Representation Or Obsession?: Disney & POC As Animals
‘The Princess & The Frog’ has been my favourite movie for years. I vividly remember feeling mesmerised watching its premiere in cinema; seeing someone who looked like me — like my mom & grandmothers on screen was magical and rare and everything that 7-year-old me clung to. Combine this with beautiful animation and a catchy soundtrack, and it had me sold.
But as the saying goes, “once is chance, twice is coincidence, third time is a pattern”. And Disney has a pattern — turning POC characters into animals. While I love ‘The Princess & The Frog’, it’s hard to watch knowing Tiana is human for about 10% of the movie. So maybe I’m picky — but movies being hailed as groundbreaking for doing the bare minimum should be questioned.
Being rid of humanity isn’t a rarity for POC characters; one of Pixar’s more recent additions, ‘Soul’, turned protagonist Joe Gardner into a cat. Despite intermingling with messages about the true purpose of life, this narrative arc seemed redundant. By turning Joe into a cat, it gave the spotlight to 22, a wayward soul played by Tina Fey. ‘Soul’ was a movie that resonated with me; but the praise Pixar received for its majority-Black cast felt misplaced when the protagonist couldn't truly shine.
Another classic tale, ‘The Lion King’ (1994), strikes similar feelings. Set in Africa, it features no humans; Africa is literally represented through an exoticised, animalistic lens, disconnected from the rich cultures it houses. It’s almost laughable to see Disney’s attempts at African stories; in 2015, the company hired a screenwriter for ‘The Princess of North Sudan’, a movie about a white man’ colonising a territory to make his daughter a princess. Being Sudanese, you can imagine what my reaction to that was.
‘The Emperor’s New Groove’ (2000), ‘Spies in Disguise’ (2019), and ‘Brother Bear’ (2003) also relied on this trope, othering its characters. But the formula of movies with POC casts needing animals for success has been disproven; ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ (2018), featuring Afro-Latino Miles Morales garnered commercial and critical acclaim, winning Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.
So, my question to animators: why the obsession with turning POC characters into animals? With Disney’s racist history, namely ‘Song of the South’, it’s unsurprising; but still — POC’s deserve better.
For a further exploration into this topic, I would highly recommend this article: Disney’s Disembodied Black Characters’.
