Disney Encouragement

As classes wrap up, I've been beginning to realize how much I'm going to miss all of my first semester classes and the friends I've made in each of them. I know I'm definitely going to miss having a class where I can discuss Disney movies every meeting. No matter how interesting any class is in the rest of my time at Duke, it'll be hard for it to be as much fun as talking about Disney. Going into finals week, I thought I'd post some Disney-themed encouragement for everyone. Good luck and thanks for making this semester so great!

Race in Disney and Grey's

In her article on the portrayal of race in The Princess and the Frog, Sarah Turner argues that Disney employs a message of colorblindness in its characterization of Tiana and Naveen. Although she is shown as black, Tiana must also be “simply another princess” in order to avoid characterizing Tiana in stereotypical African American ways (84). Turner claims that in order for Disney’s message of race to be effective, the audience must both notice her blackness while simultaneously overlooking it “in favor of her character and her desire to access the American dream” (84). I think this approach is a wise and effective one; Disney was smart to make Tiana’s race a relative non-factor in the debut of the first African American princess. After all, the point is that her attitude and personality should outweigh any physical characteristics, so I don’t see a problem.

             This article also led me to think about other movies or shows that depict race in ways that make it unimportant, and one of the most salient examples that came to mind was ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy. In the show, the main characters range greatly in race and ethnicity, featuring several “typical white” characters alongside African American, Asian, and Hispanic doctors. The diversity in the show had honestly never occurred to me until I watched a recorded interview on the subject, and I think that’s what creator Shondra Rhimes intended. The underlying message that race is irrelevant to one’s abilities or potential is one that I think should be much more prevalent than it currently is in modern film and other media. In the interview I watched (which is in a link below, but isn’t solely focused on race and diversity), Sandra Oh, the actress who plays Christina Yang, mentions that she auditioned for the role of “Christina” and that the “Yang” last name was added on after she was cast. This struck me as an incredibly impressive thing for a writer to do; how can someone write a role in such a way that race is a non-factor and be completely open to allowing an actress of any race to play the role?

            Shonda Rhimes, who is African American, has spoken many times about her casting choices, and sums up her approach to casting racially diverse actors and actresses in an interview with the New York Times.  Her interview is pretty long, but relevant and insightful, especially when one considers the perspective it is coming from. Here is a brief except from the article:

           

Rhimes refuses to make an issue of her casting. “I think it’s sad, and weird, and strange that it’s still a thing,” she told me over the phone a few months ago. “It’s 2013. Somebody else needs to get their act together. And, oh, by the way, it works. Ratings-wise, it works.” In addition to its general success, “Scandal” is also rated No. 1 on network TV among African-American viewers.

While race on Rhimes’s shows is omnipresent, it is not often discussed explicitly. This has led to a second-order critique of her shows: that they are colorblind, diverse in a superficial way, with the characters’ races rarely informing their choices or conversations. Rhimes, obviously, disagrees. “When people who aren’t of color create a show and they have one character of color on their show, that character spends all their time talking about the world as ‘I’m a black man blah, blah, blah,’ ” she says. “That’s not how the world works. I’m a black woman every day, and I’m not confused about that. I’m not worried about that. I don’t need to have a discussion with you about how I feel as a black woman, because I don’t feel disempowered as a black woman.”

Shonda Rhimes is definitely heading in the right direction as far as diversifying American media, and it’s nice to see that Disney is starting to do the same.

Link to Shonda’s interview with Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/shonda-rhimes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Link to Sandra Oh’s interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ8avIEuD9I

The Vittetoe family goes diving in Disney (without me!)

As some of you may know, despite my love for Disney, I’ve never actually been to Disney World. My sister and I used to give my parents a hard time about our never making a trip to the magical land that all our friends revered, but last week my family (without me!) got to make the most amazing Disney World trip I’ve ever heard of. In order to fully explain the trip, I need to give a little background info.

My family’s favorite thing to do together is scuba dive, and over the years it’s become much more than just a hobby. My parents met through scuba diving almost 25 years ago, so it’s pretty safe to say that our family is founded on scuba diving. Ever since I turned 12 and became old enough to get my diving certification it’s been an adventure that we all share a love for and can do together. In 2009 my parents started a small scuba diving shop called Tank Worx. For the past two years my parents have gone to a conference called DEMA (Dive Equipment and Marketing Association) to look at scuba gear they might want to put in the shop. This year the conference was held in Orlando and my sister got to go with them as a “consultant” (that’s what the business cards she made for herself say anyway).

Now we get to the exciting part of the trip. My parents, sister, and their diving friends who made the trip with them got to scuba dive in the shark tank in Epcot! They got to use the gear that the animal trainers and other underwater workers use and spent 45 minutes in the tank with manta rays, sharks, and a bunch of other saltwater fish. At first they just swam around the front part of the tank where there weren’t too many fish and waved at the people watching through the glass. Then after about 15 minutes they were led to a part further back in the tank and kneeled down on the sand. Almost immediately they were greeted by hammerhead, nurse, and sand sharks. The sharks swam right by the group of divers, coming within a foot of my sister’s head! She said she was terrified at first but after a couple of minutes all she could think about was how incredible it was to be so close to such amazing animals. After their dive they were free to roam around the park until it closed (for free!). Hearing the stories about my family’s first Disney trip made me unbelievably jealous, especially because it was such a unique way to visit Disney for the first time. The good news is the conference is being held in Orlando again in 2015, so that gives me two years to convince my parents to bring me with them next time. Here are some pictures and what my sister said about the trip!

Karly says:

It was absolutely a once in a life time experience. Diving in the Living Seas Exhibit in EPCOT was such a special moment in my life because millions of people see this exhibit, but very few see it from the other side of the glass as I had the opportunity to. My favorite part of my Dive Quest in the Living Seas Exhibit in EPCOT was the communication with the children on the other side of the glass. Blowing everyone bubble rings, waving to people as they sat to enjoy their supper, and taking pictures with the kids were just a few of the events special to me. 

Disney's "Second Screen Live" – one screen too many?

Now that it’s November, my grandparents have already started e-mailing and calling my cousins and me, asking what’s on our Christmas lists this year. Of course I haven’t even begun to start thinking this far in advance, so I always promise I’ll think about it, make a list, and send it to them “really soon.” My oldest cousin, Michelle, has consistently been on the top of her game, though. She starts her list in September and is always incredibly thorough, waiting for the November call from our grandparents where she inevitably becomes the favorite grandchild for being so prepared. This October, Michelle’s new baby Deklyn just turned one, so the majority of the items on her list are for Deklyn. This year, one of the items at the top of her list is an iPad for baby Deklyn to play games on. She explained to me that there are tons of games intended for very young kids to play that help with their motor skills and can even help them learn to read earlier. I’m sure I’ve heard of this before, but the idea of my baby cousin playing on an iPad seems crazy to me.

This reminded me of the article we read a few months ago, “Disney's 'Little Mermaid Second Screen Live' adds iPad twist,” which describes the latest innovation in movie-going. Movie viewers (specifically young children) are encouraged to download a particular app and bring their iPad with them to see a movie, during which they can play games and sing along with the story on the screen.  The article claims that Disney sees this new sort of iPad initiative as a way to lure in a young audience who would be attracted by the idea of being able to interact with the movie. While I think the idea of somehow “interacting” with a classic Disney movie seems exciting, I’m more concerned about what this type of entertainment could be doing to the youngest generation. Why is it no longer enough to simply go to a movie for the sake of watching the movie? Have we really become so attached to and dependent on our electronic devices that we can’t survive two hours in a theater without them? I agree that we are rapidly progressing towards a more technological era and that we should embrace the opportunities technology can provide, but certain things, especially classic Disney movies, should maintain some degree of inviolability.

Unfortunately, I can’t test out this new form of entertainment myself, at least until it comes to a theater closer to me. If you want to see for yourself what “Second Screen Live” is really all about, here is a link to a preview, list of participating theaters, and easy way to download the app you’ll need for the event.

http://movies.disney.com/the-little-mermaid/second-screen-live

If anyone ends up trying out one of these movies over the next few breaks (if you happen to be in CA, NY, or NJ), I’d love to hear what you thought!

The Princess and the Frog (and their races)

Ajay Gehlawat’s article on the “elision of race” in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog initially seemed like it was heading in a direction I could understand and might potentially agree with. The abstract talks mostly about the “dual contexts” of the movie’s New Orleans setting and 21^st century America release, which I agree is crucial in any interpretation or critique of the movie. I was also interested in his idea about how Disney deals with race by essentially avoiding it through the transformation of the two protagonists (both of whom are ‘brown’) into frogs. Despite my initial thoughts about Gehlawat’s article, it pretty much went downhill for me after the abstract. Many of his arguments and evidence are tenuous and questionable, and it almost seems like his use of flowery and sometimes pretentious language serves to mask this weakness in substance.

In his paragraph about the “conflation of blackness with bestiality” (a pretty ridiculous argument to begin with) Gehlawat uses cloudy language that makes his point impossible to understand. It’s as if he hopes the use of big words will lure his audience into simply assuming his argument is worth believing since he is capable of using such vocabulary (he has a PhD so he is obviously very intelligent but it also seems like he’s pretty good at using a thesaurus). For example, his topic sentence reads, “The regressive form, then, belies the salutary content, even as, again, it is the conflation of the two that makes the film so laudatory, i.e., the first animated black princess.” There are way too many commas and impossibly large words for me to even make sense of what his argument might be, making this sentence essentially useless to me, no matter what idea he is attempting to get across to his audience.

Underneath the unnecessarily complicated vocabulary and syntax, many of Gehlawat’s arguments are simply absurd and not really supported by any kind of substantial evidence. For instance, he argues that the restaurant in which Tiana works, Duke’s Café, is a reference to David Duke, a white nationalist and member of the KKK. While I applaud his historical knowledge, there is absolutely no proof that this connection is what the animators intended, and to say so is ridiculous. I feel like I could just as easily argue that the restaurant’s name is a reference to Duke University and its racially diverse population, which would imply a meaning entirely opposite from what Gehlawat suggests. I also feel like a lot of the questions he poses as to the exact political inner workings of the movie’s plot are unwarranted. No Disney movie ever explains what the “happily ever after” truly entails, nor do they explain the exact basis or process through which the couple are wed. To expect this particular movie to do so seems both unfair and even a little silly. It makes me wonder if he’s seen any other Disney movie ever made; there are always holes in the plot, but the movies are made for kids so it really doesn’t matter.

Basically I just feel like Gehlawat is trying way too hard to tear into the movie to prove that it portrays race inaccurately or unfairly. I actually can’t really say for sure what he was trying to prove because his language made it really difficult to understand what he was trying to say, but whatever his argument was, he didn’t convince me. In spite of this, there was one part of his article that I agreed with. He quotes Anika Noni Rose, the actress who voices Tiana, when she says, “I really hope we get to a point where Black characters in mainstream roles is not something we think about.” Even though these aren’t actually Gehlawat’s words, I give him credit for at least showing this side of the argument, even though it comes at the very end of his article. It should be a goal to reach a point where having a black protagonist isn’t the huge deal that it’s made into now, but rather just an element of the story. Race will always play a role, but it should never steal the show. 

Quasi-thoughts on Quasimodo

Norden’s article on the portrayal of disabilities in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame discusses Quasimodo’s characterization as disabled and how his appearance adversely impacts his ability to function normally in society. In conjunction with disability studies, Norden claims that Disney “uses Quasimodo’s physicality to imply that he is emotionally stunted” (Norden, 168). While I understand the idea that Quasi appears to be socially stunted and immature for his supposed age, I do not agree that Quasimodo’s physical appearance is the reason for his being so, nor do I think this is the message Disney intended.

As Norden discusses, making the original story suitable for an animated Disney film was a challenge, and filmmakers were faced with the task of making the characters more relatable for young children. As a result of this demand, I believe the creators of the movie purposely made Quasi more childlike in his obedience, imagination, and fondness for playing with figurines in order to make the main character someone that kids could relate to. Quasi’s youthful tendencies are a product of an attempt to make him into a character children can understand, not a product of filmmakers’ desires to equate physical deformity with emotional underdevelopment.

Additionally, it is much more reasonable that Quasimodo’s being socially or emotionally stunted is a product of his being trapped in Notre Dame for his entire life instead of simply a product of his deformity. It would be much easier for me to accept the argument that his underdevelopment is a result of the oppressive, discriminatory religion Frollo exhibits. After all, it is not Quasi’s physical deformity that keeps him trapped in the tower, but rather Frollo’s inability to accept Quasi and his handicap.