Is a popular strategy in movies to portray some social groups in order to appeal more to wider audiences and win more money in the box office. Also it is strangely seen often used in children movies specially animation.
In animation unlike in live action, the story can be told by almost everything and the characters can also be anything from animals, insects and mythical creatures to inanimate objects animated by the creators like toys, cars, or anything we use on daily basis like clothes, umbrellas, clocks, candles,etc. They just have to draw them a cute face with big eyes (the bigger the cuter the character will be they say) make them talk if they like and they have their movie characters.
These two topics collide when animators and writers tend to try to represent in this worlds of wonder our own world, and its easy to see why. When you make a character like for example "Shrek", he is an ogre who isolates himself from society, because he is alienated by humans. With this the writers try to make Shrek more human by showing he has feelings and its a victim of his society´s prejudice who thinks of him as a monster not realising they are the real monsters of the story. This internal issues give Shrek humanity with is something anyone seeing the movie can relate to, so they empathise with the protagonist as they may have often feel like him. It also serves as a creative social critique towards the society of the audience. The reason they do this is because it makes the level of story and the reception of the movie increase, which is seen in the results of the movie success being a box office hit, oscar winner and it inspired a franchise.
But what happens when the writers and the animators don't portray the certain human characteristic accurately. Disney movies are a fine example on this topic, having countless movies and shorts being accused of racism, male chauvinism, xenophobia and the often use of stereotypes. If we see their history of animation we can find some fine examples that prove this point. In the 1940s movie "Fantasia" there was a scene where a black little centaur girl called "Sunflower" serves the beautiful white centaur "Otika" who doesn't even recognises the presence of the girl. Sunflower is a clear stereotype of a black girl, she is drawn with big sized lips, big circle earrings in her ears and a hairstyle with little bows witch was popular in black communities at the time. The scene was so controversial that it was removed from the movie in an eventual edit so it wouldn't generate more controversy, but its arguably a solution course it shows they can't be "diverse" without being racist.Other examples of racism towards black communities are commonly seen in pre 70s disney movies. In the 1941 movie Dumbo, the eponymous elephant crosses his path with a gang of illiterate, dressed in rags crows that sing Jazz & blues, not only that but the leader of the gang is called "Jim Crow" after the segregation laws against black people. So why the racist stereotypes? well it can be argued that it was another time and racism was very common in america and it is still in some parts of the country, especially the centre, lets not forget this was before Luther King, Malcolm X and Barack Obama. Also disney was run by predominantly white men, when nowadays they say to be an open minded company with workers of all races.
But black stereotypes weren't the only ones in this pictures. In the second world war Donald Duck was the star of some propaganda short films made by the house of mouse that showed the duck fighting clumsy and ridiculous japanese soldiers, and also german nazis. In the 1955 movie The Lady & The Tramp, the cocker spaniel is tormented by it cousins: two siames cats with a clear asian accent. This appear to became a trend in disney films being used again in the 1970s film "The Aristocats", In the film when the titular aristocrat cats are lost in the terraces of a Paris neighbourhood, they meet a band of Jazz singing free cats filled with stereotypes, the piano playing cat who is chinese and play the keys with chopsticks, he has slant eyes and even sings the following line: " Shanghai, Hong Kong, Egg Foo Yong, fortune cookie always wrong" . The other members of the band the leader is a russian cat who is similar to Stalin and the italian cat is a womaniser.
The worst thing about this problem is that this movies are made for children who will grow up remembering and even loving this movies, they may have learned wrong views about different cultures that are much more than their folklore and idiosyncrasy. It can be said that nowadays maybe thanks to social media people tend to be or appear more politically correct so this problem has diminished. But we can still see recent examples in films like the Lion King and Madagascar where black people are only shown as criminals or sassy loud talkers. Aldo now they are voiced by people of the respective race , thats not a solution but also a problem. This makes that people of certain groups who lend their voices to characters are only showing stereotypes of their cultures to appeal to audiences. The solution is not to give a black character a black voice, this movies are about animals and inanimated objects so its not necessary nor realistic the use of stereotypes. The characters should be their one persona not with ethnic characteristics or social backgrounds predetermined by their race. The ideal would be movies with equality , making every character special not because of their social group but because of themselves.
The worst thing about this problem is that this movies are made for children who will grow up remembering and even loving this movies, they may have learned wrong views about different cultures that are much more than their folklore and idiosyncrasy. It can be said that nowadays maybe thanks to social media people tend to be or appear more politically correct so this problem has diminished. But we can still see recent examples in films like the Lion King and Madagascar where black people are only shown as criminals or sassy loud talkers. Aldo now they are voiced by people of the respective race , thats not a solution but also a problem. This makes that people of certain groups who lend their voices to characters are only showing stereotypes of their cultures to appeal to audiences. The solution is not to give a black character a black voice, this movies are about animals and inanimated objects so its not necessary nor realistic the use of stereotypes. The characters should be their one persona not with ethnic characteristics or social backgrounds predetermined by their race. The ideal would be movies with equality , making every character special not because of their social group but because of themselves.
