Disney's Antiquated Racism and Stereotypes

Film and theater has always made a point to emphasize the characteristics of its characters. A simple reason for this is to make it easy for the audience to understand the characters and know if they are good or bad, but this perhaps unintentionally victimizes those who have been consistently and historically depicted as malicious even though more needs to be said on behalf of these targeted groups.

Native Americans are one example of a group that has been the token mascot for anything related to America’s aboriginality. In a scene in Disney’s Peter Pan, Peter, Wendy, and the Darlings find themselves in the abode of the Piccaninny tribe inside Neverland. Surrounding them are tee pees, red men, tobacco, and tribal dancers. Peter and company sit and observe as the tribesmen sing: “Why is the Red Man Red?” to oversimplify the meaning of their skin color. Great Big Little Panther, the chief of the tribe, leads the rest in song. The men and women are all wearing hawk or eagle feathered headpieces, and a tobacco pipe is passed around as it reaches John Napoleon Darling, who is a very young boy, and takes a drag. Wendy is subjected to collect firewood instead of dancing by an older and a brusquer tribeswoman. Tiger Lily, the chief’s daughter, dances rather sensually and attracts Peter Pan to dance with her. They do an Eskimo kiss, but Wendy inadvertently witnesses the act and becomes flustered.

In this scene, the Native American tribe is shown as savage and foreign in that they are incapable of speaking English more fluently and that their way of living is mostly outdoors and inside less civilized spaces. Moral ambiguity presents itself when the tribe lets a bunch of kids smoke tobacco. Tiger Lily, a young woman, displays herself very sexually, and acts on her desire towards Peter Pan by Eskimo kissing him. The animators explicitly shows the tribes people having red skin which the song explains as due to the very first Injun prince kissing a maid that made him blush.

Oversimplification is the root cause of pervading stereotypes. By limiting the functional qualities characters display, It becomes really convenient for audiences to recognize and understand what to expect out of them. Consequently, this creates unrealistic expectations when these targeted groups are encountered in real life. Disney’s portrayal of American Indians makes us believe that they are foreign, savage, morally ambiguous, and hypersexual. As Wendy starts to show, she becomes wary of her being there among these people she doesn’t get along with.

These stereotypes about Native Americans reinforce what has been a consistent ploy of marginalization. They make us have preconceived beliefs about a group of people about whom we do not have accurate experiential knowledge. By being foreign, we have already ousted the Injuns as an integrated group of society, and by being savage and less civilized, we have already learned that their intelligence for technology is far behind. What people really don’t understand is that these stereotypes are all sprung from film’s necessity to create a tool for categorical convenience—in the end, every fictional creation is only an interpretation and not necessarily real nor accurate.