Disney’s Potrayal of “Other” Women

Disney stories and princesses have always been filled of subtle or not so subtle racism, (horrible stories), and not knowing how to not reinforce stereotypes.

After looking at the previous post’s video, I wanted to express what I think of Disney princesses. Most people don’t like to hear what I have to say about Disney because it ‘ruins the magic’.

Let’s take a look at the major princesses of Disney:

From Left to Right: Jasmine, Snow White, Mulan, Tiana, Aurora, Cinderella, Pocahontas, Belle, and Ariel

Most of the skin tones are light. The only ones who are different are Jasmine, Tiana and Pocahontas. If you notice as well Jasmine and Pocahontas (in my opinion) are the least clothed out of all of the princesses. There’s something ‘exotic’ about them because they aren’t common. Looking at it from a USian perspective, Native Americans and Middle Easterners are rare. Just interesting that the other less exotic princesses are almost completely covered up.

Ariel, oh the beloved, Ariel, the only red-head out of the group. One major problem I have with her plot… she’s not even ****ing human! Let’s remember that “Gingers Do Have Souls”. At least all the other princesses are human. This is just a giant ‘face-palm’. I think it would have been a more acceptable story if the prince was a mermaid and she went after it.

Belle, I feel this is typical view from many USians, which is that if you don’t date a white man he must be a beast. Note again, none of the princes are of color, all are white. The only time the prince doesn’t have a race associated, he’s a beast. I totally forgot that, the Beast is white as well. Great way to lie to little girls telling them the only good dates are white men. When I heard Disney was FINALLY going to have a Black princess, I was already gearing myself for disappointment. Whoever wrote the story was walking on egg shells for every stupid, stereotype-reinforcing thing they wrote. A couple of questions for the author are: Why New Orleans? Why 1920’s (definitely not a good time period for Blacks)? Why do you insist on having a white prince?

It’s the 21st century and we still don’t have a Latina princess or a lesbian princess. I’m assuming the second half of my wish won’t happen (soon) since parents are so touchy on things related to sexuality, even though the princesses are already highly sexualized and most of their fortes in the movies is their sex-appeal.

Self-Hatred Within The Black Community

Through the video above you can see how self hatred is very evident within the Black community (as well as in other communities like the Latino community). There are many possible reasons for this to occur.

There’s Disney*, there’s the media that glamorizes certain celebrities over others, there’s society’s imposed self hatred. There are so many ways to get exposed to the disease called self hatred.

Some of the most common signs is the lightening of the hair and eyes. A couple of days ago while sitting in an UN conference room,  a friend noted to me that almost 99% of the people in that room had dark hair. It’s interesting to see that blond hair and light eyes (and goes without saying lighter skin) is a virtue yet most of the world does not possess those traits. I guess this shows how northern European traits used imperialism and exposure to infect most of the world with the idea that they aren’t attractive. Thinking about it now, it might be because it’s ‘exotic’.

A woman in the video gives testimony of going through a surgery to lighten her eyes. The fact that there’s even an available surgery for that shows the racism that this country has. You very rarely hear, “I hate my eyes, they are too light, I wish they were darker”. Very, VERY interesting that the procedure was done in Panama, which as far as I know has a majority Black/ancestral Black/darker skin/etc population.

Straight hair, that seems more related to Afro-self hatred. A good portion of the world’s population (geographically) have straight/wavy hair. The media also glamorizes the hair that you can ‘hair flip’.The clerk in the video mentioned that straight hair “looks more natural”. I’m just wondering what does that even mean? and Who defined natural?

The bleaching is another serious topic. Bleaching is very prominent within the Black community and the Indian community. In some societies like in India, lighter skin means higher position in society.I know that in Dominican Republic this is still a fact. When I watch television, I count how many of the reporters are light skinned and dark skinned, who is doing what. Most of the presenters or public figures are white. It’s unfortunately no surprise. Although most of the women do not have blond hair, they most definitely do have straight hair. It’s very difficult to tell someone they’ve been lied to their whole life about how they aren’t beautiful when a person has fully internalized it and believed it.

There must be a strong force somewhere it to make people to bleach their skin in lieu of the fact that they may get all sorts of horrible skin diseases.

How Exactly Did Obama Win the Election?

No one can deny that the election of 2008/2009 was historical; we had a woman close to winning for both parties and (now) we have an African American president. The election was marked with change, possibly the oldest president, two female candidates, or an African American president.

I feel the election was like playing the “which one is not like the others” game. I feel many people voted for Barack Obama because he’s an African American and not because of his politics. People were so stirred and excited for the new face they saw on television talking about becoming the next president of the United States, that they didn’t realize he wasn’t going to change much. I don’t think the ridiculous rumors created were really helping the situation either:

Various other rumors were being spread, the hopeful and the bad. There was a rumor spreading that the White House would be painted black (right because a federal building would ever be touched in that manner). There was one that he is actually a gangster and that he was ‘hood’. The other silly rumor was that he would end the war in Iraq (although he has said multiple times at debates and speeches that he wasn’t going to).

I also think his platform definitely helped him win the election. All the speak of hope made people hopeful, maybe even too hopeful. Because their hopes are so high, the people of the United States are expecting superhuman feats to come from him.

The yearn for something new and the fact that he’s an African American most likely allowed him to win the election over other candidates.

BET: What Is It Really Doing?

Why am I shocked when I hear about how BET is a horrible channel? I can’t find any good in the channel. I guess the only good thing that it is assigned to a pretty awkward number, 54.

I can’t believe that Black Entertainment Television didn’t air Coretta Scott King’s funeral. It seems extremely disrespectful and ungrateful for a channel, supposedly, dedicated to black people to not show such a historic person’s funeral. I wonder who decided that would be a great idea. I always get the feeling the younger generation doesn’t appreciate anything. I feel they don’t understand how much struggle and pain someone had to go through so that they can live more comfortable lives.

That has always been a problem. It’s extremely difficult to have anything dedicated to one race, since not everyone is the same. Also, what is BET trying to say? That black people only like crap rap/hip hop music, misogyny, low-brow ‘entertainment’, stereotype-re-enforcing? BET probably causes people who has never met a black person in their life to react like this when they finally do:

I can also understand how BET is trying to cater to an audience but the content is just BAD, real bad. The blogger does make a point that Telemundo a very popular Latino channel doesn’t degrade Latinos, it simply caters to the Latino audience.

I really don’t know how to say this any better, than the blogger themselves:

They should take the initiative and change the station’s name to Young Misguided Black Men’s Entertainment Television(YMBMET for short), as that’s who 90% of it’s programming is geared at anyway. Would you believe me if I told you that the religious shows appeared immediately after BET Uncut’s 1 hour block. (BET Uncut’s cancellation had nothing to do with protests of it’s content, claims BET.)

2 things said in that quote, the more educated blacks are not watching BET and BET continues to make stereotypes and make black people look like hypocrites.  I don’t think the more educated population is spending time watching MTV or BET and enjoying it. It don’t understand how you could possibly have such degrading content on so many different levels throughout the week and then on Sunday have ‘religious’ shows. (I guess this also points out religious hypocrisy).

I went through some of the comments and someone mentioned Viacom. I keep hearing Viacom in relation to money and the destruction to all that is good.

BET: Is Aaron McGruder Doing More for the Black Community than BET?

Wanting to know more about BET who better than to watch Aaron McGruder, the creator of The Boondocks, talk about it.

It’s funny they showed a clip about ‘bad things’ skyrocketing after BET started airing. The funny thing is, I don’t think it’s solely BET’s fault. Look at MTV they glorify teenage pregnancy and girls are getting pregnant to get on a show. This actually aggravates me. For me, the entire point of the show is to show how horrible it is to be a teen mom, I guess not. You shouldn’t be praised or given that much money for getting knocked up! What type of message are we sending!? “Do drugs, and you’ll appear on ‘True Life: I’m on Drugs'”. I just don’t get it. BET probably has a role in the drop out rates, but it’s probably more personal reasons than the influence of television.

Aaron Gruder wants to find a black leader that “won’t embarrass you”. Al Sharpton is a  bit of a hypocrite and that just makes everyone look bad. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t many black role models. Many young black people think that becoming a basketball player or being a rap artist is the best way to make it in life. It’s hard to point out all the black writers, doctors, CEOs, politicians, etc.

Although the conversation reared away from BET, he does make a good point. America likes to do things and say they’ve made the most significant change ever. Getting rid of slavery seemed like such an amazing feat to many Americans. Not to brag, but Dominican Republic had slavery for only 200~300 years in comparison to America which had slavery for 200 years, but still treated it’s black population like second-class citizens (I would say 300 years since integration didn’t really happen till the 70’s and 80’s). America had slavery for a long time, even after it was ‘abolished” there was a defacto slavery.

Aaron McGruder also says that “everyone knows what the problem is”, but why isn’t more being done to get the problem solved? Since everything is based off of money, why not cut the supply and channels like BET and MTV won’t be able to produce it’s crappy shows anymore.

BET: Parental Point of View

The Boondocks is always throwing jabs at BET for corrupting the black community. AKA:

Actually, The Boondocks used to be on BET (ironic, right? Especially looking at how the Boondocks ridicules the types of things BET shows; ie naked women on strip poles, while a rapper with no talent raps about wanting sexual relations). BET took the Boondocks off the air after an episode was very critical of BET directly. I highly doubt BET producers ever took the time to watch the show. Makes me wonder if they pay attention to anything else being aired on their channel.

I knew from the get-go that BET was just absolute trash. After reading an article, I am absolutely stunned. The article’s audience is for parents. I think about entertainment from a parental perspective. I’m already very disappointed in the younger generations. I would like to reverse the crap they’ve been fed. We nowadays watch television for hours. Children are pretty likely to watch BET because everyone else is watching it. I thought BET was bad, but not that bad:

So relentless and constant is this kind of content that the PTC found that [BET] averaged one instance of offensive content every 38 seconds. By comparison, prime-time broadcast TV programming in the 8:00 p.m. hour (itself full of sex and violence) averaged one instance of negative content only about every five minutes.

This is ridiculous. How can such horrible $#@! be shown on TV? I’m puzzled as to how this hasn’t gotten more attention. I think the channel does more damage to the black community than a comment made by Don Imus. Don Imus won’t have much an effect, but BET has obvious and direct influence since it’s part of ‘pop culture’ (which I also dislike). I can’t complain too much because organizations are doing things to lessen BET’s influence. It makes me sick all at the same time to believe that BET is just in it for the money and not value/substance. They obviously don’t care. I think almost everything in pop culture is about money. I really wish I knew where I saw this video, but a man interviewed elementary school students in the mid 1900s about what they wanted to be when they grow up and most of the kids have decent dreams, like nurse, firefighter, truck driver, teacher. He did the same experiment in the 2000s and the most popular response was “get rich”. Is this a sign of culture deterioration? Most definitely.

Words: N*gg*r Part 3

In the episode, The S Word, the infamous case of the teacher calling a student a “nigga” and getting in trouble for using the word. The episode says A LOT!

The question of when and how to use the word comes into play. It seems, according to the episode, that no one knows when and how to use either variation. The teacher shows clear confusion of how to use the word. Petto says there’s a difference between the two words, what I noticed after preying on a feed for a while is that the lines between the -er variation and the -a variation has blurred significantly. Of course there were the few specks of people using the -er variant in a directly racist way, but the other used in the same fashion that maybe someone who uses the other variation uses it.

One of the points made in the episode is whether or not it’s hypocritical to use a word that you tell other people not to use. I still cannot grasp the idea of using group-exclusive words.

It also seems that the word became so ingrained in speech that it stopped being a group-exclusive word. Especially with our youth, there seems to be less of a divide between who is allowed to use the word and who isn’t.

Another observation of the show is that Thomas and Huey rarely utter the word. They are supposed to represent the educated black community. I think it shines true in real life. I’ve never heard and educated black person refer to another person as their “nigga”.

This might also show the divide between the educated and the not as fortunate to get educated.

Words: N*gg*r Part 2

When we, as youth need quick information, we refer to our friend, Wikipedia. I wanted some background information about the word “nigger“.

What an eye-opener it was! Some things I learned was the word wasn’t always used to refer to black people and at some point it was the PC term for black people. It’s mind boggling to even think that the word was the PC term! The other thing I discovered that the word went as broad as to refer to anyone who is considered ‘less-than’. The Québécois referred to themselves to explain their situation in relation to French imperialism.

One thing that really bothers me is that this seems be an American-only issue. It seems no other country has this issue, or had this issue till America had it. Many countries adopted a derogatory word for black people after Americans (so proud to be an American -__-).

The phrase ‘the n-word’ was popularized after the OJ Simpson trial. Who knew this word’s history is still changing.There seems to be a giant difference between “nigger” and “nigga”. Something I just noticed is that the racist characters on The Boondocks don’t really use the -er variation.

The annoying thing about the word is that there aren’t clear lines and people get angry because someone else doesn’t see the lines they do.

Words: N*gg*r Part 1

The ‘n-word’ has had controversy over who uses it, how to use it, and what it means. It’s no surprise that this word, which has a log history of racism and hatred, would be such a heavy package. Anytime the word is mentioned every side has a different story to tell about the word. Something/someone can be easily labeled racist for using the word.

Cartoons have been demanded to be terminated like The Boondocks or South Park for their risqué content. The Boondocks is the most notorious for being attacked for the excessive use of word ‘nigga’. I promise you that the word is said 15+ times each episode guaranteed. Like The Boondocks, what better way to make an opinion than humor. Richard Pryor and George Carlin both weigh in about the word. Both have very different, almost polar point of views of the word.

Richard Pryor takes on the view of not calling anyone by that name, which I completely agree with. We wouldn’t have all these ‘fine line’ problems if we just erase it from our vocabulary. I see it as a filthy word no matter what context it’s in. For me the history will just play in my head every time someone says it. George Carlin also brings up a good point of there is actually nothing wrong with the word, its the way you use it you should be concerned with.