Revisiting Disney: Some *Cute* Little Easter Eggs

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Some Cute Little Easter Eggs

You never really realize what a sick sense of humor some of the Disney animators have until you rematch the movies. Even then, you don't always catch their little Easter eggs. I was perusing Buzzfeed when I stumbled upon "25 WTF Disney Moments That Will Ruin Your Childhood," and figured, why not ruin my childhood? And they did, a little. I will definitely not be able to watch Jaq stack necklace beads on Gus Gus's tail with the same innocent, "Oh they're just working on a necklace!" understanding again. What I was more surprised by in the article is how probably 75% of the "childhood ruining" moments were sexual. They seemed to miss a lot of the more violent ones, for example I linked another Buzzfeed article that shows the striking resemblance between Scar's addressing the hyenas and Hitler addressing the Nazi SS soldiers. It's true that realizing the sexual relationships between the Disney characters are a little shocking, but I don't think they're any more scaring that the violent scenes and relationships which seem to be more easily accepted. If anything, the sexual relationships are just something that the adults watching these films with their kids are used to seeing or have experienced themselves so they should be less "childhood ruining," than watching he hyena's eat a zebra leg in the lion king (which is what they do, and I didn't realize that until I watched the movie last night in my common room) or watching Scar throw his brother off a cliff while his young nephew is watching. That was strikingly violent and changed my memory of the movie. I don't know which really is worse for children to see. I'm leaving it up to my readers to ultimately decide for themselves. Check out the article in my list of links on the side bar.

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Disney's as a Boys' Toy Too

I rarely remember that little boys, as well as little girls, watch Disney movies and look up to some of the characters. In many of the earlier films, the men/princes aren't really a significant piece of the story, but more recently males are playing a greater and greater role in Disney and Pixar movies. Males like Chang, Sebastian, and Wasabi serve as role models for young boys just as the princesses do for little girls. Because of this, it's just as important that little boys of all appearances and personality types appear in animated films. The Feminist community has been more outspoken about female representation than the male community, perhaps because women tended to be placed in a subservient position to the men of the stories in earlier Disney movies. However, if you try to closely examine the character of the men or male characters in the early Disney movies, they tend to just be place holders that allow the princess to achieve their happily ever after. In later films they are hyper masculine and tough, even sometimes emotionless, if they want to be attractive to the females in the story. The non-human characters like Sebastion, Timone, and the like can be more sensitive because they aren't the male protagonist trying to win the girl and save the world. If we're going to work to build up strong, independent girls, we should work equally hard to help develop sensitive, thoughtful boys. This begins with providing more complex characters for them to look up to and more representation in the male characters in Disney films.

Identity and Disney

Disney Characters' Race Breakdown

Although Disney is often criticized for its lack of diversity in the characters in its animated and live action films, the statistics are fairly close to those of the US census. Although in Disney, about 75% of the characters are White, and so minorities are somewhat underrepresented, the statistics are fairly close to the true proportions. In America, about 62% of the population identifies as White, while 17% of the population is Hispanic, 13.2% is Black, 5% is Asian, and 3.8% of the population identify as multiracial, Native American, or Native Hawaiian. While more diversity would be nice, especially regarding Latinos considering they are 17% of the US population and only one single Disney character is identified as Latino, the statistic is less drastic that I would have anticipated.