Disney’s multi-billion dollar racist paradigms

“Disney Films contribute to the cultivation of a child’s values, beliefs, dreams, and expectations, which shape the adult identity a child will carry and modify through his or her life” (Towbin A, Haddock A, Zimmerman T, Lund L & Tanner L, 2008).

As a child, the clearest memories of movie nights with my siblings and friends always involved Disney. From 3+ I use to dress up and waltz around my house imitating the character I was infatuated with at the time. One day I would want to be Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, and the next I would be dressed as Cinderella and driving my parents crazy with my princess like antics. My mother use to refer to me as a sponge, because every little word or idea you would throw at me I would absorb, and Disney was no exception. It wasn’t until I became older and stepped away from this playful game that Disney’s innocence was stripped away and the dark side of this multi billion dollar company with unmasked. Sadly, what I am confronted with when looking at these movies today is a collection of poorly stereotyped racial paradigms that depict and degrade certain cultural backgrounds.

Take The Lion King for instance, a global phenomenon that had a production budget of $45 million and an estimated domestic total gross of $312,855,561. This animated feature film was, and still currently is, a major success with children, as it closely follows the adventures of a young and curious lion cub that is the heir to his fathers thrown. Alike various Disney films, the plot follows the ‘good’ vs ‘evil’ scenario where the ‘good’ animals that everyone loves always triumph over the baddies that everyone despises. However, what is particularly interesting in this film and raises a major cause for concern is the racial stereotypes that these ‘evil’ characters illustrate.

The three hyena villians

The three hyena’s, Shenzi (Whoopi Golberg), Banzai (Cheech Marin) and Ed (Jim Cummings) pictured above are represented as the evil, malicious, unintelligent, sloppy and less superior characters within the film. They live together in the Elephant Graveyard, which has been referred to by public discourses as the equivalent of the ghetto because of its ‘lower-class’ status. This is a very intriguing environment for these animal’s to be captivated in, considering that each hyena is voiced by either an african/american or latino decent actor or actress. Throughout the film, there is also a distinct representation of racial segregation, as the less superior hyena’s who binge on scarce scraps are never aloud to enter The Pride Lands, where ‘white’ animals live a pleasant lifestyle free of hunger.

The Elephant Graveyard – home to the hyena’s

The Pride Lands – home to the ‘good’ animals

This is a prime example of the negative racial paradigms that Disney is manipulating upon innocent minds. Children engaging in these kinds of films are more or less being exposed to thinking that different ethnicities are suppose to be treated a certain way, and that one race is more superior to an another, which is far from the truth.

2.49 – 4.40

Living in a multicultural society today, I strongly feel that it is absolutely vital for children to understand the concept of cultural diversity. As a child, I admired the characters I watched on screen and at that young age, I guess I even aspired to be like them. Taking a step back and analysing the representations in these films, I’ve found that it is more important than ever before that companies endorse positive and realistic illustrations of the wide range of cultures we are lucky enough to be surrounded with. Imagine being a young child and experiencing racial torment or segregation based on the way these films analyse your culture. I don’t know about you but I find that to be completely unsettling. 

I think it’s important that we remember – children do have minds like sponges, and they will absorb exactly what you share with them, so make it the right message.

Chick Flick Funny or Journalism Dummy?

I’ll be the first to raise my hand and tell you that if I’m bored, sick or just simply procrastinating, my go to guilty pleasure television show is Sex and The City. I mean, what’s not to love about 4 hilariously funny women who are equally in love with fashion, live the glamorous New Yorker lifestyle and go a little crazy after having one too many wines from time to time. But behind my love for this show lays something darker, a stereotype that threatens to crush the careers of all women within the field of Journalism.

Carrie Bradshaw, the show’s leading starlet is a New York newspaper columnist who specialises in airing the relationships and sexual escapades of not only herself, but also her three best friends Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. While this is the central and by far the most humourable aspect of the television series that brought viewers back laughing for six seasons in total on HBO, Carrie’s line of work also says a lot about the misrepresentation of women within the media.

Not once throughout the series does Bradshaw ever tackle hard news. Even when her character is given the opportunity to freelance for Vogue magazine, her talents are confined to naturally ‘soft news’ including beauty, style and gossip edits. Jennifer Pozner, founder and executive director of Women in Media and News, believes that the under representation of women in hard news is a major and long term problem. She says that “theres a one-to-one parallel between the shunting of women’s bylines into only a few core areas that are considered ‘soft’ stories and the vast marginalization of women as newsmakers and sources in both print and broadcast news” (2012). Pozner also notes that women are far less likely to be quoted as sources in all kinds of stories except those focused on lifestyle issues, which is the case in terms of the range of articles Bradshaw is permitted to publish.

According to prominent figures in the publishing industry, it is a devastating time for female writers. ‘Carrie spawn’ are dominating today’s media landscape, as thousands of stories deemed to be an ‘overshare’ are circulating. The reoccurring themes of sex, relationships and love are are in more ways than one crushing the hopes and dreams of female journalists passionate about writing and reaching out to cover those ‘hard news’ stories.

As a budding female journalist myself, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about the future of my career. I find it extremely unsettling that the idea of gender bias could one day impair and confine my talents. If I, along with the hundreds and thousands of other women passionate about journalism out there want to report on hard news, to delve into the wonders of politics and hang up the overused ‘buy these shoes’ stories, shouldn’t we be able to? We are living in the 21st century, and women’s rights are just as important now than ever.

‘The cult of the present’ – destroying our environment and snatching our morality one gadget at a time

“The increasingly faster and more versatile computers, appealing mobile phones, high-definition TV’s, internet, tiny music players, ingenious photo cameras, entertaining games consoles and even electric pets give us the idea of a developed, pioneering and modern world. It is indeed a new era for many, but the dark side of this prosperous world reveals a very different reality.” – (Maxwell & Miller 2012)

In today’s digital age, society has become obsessed with the idea of technology – we literally do not even eat, sleep or breathe without its presence anymore. We have become the model that Maxwell and Miller identify in Greening The Media as the ‘cult of the present’, a culture that has been built on the means of materialistic value, a civilisation that is fixated on acquiring the latest and greatest gadgets at any cost. But thats the underlying issue that many of us fail to recognise, the cost. It seems that where we are winning, others are at a huge loss.

Every year as we eagerly jump for joy and spend the night camped out in never ending que’s in order to get our hands on the new and improved digital goods released by multi billion dollar companies such as Apple and Samsung, our judgement is being heavily neglected. While we are busy kicking our ‘old’ and ‘outdated’ smartphones to the e-waste curb and trading up for the sleek and sophisticated Iphone 6, our environment is at a devastating loss.

All over the world, rare earth minerals are being sourced every minute of every hour to fulfil the high production demand for new forms of technology. These vital minerals are dangerously extracted from the ground in order to improve the functionality of devices e.g. sound, colour screen, memory and storage.

http://www.cnet.com/au/videos/inside-a-rare-earth-mineral-mine/

While we may rejoice in the fact that our love for technology can be satisfied through the gathering of these rare earths, we need to look at the bigger picture. In 2007 alone, it was recorded that between 20-50 million ton of electronic and electric waste was being generated annually, with the largest supply stemming from discarded smartphones, computer devices and televisions that no longer have the ‘it’ factor (Maxwell & Miller 2012). This build up of toxic E-waste is a great concern for the environment and all of those within it, as it is causing adverse socio-economic and public health impacts for not only society as a whole, but for the developing countries who usually fall victim to being developed countries dumping grounds.

It’s a sad but harsh truth that all of this environmental and human suffering comes at the cost of a flashy new Iphone. If you were the individual slaving away, etched far beneath the ground in a mining hole, sourcing these rare earth minerals and risking your life for the production of a gadget, would an Iphone be so appealing then? It’s not such a pretty reality when the shoe is placed on the other foot..

The Injustice Between Human and Animal Suffering

For my whole 20 years of life, I have always loved and adored animals without hesitation. I was the child that literally drove my mother crazy with my antics, regularly hiding snails in my bedroom when it would rain so they wouldn’t get cold, and showing an affection that she just couldn’t understand to red back spiders. I was then, and still am today, fascinated by animal life and the way I feel they bare various uncanny similarities to the human race. Take my dog for instance – she is adorable (human attribute), a little snooty (another human attribute), cries when she is locked out in the rain (undeniably human), and looks miserably at her food bowl when it’s empty (sadly, I do the same with the fridge). While this may be a humorous way to analyse the comparisons between two different species, it gives you a rough idea of how we both can operate on the same wave length.

Despite various amounts of research indicating that both animals and humans experience similar kinds of emotional and cognitive ability, animal suffering is still just as prominent as ever in thousands of countries across the globe. While it comes in many shapes and forms, with some acts being deemed more acceptable than others, I was absolutely horrified when I was confronted with how current and real this abuse is this week while viewing the Four Corners investigation ‘A Bloody Business’, and the documentary ‘Blackfish’.  It pushed me to question the injustice we have between animal and human suffering, and the way individuals use a kind of suppository racism to justify their cruel actions by making it appear that the way they choose to slaughter animals is somehow kinder, or better than the way another person decides to murder a living being.

These documentaries are a prime example of the disregard society has to animal sentience. Like it or not, “an animal is capable of being aware of its surroundings, its relationships with other animals and humans, and of sensations in its own body, including pain, hunger, heat or cold” (Voiceless, the animal protection institute).

So i want you to take a look at suffering from an animal’s perspective, to experience the physical and emotional pain, fear and torture they endure when submitted for experimentation for cosmetic purposes.

I strongly feel as if this graphic, visual stimulant exposes the double standard we as a society have for suffering. By placing a human life in the firing line, the reactions are far more disturbing than those that have just witnessed actual animal testing.

Professor Charles Mogel, an advocate for PETA states that when asking experimenters why it is morally justified to experiment on animals, it is because “the animals are not like us”. But then I ask, why are we testing products on animals that ‘are not like us’ for our own use. Wouldn’t our reactions to these cosmetics be completely different? I don’t feel like we have the right to place ourselves morally higher than animals, yet we continue to do so when there are alternatives.

Research by the Humane Science is Superior Science organisation has shown that cosmetic testing does not in fact require the use of live animals, and that skin irritation and corrosively can be measured using three-dimensional human skin equivalent systems such as SkinEthic and EpiDerm. So why do we continue to put living beings, that can feel every ounce of agony permitted by experimentation through such large amounts of suffering? If we desire cosmetic goods, isn’t it in our rights and responsibility to encourage a way to do it humanely?