I found the two Disney videos to be both enlightening and annoying at the same time. It was interesting to see how Disney keeps getting congress to extend the copyright laws so that no one can get a hold of their precious mouse character and the extent to which they go to promote and protect their image. I found the last video to be a little over the top particularly the way that they portray a lot of the Disney stories. While it’s true that they have made some questionable decisions regarding race and stereo types you have to keep in mind many of these stories are old fairy tales—which some of those old stories are pretty horrible—and these stories were written in a different time period. Unfortunately, a time period where racism and sexism where more accepted. It seemed like the in the last video they were sort of cherry picking small slights to ethnic minorities and amplifying them to rather large proportions, probably most children don’t even pick up on this stuff. It seems to me that this is just political correctness running amok. It also seemed to me that Disney is trying to make their newer movies more compliant with the new politically correct paradigm. A lot of these movies just simply reflect an unfortunate reality. Sometimes the bad guys win, life is not always fair and sometimes you have to flutter your eyelashes to get what you need.
Can you make a story that is completely politically correct, without offending anyone and still make for a good story?
Lou Coban
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Lou - that's probably true. I was thinking the same thing during the movie as far as, what's the solution? Do you just remove your children from pop culture all together? But maybe that would be good, to remove your kids from the media as much as possible. The problem with Disney movies is when kids watch them, they watch them over and over and over again. That's how I think that horrible moral junk gets lodged in kids' brains. I bought some of what the documentary had to say.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, yes, one could make a totally politically correct movie. Would it be good? Probably not at all. I personally believe that the political correctness is already getting the best of us, and not in a good way. Instead of speaking our peace freely, we constantly have to consider our surroundings to watch for whomever we may offend. Well, I never try to offend anyone, but say what is on my mind, because, otherwise, if we just live our life reading the "politically correct" script, we might as well not say anything at all, as what we do say is not what we mean. This may not make any sense to some, but it sounds good in my head, so i'm going with it.
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Sometimes I think political correctness gets in the way of genuine progress. It is good to be aware about not wanting to hurt someone's feelings but to watch what you have to say suggests that what you think might be problematic. Our society will never improve if we are not honest with one another and keep trying to avoid the issue instead of discussing why it is an issue. As for pop culture, it has politically incorrect elements to it, but I don't think a parent can and should have their child removed from pop culture. Just figure out what you want your children to be exposed to and try to have an open dialogue with them.
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