I'm taking a break from writing about India. Today's topic is regarding Hollywood subliminally infecting American children with xenophobia.We saw Ratatouille in the theater the other day as it had just come out in India. As cute and entertaining as it was, I couldn't help but notice something that bothered me a great deal. Although the villain in the movie has a French accent, he also possesses obvious Chinese caricaturistic traits - the slanted eyes, bucked teeth, short in statute - typical of anti-Chinese cartoons back in the railroad days. Furthermore, everyone else in the movie looks French and has a French accent, while the protagonist is the only one who speaks with an American accent as do the mice. Why is there a racial distinction between the characters if the movie is set in Paris and everyone (and rodent) is supposedly French?
Then I started thinking back and mentally reviewed Disney movies I've seen in the past couple decades. In The Lion King, for example, all the lions speak with an American accent but why does Scar, the villain who kills his brother King Mufasa, have noticeably darker fur and a British accent? (Or is it African? I forget - it's been years - but I remember the accent was foreign.) Accents are indicative of where one may have been brought up - geographically and socio-economically. All the lions are raised together in the same pride, (as they never mentioned that Scar went to a boarding school abroad,) so why would the only lion with a foreign accent be the evil one? Furthermore, the mischievous hyena, one of Scar's cohorts, has an African-American accent (as the memorable voiceover was done by Whoopi Goldberg.) Why is the distinction between good and evil illustrated by various accents - namely evil portrayed by a foreign or non-white American accent while good by a standard white American accent? Since the story takes place in an African jungle, if anything, shouldn't they ALL have an African accent?
Same with Aladdin. The main characters, Aladdin, Princess Jasmine, and the Genie, all speak American English. But the supporting cast speaks with an Arabic (or was it British) accent as does the evil Jafar. Again, isn't everyone from the same goddamn kingdom? So why would the 3 main characters, all good, speak with an American accent while the evil antagonist speaks with an Arabic accent?
Coincidence? I think not, and I'm sure I can go on and on with my diatribe and you can corroborate my theory with more examples. The bottom line is children movies continue to subliminally disseminate the message that foreigners are evil. Isn't it appalling that even in this day and age in a nation built by immigrants where whites will no longer be the majority that we continue to instill xenophobia in our kids? I'm Chinese and Justin is half white (German/Irish) and half Indian, which means our unborn children will no doubt resemble Mexicans. What will the world be like for them? Will they also be watching movies where only foreigners are almost always evil? What will they think of themselves as Americans of mixed heritage? I certainly wouldn't want to raise my kids (if I ever have any) in such an ethnocentric society. Unfortunately, I'm sure this trend is here to stay for decades to come as this country is run by Stupid White Men. (It is also the title of a Michael Moore book which I highly recommend - it's completely biased and acerb and at times dogmatic, but speaks only the truth - even revealing startling details on how Bush stole the last Presidential election from Gore among other equally fascinating topics.)
4 comments:
Bit late here, but really - come on. There are also plenty of supporting characters on the side of the "good guys" (which, by the way is a foolish way to put things. There are no definite good and bad sides to anything. The hyenas in the Lion King for example were being used by Scar and not inherently "bad")
Sebastian in the Little Mermaid; Mrs. Potts, the candlestick, and the clock in Beauty and the Beast; any number of characters in The Great Mouse Detective, the odd German-Japanese fashion designer in the Incredibles. The anthropomorphic fox version of Robin Hood in Disney's 1973 film.
And what about the bad guys with perfectly average American accents? Gaston of Beauty and the Beast (who was also supposed to be French) is a narcissistic, greedy, horrible excuse for a human being who plans to force the female protagonist into marriage and would likely have raped her were it not for the Beast (who is also very "other" at least in terms of appearance if not accent/nationality). The Incredibles, The Little Mermaid, Oliver & Company, all have antagonists with American accents. These are just the few I remember from my youth.
The only accents commonly found in Disney films to my recollection are British or Australian and I'll venture that's because more Brits and Aussies also speak English as their first language.
oh come on she is totally right
I absolutely agree. I started paying attention to this kind of stuff after watching a BBC documentary on the Rwandan genocide, in which the victims were all synchronized in an American accent while those who had participated in the genocide were synchronized in an "African" accent. I actually think foreign accents are used *because* people already subconsciously associate them with evil. That makes it hard to break away from this 'tradition'.
I am an English and Drama teacher from Australia and I was actually using the net to research the topic of why many of Disney's evil characters have British accents, when I came across your post. I found it most interesting. I also found the counter points of Mrs Pots in Beauty etc interesting, but I do have to say that the idea of the main antagonist having a British accent does seem to be a theme and is worth investigating.
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