Racism and Politics in Animation - Essay Example

Racism and Politics in Animation

31 May 2016

Introduction

Racism is not a new problem or issue in this world. It has been prevailing in the society for a long time. People were unaware of the effects of racism in the olden days but today they are actually realizing the reality of it. In order to understand what racism is it is necessary for the societies to understand the concept first as we commit racism in our daily life in some or the other form – may be that is unknowingly. Racism makes people favor people only from their own race and show abusive behavior towards people from other race.

One of the examples that can be better cited here is the prevailing skin color problem among the people of South Africa. Though the country is advanced in many aspects the society is yet to come out of the black and white people concept. In July 2012, head of the nonprofit group Genocide Watch, Dr. Gregory Stanton, had steered a fact-finding mission in South Africa. According to his research a coordinated campaign of genocide was carried out against white farmers who were called as Boers. This is just a small example of racism in one of the many places in the entire globe.

We can see racism in our daily life by many people. Now-a-days racism even motion pictures and animations are also not spared from this hatred and racism concepts. Some or the other way the story of an animated movie directs towards the concept of racism (Schreiber, 2014). This essay is take a deep dive into the facts and figures of racism and politics in animation.

Racism in Animation

Let’s start with the above picture. The above picture shows four racial stereotypes in four very popular animated movies and TV series. Starting from the top left corner it is Rio (2014) and going clockwise they are Aladdin (1992), Little Mermaid (1989) and Dumbo (1941). Hence it is seen that racism is not a new thing in animation and the proof for that is the stereotype captured from the animation series Dumbo that was made way back in 1941 (Yazhgunovich). From the jive-talking zebra in Madagascar by Chris Rock to the racial hierarchy seen in Rio, the animated films of Hollywood have been filling the minds of children freely with lazy caricatures for many years and some or the other way influence children in a negatively. One question that arises is whether these animated movies and series should come with ethnic sensitivity warning so that the parents can take a decision as to whether their children should be allowed to watch those.

Modern animation narrates the success story of the modern times movie era. It has brought a revolution in film-making in terms of technical frontiers and gives us a visual spectacle that was previously unimaginable and comes with substantial and accessible themes. Then why are the racial politics in these animated movies are stuck in the 1970s? These movies are teaching our children the finer points of the racial prejudice even before they have even learned to read.

Rio 2 is a very popular animated movie that portrayed colourful and tuneful carnival of multiculturalism. However, there is prevalence of certain racial prejudices in the movie. For a start, the voices of the lead characters in the movie are done by white Americans. It is justifiable for the central character Blu, who was brought up in Minnesota and is been Americanized. He cannot sing or dance like how the other Brazilian birds do. More mystifying fact is seen in case of Hathaway's Jewel who is supposedly born and brought up in Rio. As for the long-lost jungle relatives of the couple, Rio 2 has used non-white voice actors like how James Cameron has done for the blue-skinned indigenous people in the movie Avatar (DiPalma, 2014). Cuban-born

Andy Garcia has done the voice of Jewel's father, voice of Jewel’s aunt is done by Puerto Rico-born Rita Moreno and mixed-race Hawaiian Bruno Mars given his voice for her former beau. The director has chosen the voices as per the characters and their racial or ethnic background to give the characters a powerful punch. This shows the clear evidence of racial discrimination – not only in the animated movie but also in the background production as well. The Guardian's Steve Rose wrote in his column that Disney leads as far as the racially dubious movies are concerned. He states examples like the lazy African American crows and the illiterate dark-skinned laborers in Dumbo; the workshy Jamaican crab, Sebastian, in The Little Mermaid; the darker-skinned “evil” Arabs of the animated series Aladdin; the hyenas of The Lion King and the Native Americans of Peter Pan. The notorious Song of The South – the 1946 musical animation of Disney depicted the happy black slaves singing along with the cartoon birds on a southern plantation. The Song Of The South was boycotted by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and also issued a statement condemning that the film is “dangerously glorified picture of slavery”. It would be another half-century earlier when Disney make amends to a black heroine in The Princess And The Frog in 2009 (Amidi).

In consideration of the Hispanic stereotypes, Rose reveals the ones in Despicable Me 2. The villain in the animated masterpiece is a grossly mimicked Mexican Eduardo that is voiced by Benjamin Bratt, a Peruvian-American. He is a fat, sentimental and big-nosed man wearing an open-necked shirt that exposes a large medallion on his hairy-chest. He runs a Mexican restaurant. In the Oscar-winning animated movie Happy Feet the street-dancing and pleasure-seeking underclass flock of penguins speak in Spanish accent. There is possibly another imperative that can be stated here. In the global cinema market today, movies like Despicable Me 2 and Rio can expect to make twice the revenue in the overseas compared to what they do in the US. Hence there is a desire to be a little more outward-looking; however, not to the extent to turn off the domestic white audiences. Putting things together what is often offered is an apparently globalized story that peddle the lowest-common-denominator racial shorthand. However, some recent animations have implemented a new way of circumventing this problem and get rid of people of color as a whole. The best example is the latest Oscar winning animated creation from Disney, Frozen.

According to a quote in The Guardian, British lecturer Dr. Charles Da Costa has written a column on the racial stereotyping in animation. He has placed these portrayals in the context of “PEPs” – Problem, Entertainment and Performance Contexts. He states that within the PEPs, black people along with other genotypes need to be associated with the vexing circumstances. It needs to be pacified, make others happy and be extraordinary or exceptional – away from just being normal. The common indicators of this malaise are generally exoticism, villainy, athleticism and jocularity. It is not necessary to convey the images of ethnicity within the narrow scope of PEPs.

Whether it is liked by the Americans or not, the cartoons made during the 30s and 40s era are considered to be the Golden Age of Animation. However, they were extremely racist. The animation pictures made by Metro Goldwyn Mayor, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz and other animation studios had depicted outlandish stereotypes of the Blacks with disturbing regularity.

We cannot deny the fact that the animations that were enjoyed by so many viewers those days contained images are completely unacceptable if they are to be created now (Barrier, 1999). A viewer cannot see the images on TV since they have been cut out and rendered more to suit the view of children but it can be easily make out where did the censor’s hand has been while watching the cleaned up version of the images. Every time when something explodes in a character’s face of an animation video, the character turns into a racial stereotype. Even though the myriad sight gags can no longer be seen, it is highly indicative of how prevalent the images were from the choppiness in the images. Hence it is ridiculous for a true appreciator of the old animation to dissociate the new unfortunate images from the rest of the animation. The racism becomes intrinsic to the animation.

We can say that the racism in animation has been instigated in large part with the newspaper comic strips from the beginning of the 20th century. As far as the typical depiction of a black person is concerned it is similar in both media and the pioneers of the early animation who were frequent comic strip artists. The newspaper barons regarded those animations of the Silent Era as a way to promote the comic strips and thus increase the sale of the newspapers (Klein, 1996). Hence the cartoon characters started to appear in both print and movie media. One perfect example for this is Winsor McCay and the comic strip Little Nemo created by him in 1905, which eventually became an animated cartoon series “Little Nemo in Slumberland” in the year 1911. A common character in both works is Impy, a grass skirt-wearing cannibal. He has created the cannibals Black that appear over and over in the cartoons and depicted that the Black-skinned cannibals are the threat to the entire race. Other highly influential names in making the transition from comic strip to animation successful were Walter Lantz, Pat Sullivan, Paul Terry and John Randolph Bray (Cohen). Racism in animation had actually been increased with the involvement of America in the World War II. The animations made that time used to portray both Japanese and Germans in an uncomplimentary light. For example “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips”. In this animated creation the Japanese were portrayed as yammering myopic who are buck-toothed imbeciles. But the blacks continued to suffer the heat of stereotyping that might look odd when the United States was fighting a dictator ruler who had the intention to eliminate races he thought inferior. Norman Klein used this scenario and linked this racist imagery with the chase cartoon. The war converted the animations more frenetic to keep the same with a world that is at battle. Klein suggested that blacks portrayed in cartoons were actually the white people who are losing.

One other classic example fit for this essay is Fantasia. It is one of most beloved animated films made by Disney, which is comprised of short animated sequences clubbed in a series and is often associated with the famous Mickey Mouse and also the wizard hat that is featured in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Young, 2015). Though it had a lovely story line couple with the newly launched stereophonic sound technology it had unfortunately presented some unpleasant racial stereotypes in the form of Sunflower, the small black centaur girl. She has over-sized lips and acts as a maid to the thin, white and beautiful female centaur, Otika.

Once seen the animated series it would not be so hard to understand why this character would pose an offensive stereotype to most of the people for several reasons. The character was made so offensive that when she made an appearance in the TV broadcast in 1963 she was removed digitally from any future appearances – including the home video release during 2010. The late Roger Ebert had mentioned that the original film should be preserved essentially for historical purposes. But there is no need to release the general versions to carry out racist stereotypes in a film, which is primarily designed for children.

Another classic example from the house of Disney is Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers. Though it was technically not an animated movie, since it has been a Disney creation we can count it in the category. The characters in this animated series are fun the parodies to watch. But unfortunately, the writers may have crossed the thin line of racism and non-racism when creating The Siamese Twin Gang. The Twins are the Siamese cats and like the previous Siamese cats in many other Disney animations they too have slanted eyes. The character trait was not enough racially stereotyped for the viewers that the Twins also run a gambling set up from a laundromat.

Conclusion

Though there are animated movies and series that are racially stereotyped, not every movie or series is overflowing with racial stereotypes. Some of the entries in the segment can be easily accused of nitpicking. But it is amazing to see that such potentially and blatantly offensive materials were allowed to be produced during so many decades – some of them are as recent as in the last 20 years. Even though arguments can be made as to why Mulan, Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are not included in the list of racially discriminated animation series, it would appear that Disney, Warner Brothers and many others are making a serious attempt to leave out the offensive stereotypes from their featured films (Dubb, 2016). The days are not far away when we can see the animated feature films that are clean and clear from any kind of stereotyping. The great job by the animation picture house are really commendable. They are making an effort to make their production more meaningful and fill with some message as their main targeted audience is none other than the children of growing age. Their serious effort is highly visible from some of their recent works and hoping to see more of the meaningful work in the near future and racism and politics from the animation world would vanish forever.