How Disney Films Teach Children to Discriminate

As a child growing up in rural South Africa, much of what I knew about the broader world I discovered through my television screen. National Geographic taught me about polar bears and tsunamis, and the history channel gave me a decent understanding of the industrial revolution and who really killed Kurt Cobain. But a larger part of my TV education occurred subconsciously. Like most kids, I was an avid consumer of cartoons and animated films. And while at face-value, stories about Peter Pan and Dumbo the flying elephant seem to have little to teach one about the real world, they have a lot to say about the subliminal biases and prejudices of their producers and our society at large. In fact, studies have shown that prejudice and stereotypes are baked into many of the Disney films that my generation grew up on. You might be wondering how a cartoon about elephants could have anything to say about race or class. But while Dumbo’s cast is largely made up of unrealistically dressed animals, biases and stereotypes nevertheless get through to the audience via the characters’ dialogue. By associating certain dialects and accents with villains, idiots, and lay-abouts, Disney constructs a world in which the heroes speak ‘good english’ while bad guys and side-kicks use grammatical forms common to racial minorities and the working class. <a href="https://rachel-calcott.medium.com/how-disney-films-teach-children-to-discriminate-e8355556e61b">Website</a>