There has been a lot of talk lately on some of the older Disney classics being outdated, racist, and offensive. Disney+ has even added a disclaimer to some of their older classics, but now a student is getting a lot of attention as well for slamming classic Disney films for being “horrendously outdated and offensive”.
Lauren Roberston, a student who studies languages at Aberdeen University, has rewatched 11 Disney Animated Classics and is now claiming that The Jungle Book character, King Louie, is racist and many of the Disney films have “not aged well”.
Robertson has branded Disney films such as Dumbo, The Lady and the Tramp, and The Little Mermaid as “dodgy”.
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The Jungle Book
Looking at the 1967 classic, The Jungle Book, Robertson claims King Louie is a racist.
“Remember King Louie the orangutan? You probably didn’t realize when you watched it age five with all your animal teddies lined up in front of the TV, but there is a hell of a lot of criticism about him being a racist caricature,” Robertson said.
“He and the other monkeys are shown to be foolish and criminal, and they literally sing about wanting to be able to make the white man’s fire,” Robertson continued.
Lady and the Tramp
She also wanted to warn Disney fans not to be “fooled by fond memories of two cute pups eating spaghetti” in Lady and the Tramp. This part of the film has become extremely famous and is one of Disney’s most iconic scenes of all time, but Robertson claims this is “actually problematic in itself”, but did not go into much detail as to why she thought the scene was an issue.
Staying on The Lady and the Tramp, Robertson pointed out the scene with the Siamese cats and stated the Siamese Cat Song was racist, which has been talked about recently and has even been cut out of the Disney+ Original live-action remake.
“Not only do the cats both look and sound identical, their characters are sneaky and quite frankly annoying,” Robertson said.
Dumbo
Dumbo is another Disney Animated Classic that has been a popular controversial topic, specifically the crow scene from the film. Robertson stated that the lead crow, Jim Crow, was actually a term used to mock black men, and added that viewers “didn’t have to look far to see where the movie goes wrong”.
After rewatching some of the Disney Animated Classics, Robertson stated that some of the most famous scenes were ‘painful’ and ‘completely cringeworthy’.
She also pointed out that it isn’t just some of the most famous Disney scenes that are problematic, but Disney also has many songs with lyrics that are questionable as well.
‘In Dumbo’s Song of the Roustabouts, faceless dark-skinned characters sing ‘When other folks have gone to bed / We slave until we’re almost dead,’ Robertson said.
Aladdin
But one of the more shocking claims from Robertson is about Disney’s Aladdin, in which she explains that ‘everything is problematic’.
She said it was another film that Disney remade in order to ‘cover up the blatantly problematic original’.
‘Right smack bang in the middle of the opening song, Agrabah (Arab-land) is described to be ‘barbaric, but hey, it’s home’,’ Robertson said.
‘Aladdin is a white fantasy with mispronounced Arabic words and has nonsense scribbles as writing. They also have American accents?,’ she continued.
She even said that she looked back to when she was a child watching the film and thought Jasmine had been “badass”, but now that she is older, she sees her as a character who “cries into her tiger’s fur”.
Other Disney Classics
Some of the other films that Robertson put under fire include Beauty and the Beast, for ‘bestiality’, Cinderella for being ‘super anti-feminist’, and The Little Mermaid.
“Many of the films have not aged well, with characters portraying racist and exaggerated stereotypes. It’s a good shout from Disney to acknowledge that many of the films would not be so well received if they were released today, that is if they were allowed to be released at all, they’re that dodgy,” she said.
Robertson added that she was ‘shocked’ when she watched these Disney Classics back and realized how ‘horrendously offensive and outdated’ many of them are. ‘Honestly I’m glad I got over my dreams of being a Disney Princess because that dodgy world is not one I want to live in,’ she said.
What do you think of this student’s claims of Disney Classics being ‘horrendously outdated and offensive’?
Source: Daily Mail