To Whom It May Concern,
Disney was my childhood. I remember watching The Aristocats on a portable DVD player in the backseat of a car. I remember listening to the “Bippity, boppity, boo” of Cinderella on the VHS while playing with my dolls. I remember trying to decide which princess I should be for Halloween: Snow White or Belle? The first book I read on my own was about Mickey Mouse. I am neither the first nor last kid to have this experience. My generation and future generations have and will have childhoods shaped by Disney. To us growing up, it is a magical place of dreams, imagination, and creativity. Unfortunately, as I have become an adult, I realize that Disney is all of those things, but it is also a company. A company that is fueled by money and power like every company in our capitalistic society. A company that is not self-aware enough to understand the impact it has on children. The critical age for language acquisition is between the age of five and puberty. Rosina Lippi-Green states: “The important thing to note here is that children see patterns in the data the world presents on a day-to-day basis, and those patterns are put to use. That is, children are not passive vessels who sit in front of the television and let stories float by them. What they take in is processed and added to a store of data on how things – and people – are categorized.” She means that whatever Disney puts on the screen can affect how children interpret the world around them, and most of the time Disney promotes standard language ideology and reinforces racial stereotypes. For example, in The Lion King, the main character is Simba. In a movie about Africa, he is voiced by an Anglo person. His father Mufasa is voiced by James Earl Jones, an African American, but he uses no marked features of AAVE. His voice is deep and booming but lacks the phonology, morphosyntax, and prosody of a Black person. However, Whoopi Goldberg lends her voice to Shenzi, the leader of the evil hyena pack. Shenzi speaks using AAVE. Such as the scene where the hyenas discuss lions, she says “If it weren’t for those lions, we’d be runnin’ the joint.” She deviates from Standard English by dropping the –ng from running. Cheech Marin is Banzai’s voice actor, the other hyena who speaks. Banzai exhibits some features of Latino-accented English, and “[throws] in Spanish at one point (que pasa) to make sure there is no mistake about his ethnicity.” This dichotomy between the good and the bad set forth by The Lion King tells children how good people speak versus how bad people speak. The lions use Standard English and are majestic, brave, and the heroes. Meanwhile, the hyenas speak in nonstandard English. They are conniving, mean, and heartless creatures who are hell bent on destroying the good guys. Children, who don’t know any better, then form prejudices against people who speak that way in real life. Maybe a white child hears a black child laugh and equates that to a hyena. Maybe a white child hears a black child talk and is programmed to think that they’re bad. It doesn’t matter. What matters is by displaying certain types of English as good or bad, Disney perpetuates standard language ideology and subconsciously informs children on what they should think is good or bad. In addition, another harmful film is Aladdin. The movie is set in an Arabic kingdom, but the titular character and his princess both speak in Standard English. Once again, in a film that is set in a country other than America, the main characters, like in The Lion King, both speak free of accents. And yet, the villains in the film (besides Jafar) are portrayed as speaking in Arabic-accented English. There is a scene in the beginning where Jasmine goes out to explore the market but is accused of stealing by a merchant. He threatens to cut off her hand in heavily accented English while she apologizes in Standard English. Also, Aladdin is chased by a group of people for stealing a loaf of bread. They too speak in heavily accented English. Once again, a dichotomy is created. The good guys like Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie speak Standard English while the bad ones have accents. Furthermore, the first song in the movie has the lyrics: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” After complaints from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Disney changed the “cut off your ear” segment but kept “it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” This idea of barbarism is supplemented by the merchant who wishes to cut off Jasmine’s hand, and the group who wants to kill Aladdin for stealing the loaf of bread. Children watch this film and are informed on the “right way” to talk and the “wrong way” to talk. If you talk with an Arabic accent, that is barbaric, and the hero must civilize you. Like with The Lion King, children will apply this to real life situations because it is all they have to inform them. They develop prejudices against certain people who do not abide by the standard way of speaking before understanding what prejudice even is. Rusty Barrett notes in “Be Yourself Somewhere Else: What’s Wrong with Keeping Undervalued English out of the Classroom?” that standard language ideology “generally treats undervalued varieties as ‘wrong’ on one hand or ‘inappropriate.’” This treatment can lead children to feeling as if they are wrong when using undervalued English even “when their answer is actually correct.” Disney, besides teaching harmful stereotypes to white children, makes those who use undervalued forms of English feel as if they are incorrect for speaking that way. Who is Disney to tell children what the correct form of English is? In order to better the company, you must first recognize that English is a language with many variations that are all correct in their own way. Whether recognition involves bringing on a consultant or a linguist to a film, so be it. In the linguistically informed approach to teaching, Barrett explains that “teachers often assume children are making reading errors” when they are actually “[reading] according to the rules of their native dialect.” Disney, in a way, is a school. It teaches children how society operates through magical metaphors and fantastical situations. If it were linguistically informed, it could tell children that the way certain people speak is not wrong, it is just their native dialect. One of the best films Disney has produced is Lilo and Stitch because of its excellent representation of accented Hawaiian English. In the movie, that form of English is presented as normal. Disney needs to replicate this in its future films in order to prevent the perpetuation of standard language ideology. If it does, a generation of children could be saved from harmful stereotypes. Sincerely, A Concerned Student
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