This articles beginning reminds me of a story from earlier this year. I take an anthropology class and the focus of the class is on Native Americans. One of the first assignments we had to do was find a negative or positive way that Native Americans are show in society. One boy in my class didn't bring in anything but he asked the professor if she could bring up a Peter Pan clip on the computer. We watched it in disgust. It was so racist and degrading to Native Americans. When I read this article it said many children get a lot of information from cartoon images. Peter pan was cited in particular. There are a lot of things wrong in society if that is what children are learning from!
The Black Cinderella essay makes some good points. It also reminded me of the fim we watched yesterday in class, It's Elementary. Even though that was about homosexuality, a girl said if we read stories about the princess and prince getting married we should read stories about a princess marrying a princess. Another kid said "They don't have that" and the girl said they should. The same thing applies here. If we read stories about a white princess and white prince, we should read read stories about a black princess and black prince. We do have one now called "The Princess and the Frog" but it was made very recently. I have not seen it but, I believe Dr. Bogad said, the princess is very stereotyped as an African American women. This is not surprising to me considering Disneys past. It is a step in the right direction, however, so at least that is something to cheer about.
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one thing i thought about after reading your blog was why not a black princess and a white prince, or a black prince with an asian princess. i feel like Disney movies are always going to be streotypical
ReplyDeleteI like how you brought up the way Native Americans are portrayed in popular children's media, last year I brought my children to Plymouth Plantation and was embarrasses after they kept calling the Native Americans "indians" even after I had asked them not to. My family is part Native American, and I wanted them to learn about the culture, but I definitely saw the common misconceptions they have learned through media.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good thing that they finally created a black princess and yet it still doesn't seem to impress anyone, or at least change their mind about Disney.
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