Hollywood Continues Disturbing Casting Trend

In Most American Movies are Minorities Roles Still Regulated

Jun 12, 2009 Paul Hamilton

Not unlike the early days of move making when segregation was the rule of the day, some experts argue that despite advances minorities are still only given certain roles.

As Hollywood is beginning its annual Summer Block-Buster season, poised for yet another record setting year, some experts have been asking serious questions about a Hollywood movie formula that seems to promote certain attitudes and yes even stereotypes.

The main focus of this attention has come most recently from a Disney film that is currently in production entitled The Princess and the Frog, which will be the Disney Studios first try at portraying and African-American in the animated lead-role of a Princess.

Disney is of course famous for the movies in which the animated role of Princess is celebrated, some of the iconic films that come to mind include the following:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Cinderella (1950)
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Aladdin (1992)
Mulan (1998)

These movies have made a combined domestic total of $US900,244,339 (million), and four of them an international total of $US1,433,327,150 (million) according to information from the website The Numbers.com.

Given the history of overwhelming success related to these animated films the upcoming Princess and the Frog is perhaps pre-positioned to do very well.

Why Controversial Stereotypes in Disney and other Films are important

Yet according to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), "it is between the ages of two and five that children start to become aware of race, ethnicity, gender and disabilities.

It is at this time in their lives when they can begin to accurately identify "Black" and "White" and also begin to learn attitudes about race from their parents caretakers and the world around them."

In an article that appeared on the website of The Daily Utah Chronicle in March of 2002, a group of faculty members from Harvard held a film festival entitled, Gender, Ethnicity & Disney, organized by the Women IN Color (WINC) and funded by the Harvard Foundation and the Ann Radcliffe Trust, featuring the documentary Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power, Aladdin, Mulan, and Pocahontas.

The educators at Harvard led by Harvard Medical School's Carolyn M. Newberger, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, "felt that although Disney's animated films did not create gender, class, and racial stereotypes they did trend in the direction of reinforcing them under the guise of fantasy," the article stated.

Students who witnessed the documentary, and the Disney films had a mixed reaction some where concerned about the effect seeing these films had on kids and our whole society in general while others said they just came to see the Disney films over again.

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