Disney villains wear dark clothes: does that reinforce racism?

Great Debates
1

fessie in this thread argues that it does. (A lot of quoting follows; this is to give readers who haven’t seen the thread in question an idea of the arguments in play here.)

Now, is the trend of dressing villains up in darker CLOTHES also the result of, and reinforcing of, racism? I was pretty clear in the parent thread that I thought not. One can argue that the characters with darker skin or fur tones being villains MIGHT be subconscious racism, but to me, that ties directly into the clothes question, because, IMO, they’re done for the same reason: a historical Western association with the (NOT skin) color of black with evil and white with good.

Anyway, what do you all think?

2

I promised I would participate but this is not the question I had anticipated being asked. I thought it would be this question:

I don’t disagree that the clothes being darker = racism. I will still say that the fact that a lot of the villains themselves are darker and the heroes blonde, is. (Sorry, poor sentence structure).

But the clothes have never really registered on my radar.

3

I agree. Is there any evidence that the cultural association of black with evil has any racial motivation?

The two seem quite distinct - in particular, the notion of wearing black clothes means a character is evil seems very different from racism. From what I understand of racism, racists do not necessarily think of those of other races as evil, but more that they are inferior.

4

[QUOTE=Anaamika]

I don’t disagree that the clothes being darker = racism. I will still say that the fact that a lot of the villains themselves are darker and the heroes blonde, is. (Sorry, poor sentence structure).

But the clothes have never really registered on my radar.
[/QUOTE]

But as I said in my OP, why are the two issues different? I think they are heavily connected in intent (white = good, black = evil), since I don’t think anyone can argue that Disney is DELIBERATELY putting racist overtones in their heroes and villains (note I said heroes and villains; I know about the Fantasia satyrs).

Now, if the human characters WERE separated as such by race, I think you’d have a point, but they’re not. Heck, since you mention this as a complaint, among animated features, there are only THREE blonde heroines (Aurora of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Alice of Alice in Wonderland - and she’s only so because of the book). All the others are redheads or brunettes. Yes, all are white, but doesn’t that happen anyway when you’re basing films on fairy tales? “Rewriting” cultural norms like they’re doing for the Frog Prince movie is a recent phenomenon, after all.

5

In Chinese culture, heroes traditionally wear red; villains wear black. And there was little contact with Africa until Zheng He’s voyages. So…you were saying?

6

[QUOTE=Leaper]
But as I said in my OP, why are the two issues different? I think they are heavily connected in intent (white = good, black = evil), since I don’t think anyone can argue that Disney is DELIBERATELY putting racist overtones in their heroes and villains (note I said heroes and villains; I know about the Fantasia satyrs).

Now, if the human characters WERE separated as such by race, I think you’d have a point, but they’re not. Heck, since you mention this as a complaint, among animated features, there are only THREE blonde heroines (Aurora of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Alice of Alice in Wonderland - and she’s only so because of the book). All the others are redheads or brunettes. Yes, all are white, but doesn’t that happen anyway when you’re basing films on fairy tales? “Rewriting” cultural norms like they’re doing for the Frog Prince movie is a recent phenomenon, after all.
[/QUOTE]

Heroes, too. Don’t forget the blonde heroes - Hercules, the Prince in Beauty & the beast.

And even when they do use non-whites they have white features. Look at Jasmine in Aladdin.

Mulan was the first Asian and the animation in that film is sub-par at best.

Is Disney racist? No, I am 100% idea that Disney is behind whatever sells. However…there is something, that bothers. I don’t know what, exactly. But I grew up on a lot of Disney and I remember one of my first instances of conscious cyniscm to be related to the all-white heroines in every mainstream American fairy-tale. And Disney was a HUGE purveyor of fairy tales in my day.

Light colored skin & light colored hair has always been considered beauty, however, in the West and the East. It’s a bit odd, so you’re probably right in that it goes way deeper than just casual racism. Dark=bad and it’s probably more because of our association of fear of the night and love for the sun.

I am rambling but I hope my point came through. Whatever it was.

7

Kind of seems like a stretch, but then Disney certainly has a history of racism. The crows in Dumbo are obviously supposed to be stereotypes of black people. Racism was pretty rampant, though, so I don’t know if it makes any sense to single out Disney. There are lots of counter-examples for other producers. Boss Hogg always wore white in The Dukes of Hazzard. Batman wears black. I think what complicates the issue is that white also represents sunshine, which we associate with happiness, and black represents darkness, which we associate with sadness, and I don’t think those associations have anything to do with race.

8

So dark skin = racism and dark clothes = racism.

So if a character like Maleficient from Sleeping Beauty or the Sea Witch from the Little Mermaid, both of whom are very very pale, wears dark clothing to contrast with the paleness of her skin, that is racisim? ummm not buying it.

OH and in Peter Pan, do look to Captain Hook for the racisim. Look at the Indians. There is your racisit portrayal.

Or maybe, just maybe, since these films are made for children, they just want to make the characters easy to distinguish from each other.
Beauty and Beast, the villian is a white male, Hunchback of Nortre Dame, white male villian and the hero male is a blonde.
The devil is called the Prince of Darkness. God is usually refered to as ‘light’. I think these refer not to skin color but the actual light, (sunlight) and darkness (shadows). But graphically speaking, if you want to send this idea out as an image, it is easy to move to dark colors = evil and light colors = good.

Disney has just stayed away from blondes for a good long time.

9

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
Heroes, too. Don’t forget the blonde heroes - Hercules, the Prince in Beauty & the beast.
[/quote]

Yeah, but for one thing, they’re guys, and for some reason no one is bothered when the guys are white and blonde. (Is that because we don’t expect boys to pick up standards of beauty from other guys?) Secondly, the prince in Beauty and the Beast? Isn’t he on screen as a human for, like, two minutes?

I was trying to edit my first response to mention that, but it didn’t go through. At any rate, I’d almost say that, if it’s for negative reasons, it’s xenophobia, not racism. Besides, if they DID try to use actual Arabic features, I betcha some special interest group would complain of racism. :stuck_out_tongue: [/completely unsupported supposition]

So how is the quality of animation relevant? You aren’t saying that they deliberately skimped on the animation quality because hey, who cares, it’s just some yellow chick? For one thing, that’s terrible business sense, and secondly, isn’t that during the era when computer animation was growing hot? Weren’t they cutting down on the hand-drawn department way back then too?

But as I said in my previous post, since almost all fairy tales told in this country today, at least the popular ones, originate from Europe, you were expecting the heroines to be… what, exactly?

Yes, I think this is the much more likely explanation for all the issues in play here.

10

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
Mulan was the first Asian and the animation in that film is sub-par at best.
[/QUOTE]
That’s an odd observation. Mulan’s budget was $90 million, $20 million higher than (blond) Hercules from the year before.

Heck, the budget for Mulan was more than 4x the budget for Beauty & the Beast. Now *Beauty * was made 7 years earlier so there’s going to be some difference because of inflation, but not a factor of four!

And frankly, *Mulan * is a much better-animated movie than either The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast. The characters are more expressive and the animators’ lines are more self-assured. In technical terms the Disney movies improved steadily throughout the 90’s until things went off the rails with *Atlantis * and Treasure Planet.

The idea that *Mulan * was somehow neglected by Disney management just isn’t bourne out by the facts.

11

This… this is all serious? Putting the villain in dark colored clothes is some sort of veiled racism? Giving Scar black highlight fur made him a “black” lion, in the same sense that, say, James Earl Jones is black, while Mufasa’s non-black fur makes him a “white” lion in the same sense that, to pick a random example, Jeremy Irons is white? Maleficent is a racist character?

I…

I just…

Y’know, race relations are a real problem, for our country and our world. We have serious problems to solve on this front, and I don’t know that we’re much closer to solving some of them than we were a decade ago. I am fairly certain, though, that presenting Maleficent, or Scar, as examples of racism is a real hindrance in the pursuit of a serious discussion of those problems.

12

I think there are two different issues at play that were brought up in the original thread, one of them valid, and one of them pretty loopy. It’s true that Disney heroes have historically been a pretty pale lot, but that’s been changing ever since the Disney Renaissance of the '90s, with the release of Aladdin. Since then, we’ve had native American (Pocahontas), Asian (Mulan), Pacific islander (Lilo and Stitch), and with the upcoming Frog Princess, black. So while Disney is open to some criticism on this front, they seem to be actively moving in the right direction.

The idea that villains dressed in dark clothing is evidence of some sort of subliminal racism is way out there, though. Dark = evil long predates the creation of modern racial politics, and as athelas pointed out, is hardly unique to Western cultures. The idea that a kid will see that Ursula the octopus woman in The Little Mermaid is wearing black, and extend that to the assumption that their friend Johnny at school who has dark skin is also evil seems pretty far-fetched.

13

[QUOTE=Leaper]
Yeah, but for one thing, they’re guys, and for some reason no one is bothered when the guys are white and blonde. (Is that because we don’t expect boys to pick up standards of beauty from other guys?) Secondly, the prince in Beauty and the Beast? Isn’t he on screen as a human for, like, two minutes?

I was trying to edit my first response to mention that, but it didn’t go through. At any rate, I’d almost say that, if it’s for negative reasons, it’s xenophobia, not racism. Besides, if they DID try to use actual Arabic features, I betcha some special interest group would complain of racism. :stuck_out_tongue: [/completely unsupported supposition]
So how is the quality of animation relevant? You aren’t saying that they deliberately skimped on the animation quality because hey, who cares, it’s just some yellow chick? For one thing, that’s terrible business sense, and secondly, isn’t that during the era when computer animation was growing hot? Weren’t they cutting down on the hand-drawn department way back then too?
But as I said in my previous post, since almost all fairy tales told in this country today, at least the popular ones, originate from Europe, you were expecting the heroines to be… what, exactly?
Yes, I think this is the much more likely explanation for all the issues in play here.
[/QUOTE]

Please explain to me what the difference is between xenophobia and racism. I thought I knew, but from your post and a bunch of others lately I’ve been wondering.

And yes, perhaps I do believe they just didn’t care about the animation of Mulan anywhere as much.
As for your second to last comment, I don’t know. I didn’t write them, I wasn’t expecting anythign when I was a kid. Maybe we don’t have many but there are LOTS and LOTS of black kids in this country and almost no black fairy tales. Maybe some of those.

14

[QUOTE=Miller]
I think there are two different issues at play that were brought up in the original thread, one of them valid, and one of them pretty loopy. It’s true that Disney heroes have historically been a pretty pale lot, but that’s been changing ever since the Disney Renaissance of the '90s, with the release of Aladdin. Since then, we’ve had native American (Pocahontas), Asian (Mulan), Pacific islander (Lilo and Stitch), and with the upcoming Frog Princess, black. So while Disney is open to some criticism on this front, they seem to be actively moving in the right direction.

The idea that villains dressed in dark clothing is evidence of some sort of subliminal racism is way out there, though. Dark = evil long predates the creation of modern racial politics, and as athelas pointed out, is hardly unique to Western cultures. The idea that a kid will see that Ursula the octopus woman in The Little Mermaid is wearing black, and extend that to the assumption that their friend Johnny at school who has dark skin is also evil seems pretty far-fetched.
[/QUOTE]

But if Johnny also has purple skin, a shock of white hair, and tentacles, well, what then?

15

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
Please explain to me what the difference is between xenophobia and racism. I thought I knew, but from your post and a bunch of others lately I’ve been wondering.
[/QUOTE]

Racism is, I think, a subset of xenophobia. A xenophobe is afraid of something that’s different from himself, but that thing doesn’t necessarily have to be race. An Irish Catholic who really hated Irish Protestants could be called a xenophobe, but obviously not a racist.

16

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
And yes, perhaps I do believe they just didn’t care about the animation of Mulan anywhere as much.
[/QUOTE]
You may believe it, but according to the budget numbers that interpretation just isn’t true.

Personally, I’d love to see Disney do a remake of the Uncle Remus stories. The chance of that happening is close to zero.

The problem is that so many traditional black stories became tainted by racism long ago, making them hard to recycle for modern audiences. Look at* Little Black Sambo*, for example. There’s nothing inherently racist in the story itself. The protagonist is clever and resourceful and the color of his skin is entirely incidental to his adventures with the tigers. But it’s very difficult to approach the story today without all of the ugly baggage that the name “Sambo” carries with it.

17

[QUOTE=Pochacco]

The problem is that so many traditional black stories became tainted by racism long ago, making them hard to recycle for modern audiences. Look at* Little Black Sambo*, for example. There’s nothing inherently racist in the story itself. The protagonist is clever and resourceful and the color of his skin is entirely incidental to his adventures with the tigers. But it’s very difficult to approach the story today without all of the ugly baggage that the name “Sambo” carries with it.
[/QUOTE]

I’m sure you knew this, but you didn’t mention that the story actually took place in India, and had nothing to do with black people of African descent.

18

Then again, xenophobia has taken on a connotation of “foreignness.” Seeing as the Catholic and the Protestants he hates are all Irish, wouldn’t the Catholic be best termed a bigot?

19

[QUOTE=Leaper]
But as I said in my OP, why are the two issues different?
[/QUOTE]

Why are they the same? Some cultures associate the color black with death and evil. Some cultures - I would guess it’s a much greater number, not that I have any way to back it up - have racial prejudices against people with darker skin. As Cecil notes, even in a very multiethnic country like Brazil:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_098.html
“Racial mixing in Brazil is common and in fact has come to be a point of national pride there. […] While overt racial hostility is virtually unknown in the country, there is a widely shared feeling that a light skin is more desirable than a dark skin.”

Of course, maybe that’s a holdover from the European culture that produced the form of racism we’re talking about, as well as the color associations and Disney. But maybe it isn’t.

A straight-up comparison of budgets doesn’t really prove this point, since there are so many different things that money could have been spent on. I saw Mulan and I never thought it was animated carelessly, but what you said about the animation is more persuasive than this.

20

[QUOTE=lowbrass]
I’m sure you knew this, but you didn’t mention that the story actually took place in India, and had nothing to do with black people of African descent.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, but most storybook versions of it in the United States illustrated it with African blacks. One of those versions was what was read to me when I was a child.

There’s a great modern version called The Story of Little Babaji that ditches the name Sambo and moves the action back to India.