merida doesnt end up with a guy (shes a disney princess™, but will always be an outsider/mocked in a way and thats pretty shitty tbh), and elsa doesnt end up with a guy either.... rapunzel and anna do. like, the two pretty white princesses?? who end up being like, side characters in their own adventures? while moana and raya, both dont end up with a boyfriend, but also are the main actors and driving force of their own stories. this is not bad, of course, but i do think its interesting to see. of the "princesses of color", pocahontas, raya, moana and mulan, none of them end up with a boyfriend. again. its not something that doesnt happen to newer white princesses... but considering how comparatively smaller the amount of non white disney princesses there are, its enough for me to see a pattern.
With Tiana.. I think it was her just enjoying something she was good at. I mean she was raised in certain environment, but she OWNED Her skill. They wanna eat your food? Ya gotta pay the real worth baby
i totally see what you're saying. it's literally the "strong independent black woman" trope. WOC shouldn't have to be girlboss pillars of strength all the time and i think it reveals a deep ignorance when it comes to intersectional politics. white feminism, 2nd wave in particular, has been predicated on getting white women into the workforce and being more financially independent. i can't remember who said this, but i'll always remember this quote: "the difference is, black women have *always* been working". so to uphold black female protags as "hard workers", or "strong independent women who don't need no man" etc is actually kinda of missing the point despite good intentions. it's viewing female empowerment through the lens of white feminism, pure and simple. if anyone deserves the cinderella fantasy, it's black women. fwiw, i don't think it's an inherently awful trope. you can take a lot of pride and joy in a badass female protag who is active and works hard for what she wants. but the general pattern does belie a certain ignorance imho (and well, are we surprised that hollywood feminism is bad?)
@@mcyanfeis3104 SEAsian here, seeing as Raya is technically set in a south east asian setting (more or less) allow me to say, that queer communities are quite the taboo topic around here. The creator herself is Malaysian, just like me, and in Malaysia it is a Muslim dominated country. Generally the people of Islam aren't very accepting of the queer community (generally, not all, the people do not reflect the religion, remember that) Aside from that, the name 'Raya' could be a Malay/Melayu name, meaning 'celebration', it could imply that Raya may be Malay although her religion is unspecified. The way Raya and Namaari have been written together has been quite the close shave as well as pretty questionable, I think it would've been too much of a risk to take portraying Raya as inherently queer. (Although I would've loved me some queer SEAsian rep, we're literally starving here) but I think although Raya and Namaari's relationship is pretty queer coded, taking it any further than that could ban the movie from conservative countries like mine. Ironically enough, the same community which are meant to be the target audience. So, I think that's why a lot of people just prefer not to label Raya as a queer character, for the safety of it's availability to audiences like me I suppose.
I was too young to understand the racism and sexism issues in Disney movies but also I watched them in french and the white voice actors didn't put any racial stereotypes in the voice acting or affiliated people of color with negative characters so i couldn't know about this, they simply spoke common french ( never saw a Disney movie with a Marseille or Bretagne accent for exemple, which is a shame too) . As I learned english fluently in my twenties, I strated rewatching cartoons and movies I loved when I was little and Oh boy did I understood very quickly the problem. Also white actors where mainly casts too but the voice actor I vividly remember was Sebastian in The Little mermaid because it was Henri Salvador's voice. He was a black Carribean who was super famous in french speaking countries and other. I always admired and liked him since childhood ( thanks dad) , a very talented musician, singer, guitarist, comedian and cabaret artist. His voice was instantly recongizable and strong in character, he was perfect. He did have an accent though, but It was his and not fabricated to fit a narrative. I actually prefer him over the english speaking version of Sebastian but I guess I am biased XD. I really appreciate women and men speaking aloud about those issues, bringing the attention it needs so we are a better when creating stuff for kids and what we tell them about society through movies and cartoons.
My issue with Princess and the Frog is the lack of positive black male figures. Princess Weekes did a great video on this, and she mentioned that the only black male figure that's positive is her father.......who dies off screen after 3 minutes of meeting him.
15:30 It also doesn't help that Jas was 15 at this point. It was revealed in a studio interveiw with her animator concept designer, so I remember seeing in the past. That she was in features based off that animators teen daughter at the time. 😅So- that probably doesn't make this any better.
@@berserkagain7976 Wasn't speaking on her dress code. Though that's a whole nother topic on difference of cultures and eras. But I was more referring to that seductress smooch she made with Jafar on screen. Don't ever think I've think her come onto Aladdin like that on screen.😅
@@blackmagician7645 That's because she was trying to distract Jafar from noticing Aladdin had made it safely back. Jafar wished for Jasmine to fall in love with him (which was one of 3 things the genie couldn't do).
Thank you so much for the work you four put in to make us more aware of the stereotypes and tropes that we should be looking out for in our media. One of the many things I took away from this was the parallels between Tiana and a mammy character which Muse pointed it out, and their points about how Tiana is generally just so disrespected by the Disney franchise was eye opening. So once again thank you all.
Holy crap. Thank you so much for this conversation. I've gradually grown more aware of how problematic Disney is/was but seeing everything discussed in this context I'm genuinely floored.
The findings of the study discussed around 29:12 hit me really hard. So many people who are not part of marginalized communities just do not understand the far reaching and all encompassing psychological consequences of non-existent or dehumanizing representation in media.
I've never thought of the mice being a "mammie" figure. I appreciate you putting that out there! I Suppose to expand on that, could the animal friends in "Sleeping Beauty" kinda fit in the same mold? When I went to India, I was taken by that and ever since I've watched the Animated Aladdin with my kids (they did a good job re-working some of the outfits for the new one, but there's still some problems because of COURSE they had to keep the trad costume */s) I make a point of addressing that with my kiddos. Wish @Miah Grace have been invited. She did a really good breakdown on the "Pocahontas" movie and why making the Pocahontas costume (and the movie) is h**lla problematic. OMG, DEF they should have had Louis in "PatF"!
Not being POC myself, but taking into account WHY they said the mice could represent a mammie figure, I don't think the animals in Sleeping Beauty quite fit the bill. They don't really provide for her needs or take care of her in any way. They seem to be playmates more than anything.
@@naomijackson4691 The mammie getting the pretty white lady ready for the ball/party is a very classic movie scene and if anything this is exactly what is happening in Cinderella. It's slightly more abstract but as Cinderella's need is to get out of her horrible life situation, and the only way is through marriage, she needs appropriate appearance to attend the function where she can meet him. This, a life altering need, the mice - and a magic mother figure - goes out of their way to make happen.
@@ThePixiixiq they said they didn't think the animals in sleeping beauty fit the bill as a "mammie figure" as understood why the mice in cinderella are
thank you for making this video, this is so important. growing up in germany i feel some of the racism in disney movies got lost in translation and different choices in voice acting (like the mice in cinderella don't have offensive accents) so i'm still learning new things. like, i am already disappointed in disney but dann there is even more than i thought. again, thank you for the video
Same in Poland. Im most countries dubbing all of these was lost in translation (thank God). I was surprised when for the first time someone started to talk about racism in those movies becouse even know when I watch it in my country's dub there is none.
In the original Aladdin soundtrack, if you had it on CD, the lyrics were NOT changed. Idk if they adjusted it for Spotify or something but I have the original soundtrack. Also Jasmine's original model wasn't a brown woman, it was one of the animators sisters. A white woman. -.- Oh Pocahontas, I look white, but I am Native American and I remember being told about the actual John Smith as a kid and whatnot. While I enjoy some of the movie, even as a kid I was like "wait. This is wrong." And it's ugh. UGH. I very much stopped watching it entirely by the time I was in high school and I hate seeing people treat it like "oh this is what native culture is" no it's not. No. Nope. There's SO MANY cultures. No. Siiigh. Like in a way the Peter Pan scenes are almost easier to deal with because they're so obviously stereotypically racist? Pocahontas acts like it tries not to be racist? But...ugh
I’m still annoyed that Disney modeled Aladdin and Jasmine after white people. I love Pocahontas but even I know it doesn’t at all represent every indigenous tribe. Hell it barely does for Pocahontas tribe.
I remember breaking into tears whenever Pocahontas was played in our house because I loved learning about Native American’s and to see them hunted killed me inside. Even if it’s a cartoon with a happy-ish ending, it’s still terrible and haunting.
I always thought of Naveen as some sort of Indian inspired fantasy guy. Especially when I saw his mothers "kinda" sari influenced dresses.. Funny thing, though.. I work at Disneyland. I dont think we've ever had an Indian man portray him. Latino, Pacific Islander, Plilippino, mixed race, yes... but never Indian. 🤔. Guess they never knew about the auditions 🙃
The Princess and the Frog really reminded me of a Don Bluth movie, especially his Anastasia. There too the princess decides she's better off being a regular girl instead of a royal at the end. But since Anastasia is white it's not racism or problematic, because...I dunno. Also it's estabilished really early in the Princess and the Frog that Tiana LOVES cooking ever since she was a little girl. Her owning her restaurant at the end was the fulfillment of her own childhood dream, which was being a great cook, not being a princess (unlike Charlotte, Tiana has always had 0 interest in that; might I remind the audience that the 'princess' franchise does not really exist, it's a marketing ploy to make little girls and millenials buy more stuff). She did learn though that OVERworking is not good and that there is more to life than work. I know, such problematic ideas that really harm little girls, especially little black girls, because living in a cotton candy palace doing nothing and being beautiful is what we should ALL aspire to. For real though the people behind the Princess and the Frog were put inbetween a rock and a hard place, because their movie, in virtue of starring a black princess, would have been seen as 'problematic' anyway they chose. Tiana having a white prince? Racist, sexual colonization. Black prince? Racist, this means black women can only choose black men as partners. Nondescript fantasy prince? Racist, because it's racist. Tiana being a work-oriented young woman with a goal? Racist, she is a mammy stereotype. Tiana being a beautiful spoiled princess who never has to work? Racist, perpetuates the 'lazy negro' stereotype and it's a bad image to expose little girls too as well. Tiana being beautiful? Sexist. Tiana being ugly? Racist. The moral: you can never win.
"The moral: You can never win." True. People are different so they don't see things in the same way and sometimes we have to remember that just because we personally think it's bad, that doesn't mean it's objectively is or the creator had ill intentions with it. Like I came across a fandom discourse: "He has to be a kid, otherwise this autistic representation is infantilizes neurodivergent adults, because there is no nd adult who behaves like that in real life." opposed to "He has to an adult, I behave similarly too, it's a perfectly fine representation and just because somebody is childish, that doesn't mean the fandom should be babying them." There is always gonna be someone who complains, because experiences are not universal. You can't please everyone. Other examples come to my mind, like Hazbin Hotel. Some people got mad that they portray some of the queer characters as bad people, while others are happy, because they are "sick of the soft uwu gay boy rep", they want queer people to be... Various kind of characters too and that includes morally grey/flawed/evil/everyman, etc. besides nice/only having minor flaws (and the characters are also in Hell). *Just to be clear: This is a reaction to only to this comment, not the video as the whole, I still have to watch that*
They killed the father off early on to make the story take shape in the princess and the frog. It gives Tiana the incentive to work even harder to make "Their dream" come true, her father and herself feeding their gumbo to a lot of people. Its made clear she loved her father so much she wants to do him proud. The way they killed him off is subtle but implied that he died fighting WWl. Not at all unrealistic for the time period they were in, he must have passed near the end of the war making the time frame of this story the late 20's or early 30's. The reason they portray her being a workaholic so hard, wasn't to portray her like a mammie figure, but to later teach a lesson on how the greatest wealth is immaterial. Love, family and friends are important and not to lose sight of that. The fact that you guys want her to be an airhead princess that's wealthy devalues her as a strong female role model that Disney set her up to be because lest we forget Tiana lives during a time when women did not work outside the home save for a few different roles. Tiana having her own place that she owns and runs is the very definition of a modern woman. Which is why Tiana is my favorite Disney Princess. It is very progressive of Disney since other princesses have nothing going for them at the end of their stories save for maybe Belle since she was educated by Maurice as she could read. The rest of the princesses 1939-90's pretty much were doomed to being a wife that has no equal role in the marriage and had kids, the end.
thank you, as a kid I always thought Tiana was so cool and the soundtrack to the movie was great, I thought it was obvious as to why she was a hard worker, people are reaching for anything to be racist. people ask to show different cultures but when they get a princess or a show that doesn't have a white main character they claim it's stereotypical or "white washed" I wish people could just enjoy movies and shows again without the status quo. kids don't think about stereotypes and racism, they just enjoy the movie, it's adults who overanalyze everything and ruin it. adults should view movies like kids do lol.
But it’s not reaching, I know you may not understand and may not be comfortable with this realization (for you) but Disney just need to do better, pain and simple there’s nothing else to it just they need to fix their past mistakes no matter how uncomfortable it is for them cause they choose to make these decisions and they aren’t good, people in the comments alike to you keep saying this all happened so long ago when that generation of people from those times 1920-now are still alive (as of around 2020 they have only just all recently pasted if not some still alive like some of my family) sure this movie is like a few years of so it “was a different time” (bad excuse so don’t use it cause wasn’t really a different time) but they could just tell the true story of Pocahontas, of Fa Mulan, Aladdin, and a BETTER story of princesses and the frog so they ARENT being racist or disrespectful to the cultures they are making money off of
@@mementomorinoey6700 I love the movie too and how they showed the scenes were good but not great, tiana was living on what looked like a old plantation, which is.. less than okay for me but it’s not my main problem my problem is that she needed a man to be successful, for such a possible story unlike princess tales she had the money, the skill, it was because she was black and a women which is great they showed it in the time but it would’ve been better if Lotie helped her cause that was her best friend, then she could’ve had it taken by the bank or just something that entire adventure they had is fine but the prince was kinda just a lazy rush boy and she was working to hard there’s a strong difference between helpmates and someone who is just paying for her
@@AshaiNoir But Navine just as you said barely played a part??? I mean its been awhile but I know they still used the money Tiana saved up before Navine plus the money she was paid by Lottie for the event, and they use Louis as "gentle encouragment" to get the investors to fork over the deed. Navine helped renovate the place but other that she did mostly everything by herself
Speaking on “the princess and the frog” I love how Disney reiterated their belief that a Prince could never find a black woman and fall in love with her beauty, so they made sure we knew he fell in love with her Personality first.
While I agree partly, in The Princess and the Frog it’s shown in the beginning Naveen sees Tiana and tries to flirt with her. She shakes her head and walks off and he shrugs and continues playing. Then later in the movie he explains he “made that promise to a beautiful princess”. So he already thought she was gorgeous. And then fell for her personality. I say that because the voice actress was involved in the making of the movie.
nah i just think the princess frog is modern enough to not have to have a love at first sight like cinderella or snow white, like ariel and belle had the same "fall in love with her personality first" thing
So you want Naveen to fall in love with Tiana for her looks ? From what I know, that isn't something that's supposed to be praised. When in movies, a man falls for a white girl by looking at her, it's sexist, but when he doesn't do that with a black girl, it's racist ? How does that make sense ??
I appreciate you all, SO MUCH for this conversation! I knew many of these issues but hearing it from your perspective directly was really insightful and… horrifying. Ugh ❤️❤️❤️❤️ you all!
i appreciate you having this conversation and sharing it. i feel like there's so much glorification of disney in the costuming community. like, the types of people that feel like it's their god-given right to go to a park at least once every year, even when there's a raging pandemic and disney is forcing its workers to work in unsafe conditions because it values its profits over the lives and safety of its employees. like, you can enjoy the movies! it's fine! but please PLEASE just be real about how problematic the movies and the corporation have always been and continue to be, and about how the fantasy of ~disney magic~ has only ever really existed for white christians. i know disney adults are trying to relive their childhoods, but.... you're adults. apply some critical thinking. i think i saw somewhere that even the heiress of the disney fortune is openly critical of the company's corporate practices. if she can do it, so can you, i promise.
Adding to the Lion King, the good protagonists are the bright, light-skinned/slightly tanned lions and ALL the villains have dark fur, dark manes, etc. And they have the AUDACITY to say, "Oh, we didn't apologize, but we fixed it!"
I think that’s because villains usually are represented with darker , and moodier colors. If you want your villain to be seen as a villain at first glance, then using bleak colors makes it easier to read which is what the lion king does. So I can’t say for sure but I think that using those colors were to make it easier to tell what was. And that there was probably no racially motivated choices behind it.
Because this is an archetype. Forces of God, forces of Devil - forces of *light,* forces of *darkness.* The fact that humans have skin range that is on the spectrum of white - black and everything in between is more of a coincidence than anything. At the time this archetype was born not a lot of people knew what black people looked like or if they even existed due to the lack of education and exposure.
I don’t just want to see different ethnicities of princesses get the same chance I also want to see some plus sized princesses or Maybe some princesses with disabilities we need more princesses we can relate to
My heritage makes me a mutt, but 100% of the time I see indigenous people in Disney, it just feels wrong. My grandparents made jokes about it and found parts of it hilarious, but there's always been that tension.... i would really love to see stories written and brought to the public by more people who are indigenous particularly, but also all POC.
There are a lot of Indigenous projects written by Indigenous people out there. Rutherford Falls, Reservation Dogs, Rhymes for Young Ghouls. They're not animated but Native people are real humans and not images created by Hollywood. Some of my in-laws were actors on Northern Exposure, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, etc.
Disney is all kinds of problematic, and it’s so disappointing to look back and to see that it’s basically still the same where it matters. Until peoples are allowed to tell their own stories (being involved throughout all of production from writing to acting to producing, costume, cinematography, animation etc) it’s not going to get any better. Thank you for the informative video, I definitely learned a lot from it! I think collabs like this one uniquely create conversation and explore them in ways that one person talking to a camera cannot always achieve.
I’m Indigenous. My white mom was thrilled Pocahontas was a movie and took me to see this. First Indigenous Disney princess! Such progress! I guess it was ok for the time, but it’s just as well I got educated about my heritage from my dad.
I never heard of the Cinderella mice being questionable. Since I didn't grow exposed to many cultures other than my own, and where most of children's movies were dubbed, I didn't catch a lot of awful things until I learned about it on the internet and/or got to learn English and experience the original scripts my self. To this day I'm still learning, thank you for talking about this and pointing so many things out
Some of this really seems to be pushing it. Yes, Mulan and Tiana work, but they are praised for that because it shows that they are strong, independent women who are not delicate pansies like most of the white princesses. Wouldn’t you also be upset if the African and Asian princesses were depicted as “weak” and needing a man to save them? Also, the mice in Cinderella take care of her and make her a dress because SHE takes care of them and makes THEM clothes! They are returning the favor of her kindness to them! I agree with some of your points and agree that Disney certainly has a problematic past, but I just think you could be reading too far into this and being upset by things that were not at all intended the way you interpreted. I think this can bring a lot of unnecessary hurt into your lives.
If you knew ANYTHING about racial stereotyping you would know that NOBODY would get upset about Tiana being "weak" and "needing to be saved by a man." Because black women, ESPECIALLY the darker skinned you go, AREN'T seen as weak. We AREN'T seen as "weak, delicate pansies," as you put it, the same way white women are. The same way the white princesses are. We AREN'T seen as beautiful. We are NEVER seen as damsels in distress that "need to be saved." You yourself are saying that the white princesses are seen as "delicate pansies," bc white women are seen as that. Black women (and to an extent, brown women) are seen as strong, angry, crazy, hypers*xual, etc. Tiana is the Mammy trope, same as the Strong Black Woman trope. Her life is just work work work work. She's not allowed to be a ditzy bimbo with loads of huge puffy glittery ballgown dresses with wealth and money and a castle. The fact that the character was so beautiful was seen as a plus, but what's the point of that if she was a frog for 90% of her own d*mn movie?
I wish they mentioned how Pocahontas was based of a real life story, and that the real life girl's name isn't even Pocahontas. "Matoaka" is her real name, Pocahontas is only a nickname. Notice how I've been using the term "girl" this whole time? It is because she was about 10-12 years old when she would meet John Smith. Disney created a love story about that is just horrific.
@@3173_Delta Snow is not a real person, as far as I know. It is still very bad that they kept her 14 but using a *real* little girl to tell a twisted romanticized version of real events is racist. Young girls of color are sexualized much more than their white counterparts.
Thank you all so much for this discussion Growing up as a kid in the 70's I remember how The Wonderful World of Disney would be on every Sunday night. If your parents couldn't afford the movies on a regular basis this was how you learned the Disney catalogue. I remember allot of clips from Song of the South, and they ran the problematic clips you ran seconds of. This was also back when they'd play Gone with the Wind every Thanksgiving weekend for network television. We don't have kids, so Disney really isn't part of our life. Apparently I wasn't missing much. New Disney didn't fall too far from the Old Disney tree. That's disappointing, not surprising, but, still - do better Disney. - Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown/Pimisi
Thank you for this break down. My mother had used Disney movies as teaching moments due to how consistently problematic they were. But you all touched on more things and showed that not much has changed in a generation. It's just appalling with the sheer amount of money spent making the movies that a reasonable amount of money wasn't spent on research and representation in the creative process.
I remember watching peter pan for the first time and noticing my mothers discomfort watching the seen with the indigenous, and now knowing about my mothers heritage, and how on my moms side they were connected to the Cherokee tribe. I understand why she was so uncomfortable and disgusted by disneys representation of indigenous people.
brother bear is another movie I've heard people discuss the same problems with. The main characters are indigenous (I'm not 100% if they were supposed to be Inuit or another Alsakan/Candian tribe) and get turned into a bear and are a bear for the whole movie. Also, this could be a false fact I heard but supposedly the music used in that film was European-based rather than actual cultural music because they thought it sounded 'close enough.' And then another one which may not be as serious of a case is The emperor's new groove, which I get is mainly a comedy sketch set with an Incan back-drop (it is most likely Incan but they never outright said so). but the main characters are mesoamerican and one character gets turned into a llama (realistically speaking it should have been an alpaca anyway) for the whole movie. And then of course how Esmarelda is treated in the hunchback of Notre Dame, also the fact that the movie uses slurs to describe her and sexualizes her throughout and Disney still hasn't done anything (which doesn't surprise anyone)
Thank you for covering this subject! I'm Lakota. My in-laws are from different tribes in Oklahoma. My daughter in-law is Kiowa and Pawnee. So we have many different cultures and languages within the Native community. A lot of people just don't know Matoaka's real story. Her name was erased and she became Pocahontas to fit the narrative of making colonization more palatable. Romanticizing what happened to her and continues to happen because the town in England where she was buried has refused to return her remains so she can be laid to rest in her homelands with her people is disturbing. Her tribe still exists. Several people who are from the same nation are even on Twitter. This was such a good and interesting discussion!
It's shocking how much of the wrongs we miss here in Brazil because of the dubbing. For example, there's no so such thing as a "black accent" in here. All of this, even though Brazil has the largest black population outside of Africa and one of the largest asian (especially japanese) populations too.
I'm Cherokee and I actually wasn't allowed to watch Peter Pan as a little kid 😅 I don't think I ended up watching it till I was like maybe 13 or 14? And I was like... Well okay then. That exists.
As someone with quarter Cherokee in them from their dad's side of the family I watched peter pan as a kid and in the end i honestly never really understood why kid me liked it when i watched it. Looking at it now I was just a small kid who never understood how bad the movie really was especially with the scene depicting things that are very outdated and very wrong.
I’m so glad you made these points about princess and the frog because it bothered me too. When I talked about it with a white friend (I’m also white) he accused me of being racist by not wanting to see a black story. I kind of always felt like why did the first black princess have to be not really a princess, why did she need to struggle so much, why couldn’t she have just been a princess who happened to be black.
I am such a fan of your sews and am SO GRATEFUL for you using your platform to address this. I am also so happy that you are working with costumers of color. RUclips recommends a lot of great costuming content to me, but very seldomly with RUclipsrs of color. Thank you for using your platform to share this information!
I'm sorry that we live in a world where this type of video is necessary, but I thank you a thousand times over for the generosity and courage of all of you for sharing your knowledge and experiences with the rest of us.
I LOVE Princess and The Frog!!😭The food always looked sooo good, so now I’m older and STILL somehow haven’t had gumbo or beignets! But I wasn’t really a fan that she was a frog for so long :(
The mice are brown in Cinderella which is a perfectly normal and common color. They have French names, like Jaque and Gus, when they get turned human they are Caucasian. Such as from Cinderella the sequel when the mice tell stories about their time in the castle when Jaque tells the story about the time Fairy God Mother turned him human at his request so he could better help Cinderella. There's no actual representation of POC in that film. The animators probably just choose a color that made sense and looked realistic for mice. Also, Cinderella took care of the mice too. She fed them and protected them and its not like she treated them like servants or "mammys" like you said in the video. I just wanted to get that point across. I agree with most of what's been said in this video except for the stuff about Cinderella
'98 Mulan is my favorite Disney movie. She was a complete badass, Shang was the best Disney "prince". It had it's issues, obviously. The live action film was...oof. I remember thinking "this is pretty but where did all this European nonsense come from???" And then hearing about the camps...the whole situation is awful.
I'm a half-Arabic Austrian who was always relegated to play Jasmine (didn't help that my name's Yasmin, either) and I could never reconcile the imagery with both my dad's culture and heritage, and the stories he used to read to me. Also, since I grew up speaking German I didn't catch most of the really racist parts when I was a kid (only ever watched the dubbed versions). RUDE awakening later. I've been done with Disney in a hot minute but this fantastic video really drove the point home. Well done, all of you amazing women!
I never felt comfortable with the Disney movie canon, and watching this video makes me feel good that my children grew up largely Disney free. I wanted my daughter to be a strong, independent woman, not a girl who focused helpless princesses as role models until "some day her prince will come". I wanted my son to know there were many ways of being a male adult that did not fit the Disney stereotypes (which are just as rigid for male characters as female). I didn't want either of them to get locked into a "dreams can magically come true " (without the work) mindset. Disney is pushing a groupthink, "opiate of the masses", "bread and circuses" mentality. They still are, though they've moved away from overt racism.
You clearly haven't watched paid any attention to these movies because if you had, you would realize that there's more to the Disney princesses "THEY JUST SIT AROUND AND WAIT MEN, LOL"
And what the heck are you talking about when you say "male stereotypes?" Disney has a wide variety of male characters, all different in personality and/or motivations. Not every single male character is some hyper masculine dudebro prince (which I'm assuming is what you're referring to). Hell, even the princes weren't even the hyper masculine to begin with. Do you know how many "Prince Charming is secretly gay" I've heard growing up? Here's a clue... A LOT.
1. Watching Disney isn’t gonna make her less independent 2. There is plenty of princesses in Disney who don’t wait around for a man. Tiana owns her own restaurant, Pocahontas saved the entirety of her tribe, Mulan saved China and her movie isn’t really focused on romance all that much, Elsa doesn’t have a man, Rapunzel’s dream was less a man and more about wanting to live life, Anna mostly wants to have a relationship with Elsa, Merida doesn’t have a man, Cinderella was a slave to her family and got away from them. Jasmine constantly stands up for herself and refuses to marry for any other reason except love. They aren’t Disney princesses technically (but should be) but Esmeralda stands up for her beliefs, Jane is a bit of a nerd who happens to fall for Tarzan, Meg didn’t even want to fall in love again and is sassy as hell. The princes? Constantly show good values themselves.
Pocahontas: I’m not native and I get depressed thinking of this movie. Irene Bedard has a lovely voice and her songs have wonderful tunes, but literally everything else in this movie is astoundingly problematic.
i feel bad for never having noticing most of these things. though i know these feeling of "NOO!! THEY GOT IT ALL WRONG!!!" when watching American films. while im not POC myself, i am a TCK (Third-culture kid) that has lived in Spain, South-Africa and now, In Germany. THE AMOUNT OF TIMES that they show Africa (and South-Africa) as a continent full of just poor, starving children in huts is disheartning, though im not saying that this doesnt exist. it very much exists, BUT there is SO MUCH MORE to africa. so many trafitional foods, clothings and not EVERYTHING IS SAVANA FULL OF LIONS!!! THERE ARE JUNGLES, MOUNTAINS, OCEANS, DESERTS. THE COUNTRIES ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL AND UNIQUE WITH HUNDREDS OF TRADITIONS LANGUAGES AND MAGICAL AND INCREADIBLE STORIES. IT INFURIATES ME SO MUCH THAT TIME AND TIME AGAIN AMERICAN FILM WRITERS GET IT WRONG!! especially those american family comedy films where an american family go to africa and its JUST STEREOTYPES. "oh lets go to africa!! oh wow we get off the train and there is already a fucking hippopotamus blocking the door to our bus!!" bullshit. utter bullshit. they don't even get the fucking animals right (and even their names sometimes) if i get so sad at people getting one of my cultures incorrectly, I CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE HOW HARD it must be seeing such bad representation. bad representation sucks. it really really does. one can only hope it gets better in the future.
I remember adutioning for a small Peter pan play and they had us sing and like, slap our mouths in a VERY stereotype-y way. I refused to do it bc I thought it was stupid 💀 good kid, good kid.
Yes! This is such an excellent discussion! In regards to the mice in Cinderella, honestly I hadn't thought of them as being racist stereotypes so thank you for pointing that out. There's also other stereotypes too---how about Oliver and Company? I think there's a few there and Fagin definitely ties into some very bad Jewish stereotypes as well (granted, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie).
When I worked at Disney World, it always confused me why Beauty and the Beast had a restaurant, but Princess and the Frog didn't? Like, that's what they movie is about. As much as I loved the grey stuff, having Tiana's Place as an actual, visitable restaurant would make so much more sense than having her take over the slave ride. (Not that they can't do both. But it would be awesome to show some southern soul food in Disney)
Tiana has a restaurant on Disney’s cruise ships. Obviously not as good as being in the parks but its there.
I went to be our guest, and it was great! But I would soooo go to a tiana themed restaurant! I would LOVE if they added that! The look can be amazing, the louisiana themed menu, wonderful!
Wait… Disney World doesn’t have a restaurant for a movie where the main character’s main dream was to open up her own restaurant…. Wtf.
Princess and the Frog didn't win an oscar.
Yeeesss, and not just the southern soul food, but the entire restaurant could have that old 1920s feel that would make our inner art-history nerds go bananas!
I love Disney, but I hate when people pretend it’s all sunshine and rainbows and fail to hold it accountable for the problematic stuff it’s made and continues to create. It’s okay to call it out for its racism. It’s okay to demand it does better in terms of representation. You’re showing maturity and acknowledgment of your privilege by doing so.
Absolutely. By calling it out, hopefully we can get them to create better things.
@@LaynieFingers that’s right. It’ll be a long way to go but every step of progress matters.
I totally agree, very well said. Thank you for saying that.
@@Apollo_Blaze my pleasure
Yes yes yes
My parents literally did not let me watch Aladdin for my entire childhood, on the excuse that it was 'hyperactive'. Found out later, the *actual* reason was Jasmine's hypersexualization and the fact that she only 'acts sexy' towards men she doesn't like (Ali, when she thinks he's full of crap, and later, Jafar). In other words, her sexuality is basically weaponized repeatedly, throughout the movie.
The most funny thing is that she's not dressed like an Arabian woman nor like princess
Same!
I didn't know that (although I have seen the movie). I actually think its a stupid reason because children wouldn't catch on to that anyway, the issue is only in the parents head. While I thought of jasmine as generally attractive, I actually never thought of her as being hyper-sexualized
@@zakosist hm I don’t know, as a child I definitely felt like the scene in the red outfit had a really different, sexual vibe. I didn’t really know much about sexuality, but that and the princess and the goblin’s hostage scene gave me weird feelings and I think this kind of thing is probably why so many get a thrill from fictional dubiously-consensual stuff.
@@MinimalistTheatre333 Hi, could you please give me your sources about Middle east doing more slave trafficking than America ? Because that's the first time I heard of it
I remember someone once pointing out how the only characters that get transformed into animals are characters of colour, and I remember my jaw dropping because they're so right and I never realised that before
Odette was white, tho.
@@Crawlingdreams418 Odette is not a disney princess
@@Crawlingdreams418 she was then seen as a beautiful young blond woman. god forbid disney allowed characters of colour feel/be pretty.
@@gg-dg6rk both the white and the non white disney princesses looked idealized as hell (with the exception of moana and merida, who look more like ordinary girls next door). the golden era even put way too much focus on snow white and cinderella's appearance, which is unsurprisng, given the plot of the originals. if the poc princesses were portrayed looking like laney boggs (She's All That) and the white ones looked more like Regina George, that would've been a valid statement. but like i said, both are portrayed as attractive with the exception of the girls i mentioned earlier.
also, like the user mentioned, odette is not disney.
@@malacorrulany i should've guessed they were referring to disney characters, my bad
I hate how problematic Pocahontas is but I love "colors of the wind."
I hate that this song was wasted for an extremely racist movie
It is the equivalent to dedicate your favorite love song to your fiancé and one month later he breaks up with you.
Edit: poc people shouldn't baby white people about racism, it's getting annoying. Btw, we suffer racism and we are the ones that need to be "nice", wow.
Edit: they deleted the comment
No, it's problematic.
Pocahontas sexualize indigenous women, and I'm not a woman, I'm androgyne man, and i myself have been experienced racism because of being indigenous with Pocahontas, and people love to use "Pocahontas" against my people, specifically our women. I've seen people literally makes lists with "biokinesis" to look like native women stereotype because of Pocahontas.
Please tell me i misinterpreted your comment, because if not, then you really should look more into the harm it did to us.d
they could've at least given that princess another name and not try to romanticize or water down what happened then.
@@sure9019 As someone who has loved Pocahontas as a Disney Princess and the movie itself, this is really sad to see. I loved "Colors Of The Wind" and the message Pocahontas shared with the song. It's really messed up that the movie caused harm for a lot of Native Americans.
@@BratzRockAngels not only native Americans.
I'm a indigenous person from Brazil and yet I'm still being attacked with this same thing, and Soo our women. It did more harm than turtle island
Makes me upset as a white girl that I didn't catch a lot of these things growing up. Hearing these points from a group of beautiful bipoc women hurts my heart because I've never had to think about these things.
@@MinimalistTheatre333 The word for slave actually came from the word Slav. The name of the ethnicity native to eastern Europe.
same
Honestly same
same. its upsetting that i couldn't have been educated better on such issues of problematic content as a child.
Why are you upset over something that you couldn’t have possibly known about?
Disney always seems to take one step forward and two steps back (and somehow three steps sideways) whenever they attempt representation. Howard Ashman's influence over the tone and themes of the Renaissance period were huge for young queer kids, but those movieswound up extremely YIKES in other ways. Now "Disney's First Gay Character" is basically a running joke in queer spaces.
As a kid from poverty and abuse, Cinderella was dear to me, since she held onto hope and kindness through one of the cruelest situations a child can go through. Cinderella, even way back then, wasn't a doormat about it. She knew her situation was cruel, but held it together to ensure her survival until her chance at freedom came. Of course, when Tangled came out, Rapunzel shot right up to the top of my favorites. Seeing characters escape abuse is and go on to live full lives speaks right to my heart. Though the mice saying "leave the sewing to the women!" felt awkward even as a little kid.
Having more representation and knowledge in the writers room, animation studio, basically the entire line of creation, is the only way I can think of for things to get better for every line of representation, because telling better stories matters.
i hate to break it to you, but with my country and china being disney's biggest markets, we won't be getting explicitly gay characters from them any time soon. and considering most creators treat us like boxes to tick with a checkmark... yeah, i'm gonna wait for them to get a conscience
Three steps sideways that's perfect 😂
@@Crawlingdreams418 Have to wait for small creators to do it. People who don't care about money.
When Princess and The Frog came out and showed Tiana's Restaurant, I was excited to see that become an actual thing in the parks, but instead they made Beauty and The Beast castle into a restaurant? I mean, I get the idea is similar to "Be Our Guest" song where the castle gets food for Belle, but even then, it would have made more sense to make the actual restaurant that Tiana dreamed of and got in the end a real thing, than a restaurant based around one song from the entirety of Beauty and The Beast.
I’m sorry but it’s belle
@@oceansolstice608 I mean, that is what I meant, thanks for contributing to nothing in what I was saying originally.
@@ztellarvibrationz8753 I have OCD it just bothered me that you spelt her name wrong
@@oceansolstice608 I mean, thanks I guess lol
this! i just realized that, i thought it'd be a common sense thing. but NOOOOO lets make a restaurant based on a song !
I liked the discussion about Jasmine being confused as a black character rather than a brown one. I'm Maori so when Moana came out, it was a huge deal. It was one of the better representations, especially since they got people who spoke Te Reo to sing some of the songs.
Unfortunately, because I am quite pale (one might say 'white passing') I am ostracised by many because I don't have tanned, darker skin. It annoys me that many people think POC means black- even if they don't mean to be rude, I've heard my brown and Asian friends be told they're not POC because that means 'black'.
Also, with Peter Pan (take this with a grain of salt because I'm Maori, not Native American) but those scenes made me so uncomfortable because Maori culture and Maori people are so 'lost' outside of the Pacific. I have had people say I'm making it up because they never heard of it. And yet, kids would mock me with the dances and gestures that were shown in Peter Pan.
I'm pretty sure the term "people of color" is just a nicer version of saying "colored people". And when you say "colored people" do you really think of someone who is pale or even white passing? no u don't. I get where you are coming from but just because you're not white doesn't make you a person of color
@@telepups28 I'm not actually white, though. I'm full Maori with olive skin. Grew up with my people, speak my language. 'just because you're not white doesn't make a person of colour' literally doesn't make sense. If I'm not white or a POC, what am i?
@@telepups28 ummm. what is wrong is the term person of color, cause you can come from a different culture than white USA culture, be white (or almost white) and still be racialized or discriminated. Things are not so easy, is not like, every person from a specific culture has a tag in their skin color.
@@ghosty8193 you don´t have to explain your skin color to nobody. Keep doing you. I think that sometimes people may not understand. What is wrong is "person of color" term. You are Maori. And from my perspective the term person of color just points to otherness, cultures that USA white standars may not understand. Is not about skin color, is about culture.
@@shanhyuga6607 Honestly, it's stuff like this that hurts everyone in the situation. Categorizing people as 'colors' just seems strongly dehumanizing to me. Cultures don't decide your skin color after all, on top of the color coding being inaccurate. Not to mention, skin color can change over time, most people's do considering what dictates your skin tone in the first place.
This discussion was so valuable. The mice was something I had never even considered....
I'm gonna add my two cents as a native american. The relationship with Peter pan and Pocahontas is kinda complicated, because yeah, it is super offensive, but it was also one of the few places I saw myself. There was also a lot of cognitive dissonance. For instance, the word "savage" was thrown around a lot, but my family was more accurately described as "generous". I thought maybe it was referring to some other Indians, blackfoot were named specifically, but my best friend was Blackfoot. In that regard, it was very alienating from my indigenous heritage.
And of course, Pocahontas really perpetuated the white savior, to the point where that's what I start with anytime I want to explain it. There's another costuber who is native who really goes into Pocahontas, Miah Grace. In summary, the book Disney's Pocahontas is based on was written by John Smith, a swindler and a loser, and who completely made up most of it. On top of that, the woman he called Pocahontas was a child at the time he knew her.
The way the film Pocahontas tries to "both sides" it, having the native people join in on the "savages" song, is just really gross and contradicted by actual history. That just was not a mindset they would have had. The outfits, of course, are also completely inaccurate, and Pocahontas being quite scantily clad feeds into the idea of sexually promiscuous indigenous women. (Let me be clear that real women can and should wear whatever they want. Real women have autonomy. Pocahontas is a fictional character and this was a choice made by people who were not indigenous and not women.)
The fact that tiger lily doesn't speak is pretty gross, and kinda feeds into the idea of WOC not having autonomy. And the colorism in the fact that she's considered the most beautiful and she's also the palest.
My sister really struggled with whether she wanted to show her kids Pocahontas. Even today, there's not really any children's movies with good native representation. There's things to relate to in Lilo and Stitch and Moana, but obviously they're not native American, and even those have problems that I can't really speak to, not being Hawaiian or Polynesian.
This was kinda stream of consciousness, there's probably mistakes, and I hope it made sense.
TL;DR watch "Why I'm not going to make a historical Pocahontas costume and no one else will either" by Miah Grace
Thanks, I’ll check out the video! Thanks for bringing awareness to this.
The only representation I saw apart from Disney about Native American culture was Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. I always loved it for the horses when I was little, but as I watched it when I was older I realized it was also about American colonization. It showed how the natives grieved when they were colonized and robbed of their home. The main native american character you see is named "Little Creek" and he shows such amazing compassion to the main character, Spirit the horse. You get a bit of insight into his way of life and his culture, as he introduces Spirit to it. I think the movie is amazing, there's limited representation but I feel it is better than these racial/ethnic stereotypes.
@@tabi2674 Spirit isn't even a Disney movie though. It's made by DreamWorks. The only Disney movie that actually does a good representing Native Americans is Brother Bear.
@@Jadedrock yeah and even then they made assumptions about talisman, and with spirit they made a spin-off about it that’s not even about native culture and the awareness of colonization.
They made it about (mainly) little white girls riding horses competing, and trying to boost feminism. While I’m glad they’re showing that girls can a predominantly masculine thing, most cartoons have that theme. Them taking away what little good representation we had that showed pain and some of what really happened and then replacing it with a common theme is extremely hurtful and blatantly racist.
@@Jadedrock Spirit is a great movie though! I have a few minor quibbles with it, but still good. (the spin-off is very disappointing...)
Brother Bear has a similar issue that I have with Princess and the frog, in that the main character is a POC and spends most of the runtime as an animal. It's still a good movie! But also, it's more Inuit than Native, so again, relatable, but not necessarily MY place to comment on.
I was focusing on disney movies when I wrote my initial comment, and I often forget that brother bear is Disney because it's not really a musical lol
(I apologise for this long comment, I am incapable of being concise...)
I never realized the mouses in Cinderella were black coded, it feels so wrong. I think the dubbed versions is more ok because they don't have a particular accent. But sometimes it's worst. I had to watch Moana in English because as someone who grew up in Polynesia I just couldn't bear to hear them be voiced without any accent... don't tell me they couldn't find any Polynesian to dub the movie =-=
For the Siamese in beauty and the tramp, I'm not Asian myself and still felt the song was uncomfortable and racist as a child .... it's the worst.
unlike for example the mice, i feel like the big thing why the siamese cats in the dubs still translate very racist despite the missing accents comes from the eyes and the "asian music" they sing to, and possibly the melody of the speech
Half of the comments on movies vonfuse me for this reason. If you grew up with differently dubbed versions, American voice actors matter less.
Is the mice being a mammy figure racist? I just googled mammy and it's a word for a mother. I don't really see how the mice or the way they talk as racist nor have I ever met a person who talks like that :/ im black and I don't see them as being black coded at all.
Wait the mice are a racist stereotype?
@@alexie832 apparently. I don't believe it is tho
Whoa I had no idea about the original voices of Disney animals due to watching them in translation, and it's honestly horrifying. 😬Thank you all for making this!!
Same! I watched them growing up in Swedish and while looking back I can see some of the imagery being very racially stereotypical, I think because they didn't have the accents or voices it wasn't as noticeable. Like... I would never in my life have connected that the mice in cinderella had any racial stereotypes behind them. That's so wild!
Same here
@@hernameispekka_Rebecca same in Germany
Same here! Watching the Polish version I had no idea about most of them, apart from the cats, cause they were clearly racist still
Right?! I was like okay hoooow are the mice racist?! Welp. I watched them in German, so there you go…. That’s why I never noticed
seeing how Disney misses the mark even with European fairytales, I wasn't really suprised that 1998 Mulan isn't really accurate to the ballad.
it's just really sad that the worst butchering of these fairytales is visible in Princess and the Frog, and then they give that butchered story to the black girl for the sake of """"subverting"""" stereotypes (while Tiana is the only black princess to this date?), while Tiana with the original storyline would have been much more powerful? like the original is about the princess (!) drawing a line and being well aware of boundaries while everyone else is guilting her into giving in to more and more ridiculous demands, to the point where the frog absolutely tries to violate her and is thrown at the wall (which then makes him transform back into a king instead of dying.) the original was never about "just work harder!!!!!!!", it is literally about "yeah we've had an agreement but you are more than crossing boundaries that I am uncomfortable around you, cut that crap"
like tell me where girls, and especially black/brown girls, need to learn to "work harder" instead of "my boundaries have to be respected and it's not too much/selfish to demand respect and not be violated"
? How was the frog crossing boundaries, I do remember the deal being that if she kissed him (only so he would turn back I think), then he'd get the ball for her. She knowingly made the agreement and decided she didnt want to keep the deal.
@@ok.4322 she agreed to companionship to get the ball, not to kiss him, and at first, yes, she tries to not fulfil her side of the deal, and everyone reprimands her for that - and she complies eventually since she had made the promise and understands that she needs to be fair to him. however, the frog becomes more and more demanding of things I don't think are considered what companions do i.e. sleep in her bed, wanting a kiss etc. at that point he already was allowed to eat from her plate and drink from her cup while sharing her chair. it's no longer the princess needing to learn a lesson, and the fairytale acknowledges that since the frog transforms after he crosses the line where the princess can't take it any more and shows him that by throwing him at the wall.
There are plenty of people that work themselves to the ground similarly to Tiana at the beginning of the movie (and in some cases, even harder). Take a look at the effort Sakuri puts into video game development, especially for Smash Bros Ultimate. There have been articles about Sakuri hurting his hands developing Smash. People might see a racist stereotype from Tiana, but all I see is a workaholic.
@@PK-Radio It's just a movie portaying existing people, dude.
@@inkythoughts I may be a little late, but I think you got the story in a bit of a mess.
The frog asked her to sit next to her, eat from her plate and sleep in her bed. And that's how it stayed. The king's daughter threw him against the wall because she found him repulsive (on the outside). The moral of the fairy tale is that you should keep your promise and not judge from the outside. There was never any talk of a kiss.
I wish you could have discussed Coco, too. It's not about Princesses, but it's a strong example of taking a country's important traditions and remarketing it to said country.
Every Day of the Dead after Coco I've had to dig really deep into things at supermarkets, specially walmart, to find non-Coco items. They are re-branding part of my country's traditions and reselling it to us... kids are gonna see it and think it's normal! Alfeñiques, which are sugar skulls, are already suffering from this because people don't buy them anymore because they "aren't like the disney ones".
Don't get me wrong, it was a really well researched movie, they even used a lot of architecture that you can find in CDMX...
But we already have a problem with Cinco de Mayo in the US being thought as our Independence Day and taken as an excuse by yt people to just drink. Now Day of the Dead is used as costumes in Halloween when it's not a 1'% secular celebration here...
It's also incredibly centralised. Here in the far up north it's hard to find THAT representation of Day of the Dead.
EDIT: And this is not even touching depictions of child labour, romantization of poverty, the stupid caste system we have and the classism that comes with it, the problematic idolization of Mexican pop culture figures, the use of a cenote as a place of punishment when that wasn't it's original intent... (that cenote was BEAUTIFUL, but Gods, it's use...), the chancla (yeah, it was funny to watch because, dude... we relate... but the trauma that comes with it, oof! We as mexicans use laughter to deal with trauma, and after the initial viewing of the movie you start to get flashbacks by the third viewing and it's not fun anymore..), the commercialization of Mexican traditional towns and villages (we have this thing called Pueblo Mágico or Magical Town, it's been around for some years now to promote tourism, but it's detrimental for the people living there and the national touists as prices skyrocket for us, and Coco's representation of Santa Cecilia doesn't... help at all. Plus it perpetuates this idea that ALL of Mexico is like this. Far north villages are different than central Mexico, and even Southern Mexico. I've had gringo tourists come to my city thinking it's a stereotypical Mexican village and finding we tall buildings and there's not much left of colonial era houses due to gentrification... they leave so dissapointed when we finally can get the point across that no, we aren't beggars and yes we do know Enlgish...) and the xoloscuintle (Dante was portrayed as a stray dog... yeah, Xolos are highly valued... they are expensifve af dogs both to get and to take care of, they have really specific needs because they really ARE bald dogs and because of the movie's popularity their prices skyrocketed. And they are endangered...)
Don’t forget about how Disney put in border themes on a literal tradition in the movie 💀 like, as a Mexican, why can’t we have a movie where we aren’t subjected to the trauma our people face? It’s rlly disheartening
I found a really good video called, "Coco's Feel-Good Oppression" by @UCC9Gi77WB7y8qcmPSsFgGfA. ruclips.net/video/fQFVby3If5U/видео.html
Didn’t Disney try to trademark the tradition? Shameful idiots.
That thing about the cities pisses me off so much tbh. I do know that yes, most of our population unfortunately lives in poverty, and the places they live in are in poor conditions, but that doesn't mean that ALL of Mexico looks like in Coco, and I hate that that's how most outsiders view it
@@valeriadiaz5585 ik man and the fact that an American company is MAKING that joke is just like... what...
The other thing that's just super bizarre about Peter Pan is that the Island they go to is supposedly magic right? But then there's just a bunch of native folks living there. And it's super unclear if the story/movie is implying that all native people are magic or if it was just an island that had been colonized. The native characters don't seem to have magical powers, but then this is also an island full of mermaids and fairies so it's almost implying that Native people are mythical creatures. It's such a bad movie.
Well, to be fair, that's to blame on the source material.
Ok, so there is a story about them, about Tiger Lily more precisely. They are "magical", they are born and stop aging at different times. I don't remember the plot really well because I read it a long time ago, but I know I liked it. Title: Tiger Lily by Joli Lynn Anderson
The book implies that children's fantasies come to life on the island. There is a bit of a cliche about boys reading books a lá 'last of the Mohicans' and fantasizing about being the heroes siding up with the "noble savages". Could the Natives of Neverland encompass that? Just my guess, still problematic.
@@anitamihholap5926 I often read books in school about boys and girls reading about different topics, like pirates, indigenous people, hunting and everything else, and being inspired by these to play out the roles of the exact same groups
So, yeah, I guess the Neverland is exactly about that, boys are inspired by pirates and Natives, you get those in Neverland, girls like fairies and mermaids, you get those
But yeah, I look at the Native Americans in the movie nowadays and cringe, they look like racist caricatures
Let's all forget that those children were given morphine to fall asleep......
Can I just say as a white Virginian, when we did Virginia history in 4th grade we started studying the Powhatan tribe (a sub tribe of the Algonquins, as I recall) we studied their culture (as much as we could find because that culture was mostly lost) and the impact that the English settlers had on them. At the end of the unit (which took a few months of pretty in-depth work) we watched Pocahontas with the specific assignment to find all the things that were wrong/incorrect about how Disney put this story together. It was a really showing exercise. We discussed that particular song (which shall remain silent so as to not provoke or trigger unnecessarily) and how that was one of many ways that Native Americans were viewed. It was always taught that this is not in any way acceptable nor that Disney was advocating that type of thought. I always took it as a villain song, one of intolerance and meanness which served only to cement the need for the villain's downfall. It's a really cool song that does everything the plot (as rewritten/made up by Disney) needs it to. It should never be taken as advocacy for that way of thought.
The magic "now Pocahontas speaks English" thing was also a necessary plot device simply so the story didn't have to cover years and so that Pocahontas could assume the role in history that she deserves as a peacemaker between the two very different cultures. Not to protect or serve white people or to serve up her people to white servitude or anything of the sort. She was a peacemaker and that's what she is remembered for. I've gone back to her through my life to look again and study her over and over. She's one of my heroes. I wish we knew more about her. I wish we had more records of her and her people the way we do about the settlers at Jamestown.
Sorry for the novel. I just felt like I needed to speak as a writer, musician, and lover of history. Cheers everyone!
The movie Pocahontas came out while I was in 4th grade, I forget if we'd visited the Jamestown sites before or after, but that movie did not sit well (and I have no doubt it was really much worse than I was able to appreciate at the time)
As another Virginian, DUDE SAAME!! I remember learning about the Native Americans of our area, their culture, and Pocahontas. The real, actual story of Pocahontas. Right after our unit test, my teacher put on the movie Pocahontas for us and we were LIVID. I'm pretty sure everyone in my class left with a newfound anger for that movie.
I was falling down the rabbit hole of the real life of Pocahontas and stumbled on an article of what the ENGLISH teach about Pocahontas. It makes Disney look like a documentary. They don't even know where exactly she is laid to rest; but they have a sugary sweet version of what they think is her tale.
@@JoKir2013 can you send a link?
Story time: I took a class 8 or 9 years ago called Intercultural Communication, taught by a very dark-skinned Black man. He tried to do right by us, and my classmates were not as respectful of him as I wish they had been. Anyway, he played for us a documentary about the racial problems in many Disney films, such as the hyenas in Lion King, King Louis in the Jungle Book, the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp, and the representation of Indigenous Americans in Peter Pan. Then we went in a circle and gave our reactions, and I was the very last person in a class of about 50, so I spent the next hour silently fuming as every single white person in the class, and several of the non-white international students as well, said that they thought it wasn’t that bad, that these things were cartoons and wouldn’t affect children. One white person literally said that calling the hyenas racist was “grasping at straws.” I went on a rage-filled rant, and spent much of the rest of class singlehandedly arguing them all down, and my poor prof, stranded as he was all alone in the hecka white Comm. dept., backed me up as much as he could, but we both knew I could say all that shit as a light-skinned student, and he couldn’t say any of it as a dark-skinned prof. It was so hellish that I changed majors the next term and developed a panic disorder shortly after.
kids media should be held by a MUCH higher standard than adult media. kids are building their understanding of the world, and exposing them to stereotypes reinforces stereotypes! whereas, adults tend to already have their ideas set in stone and can think more critically about the media they consume.
i'm convinced those white kids only chose to study that to force their white supremacist beliefs down poc throats.
@@pheonixrises11 exactly racism is TAUGHT it's not genetic tf were those whites on 😭
This is why I don't argue with those people. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. The discussion in the video was very valuable.
I'm so sorry you went through that, This story is so upsetting :(
I live near Roseburg, Oregon, whose high school mascot is the Roseburg Indians.
That study is so alarming to me! If being reminded of Pocahontas makes indigenous students do worse on a test, imagine how they fare they going to a SCHOOL that makes them a mascot. Some of the older imagery of the school is very racist, too. Now it's just am orange feather, but it used to be a caricature that looked the chief from Peter Pan.
They have been debated whether to change it for decades, and a lot of people don't want to. They are very adamant about it, very angry and emotional, and as far as I know, they're all white. Indigenous students just THIS YEAR got to wear tribal symbols, like eagle or turkey feathers, during graduation--in a school where they're the mascots.
Thats really bad....we have a Very Long way to go...
@@MinimalistTheatre333 why do you keep posting this comment on several oc without even context? I don't understand
I didn't realize that there were schools that still had Indians as mascots...
back when I was a sophomore, we had our mascot changed for being a "representation" of our local tribe. Looking back on it, I'm glad we ended up not having a mascot.
More than the movie I think is more how horrible kids can be, calling them "Hey, you are one of those Pocahontas people, ha ha! :U" So yeah, no wonder some would ended hating the film.
I live in Oregon too, luckily my area is very anti racist.
It's crazy that Tiana didn't get a fairytale ending. She didn't get taken away to a palace (like the other princesses) where she could've continued with her dream of having a restaurant by choice. Instead, she got a five star SOUL FOOD RESTAURANT, that her and her "PRINCE" WORK IN. Guess that's as close to a palace as a black woman gets, huh??
To be fair, a huge part of Tiana’s character is her work ethic. And Naveen clearly needed to learn to develop a work ethic after living his life as a spoiled prince who only parties and has fun. It wouldn’t really make sense if they had her owning a restaurant and not working in it with Naveen. They SHOULD make a black Disney princess (one set in Africa maybe) where her dream isn’t to work.
@@sugarpearl9781 Argh African stories have strong feminism themes, not sure if Disney can handle
But she got what she wanted, dreamed of, and worked her butt off for. I would have been more upset if she did get whisked off to a castle.
They could've let her not be a frog for 90% of the film. I was mad asf even being 11
I loved the ending to Princess and the Frog! Showing that you can find happiness by mistake but still work hard for what you want. Sure Naveen was a prince but he was cut off financially, and seeing how happy they were on the balcony made it amazing! What you love is your palace, a castle is only cold stone if there is no love
As a white woman, I had more than a "wait...wtf???" moment during this video! I had already heard about character coding of the villains (for example Mother Gothel, Ursula, etc) and recently watched a couple videos about Chinese culture representation by Xiran Jay Zhao, but you made me realise there's so many more issues with Disney that absolutely flew over my head 😅 Thanks for the quality content and for promoting education 😊
what is Mother Gothel coded as?
@@whatever5401 iirc, shes suposed to be a harmful jewish stereotype
I am Arab-American and when Aladdin came out, I was so happy. Representation matters and I was so starved for ANYTHING that even attractive negative representation was welcomed. I was traumatized and physically threatened as a child by an old Popeye cartoon where Bluto was a villain named Abu Hassen (my maiden name) SWANA need better.
I remember that! I used to love popeye… and watch it all the time as a kid. I am so, so so sorry.
Dude I remember seeing this episode of Popeye as a kid where brown people were...worshiping something/someone?? Chanting "Salami Salami...Bologna Bologna" like bruh
Bruh-
@@carrieon2912 thank you. The cartoon itself wasn't so bad, it was the reaction of my classmates. My sister and I used to be chased and abused on the playground by boys screaming "Abu Hassan teach you lesson." and seemed to think we were responsible for Popeye being beat up. I would come home with my dresses torn and my tight ripped from the gravel on the playground. I would be shoved into the ground and face rubbed into the grit. I would come home and my mother would tell me to play more ladylike. I never told her or my father as I was so ashamed. I can still tell you 50 years later the names of those three boys. This was kindergarten and probably up to 2nd grade.
@@tiredoftrolls2629 I am so sorry you had to experience that. Children are cruel, and it's awful that episode exists and triggered those boys to treat you so poorly. It really is so harmful when media portrays these negative stereotypes and generalizations. I hope things are much better for you now.
First off: Louis Armstrong was a Victorian? Holy crap, does that gives some perspective on time! Second, Tatiana in Princess and the Frog was originally going to be the housekeeper/maid of the house Lottie. They changed that in an effort to be less racists, by not having her be the poor servant of her rich white friend. Points, I guess? Lastly, I hate Disney. The whole company is soulless. On top of not portraying race correctly, they also almost always portray female characters poorly. Their male characters are so forgettable that they don't even have a "Disney Prince" line to commemorate them by. Guess boys don't need kind and caring role models?
To say nothing of villains coded LGBTQ+ and sometimes Jewish.
You forget that most of the Disney movies (especially those with the princesses) are from OLD fairy tales (brothers grim, 1000 arabian nights, Hans Christian Anderson ect.) and the prince don´t have any remarkable traits in there too.
Yet they still made her a frog for the majority of the movie 🙄
Have you ever read original The Brothers Grimm Fairytales. They are not for children.
@@lunamariahawke9320 that depends on the story you read. Besides the fact that Grimms tales are terrifyingly violent, most of the prince focused story are about being the best at trickery and twisting words, they are frequently about the underdog, youngest son winning over the toxic masculine over muscled older brothers.
I had never even considered that the mice and birds from Cinderella could be a racial stereotype. I always figured they were how they translated the birds helping out Cinderella in Tři oříšky pro Popelku (Three Wishes for Cinderella), which I grew up watching at Christmas
Edited to add: as a european girl who watched the Disney movies in my native language I never realized how many strong accents there were in the movies
Same! We had a similar movie to three wishes for cinderella (maybe it was the same? idk), here it's called three hazelnuts for cinderella. But yeah I only heard the Disney movies in my language and there weren't any accents in there as I remember (I barely watched Disney movies even as I was a child)
Same, I never knew they had any specific accent in the original English language, because I've only ever watched the Norwegian and Swedish dubs of Cinderella. And yeah, I also grew up watching the Czech Cinderella movie a lot growing up (they show it every Christmas eve on TV in Norway), and there are a lot of animals that help her in that, so I just figured the Disney version was kind of the same.
Not gonna lie, I absolutely HATED Peter Pan and I'm not even indigenous. I hated all the themes in it. The messages in full were horrible. A young teen girl forced to play mommy or else. little boys have to grow up sooner than they should or else. A grown man trying to kill children. Peter Pan laughing at Wendy practically getting drowned almost to death by mermaids. Tinker Bell's don't touch my man attitude. It's all sick. I hated it with a passion and had nightmares from it.
I thought it weird that no one in the Lion King had any type of African regional accents like Yoruba or something. Like why does the bird and the evil Lion sound like... What?
I loved Dumbo but you aren't gonna like these factors. I researched it and spoke to many people to make sure I wasn't crazy. Dumbo and his mother, Mrs. Jumbo, and the other elephants were symbols of black African people being sent to a circus. The crows and "Jim Crow" were the symbols of the Jim Crow laws and black facing. Black birds with bright-colored beaks? Um? And even when the circus tent was being put up, they used black shadows in a thunderous stormy night. Etc. Etc. It took Timothy, a white mouse who can speak (since Dumbo was silent) to help Dumbo get to the top and save his mom by becoming the best at the circus. DUMBO AND HIS MOTHER WAS SILENCED! Not to mention, name stripping. His mother wanted to call Dumbo something completely different in naming and was bullied because of his ears (difference). Sad.
Cinderella was always my favorite story and movie. Some of the adaptations were wonderful and more. The animation? It's sad hearing how you feel because I loved those mice and now I'm like darn... That hurts me to realize now why I also felt uncomfortable with them on screen. I loved those mice. They were cute and funny but it makes sense because... geez.
For Tiana, if Disney doesn't give her a dang restaurant called Tiana's Place in Fantasy Land, I will find anybody willing to petition with me. AND a ferry ride! XD
I'm glad this was talked about here.
How sad you have to be to get nightmares from fucking Peter Pan?
@@King_of_Fools Considering I watched Peter Pan in elementary school, the part where Wendy was nearly drowning was traumatizing because I didn't know how to swim and Peter Pan laughed majority of the time instead of saving her first until he realized, "Oh they dragged her under water! Maybe I should stop this." When clearly she was being bullied by murderers. Unfortunately, it made me think of what my bullies could do to me because I had lots of them. I hated it and it was rage provoking all the time for me. It was a gross film.
@@mastermoonlightvariety I personally loved Peter Pan in my childhood, and, oh boy, you should see the original book
It's so bloodthirsty, and Peter is pretty awful there, movie Peter doesn't even compare
On the topic of him being this indifferent to Wendy's suffering, as a person, who also lived through bullying, he is supposed to be this immature kid who doesn't know any morals, doesn't know how to process his feelings, doesn't feel remorse, because he is still a kid going through emotional development
Kids growing up usually don't know, which is right and which is good, unless taught by their caretakers, and Peter didn't really have that
He was taken into fairyland as a kid, grew up all alone in the wilderness and wished to never grow up, and all of that stunted his development as a person
He does feel to me, like my bullies, but still, I like the movie (even though I cringe at the Native American part nowadays, ugh)
@@artemismoore4176 But even children without parents still have some sense of kindness and morality. It's not always taught by the parents, because not everyone have them. But their lives and the people they love around them teaches them. He still had many friends so he had to have some form of kindness, but he acted like if he lost one of his friends in the past before the story we saw, who cares. That's not true. He did care but that's not shown.
He had Hook to teach him what kind of person not to become, regardless of staying young. Plus he had some want to grow up because he longed of a mother figure due to missing his own. The one part of growing up that did matter to him, even though he still wanted his freedom. So the portrayal of Peter Pan being this heartless and merciless kid is still no excuse. If you listen to his words, the world he was thrust in made him rough because he was attacked and through those attacks he still became a strong loving leader taking in lost kids. He didn't want them to get hurt or live what he had to go through when he arrived. But strong leaders do no laugh in your face if you're drowning or treat people they way he did because he has been through that pain. It would bother him more than laughable to watch someone other than him and/or at least his age get hurt. The Peter they portrayed was a bully, not the miss opportunity they had to make him reasonably tough but still likeable. He was a jerk to me. But everyone sees differently so I understand your side but I simply cannot excuse that behavior even when I was in elementary.
@@mastermoonlightvariety I understand, at the same time, I've seen how cruel, merciless and cowardly kids can be, so I'm not surprised
Everyone has their own opinion at the end of the day
I think the best representation of black people Disney ever gave us were the Muses in Hercules. Aside from Disney forcing black gospel into a Grecian story just because the muses are brown 🙄, they were very beautiful, non sexualized, and very entertaining. They were my favorite part of the movie. ❤️
I dont care about their color. They look like Greek Pottery art.
I don't think it was as much of a force as you think. Greek drama typically has a chorus that acts as narrators. Just like....The Muses.
Muse and Dionysus kind of touched on this with her comments about Jasmine being confused for a black character, but I'm Romani, aka the same as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and while she isn't great representation she's one of the better ones honestly and was important to me growing up and the amount of times I had people telling me that I couldn't be Esmeralda because I'm "not black", because people see a deeper skin tone and can't equate that with any other ethnicities - we simply don't exist.
There's also still a lot of persistent racism to this day. Mother Gothel from Tangled is basically one huge racist stereotype of a Jewish woman, and there's blatant antisemitism peppered throughout the Disney canon. Even in Frozen with the way Indigenous Sami people were represented through Kristoff, which they tried to correct in Frozen II and still missed the mark.
Yesss! Fellow Roma here. I came here to say pretty much the same thing. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is usually skipped right over in these discussions but it deserves to be seen. We need to be seen! And I’m right there with you on having people tell me I couldn’t be Esmeralda because I’m not black. I love Esmeralda, Clopin, and the rest of their kin despite the stereotypes, and wish they would get more attention. Some of the stereotypes cast upon them are especially harmful yet we’re not viewed as an ethnic group because you know, they’re just g*psies…
Opre!
@@MinimalistTheatre333 Did you reply to the wrong comment? No where did I mention "harem girls", I talked about my own race which is Romani.
@@coppermoth6069 Is this an attempt at sealioning?
Kristoff has been described as being Sami by Disney and Jennifer Lee and was coded that way in his appearance, but there was absolutely no consultation with Sami groups, and very little of their culture was represented which actual Sami groups have complained about and was what the whole deal with the Northundra was in Frozen II, Disney trying to backtrack and appease Sami groups that they insulted the first time around.
If you can't tell Mother Gothel is an antisemitic stereotype, then I really don't know what to tell you. Even her name is Jewish. Research Nazi propaganda and blood libel. Even her look is a Jewish caricature. Coding villains as minorities is literally nothing new, there are even tons of videos about it here on RUclips made by minority creators.
@@coppermoth6069 Jennifer Lee is one of the key writers of the Frozen franchise, it wouldn't exist without her. Kristoff being Sami is not a "theory" it's canon conformed by the writers on multiple occasions, and is obvious as portrayed in the movie from his clothing and career.
The voice actress is really not relevant for a racist stereotype and doesn't invalidate all of the harmful things they did put into her character.
What you're doing right here is sealioning - trying to provoke a debate by asking disingenuous questions under a guise of sincerity and expecting a stranger to drip feed you information instead of doing the research yourself if you're truly interested. It's particularly exhausting for POC and minorities who have to deal with this constantly in an attempt to invalidate their experiences. Google is literally free and all of these questions could be answered by looking at the first page of links, which you clearly have no interest in doing and exactly what makes this sealioning.
I didn't even know what the Sami people were until this comment made me curious. I had never realized that these things were harmful stereotypes about a minority group as I did not even know that the Sami existed. Thank you for teaching me something and helping me see something from a different perspective.
I LOVED THIS DISCUSSION. I think the more people talk about not just how marginalized groups are portrayed in popular culture but the personal impact those portrayals have the better it is for society as a whole.
@@MinimalistTheatre333 Kindly, please shut up.
I would like Tiana’s Palace as an actual, visible restaurant instead of PaTF replacing/retheming Splash Mountain. Splash Mountain and Song of the South are based on Black/African-American folktales.
With the name of the female hyena being 'Shenzi' which literally means stupid in Kiswahili and her being a stereotypically black character, I'm thinking Disney knows what they were doing there. I am from Kenya and I speak Kiswahili so I was always so put off with them adding that in even as a kid.
Oh I didn’t know that! That’s absolutely awful!
Are you referring to an animal as a "black character"? Could you elaborate, I don't understand what you meant at all. All of the characters are from Africa, since they are African animals. Animals, not humans. The only thing they were supposed to represent is a part of African wildlife and their role in it - villainous due to scavaging and vocalisations that resemble maniscal laughter. Some people just read to much into things. Racism existed in Disney for ages, stuff like Pocahontas and pretty much everything before 1980s, but this one is just a massive stretch. These hyenas are an archetype of dumb and goofy followers of a main antagonist.
This knowledge adds a lot of perspective. But considering the fact that they did do research when it came to naming the other characters (Simba = lion, Rafiki = friend, etc) maybe they were being ironic? Even though Shenzi was the only hyena voiced by a black actor, she was also literally the least dumb of the three. They also might have figured that those who don't know what Shenzi means would get the biggest laugh out of the actual stupidest one being "THE ONE NAMED ED."
As a Kenyan, I can confirm that shenzi does mean stupid in Kiswahili
They wherent using kiswahili though. They used Swahili in that language it means Savage or barbaric. Because that's just how the character acted.
the last time i watched Peter Pan, I got so fucking embarrassed when they were with the Native people because i had completely forgotten about all of that. i was so upset, especially because i had been super excited to watch one of my favorite movies that i hadn't seen in years.
Peter Pan 2 fixes most of the problems from Peter Pan. It’s definitely better then the original
I hate the argument of there being "not enough" racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia and other terrible things in media depicting minorities. I'm a sapphic woman, and hearing people say that media needs more homophobia to be realistic is infuriating. Like name one piece of media that is 100% realistic, I'll wait. Media is a form of escapism, so obviously people of all minorities would love to think of an ideal world where no bigotry exists. If I wanted to experience this shit I would just go sit in the back of my English class and listen to the boys say the f slur repeatedly.
Also it's kinda showing people that this kind of mindset is normal. These people are not normal. Maybe we should just ignore the people who treat minorities horribly based on factors outside of our control, showing them how it feels to have little to no representation.
I don't think it's wrong to show minorities going through bigotry, because many go through that.
But saying "there isn't enough bigotry in this film/show/book about [insert minority group]" sounds like minority groups don't deserve a normal life. And it also sounds like as if people who have never went through bigotry have the right to dictate how minority groups should live their life.
And yeah, I agree, stuff like films are a way of escapism. So, imo, it shouldn't be wrong to make a story where stuff like racism, homophobia, etc. aren't present.
I feel like they should show struggle, but not because of who they are. These characters should go through struggles that develops them like any other character, but not because of them being of a specific minority group.
THIS! I'm an LGBTQ+ person who doesn't identify as my assigned gender at birth, and *if* there is an LGBTQ+ character it's immediatly shot down by media for not being "realistic." Often times there are no LGBTQ+ characters at all due to homophobia! It's downright frustrating.
Richie in IT is an amazing example of a well written LGBTQ+ character. It follows no sterotypes and people would have no clue if it wasn't shown in the second movie. It's not his whole personality, just part of him.
@@firebuggg7383 ikr it seems like we either get no representation or representation that just reminds us of how shit the world is for us. like I like the validation of seeing someone else go through my problems but let me escape it for once jeez
Ladies I really appreciate you all shedding light on this topic with your perspectives! But as a lady with autism, I wanna point out this question: why are all the Disney princesses neurotypical?
Which leads into the topic of why theres no current disney princess with a disability, physical or mental. Not to be a snowflake, but I always wondered about why that is. And no I'm not saying all representation is a good thing. However such a lack of representation cant be good right?
If I ever live out my dreams and work for Pixar, one of my primary ideas was a princess story based around a girl with pure ocd and maladaptive daydreaming. I struggle with both on a daily basis and it’d be cool to see pure ocd, which isn’t just physical compulsion but mainly mental, on the big screen.
@@golfwang8084 I hope it works out
True, but I really liked Ariel as someone autistic myself and who becomes very quiet when I'm tired. I especially adore her collecting thing, as I use to have phases in my life I collected rocks, cards and tea. Now into digging up old bottles
I just wish there were more female characters of colour who openly say they're autistic and had good representation. And no we aren't all super brainiacs who have no understanding of social normalities that adore terrorising the lives of our unsuspecting new guardians
Because people don't like having their heroes as "imperfect" and they perceive mental and physical disability to be "imperfection" its a messed up reality that people with disabilitys are still seen as lesser.
They would also have to give genuine effort to do it correctly and despite the fact that diseny has the resources to do the "resurch" required (which could just be talking to people or disabled writers telling stories)
I just dought diseny would do that. And if they did I don't trust them not to disrespect us all.
They tried making an ADHD character, it failed to the point where they just erased the whole character.
It was a disgusting stereotype of people with ADHD, and didn’t even go in deep in the disorder and tried to make her as “normal” as possible, while the only “odd(?)” thing was that she was organized?
I have ADHD and it’s VERY different from just being “organized”
I mean Mulan 2020 is also deeply misogynistic ,because nobody can achieve what she did because no woman has her superpowers. There have been so many historical documented occasions where women dressed up as men to archive their goal and even outperformed men and I feel like Disney spits on them. Basically Mulan 2020 boils down to you have to be special from birth or you will never archive anything.
Also can female warriors have amour and tied back hair at least once?
Oh god I have SO many problems with Milan 2020, I REFUSE to watch it not just because of the film itself but of the controversies of the production and actors 🤮
As a white woman, I knew Disney did some racist things in the past but HOLY SHIT I didn't know it was that bad. Like I knew about the Siamese cats, Song of the South, some of the Aladin stuff, and just the really obvious things. But the Lion King, Cinderella, and the Princess and the Frog went way over my head. It is strange to see recent movies show these things without notice because of ignorance to the cultures they represent. You deserve better than this. Like I would have loved to see stories based on actual folklore from different parts of the world instead of **insert generic western tale** like I love those too but not when they are used as the equevalance of white washing or black face. idk if this will happen but I hope Disney will make some changes in the future especially since thay just keep growing. Now I'm gonna watch anime made by the people they represent.
The cats are definitely a problem but if you are watching it through adult eyes. I remember hating those two snots because they were mean to lady wreaked everything. Now I'm going "this didn't age well"
I'm Asian myself, but I never really considered the fact that the Siamese Cats were so racist, or even villains for that matter. They just seemed like two asshole cats that showed up for like five minutes. And me and my family always sung that song a lot because we thought it was funny and fit our own Siamese cat.
I clocked Aladdin as problematic as a small white child. The amount of people that told me I was wrong was a thing...
Thanks for a great video!
This video came out so well and I'm so impressed that were able to drive so many points home by adding in the elements we chatted about!
Thank you all for working through this.
You’re all amazing. Thank you for this discussion!
I'm half navajo and I loved Pocahontas bc I was never taught about the real pocahontas story. I got a watered down historical record from the public school system. Once I learned, it really ruined it for me... My native dad was never taught the story either since we were not raised on the reservation. Peter pan pissed me and my dad off quite a bit tho. That was bullshit. Aladdin is just so confusing because I thought it was supposed to portray medieval arabic culture-ish but like... I guess the palace does look like it's based on islamic architecture. The Taj Mahal is inspired by islamic architecture design which tends to be of arabic influence. There are plenty of Muslims in India as well. Although they shouldn't have plopped the Taj Mahal in an arabic setting bc that is weird and out of place. Also I guess I can see that some arabic people are light skinned Caucasian but... Why they gotta make all the bad guys more stereotype ethnically arabic- looking while the protagonists look more white and lighter skinned? Why is everybody a thief or a sex object?
In middle school I read a book from the perspective of a young white boy, which I think was done because no one’s sure exactly what actually happened since it was originally only John Smith’s perspective and doing it from Pocahontis’s perspective would require making decisions as to what actually happened. I don’t remember the name of the book, but it talks about how hard it was to live in pre-America without any help and the uncertainty as to what parts of John Smith’s story were true
Aladin is odd because the og may have been chinese and jafar was north african so wherever the story happen could be anywhere in the arabic world of back then but also maybe asia too? They pretty much just mixed a bunch of cultures into one and westernized some stuff, It's odd all around.
Your completely forgetting the fact that Aladdin is based in a fictional universe in a fictional kingdom BASED not one but multiple things
I really appreciate you all sharing your perspectives on this topic. As a mixed indigenous person who grew up seeing the movie Pocahontas, lemme tell you what an uncomfortable thing it was in my household. But it was all Disney gave us, so we just kind of grimly accepted it. It's amazing what minorities have to settle for when there's nothing else for us.
I would like to know your opinion on Little Creek from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron
@@starrsmith3810 I really liked Little Creek. I have a bit of a soft spot for him because I have Lakota family members. So while Im of a different tribe, he reminded me of my extended family.
In general the movie's portrayal of native people and the relationship with horses and protecting their land was a very welcome change from Pocahontas.
I’m half Native American, nohkôm (my grandma) REFUSED to let me watch Pocahontas. We only got to watch Brother Bear but nohkôm was so upset whenever Pocahontas was mentioned and I get where she was coming from, since she was a 2nd or 3rd generation Residential School survivor. This was the same with Peter Pan. And the first time I watched Pocahontas, I cried genuine and angry tears.
Also the whole thing with Peter Pan, the girl was given NO lines and was only there to give Pan the “Eskimo” kiss and be seen as exotic. It does hurt too because it pushes the “red skin indian” stereotype on us and it makes it hard for me, a Native American, to be seen as Native American since I am pale and not a “savage”.
I never give money to the Mouse because of its impact on US copyright law, which makes it impossible to provide digitized historical documents or books to the public. This review of the continuing racism in even more recent films makes me more determined not to give this billion-dolllar company any $upport. I remember the sexism from my childhood, but I haven’t seen most of these older movies in a long time, and I haven’t seen many of the more recent movies at all. Glad to continue spending my hard-earned money elsewhere.
I wasn't very into the mouse's movies as a kid but in the last few year I have become VERY anti-mouse! Their manipulation of copyright law is absurd, they are holding history hostage because they don't want to lose a couple dollars. All while they snatch up every single entertaining company and popular franchise! They need to be evaluated for anti-trust violations, and broken up.
@@MinimalistTheatre333 Quit spamming
I started hating Disney when they tried to copyright the name 'Loki', cause I have friends who believe in and worship norse Gods. Then I started down the rabbit hole of how terrible Disney is and I started hating them even more
Thank you, everyone, for your education on these topics! I admit, growing up white, in the South, these were not conversations that I even heard of until well into my college years... and even then, with some incredulous undertones. One of my directors in college liked to use the struggle of African Americans and their modern poverty as window dressing in her shows. It was never to say anything, but she believed that having it on the stage "said enough", and it was an aesthetic she enjoyed. The reason I bring this up is because in Muse's section about The Princess and the Frog and how they just wished to see Black people exist without needing to stand for something, it reminded me of perhaps the most egregious statement this director made... and it stuck with me. "Black theater is the theater of suffering." And that was where she left it. Her Black characters were always the ones suffering for one reason or another. Poor, downtrodden, ill, dying, whatever. It feels like so many people subscribe to that theory in creating media featuring persons of color - specifically African Americans - subscribe to that theory... and it really is time for a change.
;-;)
Such a great conversation and so many important points made on the deeply problematic representation that exists in this company's past and present. As a latinx person, our representation in Disney has also had a history of being relagated to characters who are talking animals. The character of Jose Carioca from Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros was the ONLY Brazilian representation in US-made media I had growing up, and he's a talking parrot in essentially a propaganda film. I have a lot of complicated feelings about this character now that I'm older because Jose meant so much to me as a kid but I can see the issues with his character as an adult. Then there's Emperor's New Groove, which has it's own issues, including a predominantly white cast and a black actress playing the villain (love Eartha Kitt to death and she rocks it, but that's not great) to represent an indigenous civilization.
As a half brazilian and half finnish Jose was like.. A happy representation in our family. It is wild to hear about the character as an adult so I can understand a bit what kind of mixed feelings the green parro guy gives these days - I think in my own personal experience, as I started to grow up I felt odd how flirty and how much he was after ladies.. What started bothering you as you grew up?
@@k4r4k0 I am also half Brazilian; born and raised in America but one side of the family all is from Brazil and Bolivia. So when I was little Jose and The Three Caballeros was a way to connect to my family and culture. When I visited Brazil they even had comics with him (which I still have). But yeah, as an adult, the flirtatiousness and the over sexualization of pretty much every woman who appears in the film is uncomfortable. It also being basically war/post-war propaganda doesn't sit all that well with me either because it just doesn't feel genuine as an adult. "Look at our friends (allies) in the South! What beautiful places and people! Sure glad they are on our side of the war!" Thinking on this whole general topic of representation, it is such a low bar to say at least Jose and Panchito were voiced by Brazilian and Mexican actors (in *1944* and it's been really the last 20 years they've actually made any effort with casting for other films), but again, it's talking birds.
HECK, YEAH! As a Brazilian, I've always had a lot of consideration for José's character, as he's the only Brazilian character made by disney and a rare kind in North American media.
I mean, the only other Brazilian characters in animation when I was growing up, were the ones from Rio - and that because the director, Rodrigo Santoro, was Brazilian himself.
But that representation, even though kinda accurate, was so... wrong LMAO! Zé Carioca is basically the "Brazilian street-smart"("brasileiro malandro") stereotype, specially in the 40's movies. And for almost the next 80 years he would be voiced with a heavy Mexican accent.
The only "good" representation of him on media, the one that mad me smile, was on DuckTales 2017 reboot. There no one mispronounced his name or made him speak spanish... there's even an episode that shows some *real* Brazilian food!
Fortunately, the representation in Rio was way better, even though still heavily stereotyped. After all, Blue Sky had to sell it for the American audiences before everyone else. And what sounds more Brazilian, for foreigners, than Rio de Janeiro, Carnaval and samba?
@@zuzuomelete and that's why I took woody woodpecker as my favorite animated bird
I like Emperor's New Groove and in all Latam is loved. Like i know that may be somethings wrong but you are watching it from a USA point of view. Won´t judge but, I think the only way any of us may get a 100% accurate representation is by making our own movies. Is a movie done by a American studio, like you can´t expect it to get completly accurate. Tho, the allies part, yeah. You should check all the shortcuts Disney made after WW2 about Latam as allies. Uruguayos were mad haha. Lol.
Pocahontas isn't even drawn to look indigenous since they decided the voice actress Irene Bedard wasn't "hot enough" so they combined her face with Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington to make her "sexier".
One thing that I noticed even as a kid/teen was WHY WAS everybody in Lion King who was from pride rock like lowkey white or lightskin and why was everyone who was seen as bad from the outcast land INCLUDING Kovu, dark. Like wtf was that about
They weren't trying to make it racist.
@@Str4wb3rrii they most likely weren't but it still felt off
Not really tho, the female lions that aren't from the pride rock are not dark skinned and the male ones are heavily implied to be scar's children so they just took after their father
@@meatchips4936 Kovu wasn't Scar's son though, I think it was mentioned Zira found him or something like that. Would be weird if Kiara married her cousin
@@meatchips4936 The lions from pride rock where all significantly lighter and had more European features ..... eventhough they were animals?? All the "outsiders" where both darker and more aggressive. This was definitely racially motivated🤷♀️
I was a history major in college so much like you peeps, I can't say why it's problematic for indigenous people in terms of stereotypes. But I can definitely tell people what really happened to the real Matoaka in history (Pocahontas' real name).
TW: For violence towards indigenous people, diseases, and kidnapping.
When she and John Smith first met she was most likely 12-years-old and he was 28. So nothing romantic would've happened between them. And due to issues with supplies that the Natives had a shortage of, the English reaction was violent. At one point it got so bad the real Cheif Powhatan moved his people's village so they would be left alone. As for the put her head on John Smith's head part. Smith possibly made it all up or it was a ritual that he misinterpreted. Matoaka wouldn't have been able to do it at the time because she was too young for certain rituals. Later on in her life when she came of age around 15 I believe. Native Oral traditions state that she eventually got married to the warrior Kocoum and had her first son with him.
But, at the age of 17-18, she was kidnapped by the British, Kocoum was murdered, and she was forced to learn English, convert to Christianity and then marry John Rolfe. Once she made it to London and soon gave birth to Rolfe's son, Matoaka was used as a marketing ploy all around England to stir up government-sponsored investments in Jamestown. But due to being indigenous and not encountering British diseases in her life, she contracted smallpox and died at the age of 20 she never saw her 21st birthday or her people ever again. Now take that information and think back to the movie and you can see more problems that way.
(not so) fun fact: they made a pocahontas sequel where they tried to be more historically accurate and romanticized her marriage to John Rolfe and her assimilation into British culture. So.... that was a thing. -_-
She was also SA’d and they told her they would take her back home when they stole her away, and they also RENAMED her Rebecca. Allegedly, she didn’t die from smallpox but was poisoned.
It’s sick. A lot of what happened and still happens to our people (sooo many indigenous women go missing and the news pretty much just doesn’t talk about it) gets covered up or twisted so that the perpetrators (and by this I refer to people still alive who contribute to undermining the culture and history of indigenous tribes) don’t feel guilty or ashamed about what they did, so that people won’t know how awful the perpetrators are, and so that people don’t find out the real, bloody, horrific history of this country.
im a white latina, and even back in 2009 when i was still a teen i thought "wait but why does the black princess need to keep working even after she becomes a princess? why cant she just have a happy ending like cinderella, who also worked hard and landed a prince? and why is this one set in such a specific time period compared to all other princesses? and why is the dang story with the kiss before midnight and the blood and the contract and the body switch and the frog transformation so damn complicated?????"
right now the more "modern" princesses dont have a prince, and are like independent and adventurous and stuff... but i Have Noticed that while merida doesnt end up with a guy (shes a disney princess™, but will always be an outsider/mocked in a way and thats pretty shitty tbh), and elsa doesnt end up with a guy either.... rapunzel and anna do. like, the two pretty white princesses?? who end up being like, side characters in their own adventures? while moana and raya, both dont end up with a boyfriend, but also are the main actors and driving force of their own stories. this is not bad, of course, but i do think its interesting to see. of the "princesses of color", pocahontas, raya, moana and mulan, none of them end up with a boyfriend. again. its not something that doesnt happen to newer white princesses... but considering how comparatively smaller the amount of non white disney princesses there are, its enough for me to see a pattern.
Indeed. There's plenty of sexism in the mix too.
@@mcyanfeis3104 in the first movie, mulan & shang weren’t a couple, & the second movie is infamously it isn’t considered canon
With Tiana.. I think it was her just enjoying something she was good at. I mean she was raised in certain environment, but she OWNED Her skill. They wanna eat your food? Ya gotta pay the real worth baby
i totally see what you're saying. it's literally the "strong independent black woman" trope. WOC shouldn't have to be girlboss pillars of strength all the time and i think it reveals a deep ignorance when it comes to intersectional politics. white feminism, 2nd wave in particular, has been predicated on getting white women into the workforce and being more financially independent. i can't remember who said this, but i'll always remember this quote: "the difference is, black women have *always* been working". so to uphold black female protags as "hard workers", or "strong independent women who don't need no man" etc is actually kinda of missing the point despite good intentions. it's viewing female empowerment through the lens of white feminism, pure and simple. if anyone deserves the cinderella fantasy, it's black women.
fwiw, i don't think it's an inherently awful trope. you can take a lot of pride and joy in a badass female protag who is active and works hard for what she wants. but the general pattern does belie a certain ignorance imho (and well, are we surprised that hollywood feminism is bad?)
@@mcyanfeis3104 SEAsian here, seeing as Raya is technically set in a south east asian setting (more or less) allow me to say, that queer communities are quite the taboo topic around here. The creator herself is Malaysian, just like me, and in Malaysia it is a Muslim dominated country. Generally the people of Islam aren't very accepting of the queer community (generally, not all, the people do not reflect the religion, remember that) Aside from that, the name 'Raya' could be a Malay/Melayu name, meaning 'celebration', it could imply that Raya may be Malay although her religion is unspecified. The way Raya and Namaari have been written together has been quite the close shave as well as pretty questionable, I think it would've been too much of a risk to take portraying Raya as inherently queer. (Although I would've loved me some queer SEAsian rep, we're literally starving here) but I think although Raya and Namaari's relationship is pretty queer coded, taking it any further than that could ban the movie from conservative countries like mine. Ironically enough, the same community which are meant to be the target audience. So, I think that's why a lot of people just prefer not to label Raya as a queer character, for the safety of it's availability to audiences like me I suppose.
I was too young to understand the racism and sexism issues in Disney movies but also I watched them in french and the white voice actors didn't put any racial stereotypes in the voice acting or affiliated people of color with negative characters so i couldn't know about this, they simply spoke common french ( never saw a Disney movie with a Marseille or Bretagne accent for exemple, which is a shame too) . As I learned english fluently in my twenties, I strated rewatching cartoons and movies I loved when I was little and Oh boy did I understood very quickly the problem. Also white actors where mainly casts too but the voice actor I vividly remember was Sebastian in The Little mermaid because it was Henri Salvador's voice. He was a black Carribean who was super famous in french speaking countries and other. I always admired and liked him since childhood ( thanks dad) , a very talented musician, singer, guitarist, comedian and cabaret artist. His voice was instantly recongizable and strong in character, he was perfect. He did have an accent though, but It was his and not fabricated to fit a narrative. I actually prefer him over the english speaking version of Sebastian but I guess I am biased XD. I really appreciate women and men speaking aloud about those issues, bringing the attention it needs so we are a better when creating stuff for kids and what we tell them about society through movies and cartoons.
My issue with Princess and the Frog is the lack of positive black male figures. Princess Weekes did a great video on this, and she mentioned that the only black male figure that's positive is her father.......who dies off screen after 3 minutes of meeting him.
Watch soul then. It's got a ton of positive figures overall in the movie lol.
@@berserkagain7976 I haven’t seen it, but she made a video about how flawed that movie was too.
15:30 It also doesn't help that Jas was 15 at this point. It was revealed in a studio interveiw with her animator concept designer, so I remember seeing in the past. That she was in features based off that animators teen daughter at the time. 😅So- that probably doesn't make this any better.
Have you seen how 15 year olds dress these days/back then? You saying a women isnt aloud to dress the way she wants seems kinda sexist to me.
@@berserkagain7976 Wasn't speaking on her dress code. Though that's a whole nother topic on difference of cultures and eras. But I was more referring to that seductress smooch she made with Jafar on screen. Don't ever think I've think her come onto Aladdin like that on screen.😅
@@blackmagician7645 That's because she was trying to distract Jafar from noticing Aladdin had made it safely back. Jafar wished for Jasmine to fall in love with him (which was one of 3 things the genie couldn't do).
Thank you so much for the work you four put in to make us more aware of the stereotypes and tropes that we should be looking out for in our media. One of the many things I took away from this was the parallels between Tiana and a mammy character which Muse pointed it out, and their points about how Tiana is generally just so disrespected by the Disney franchise was eye opening. So once again thank you all.
Nooooo not the Nala eyes XD
That scene still makes me so so uncomfortable!
Holy crap. Thank you so much for this conversation. I've gradually grown more aware of how problematic Disney is/was but seeing everything discussed in this context I'm genuinely floored.
The findings of the study discussed around 29:12 hit me really hard. So many people who are not part of marginalized communities just do not understand the far reaching and all encompassing psychological consequences of non-existent or dehumanizing representation in media.
I've never thought of the mice being a "mammie" figure. I appreciate you putting that out there! I Suppose to expand on that, could the animal friends in "Sleeping Beauty" kinda fit in the same mold?
When I went to India, I was taken by that and ever since I've watched the Animated Aladdin with my kids (they did a good job re-working some of the outfits for the new one, but there's still some problems because of COURSE they had to keep the trad costume */s) I make a point of addressing that with my kiddos.
Wish @Miah Grace have been invited. She did a really good breakdown on the "Pocahontas" movie and why making the Pocahontas costume (and the movie) is h**lla problematic.
OMG, DEF they should have had Louis in "PatF"!
Not being POC myself, but taking into account WHY they said the mice could represent a mammie figure, I don't think the animals in Sleeping Beauty quite fit the bill. They don't really provide for her needs or take care of her in any way. They seem to be playmates more than anything.
@@naomijackson4691 The mammie getting the pretty white lady ready for the ball/party is a very classic movie scene and if anything this is exactly what is happening in Cinderella.
It's slightly more abstract but as Cinderella's need is to get out of her horrible life situation, and the only way is through marriage, she needs appropriate appearance to attend the function where she can meet him. This, a life altering need, the mice - and a magic mother figure - goes out of their way to make happen.
@@ThePixiixiq they said they didn't think the animals in sleeping beauty fit the bill as a "mammie figure" as understood why the mice in cinderella are
@@izzyeis5752 Thank you for the "poke". I was more tired when I answered and read something that wasn't there. Sorry :)
thank you for making this video, this is so important. growing up in germany i feel some of the racism in disney movies got lost in translation and different choices in voice acting (like the mice in cinderella don't have offensive accents) so i'm still learning new things. like, i am already disappointed in disney but dann there is even more than i thought. again, thank you for the video
Same in Poland. Im most countries dubbing all of these was lost in translation (thank God). I was surprised when for the first time someone started to talk about racism in those movies becouse even know when I watch it in my country's dub there is none.
In the original Aladdin soundtrack, if you had it on CD, the lyrics were NOT changed. Idk if they adjusted it for Spotify or something but I have the original soundtrack.
Also Jasmine's original model wasn't a brown woman, it was one of the animators sisters. A white woman. -.-
Oh Pocahontas, I look white, but I am Native American and I remember being told about the actual John Smith as a kid and whatnot. While I enjoy some of the movie, even as a kid I was like "wait. This is wrong." And it's ugh. UGH. I very much stopped watching it entirely by the time I was in high school and I hate seeing people treat it like "oh this is what native culture is" no it's not. No. Nope. There's SO MANY cultures. No. Siiigh. Like in a way the Peter Pan scenes are almost easier to deal with because they're so obviously stereotypically racist? Pocahontas acts like it tries not to be racist? But...ugh
What kind of incestous stuff is that, she is highly sexualized lol.
I’m still annoyed that Disney modeled Aladdin and Jasmine after white people.
I love Pocahontas but even I know it doesn’t at all represent every indigenous tribe. Hell it barely does for Pocahontas tribe.
I remember breaking into tears whenever Pocahontas was played in our house because I loved learning about Native American’s and to see them hunted killed me inside. Even if it’s a cartoon with a happy-ish ending, it’s still terrible and haunting.
I always thought of Naveen as some sort of Indian inspired fantasy guy. Especially when I saw his mothers "kinda" sari influenced dresses.. Funny thing, though.. I work at Disneyland. I dont think we've ever had an Indian man portray him. Latino, Pacific Islander, Plilippino, mixed race, yes... but never Indian. 🤔. Guess they never knew about the auditions 🙃
When I watched theories as a kid I didn't think that naveen was black
I used to think he was, like, Mexican and black or something-
The Princess and the Frog really reminded me of a Don Bluth movie, especially his Anastasia. There too the princess decides she's better off being a regular girl instead of a royal at the end. But since Anastasia is white it's not racism or problematic, because...I dunno. Also it's estabilished really early in the Princess and the Frog that Tiana LOVES cooking ever since she was a little girl. Her owning her restaurant at the end was the fulfillment of her own childhood dream, which was being a great cook, not being a princess (unlike Charlotte, Tiana has always had 0 interest in that; might I remind the audience that the 'princess' franchise does not really exist, it's a marketing ploy to make little girls and millenials buy more stuff). She did learn though that OVERworking is not good and that there is more to life than work. I know, such problematic ideas that really harm little girls, especially little black girls, because living in a cotton candy palace doing nothing and being beautiful is what we should ALL aspire to. For real though the people behind the Princess and the Frog were put inbetween a rock and a hard place, because their movie, in virtue of starring a black princess, would have been seen as 'problematic' anyway they chose. Tiana having a white prince? Racist, sexual colonization. Black prince? Racist, this means black women can only choose black men as partners. Nondescript fantasy prince? Racist, because it's racist. Tiana being a work-oriented young woman with a goal? Racist, she is a mammy stereotype. Tiana being a beautiful spoiled princess who never has to work? Racist, perpetuates the 'lazy negro' stereotype and it's a bad image to expose little girls too as well. Tiana being beautiful? Sexist. Tiana being ugly? Racist. The moral: you can never win.
"The moral: You can never win." True. People are different so they don't see things in the same way and sometimes we have to remember that just because we personally think it's bad, that doesn't mean it's objectively is or the creator had ill intentions with it. Like I came across a fandom discourse: "He has to be a kid, otherwise this autistic representation is infantilizes neurodivergent adults, because there is no nd adult who behaves like that in real life." opposed to "He has to an adult, I behave similarly too, it's a perfectly fine representation and just because somebody is childish, that doesn't mean the fandom should be babying them." There is always gonna be someone who complains, because experiences are not universal. You can't please everyone.
Other examples come to my mind, like Hazbin Hotel. Some people got mad that they portray some of the queer characters as bad people, while others are happy, because they are "sick of the soft uwu gay boy rep", they want queer people to be... Various kind of characters too and that includes morally grey/flawed/evil/everyman, etc. besides nice/only having minor flaws (and the characters are also in Hell).
*Just to be clear: This is a reaction to only to this comment, not the video as the whole, I still have to watch that*
They killed the father off early on to make the story take shape in the princess and the frog. It gives Tiana the incentive to work even harder to make "Their dream" come true, her father and herself feeding their gumbo to a lot of people. Its made clear she loved her father so much she wants to do him proud. The way they killed him off is subtle but implied that he died fighting WWl. Not at all unrealistic for the time period they were in, he must have passed near the end of the war making the time frame of this story the late 20's or early 30's. The reason they portray her being a workaholic so hard, wasn't to portray her like a mammie figure, but to later teach a lesson on how the greatest wealth is immaterial. Love, family and friends are important and not to lose sight of that. The fact that you guys want her to be an airhead princess that's wealthy devalues her as a strong female role model that Disney set her up to be because lest we forget Tiana lives during a time when women did not work outside the home save for a few different roles. Tiana having her own place that she owns and runs is the very definition of a modern woman. Which is why Tiana is my favorite Disney Princess. It is very progressive of Disney since other princesses have nothing going for them at the end of their stories save for maybe Belle since she was educated by Maurice as she could read. The rest of the princesses 1939-90's pretty much were doomed to being a wife that has no equal role in the marriage and had kids, the end.
thank you, as a kid I always thought Tiana was so cool and the soundtrack to the movie was great, I thought it was obvious as to why she was a hard worker, people are reaching for anything to be racist. people ask to show different cultures but when they get a princess or a show that doesn't have a white main character they claim it's stereotypical or "white washed" I wish people could just enjoy movies and shows again without the status quo. kids don't think about stereotypes and racism, they just enjoy the movie, it's adults who overanalyze everything and ruin it. adults should view movies like kids do lol.
But it’s not reaching, I know you may not understand and may not be comfortable with this realization (for you) but Disney just need to do better, pain and simple there’s nothing else to it just they need to fix their past mistakes no matter how uncomfortable it is for them cause they choose to make these decisions and they aren’t good, people in the comments alike to you keep saying this all happened so long ago when that generation of people from those times 1920-now are still alive (as of around 2020 they have only just all recently pasted if not some still alive like some of my family) sure this movie is like a few years of so it “was a different time” (bad excuse so don’t use it cause wasn’t really a different time) but they could just tell the true story of Pocahontas, of Fa Mulan, Aladdin, and a BETTER story of princesses and the frog so they ARENT being racist or disrespectful to the cultures they are making money off of
@@AshaiNoir okay poc to poc cause I actually relate to Tiana very much, why do you feel shes not shown right.
@@mementomorinoey6700 I love the movie too and how they showed the scenes were good but not great, tiana was living on what looked like a old plantation, which is.. less than okay for me but it’s not my main problem my problem is that she needed a man to be successful, for such a possible story unlike princess tales she had the money, the skill, it was because she was black and a women which is great they showed it in the time but it would’ve been better if Lotie helped her cause that was her best friend, then she could’ve had it taken by the bank or just something that entire adventure they had is fine but the prince was kinda just a lazy rush boy and she was working to hard there’s a strong difference between helpmates and someone who is just paying for her
@@AshaiNoir But Navine just as you said barely played a part??? I mean its been awhile but I know they still used the money Tiana saved up before Navine plus the money she was paid by Lottie for the event, and they use Louis as "gentle encouragment" to get the investors to fork over the deed. Navine helped renovate the place but other that she did mostly everything by herself
Speaking on “the princess and the frog” I love how Disney reiterated their belief that a Prince could never find a black woman and fall in love with her beauty, so they made sure we knew he fell in love with her Personality first.
And Naveen was so trifling. Tiana deserved better.
@@labelle9921 I thought Naveen was cool 💀💀💀
While I agree partly, in The Princess and the Frog it’s shown in the beginning Naveen sees Tiana and tries to flirt with her. She shakes her head and walks off and he shrugs and continues playing. Then later in the movie he explains he “made that promise to a beautiful princess”. So he already thought she was gorgeous. And then fell for her personality. I say that because the voice actress was involved in the making of the movie.
nah i just think the princess frog is modern enough to not have to have a love at first sight like cinderella or snow white, like ariel and belle had the same "fall in love with her personality first" thing
So you want Naveen to fall in love with Tiana for her looks ? From what I know, that isn't something that's supposed to be praised. When in movies, a man falls for a white girl by looking at her, it's sexist, but when he doesn't do that with a black girl, it's racist ? How does that make sense ??
I appreciate you all, SO MUCH for this conversation! I knew many of these issues but hearing it from your perspective directly was really insightful and… horrifying. Ugh
❤️❤️❤️❤️ you all!
i appreciate you having this conversation and sharing it. i feel like there's so much glorification of disney in the costuming community. like, the types of people that feel like it's their god-given right to go to a park at least once every year, even when there's a raging pandemic and disney is forcing its workers to work in unsafe conditions because it values its profits over the lives and safety of its employees. like, you can enjoy the movies! it's fine! but please PLEASE just be real about how problematic the movies and the corporation have always been and continue to be, and about how the fantasy of ~disney magic~ has only ever really existed for white christians. i know disney adults are trying to relive their childhoods, but.... you're adults. apply some critical thinking. i think i saw somewhere that even the heiress of the disney fortune is openly critical of the company's corporate practices. if she can do it, so can you, i promise.
Yes! This! We can love something and still want it to do and be better!
Yes! Abigail Disney has so many great things to say about this, I really reccomend her 2019 interview with The Cut
Adding to the Lion King, the good protagonists are the bright, light-skinned/slightly tanned lions and ALL the villains have dark fur, dark manes, etc. And they have the AUDACITY to say, "Oh, we didn't apologize, but we fixed it!"
I think that’s because villains usually are represented with darker , and moodier colors. If you want your villain to be seen as a villain at first glance, then using bleak colors makes it easier to read which is what the lion king does. So I can’t say for sure but I think that using those colors were to make it easier to tell what was. And that there was probably no racially motivated choices behind it.
Because this is an archetype. Forces of God, forces of Devil - forces of *light,* forces of *darkness.* The fact that humans have skin range that is on the spectrum of white - black and everything in between is more of a coincidence than anything. At the time this archetype was born not a lot of people knew what black people looked like or if they even existed due to the lack of education and exposure.
I have never thought of the mice from Cinderella as black.
Lmao because they aren't. In what way are they supposed to be black people? The crowd from dumbo on the other hand, they are 100% supposed to be.
I don’t just want to see different ethnicities of princesses get the same chance I also want to see some plus sized princesses or Maybe some princesses with disabilities we need more princesses we can relate to
No fatties
My heritage makes me a mutt, but 100% of the time I see indigenous people in Disney, it just feels wrong. My grandparents made jokes about it and found parts of it hilarious, but there's always been that tension.... i would really love to see stories written and brought to the public by more people who are indigenous particularly, but also all POC.
There are a lot of Indigenous projects written by Indigenous people out there. Rutherford Falls, Reservation Dogs, Rhymes for Young Ghouls. They're not animated but Native people are real humans and not images created by Hollywood. Some of my in-laws were actors on Northern Exposure, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, etc.
Disney is all kinds of problematic, and it’s so disappointing to look back and to see that it’s basically still the same where it matters. Until peoples are allowed to tell their own stories (being involved throughout all of production from writing to acting to producing, costume, cinematography, animation etc) it’s not going to get any better.
Thank you for the informative video, I definitely learned a lot from it! I think collabs like this one uniquely create conversation and explore them in ways that one person talking to a camera cannot always achieve.
I’m Indigenous. My white mom was thrilled Pocahontas was a movie and took me to see this. First Indigenous Disney princess! Such progress! I guess it was ok for the time, but it’s just as well I got educated about my heritage from my dad.
I never heard of the Cinderella mice being questionable. Since I didn't grow exposed to many cultures other than my own, and where most of children's movies were dubbed, I didn't catch a lot of awful things until I learned about it on the internet and/or got to learn English and experience the original scripts my self. To this day I'm still learning, thank you for talking about this and pointing so many things out
Some of this really seems to be pushing it. Yes, Mulan and Tiana work, but they are praised for that because it shows that they are strong, independent women who are not delicate pansies like most of the white princesses. Wouldn’t you also be upset if the African and Asian princesses were depicted as “weak” and needing a man to save them? Also, the mice in Cinderella take care of her and make her a dress because SHE takes care of them and makes THEM clothes! They are returning the favor of her kindness to them! I agree with some of your points and agree that Disney certainly has a problematic past, but I just think you could be reading too far into this and being upset by things that were not at all intended the way you interpreted. I think this can bring a lot of unnecessary hurt into your lives.
If you knew ANYTHING about racial stereotyping you would know that NOBODY would get upset about Tiana being "weak" and "needing to be saved by a man." Because black women, ESPECIALLY the darker skinned you go, AREN'T seen as weak. We AREN'T seen as "weak, delicate pansies," as you put it, the same way white women are. The same way the white princesses are. We AREN'T seen as beautiful. We are NEVER seen as damsels in distress that "need to be saved." You yourself are saying that the white princesses are seen as "delicate pansies," bc white women are seen as that. Black women (and to an extent, brown women) are seen as strong, angry, crazy, hypers*xual, etc. Tiana is the Mammy trope, same as the Strong Black Woman trope. Her life is just work work work work. She's not allowed to be a ditzy bimbo with loads of huge puffy glittery ballgown dresses with wealth and money and a castle. The fact that the character was so beautiful was seen as a plus, but what's the point of that if she was a frog for 90% of her own d*mn movie?
I'm surprised that 'The Aristocats' weren't brought up for the "Everybody Wants to Be a Cat".
Or how Edgar (a white man) was trying to kill cats (minorities in his eyes)
I wish they mentioned how Pocahontas was based of a real life story, and that the real life girl's name isn't even Pocahontas. "Matoaka" is her real name, Pocahontas is only a nickname. Notice how I've been using the term "girl" this whole time? It is because she was about 10-12 years old when she would meet John Smith. Disney created a love story about that is just horrific.
Snow white was 14, their ages have nothing to do with racism
@@3173_Delta Snow is not a real person, as far as I know. It is still very bad that they kept her 14 but using a *real* little girl to tell a twisted romanticized version of real events is racist. Young girls of color are sexualized much more than their white counterparts.
Thank you all so much for this discussion
Growing up as a kid in the 70's I remember how The Wonderful World of Disney would be on every Sunday night. If your parents couldn't afford the movies on a regular basis this was how you learned the Disney catalogue. I remember allot of clips from Song of the South, and they ran the problematic clips you ran seconds of. This was also back when they'd play Gone with the Wind every Thanksgiving weekend for network television.
We don't have kids, so Disney really isn't part of our life. Apparently I wasn't missing much. New Disney didn't fall too far from the Old Disney tree. That's disappointing, not surprising, but, still - do better Disney.
- Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown/Pimisi
Thank you for this break down. My mother had used Disney movies as teaching moments due to how consistently problematic they were. But you all touched on more things and showed that not much has changed in a generation. It's just appalling with the sheer amount of money spent making the movies that a reasonable amount of money wasn't spent on research and representation in the creative process.
I remember watching peter pan for the first time and noticing my mothers discomfort watching the seen with the indigenous, and now knowing about my mothers heritage, and how on my moms side they were connected to the Cherokee tribe. I understand why she was so uncomfortable and disgusted by disneys representation of indigenous people.
brother bear is another movie I've heard people discuss the same problems with. The main characters are indigenous (I'm not 100% if they were supposed to be Inuit or another Alsakan/Candian tribe) and get turned into a bear and are a bear for the whole movie. Also, this could be a false fact I heard but supposedly the music used in that film was European-based rather than actual cultural music because they thought it sounded 'close enough.' And then another one which may not be as serious of a case is The emperor's new groove, which I get is mainly a comedy sketch set with an Incan back-drop (it is most likely Incan but they never outright said so). but the main characters are mesoamerican and one character gets turned into a llama (realistically speaking it should have been an alpaca anyway) for the whole movie. And then of course how Esmarelda is treated in the hunchback of Notre Dame, also the fact that the movie uses slurs to describe her and sexualizes her throughout and Disney still hasn't done anything (which doesn't surprise anyone)
Llamas and alpacas both live in south America.
@@Yessica13 I know, alpacas are just more prominent in Peru and the Andes mountains where the Incan civilization was.
Thank you for covering this subject! I'm Lakota. My in-laws are from different tribes in Oklahoma. My daughter in-law is Kiowa and Pawnee. So we have many different cultures and languages within the Native community. A lot of people just don't know Matoaka's real story. Her name was erased and she became Pocahontas to fit the narrative of making colonization more palatable. Romanticizing what happened to her and continues to happen because the town in England where she was buried has refused to return her remains so she can be laid to rest in her homelands with her people is disturbing. Her tribe still exists. Several people who are from the same nation are even on Twitter. This was such a good and interesting discussion!
Thank you to all of you for making such a high quality, educational and emotional video.
It's shocking how much of the wrongs we miss here in Brazil because of the dubbing. For example, there's no so such thing as a "black accent" in here. All of this, even though Brazil has the largest black population outside of Africa and one of the largest asian (especially japanese) populations too.
I'm Cherokee and I actually wasn't allowed to watch Peter Pan as a little kid 😅 I don't think I ended up watching it till I was like maybe 13 or 14? And I was like... Well okay then. That exists.
As someone with quarter Cherokee in them from their dad's side of the family I watched peter pan as a kid and in the end i honestly never really understood why kid me liked it when i watched it. Looking at it now I was just a small kid who never understood how bad the movie really was especially with the scene depicting things that are very outdated and very wrong.
Nobody os Cherokee.
Jasmine has always been brown skinned to me, idk how anyone could ever see her otherwise
I’m so glad you made these points about princess and the frog because it bothered me too. When I talked about it with a white friend (I’m also white) he accused me of being racist by not wanting to see a black story. I kind of always felt like why did the first black princess have to be not really a princess, why did she need to struggle so much, why couldn’t she have just been a princess who happened to be black.
I am such a fan of your sews and am SO GRATEFUL for you using your platform to address this. I am also so happy that you are working with costumers of color. RUclips recommends a lot of great costuming content to me, but very seldomly with RUclipsrs of color. Thank you for using your platform to share this information!
I'm sorry that we live in a world where this type of video is necessary, but I thank you a thousand times over for the generosity and courage of all of you for sharing your knowledge and experiences with the rest of us.
I LOVE Princess and The Frog!!😭The food always looked sooo good, so now I’m older and STILL somehow haven’t had gumbo or beignets! But I wasn’t really a fan that she was a frog for so long :(
The mice are brown in Cinderella which is a perfectly normal and common color. They have French names, like Jaque and Gus, when they get turned human they are Caucasian. Such as from Cinderella the sequel when the mice tell stories about their time in the castle when Jaque tells the story about the time Fairy God Mother turned him human at his request so he could better help Cinderella. There's no actual representation of POC in that film. The animators probably just choose a color that made sense and looked realistic for mice. Also, Cinderella took care of the mice too. She fed them and protected them and its not like she treated them like servants or "mammys" like you said in the video. I just wanted to get that point across. I agree with most of what's been said in this video except for the stuff about Cinderella
Cinderella was a stretch
I also would love to see more movies and tv shows of BIPOC folks just existing, in a fantasy setting, in a sci-fi setting, in whatever setting
'98 Mulan is my favorite Disney movie. She was a complete badass, Shang was the best Disney "prince". It had it's issues, obviously. The live action film was...oof. I remember thinking "this is pretty but where did all this European nonsense come from???" And then hearing about the camps...the whole situation is awful.
I'm a half-Arabic Austrian who was always relegated to play Jasmine (didn't help that my name's Yasmin, either) and I could never reconcile the imagery with both my dad's culture and heritage, and the stories he used to read to me.
Also, since I grew up speaking German I didn't catch most of the really racist parts when I was a kid (only ever watched the dubbed versions). RUDE awakening later. I've been done with Disney in a hot minute but this fantastic video really drove the point home. Well done, all of you amazing women!
I never felt comfortable with the Disney movie canon, and watching this video makes me feel good that my children grew up largely Disney free.
I wanted my daughter to be a strong, independent woman, not a girl who focused helpless princesses as role models until "some day her prince will come". I wanted my son to know there were many ways of being a male adult that did not fit the Disney stereotypes (which are just as rigid for male characters as female). I didn't want either of them to get locked into a "dreams can magically come true " (without the work) mindset.
Disney is pushing a groupthink, "opiate of the masses", "bread and circuses" mentality. They still are, though they've moved away from overt racism.
i don’t think u need to grow up completely disney free to be independent. i’m glad i grew up with disney and have all the nostalgic memories
You clearly haven't watched paid any attention to these movies because if you had, you would realize that there's more to the Disney princesses "THEY JUST SIT AROUND AND WAIT MEN, LOL"
And what the heck are you talking about when you say "male stereotypes?" Disney has a wide variety of male characters, all different in personality and/or motivations. Not every single male character is some hyper masculine dudebro prince (which I'm assuming is what you're referring to). Hell, even the princes weren't even the hyper masculine to begin with. Do you know how many "Prince Charming is secretly gay" I've heard growing up? Here's a clue... A LOT.
1. Watching Disney isn’t gonna make her less independent
2. There is plenty of princesses in Disney who don’t wait around for a man.
Tiana owns her own restaurant, Pocahontas saved the entirety of her tribe, Mulan saved China and her movie isn’t really focused on romance all that much, Elsa doesn’t have a man, Rapunzel’s dream was less a man and more about wanting to live life, Anna mostly wants to have a relationship with Elsa, Merida doesn’t have a man, Cinderella was a slave to her family and got away from them. Jasmine constantly stands up for herself and refuses to marry for any other reason except love.
They aren’t Disney princesses technically (but should be) but Esmeralda stands up for her beliefs, Jane is a bit of a nerd who happens to fall for Tarzan, Meg didn’t even want to fall in love again and is sassy as hell.
The princes? Constantly show good values themselves.
It's not a brothel, that's just a very persistent edgy fan theory that someone made up and now it won't die.
There is nothing in the movie that hints towards it being one aside from "a lot of women in one room" but that could of been anything.
Pocahontas: I’m not native and I get depressed thinking of this movie. Irene Bedard has a lovely voice and her songs have wonderful tunes, but literally everything else in this movie is astoundingly problematic.
i feel bad for never having noticing most of these things. though i know these feeling of "NOO!! THEY GOT IT ALL WRONG!!!" when watching American films.
while im not POC myself, i am a TCK (Third-culture kid) that has lived in Spain, South-Africa and now, In Germany.
THE AMOUNT OF TIMES that they show Africa (and South-Africa) as a continent full of just poor, starving children in huts is disheartning, though im not saying that this doesnt exist. it very much exists, BUT there is SO MUCH MORE to africa. so many trafitional foods, clothings and not EVERYTHING IS SAVANA FULL OF LIONS!!! THERE ARE JUNGLES, MOUNTAINS, OCEANS, DESERTS. THE COUNTRIES ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL AND UNIQUE WITH HUNDREDS OF TRADITIONS LANGUAGES AND MAGICAL AND INCREADIBLE STORIES. IT INFURIATES ME SO MUCH THAT TIME AND TIME AGAIN AMERICAN FILM WRITERS GET IT WRONG!! especially those american family comedy films where an american family go to africa and its JUST STEREOTYPES. "oh lets go to africa!! oh wow we get off the train and there is already a fucking hippopotamus blocking the door to our bus!!" bullshit. utter bullshit.
they don't even get the fucking animals right (and even their names sometimes)
if i get so sad at people getting one of my cultures incorrectly, I CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE HOW HARD it must be seeing such bad representation. bad representation sucks. it really really does. one can only hope it gets better in the future.
28:23
Then why did you spend so long talking about Aladdin? None of you are Arab, none of you are Muslim, none of you are even West Asian at all.
I am SO excited to get a full video specifically on your and your collaborators thoughts and theory. What a treat!!
I am native American and my mom and I heard about Pocahontas and watched it together. we never talked about it again after that.
I remember adutioning for a small Peter pan play and they had us sing and like, slap our mouths in a VERY stereotype-y way. I refused to do it bc I thought it was stupid 💀 good kid, good kid.
Yes! This is such an excellent discussion! In regards to the mice in Cinderella, honestly I hadn't thought of them as being racist stereotypes so thank you for pointing that out. There's also other stereotypes too---how about Oliver and Company? I think there's a few there and Fagin definitely ties into some very bad Jewish stereotypes as well (granted, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie).