#disney racism

[azural83]

I always thought that it was odd how disney still promotes pocahontas

Disney has a history of censoring or straight up ignoring their old problematic media but pocahontas? A true story about a girl who went through horrifying events that they romanticised and profit of it is still considered one of their memorable movies, she's still one of the official disney princesses despite the fact that how disrespectful the movie was towards matoaka

[rjalker]

So

Is Pete an anti-black caricature? Because this little set up has the vibe of a racist caricature.

I know there's a book written to talk about this exact stuff (Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation, by Nicholas Sammond) but it's not on the web archive yet so I can't read it.

Mickey's iconic white gloves are apparently a reference to minstrel shows from the time that everyone back then understood without question, but the reference has faded from public awareness.

[ID: A screenshot from the 1928 Mickey Mouseo animation "The Gallopin Gaucho", showing Pete, a large black cat with a wide white face and big black nose, leering down at a terrified Minnie Mouse. Pete is wearing a sun hat, has prominent, crooked teeth, and wears a loose white overall with a single strap. End ID.]

This animation also has a really blatant racist caricature as well

[troythecatfish]

Here’s my personal recommendations of YouTube videos to check out:

[smallandangry24]

If fucking Obi Wan Kenobi says to racists “you are no Star Wars fan in my mind. There is no place for racism in this world” 😤😤😤. It’s time to listen up. Also this is the first time I’ve personally heard a white leading actor/executive producer explicitly denounce racism in this way, ESPECIALLY DISNEY/STAR WARS!! So thank you Ewan McGreggor!!

[cistematicchaos]

Since some of y'all seem to have forgotten, the PJO series IS on the boycott list. Even if you're not paying for Disney+ (by which I mean your ass BETTER be pirating it if you're watching), if you're creating gifs/videos and/or talking about the show, you are promoting it. I don't care how long any of you have been waiting or how much you like it, show some spine and keep your mouth shut. Or did you forget y'all cared about Palestinians already?

[newsfrom-theworld]

It didn’t take the 30, 000 dead Palestinians.

It took seven white lives. Seven.

[foureyedfreezy]

I'm over the Little Mermaid drama, but that ironic statement against it is Disney should make "new characters" instead of casting a black woman to play Ariel. But the thing is, people hate original content too. They call Turning Red and Strange World cringy and inappropriate to children. They call Encanto overrated. They call Raya and the Last Dragon boring or a Avatar: the Last Airbender rip-off. They are even bashing Wish and the movie isn't even out yet. Pretty much anything that isn't catered to straight white people is considered bad by default in the Disney fandom.

[animentality]

I saw Elemental and while it was far better than it looked, I had some issues.

First off, fantasy racism is hard to do properly because most writers make the fatal error of making the oppressed people too powerful.

Like X men. Oh, it's a metaphor for racism against black people in America...except black people don't shoot fucking death killing laserbeams from their buttholes every time they take a fart.

Or say, Zootopia. A well meaning allegory, but it still implies people of color are actually a threat to the rest of the population???

Like I don't care if a "bunny can go savage."

You still present the oppressed race, of predators, as being scarier and bigger and more easily able to hurt others.

So Elemental had the same issues.

It basically said, well, the fire people are the last wave of immigrants. They are discriminated against the most because they are new. They speak another language and no one likes them because they burn things and they can hurt the rest of us, so we keep them in these segregated communities, that are more fire safe.

Now here's the issue with that, if you haven't already noticed...

Once again, we get a race of people who are a thinly veiled metaphor for immigrants...but the issue is...

The fire people ARE a legitimate threat to the earthy, leafy people. They can literally kill them. They literally burn off pieces of their bodies in the damn film.

Now technically the wind and water people are less in danger, but we literally see in the movie that the fire people are WAY more of a threat than any other people. The main character literally blows the fuck up.

She destroys several plot important things when she can't control her temper!!! She destroys her own father's shop. Several times.

It's implied that fire people can also EVAPORATE the water people too.

So therein lies the issue.

If we saw the water people being more destructive, I could forgive it! If we saw more equal distrust between all the people, then maybe I could buy it. There ARE hints that the wind people have an affinity for lightning, which you would think could be a destructive force too, just as much a threat to water! And water can douse fire, right? So that's also bad, and that at least has some basis in the film?

But the problem is that the larger society only sees fire as bad...and the metaphor doesn't come across, when you focus on just fire and show us the many, many bad things fire can and does do to the other elements.

Now here's the thing that really annoys me.

The racism/discrimination against immigrants metaphor was okay. It had some nuance, at least. I enjoyed some of the very thoughtful discussions of what it means to be a second generation immigrant and the stresses of trying to live up to your parents' expectations of you.

I actually enjoyed the romance too. They were oddly sweet, and the heroic sacrifice in the end was genuinely touching.

But the movie's racism metaphor was too strong, and it has bad implications, given how much of a threat all of the races are to each other, whether it's equally divided between them or not.

This is not at all applicable to real life. Our differences are not so fucking fundamental. They are cultural and only very, very slightly biological. Our DNA is not so fucking different that this metaphor works, at all.

These kind of movies make the unintentional point that races are cut and dry categories, and all we need to do is accept these alien creatures so different from us into our society.

This is not true.

Like what the fuck. This is so not true. Every single race on earth can and does reproduce with one another, plus we've all been intermixed since the beginning of fucking time.

So that metaphor just breaks itself, in my opinion.

Now here's my suggestion.

This movie should've been a metaphor for disability accomodations.

And hear me out, right?

The fire people CANNOT go to several places. Places entirely underwater, or partially submerged, places covered in foliage, where they might burn things. It is a central theme, that fire people are barred from certain places because they simply haven't bothered to make those places accessible to them.

See, that's a much more palatable and less problematic theme/metaphor to draw from!

The main character wants to see this plant that only grows underwater, but she's never gotten to see it because it's in this weird stadium that's underwater, and they simply haven't tried to make it accessible to fire people.

Plus, water people trains are constantly throwing water down on fire town, and water is a huge threat to fire people, and the whole city seems to run on water transport, and i think, but im not sure, it's stated that water people came first, and that's why elemental city is mostly catered to them?

But there's a great moral there!

There's no reason fire people can't be in certain public spaces! There should be laws forcing all earth spaces to have fire safe accommodations, like metal or clay flooring in all necessary areas!

That museum should've had some kind of tunnel for fire people to walk through!

It should be required for all public areas that there be metal or clay or glass crossing certain areas, so that fire people can still reasonably access everything that the other people can access!

Like ramps and elevator and railings, in real life!

And it's such a shame, because the protagonist has a talent for shaping glass. For making art.

It's implied she might end up working for her boyfriend's mom, who's an architect!!!

The protagonist should've been a fucking architect, who EXPLICITLY dedicates herself to making the rest of the city accessible to her own people!!! So they can get out of fire town and live amongst the rest of them!

At the end, it's implied more people are coming to fire town...but for no fucking reason. They just go there now.

But the protagonist, Ember, really needed to be a driving force.

She needed to be a metaphor for accessibility in public spaces, because that's a much better parallel than just racism itself.

If you toned down the "destructiveness" of fire and explained that fire people are unfairly excluded from public life simply because it's easier for the other people to ignore them and not care about their needs...then you have a far less problematic story, with a much more sensitive and interesting take on disability discrimination.

Ember needed to be an advocate, someone who tries to bring her people into the wider world, and not the wider people into her world.

There is NO reason fire people could not be allowed to participate in public life.

And there was no reason fire people had to be pitted so hard against every other race.

Elemental was a really fun movie, with beautiful animation and some very well thought out ideas for how the city worked.

But it failed as a racism/immigration allegory.

It could've been far more nuanced and complex, if it had bothered to talk more about how fire people need accomodations, rather than just, fire people hate everyone else, and everyone else hates fire people.

[what-shitfuckery-is-this-ew]

Tiktok white women mad that a brown girl could play Repunzel cause "it's a German story"

And like lets ignore the racism (because if y'all think she'd be a great Mother Gothel but not a good Rapunzel because of her melanin especially after Mother Gothel is already a racist caricature ...) and focus on the fact that the Brothers Grimm went all around the world collecting stories which had been passed down orally and shared between cultures.

Rapunzel is not just a German story first, Even the Brothers Grimm got it as a French story. Rapunzel is an Italian story before that, and before that Rapunzel is a Persian story.

By the logic y'all are using Jasmine should be Chinese, Cinderella should be Egyptian Snow White should be Malay and Pocahontas should be 9 (and not in love with John Smith for god sake she was a real 9 year old girl)

[tymime]

Public Domain cartoon characters from the Golden Age of Animation (and beyond)

Revised and expanded version of this post: https://tymime.tumblr.com/post/648495121557585920/instead-of-whining-about-mickey-mouse-not-falling

While Mickey entering the public domain is exciting and all, I do think a lot of people are overlooking the many other animated characters that are available to use in their creative works. This list isn't entirely exhaustive, but it does highlight some of the most interesting and/or appealing characters, as well as ones that have the potential to be so.

Koko the Clown

One of the oldest cartoon stars from the Fleischer studio, almost all of Koko's silent-era cartoons are PD, and have been for quite some time. A handful of his appearances alongside Betty Boop are also PD.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Oswald's PD status has been greatly overshadowed by his fellow Disney star Mickey, but I believe that he deserves more recognition. All of the shorts produced by the Disney studio are PD as of this year, and let's face it, those are the only ones most people care about. Pegleg Pete's bear design is also PD.

Keep in mind that the blue shorts that Oswald wears in Epic Mickey and elsewhere are likely copyrighted, so I recommend steering clear of that.

I'm also not entirely sure you can use the name "Ortensia" for his cat girlfriend, since that name first appeared in Epic Mickey also. She was called "Kitty" back in the day, among other things.

All of Van Beuren Studio's cartoons

The Van Beuren Studio was active during the rubberhose era, and their cartoons, especially the earlier ones, are like a cruder, possibly even more bizarre cousin to Fleischer and Disney. They went bust in the late 1930s, and no one renewed the copyright later on, so the entirety of their output is PD.

Their most notable characters include Tom and Jerry, a pair of average Joes who always get into strange adventures. They shouldn't be confused with MGM's Tom and Jerry, and in fact they were called Dick and Larry when their shorts were rereleased for the home-movie market in the 1940s.

Also notable is Waffles and Don, who are basically just animal versions of Tom and Jerry. You might consider these two as a better alternative, just to avoid confusion.

There's also Cubby Bear, a pretty blatant Mickey Mouse clone, but unique enough that I don't think anybody’s going to confuse the two nowadays.

In the previous post, I mentioned a rumor that Disney threatened legal action over the character, but I can't find the source for that now. I may have been thinking of Milton Mouse, who was so extremely similar to Mickey that they actually did sue the studo for copyright infringement. So maybe don't try selling any Milton merchandise...

Finally, there's Molly Moo-Cow, who appeared in several Rainbow Parade cartoons in the mid-to-late 1930s. Molly is arguably not the most interesting character, but I have a fondness for her since we grew up with one of her shorts on a VHS tape.

Toby the Pup

Another very obscure character, about half of his cartoons are lost media. The little that does survive is hard to find online, but I think his design has appeal.

Dr. XXX

Disney's The Mad Doctor was never renewed for reasons unknown, though some speculate that the studio thought that the cartoon was too scary and decided to let it go. Fortunately for us, that means that this iconic character is now in the people's hands.

Goopy Geer

Goopy appeared in the three Merrie Melodies cartoons alongside his unnamed girlfriend. Despite his name and appearance being similar to Disney's Goofy, he actually made his debut about a month before (Goofy was named Dippy Dawg at the time anyway, so it was undoubtedly a coincidence).

Claude Hopper

Claude appeared in a single Looney Tunes cartoon in 1943 called Hop and Go, alongside a pair of Scottish rabbits who antagonize him. The cartoon ends with a very unfortunate depiction of Tokyo being blown up (World War II was still going on at the time), so it's no surprise that Warner Bros. decided not to renew this one. Despite that, he has a very appealing design (imo), so I think he has potential. (Also, he's voiced by Pinto Colvig, the original voice of Goofy!)

Private Snafu and Mr. Hook

Snafu and Hook were created for the US government, so according to the law are automatically public domain. The shorts were made to be shown to members of the US army and navy respectively, in order to teach them valuable lessons for fighting in WWII, but are nevertheless hilarious cartoons- animated by the Looney Tunes team with scripts by Ted Geisel- aka Dr. Seuss!

The Dover Boys

Also of note are the ComiColor cartoons from the Iwerks studio, Rainbow Parade from Van Beuren, and most of the Color Classics by Fleischer. These don't have any especially memorable characters in them, but I thought I ought to mention them.

Yes, Tom, Dick and Larry, Dora Standpipe and the villainous Dan Backslide are all public domain. A bunch of YouTube Poops were created after this fact was discovered by the internet a few years ago.

How Warner Bros. could ever let this one get away I'll never know. Their loss is our gain, I suppose.

Caveats and other concerns

Krazy Kat

Felix the Cat

All of the strips up to 1928 are definitely fair game. According to the Public Domain Superheroes wiki however, the entirety of the strip's run is PD. I'm not sure if it that's true, but the Fantagraphics collections don't credit any newspaper syndicate, so it seems likely. (Apparently the copyright status of newspaper comics are a whole can of worms on its own...)

At any rate, the strip's cast was pretty well set in stone by 1928, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. A large number of animated shorts starring Krazy are also PD, but those were pretty much in name only.

Flip the Frog

Felix was pretty much the first cartoon superstar, and almost all of his Golden Age appearances are PD now. Keep in mind that this does not include elements from the 1950s cartoon like his magic bag, or from The Twisted Tales of Felix, as amazing as that series is.

The character's name and appeance are still trademarked by NBC Universal however, so you might be able to use him in a minor role, but not much else.

I'm uncertain about this one. According to most sources Flip is PD, but according to the Thunderbean Blu-ray collection he's copyrighted by the Film Preservation Archives, whatever that means. Additionally, Flip himself is supposedly trademarked by Leslie Iwerks, Ub Iwerks’ granddaughter, though no one seems to be able to confirm that. I don't know how the trademark hasn't lapsed yet, considering that Flip hasn't appeared on any official merchandise or anything in decades.

Bosko and Honey

I believe there's nothing stopping anyone from using Bosko's classic design (later appearances at MGM and in Tiny Toons are still copyrighted), but the character himself is a bit problematic, considering that it's all but stated outright that he's a blackface caricature. Use with caution.

Foxy and Roxy

Noveltoons

Like Goopy Geer, Foxy appeared in three Merrie Melodies cartoons. Roxy's name originates from an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures however, so keep that in mind. Though I'm not sure what else you would call her (or if Warner Bros. would even care). Supposedly her original name was "Fluffy", but I can't find a source for this.

Like Bosko and Honey, later appearances in Tiny Toons are still copyrighted.

Noveltoons was a series produced by Famous Studios, the successor to the Fleischer studio. The characters include Baby Huey, Herman the mouse, Blackie the sheep, Little Audrey, and of course, Casper the Friendly Ghost. Only a small handful of the shorts are PD though, and Casper is trademarked, so one's options are limited.

Ginger Nutt (and rest of the Animaland cast)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

This one I'm not entirely sure about either, but Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus has long been a staple of grey-market tapes and DVDs, so I'm just going to assume all of the Animaland cartoons are also PD. Considering that the series wasn't very sucessful, and is very obscure nowadays, it seems pretty likely.

If anyone has any insight on this, let me know.

Calvin and the Colonel

Now here's an interesting case. An all-time classic Christmas special, and yet large parts of it are PD because they accidentally put the wrong date on the copyright notice. Instead of the Roman numerals MCMLXIV (1964), it reads MCLXIV (1164), and according to the law at the time, that meant that the film immediately went into public domain.

Of course, Rudolph himself is still copyrighted, and will be until 2035 when the original book falls into the public domain. Even then he's likely to still be trademarked. Not to mention the songs featured in the '64 film will be copyrighted for a long time afterward.

Still, this means that anyone is free to use all the other characters, including Hermey, Yukon Cornelius, King Moonracer, Clarice, and all the Misfit Toys. It's a wonder no one seems to have taken advantage of this. And of course Santa and his reindeer have been PD for ages, especially Santa since he comes from folklore- and you can't copyright folklore.

This cartoon is based on and stars a lot of the same voice cast as the old-time radio show Amos and Andy, which, while not overtly racist, featured white actors pretending to be black. The cartoon obviously has animals instead, but still, tread carefully. Someone is bound to point out the characters' history.

Hoppity Hooper

Another one I'm not sure about. The Public Domain Superheroes wiki has characters from this show among its articles, but I wasn't able to confirm if it really was PD. It was created by Jay Ward, the same studio who made Rocky & Bullwinkle and George of the Jungle, but was also a huge flop for some reason, so that may be the reason why they let the copyright expire. Again, I'm not sure, but no one seems to care that the entire series is on YouTube, so who knows?

...Well, there you have it. Lots of obscure and forgotten toons waiting to be rediscovered and reused! If anyone has any more info or corrections, leave me a comment. I'd love some clarification on some of these.

[azural83]

In 1992 disney mixed random cultures from Asian countries and called it middle eastern representation

In 2021 they mixed cultures from SEA countries and called it representation

Gotta love how they never learn

[artist-issues]

I had someone tell me recently that Zootopia is about transgenderism.

No, it’s not.

I’m well aware of who directed and wrote the movie. I don’t care. If they were trying to say “transgenderism is a good thing: you CAN be whatever you want to be!” they did a terrible job saying it. Their movie did not say that clearly.

And I don’t think that’s what they were trying to say. I think they were trying to say, “it doesn’t matter what your race or background is; we’re all the same in the ways that matter, so try to understand each other and the world will be a better place.”

That’s it. That’s what the movie said.

But you who’ve listened to the knee-jerk responses will say to me, “are you kidding me, artist-issues, they literally say the line, ‘anyone can be anything!’ all throughout the movie!”

Right. But can anyone be anything, in the movie?

No.

The fennec Fox cannot shapeshift into an elephant. If he could, that would be a great portrayal in favor of transgenderism as a valid identity instead of a mental disorder. But he can’t go from being a fox to an elephant.

That trunk is made of felt; it cannot breathe. He will never get any larger. He has no ivory growing out of his skull. He is a fox, and no amount of feelings or wishful thinking in the movie makes him an elephant—oh, but hey—that fox never actually wanted to be an elephant.

It was a scam. It was a play for sympathy, so that the grown-adult fox could trick bleeding hearts, break the law, and do whatever he wanted.

How’s that shape up, as an argument for transgenderism? Not too good.

Now, do I believe it was an intentional argument being made by the filmmakers against the transgender movement? No. I don’t. Because I know who wrote and directed that movie.

But, again: if it was an intentional attempt to say “you can be anything you want to be,” the movie did a crap job of showing it.

Unless you mean, “you can have any career or position in society you want to have, as long as you work hard, and never mind what faulty judgement gets in your way.” Then, sure, yeah, that’s what the movie was saying.

“But what about the fact that Nick says, ‘everyone comes to Zootopia thinking they can be anything. Well, ya can’t. You can only be what you are. Sly fox, dumb bunny.’ And he was proven wrong!”

Mmkay, but what was he proven wrong about? He was proven wrong about Judy having a character flaw. She has moments of being dumb—giving in to prejudices. But she grew past that, because there’s more to a person than their character flaws. Just like she says to him on the sky-tram: “you are so much more” than a shifty, untrustworthy, sly fox.

And pay attention to what NICK said. “If the world is only going to see a fox that is shifty, and untrustworthy…” Nick does not believe that he is, deep down, shifty and untrustworthy. He’s just chosen to adopt that based on how others see him.

They’re talking about character flaws. All the stereotypes in the movie are just that: they’re stereotypes, based on the type of mammal you are. Not on whether or not you’re a mammal at all, which would’ve been the clearer correlation between Zootopia’s prejudices and the real-world transgenderism discussion.

Zootopia is about racism, and maybe, if you tilt your head and squint, classism. It’s not in any way about sexuality. Nice try. Unless you’re the filmmakers, and you’re somehow spinning it so that you were intending to say something about gender: in that case, bad try. Terrible job, that’s not what your movie succeeded in saying at all.

[troythecatfish]

[batwynn]

All the advertising I saw for Elemental:

Check out this wacky adventure between a fire person and a water person! A Tree Child Flirts with her! LOL! HEY LOOK CLOUD PEOPLE! *cartoon spring and honking noises*

Me: I don’t… want to watch that. Oh well, that’s fine.

Me actually watching it:

Oh wait, it’s a story of an immigrant family who come with nothing and build a community for themselves and their people and the weight of debt you feel to your parents who sacrificed for you to succeed but the way that that success sometimes isn’t what you want and how parental love can feel conditional when there’s a lack of clear communication and—

Me getting to the end: SHE BOWED AND HE BOWED BACK 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭💦💧💦💧💦💧💦💧💦🌊🌊🌊🌊🚿🚿🚿

[high-quality-tiktoks]

🧜🏿‍♀️🙄

[lolotheparagon]

Okay so people are comparing Isabela to Asha from the newest trailer for Wish cos they look similar and I’m like….

HOW ARE THEY ALIKE

Isabela is a Colombian woman and Asha is an Iberian Penisula black woman??????

Guys, just because two women of colour are wearing similar clothes doesn’t mean they’re the same character model, you fucking idiots. If Asha was white, y’all wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Can you stop being racist for like 5 minutes?