“Disney” updates a racist push in its classics

“Disney” updated the pre-start notice for its classic movies, adopted since last year, and strengthened it with an additional message. This alert opens popular movies such as “Dumbo” (1941), “The Jungle Book” (1967) and “Peter Pan” (1953), when shown on the “Disney Plus” streaming platform. The notice reads: “This program contains negative representations and / or offenses against peoples or cultures. These were wrong stereotypes at the time and still are today. “And instead of removing the content,” we want to acknowledge its damaging impact, learn from it, and open a discussion about it so that together we can create a fusible future. “

Disney first began broadcasting the alert in November last year, but this time it updated it with a new, improved version.
However, the warning in its first version was brief as follows: “This program is presented in its original state. It may include outdated cultural representations. “
According to the BBC website, among the classics that have come on alert is the movie “Aristocrats” (1970), and among its characters is a “yellow-faced” cat who plays the piano with chopsticks. Similarly, “Peter Pan” where Native Americans are referred to as the racist words for “red skin”. The monkey character “King Lui” appears as a caricature to blacks, depicting him as a lazy character who plays jazz and has little language skills.
Also, some movies like “Song of the South” (1946) were not originally screened on the “Disney Plus” platform due to their racist content. This work has caused controversy in the United States since its production, as the company has not released copies of it on videotape or CD. And he recovers, through the character of Uncle Remus, an old racist myth, according to which the blacks who worked in the cotton fields during the slavery period were happy.
Among the racist stereotypes in the classic “Disney” movies, include the movie “Dumbo”, in which the little elephant learns to fly with the help of crows, the actors exaggerate their voices and accent to appear as a stereotype of black people. Americans. Disney Plus is not the first streaming platform to acknowledge the racist history of some of its films, Warner Bros. has begun to display an alert about “racial and ethnic prejudice” in its cartoon. This alert indicates that “although these cartoons do not represent our current society, we chose to show them in their original state, because modifying them means affirming that these prejudices did not exist in the first place.”