Talk to Kids About Racist Stereotypes in Classic Disney + Movies
When Disney + launched in 2019, some of its classic children’s films included a softball warning that read, “This program is presented as it was created. It may contain outdated cultural images. ” This wording is not only inadequate to categorize racist stereotypes in many old Disney films, but is also partially hidden in the film description or in a separate “Details” tab. But Disney is now making these warnings more detailed and visible, allowing parents to use them as an opportunity to talk to young children about racism and problematic storytelling.
The warning that appears in front of several classic Disney films, including Dumbo , Peter Pan, The Jungle Book , The Swiss Robinson Family, and The Aristocrats , is now prominently displayed before the start of the movie and cannot be quickly replayed. It reads:
This program includes negative portrayal and / or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and wrong now. Rather than removing this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful effects, learn from it, and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.
Disney strives to create stories with inspirational and inspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of human experiences around the world.
To learn more about how stories have affected society, visit www.disney.com/StoriesMatter .
If you then visit the Disney Stories Matter website, you can find more information on what is especially problematic in some films. Disney says the content alerts were created through a third-party advisory committee. For example, here’s a more detailed explanation of themalicious content in Dumbo , released in 1941:
Ravens and musical numbers pay tribute to the racist minstrel show, where blackened-faced white performers in tattered clothes imitate and ridicule enslaved Africans on southern plantations. The leader of the group in Dumbo is Jim Crow, who shares the title of laws that perpetuate racial segregation in the southern United States. In the song “The Song of the Roustabouts,” faceless black workers toil to offensive verses like “When we get paid, we throw away all our money.”
Likewise, here’s a warning about Peter Pan:
The film portrays indigenous peoples in a stereotypical manner that does not reflect the diversity of indigenous peoples or their true cultural traditions. He shows that they speak an incomprehensible language, and repeatedly calls them “redskins” – an offensive term. Peter and the Lost Boys dance, wear hats and other exaggerated imagery in a form of ridicule and appropriation of indigenous culture and imagery.
Disney has taken a position that parents can and should take with their children: we cannot learn from the mistakes of the past if we do not acknowledge them. We could avoid these films altogether, but use them as a springboard to talk to our children about racism, help them recognize it when they see it, and set an example of recognizing and learning from past mistakes so that we can do better at the future. future.
The conversation we have with our children about race and racism is not a one-off conversation; such important topics should be constant , and parents will look for opportunities to develop them. And it is certainly possible to present these films to our children for the first time.
Yes, and I don’t feel like you should wait for Disney to issue a warning before discussing sexist topics or other problematic storylines or character development in some of their other elders, but not really what the old films are. These conversations can also start now.
This story was originally published in 2019 and has been updated on October 19, 2020 to reflect current information.