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In our society media runs the world. The way the media presents certain stories to the world, can determine how you feel about that certain problem or story. Disney the company has been played a major role in media since the early 1900’s. During the 1900’s Disney produced many movies that have been accused of not necessarily being racist, but being socially unacceptable. During the 1900’s minorities were not socially accepted by the American culture. Disney is slight subtle ways would incorporate these bias views into their television programs, and films. Disney movies portray minorities with extreme cultural stereotypes. In The Lion King, Aladdin, Dumbo, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book and many other animated, films there’ re cultural misrepresentations that depicted racial minorities as certain characters.
One of the most cultural misrepresentations that Disney presents in their movies can be found in the 1992 film Aladdin. Throughout the movie Disney depicts thieves and guards as carrying swords almost at all time, depicting a highly violent culture. Another key point that I found compelling was the portrayal of protagonist character versus all the rest of the characters. Children are very easily convinced, and after watching the movie Aladdin their ideas and thoughts about the Middle East are based off of this movie.  Hopefully as they grow older they are able to realize that the stereotypes in Aladdin are used merely just entertainment.

In The Jungle Book in this scene of a monkey (King Louie) sings a song stating how he wants to be a human. Now on the surface this may not look like a big deal, but when breaking down the logistics of the whole scene and understanding the time period when the film was released can lead people to conclude many different things. First off, the film was released during 1967. This was during the time of the Civil Rights Movement, when blacks were somewhat making strides in gaining equal rights in America. During this time a monkey was a racial slur for an African-American. King Louie in movie doesn’t speak in the same mannerisms as the other characters. With Disney, and other companies like Disney controlling the media, it makes it harder for minorities to break free from these stereotypes.

Disney movies have been known to have stereotype all minorities in their films. In a scene for the movie Dumbo the audience meets a group of jive-talking black crows. When first looking at the scene there seems there is nothing wrong with the crows, however when closely looking at the crows the audience can see there supposed to be black. The leader of the crows is called Jim Crow, which is extremely ironic. Jim Crow is used to describe the segregation laws after Reconstruction. Also the crows are portrayed as uneducated. The ways the crows speak are also different from the way the rest of the characters in the movie speak. The other characters talk with proper English, where the crows only speak in slang. To make it even worse, white men putting on their best black voice impression played all the crows. Disney having stereotypical characters puts certain stereotypes put into young kids mind at a very young age. In doing this it ensures the continuance of systematic racism that is constructed to keep minorities oppressed.

Peter Pan and the song, “What Makes the Red Man Red?”  Much like the movie Aladdin, Disney illustrates Native Americans in Peter Pan to be ugly, uneducated, heavily accented, and barbaric.  These are all false representations of the Native American culture.  The fact that Disney movies are targeted to a diverse young culture, it is their duties too accurately portray every race in a positive manner. The industries must take into account that their movies are publically known to be portrayed as racist to many cultures.  As the years have progressed their racist criticisms have decreased, but the movies that still negatively depict other ethnicities remain so popular to young children.

When kids watch these Disney movies they believe that these stereotype roles are the right say to live. The Disney princesses have been one of Disney’s main attractions for kids all over the world. Minority “princesses” changed the way people look at Disney princesses as a whole because not seeing a white and blonde makes it so princesses can in fact be African American or another race. In The Lion King, Mulan and many other Disney movies, the voices of each character plays a big role when talking about minorities and how they’re depicted in Disney films. Other than The Lion King there are many different Disney movies that use voices of minorities to show who the character is. Another movie where this is established is in Mulan. An African American voices the little dragon whose name is Mushu. In the film he is one of the characters that doesn’t get taken seriously and is there for comedic relief. Minorities are usually the voices of characters that are comedic and this stereotype of people laughing at the character and his voice is in fact real. When people hear these voices they laugh and don’t think of it as anything important, just the director putting in humor. Overall, minorities are being used for voices in Disney movies as being comical and the object of ridicule. Cartoon characters are not taken seriously because they are comedic or evil do not necessarily represent a race, yet minorities voice them. These movies that we have closely examined are still prominent in todays modern media for young children. It is desensitizing to young children to have their minds filled with cultural misrepresentations of certain ethnicities.