Over the course of last week in class we have discussed stereotypes and the damage that they do. The more and more I start to examine certain types of movies closely the more and more I see stereotypes being taught without the viewer even noticing.
My daughter was watching the disney movie The Lion King which I'm sure many of you have seen before. As I watched it with her I began to notice some very disturbing things about the movie. The Lion King does the same thing. The main characters are various animals but in my opinion their voices have racist stereotypes attached to them. The movie takes place on the African Sahel yet if you noticed Simba's voice is played by a white actor. The hyenas who are bad characters in the film speak english that is hard to understand and are played by Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin. To me this can be construed as being stereotypical.
I also couldn't help but notice the stereotypical depictions of females in the movie as well. The lionesses cannot protect themselves from the evil Scar and they must wait for Simba to come back as an adult male and help them. This only feeds the stereotype that women are weak and need men to protect and save them.
After noticing these things it is very apparent that even something as innocent as a disney movie may only be serving the pourpose of perpetuating stereotypes which is very negative and entirely wrong. Just some thoughts.
Chris Roberts post 4
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