Well that’s interesting, Cal, but if you won’t concede that Amos & Andy is a racial stereotype, then I fear we have no common ground to continue a discussion.
Right – but, aside from their language, how are the crows Black stereotypes? They don’t eat watermelon, play with dice, or do any of the other things commonly associated with Blacl stereotypes. (You wanna see Black stereotypes in cartoon, watch Bob Clampett’s Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves, which seems to have gone out of its way to be over-the-top:
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs - Wikipedia )
I certainly concede that Amos ‘n’ Andy is a racial stereotype. There’s no question about it.
But Calvin and the Colonel isn’t. That’s the point.
What do you mean? They were the exact same ones from Dumbo. Are you asking whether they’re equally “offensive” in that movie?
No it is right on topic. The topic is that evil characters are presented with dark skin or dark clothing. The crows are dark. They have dark feathers. (and a magic one) So they should be evil characters, by the measure presented by fessie via the OP, but they aren’t! They are the good guys.
If the Disney studio were really trying to get children to equate dark with evil then why would they make any dark character good? To throw us off the scent?
The other elephants are grey, and the real evil characters are the clowns. They all have painted white faces and in their most evil they wear yellow firemen’s coats. (only one clown worries that making Dumbo leap from such a height is dangerous to Dumbo but he is brushed aside)
It’s natural that Dumbo would be taught to fly by birds. He could have meet any group of birds. A group of robins, a group of blue jays or bald eagles would have done the job. So crows were specifically chosen. Maybe because crows do grow large so the porpotinal differences would be less egerious or maybe because crows are very common and anyone watching the movie would recognize a crow when they saw one. But maybe, just maybe, they wanted to include some black characters, other than the ‘roust-abouts’ that raise the tent in the rain in the middle of the night.
You’re right. Black stereotypes don’t exist, and never did. All movies and television were perfect, always. Thank you and good night. :rolleyes:
I don’t think they were the same ones (though I might be wrong – but these guys looked physically the same as each other). My point is that they’re “cool” jazz musicians, and especially in the 1940s, when this was set, cuch guys were often black.
Whether the crows were the same as the ones in Dumbo or not, does their use as backup musicians imply a subtle racism?
I don’t think so myself, but I can make many of the same arguments for them being racist stereotypes that have been raised for the crows in Dumbo.
Ya know, that’s not what he said, or even anything close to what he said, and if you’re not interested in participating in the actual discussion - which I think has morphed into an interesting and valuable one - why address something no one has said?
Cal has never denied to existence of black stereotypes. He is asking - fairly, I think - if the crows in Dumbo can be fairly counted among them. They have only one “black” characteristic (their dialect), but are otherwise developed characters who are even fairly complex (for a kid’s movie). How does this qualify as a stereotype?
I think you’re mixing me up with someone else. I already said that I do not agree with the OP. I said I think it’s a stretch to conclude that black clothing equates to racism. The issue of whether the crows are a stereotype is a separate matter, which is why I mentioned it being off-topic.
I know. I thought you would pick up that I was being extremely sarcastic in my frustration at the course of the discussion. I’m just not interested in arguing to the overly-incredulous something that is so blindingly obvious that it was even mentioned on The Daily Show as recently as last week.*
If you all want to argue about whether the crows are black stereotypes, have at it. I know that they are, and I have no interest in further arguing it than I have in proving that the sky is blue.
*They didn’t even have to say it; they simply ran a clip from the movie of a few seconds and knew that the audience would understand that it’s a black stereotype.
I just watched the scene again - I guess they aren’t. I just always assumed that they were.
I know you weren’t really asking me, but, no.
Apparently the writers of The Family Guy share my delusion as well:
Oh I completly agree that the crows are ment to be seen as ‘black’.
You give way too much credit to today’s Hollywood and way too little credit to the folks from the “50’s” (even though Dumbo was a very 40’s movie). How is a light hearted reference to an existing dialect so demeaning? IIRC, that’s about the only example of non-standard grammar you can find in the crows’ dialog. The rest of the characterization came from the accent. How is that worse than 80’s Sebastian asking Ariel “what more is you looking for?”.
That’s a pretty interesting point. I was subbing recently in a class and showed the students the (legally purchased by the library, thankyouverymuch) Greatest Hits of Disney or something. One of the songs was “Under the Sea,” and Sebastian’s giant grinning Jamaican schtick really got on my nerves. It wasn’t quite a minstrel show, but it had something in common with minstrel shows.
I think he was pink.
Daniel
When Meryl Streep does a dialect, is that racist or minstrel show?
A dingo et my baby!
This is what I’m thinking, too.
I agree that Crows are ‘Black’, as in characatures of Black people. But is making a characature of some group inherently racist or bad?
Wouldn’t that issue depend on how they are portrayed? Everyone would admit that portraying Jews as rodents with Yiddish accents would be horribly anti-Semitic if the Nazis did it to portray Jews as vermin - but what if the mouse in question was Fievel Mousekewitz in “An Americal Tale”?
And here’s a scholarly paper that doesn’t.
Here’s the song in question from Dumbo. It’s interesting to compare it to this contemporary performance of “Beware” by Louis Jordan. Jordan was a massive star with strong appeal to both black and white audiences. He was the canonical black hipster of his day and about as far from a Stepin Fetchit as it’s possible to be. The crows in Dumbo weren’t supposed to be pickaninnies or toms, they were supposed to be jump jazz hipsters.
You’ll also note that virtually the only ungrammatical part of the entire song is the clearly arch “be done seen most 'bout everything” chorus. Everything else is highly articulate and clever wordplay set to jazz music. They’re stereotypes, yes, but no more negative than (as **pizzabrat ** points out) Sebastian the Crab from The Little Mermaid.
You’ve managed to demonstrate that there is a popular perception that these characters are racial stereotypes, but that’s a bit different than demonstrating that they actually are racial stereotypes. How many people in the audience of The Daily Show have actually seen the movie, do you think? And how many were reacting to the clip based on what they’d heard about it second (or third) hand, and the context in which it was presented on the show?
You get the hell out of that town.
The crows talked like stereotypical uneducated black people. Have you watched the segment in question? If you don’t recognize what it is, then there’s no way I’m going to successfully explain it to you. I’m not going to have a pissing contest about the exact number of grammatical mistakes in the dialog, because that is completely beside the point. I could take any example of a stereotype and say it’s a “light-hearted reference to something that exists”. We could then conclude that stereotypes do not exist. That’s what ALL stereotypes are. A stereotype isn’t a completely made-up trait: “Black people live on Jupiter and go ‘erg op beeble fleen’” Basically, people seem to be arguing: “But black people actually do that”, as though that furthers their point. It doesn’t.