fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4413 ]

[ SECRET POST #4413 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4413 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #632.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

03. https://i.imgur.com/nB8Wlyz.jpg

Me, too, OP. When I found out what Disney was caricaturing, I was horrified. Then I was mad. Disney did a lot of this crap. WTF was he thinking?

He was racist

He actually wasn't. Insensitive? Yes, incredibly so. But a lot of this was okay at the time, even to people of color.

I think it is frankly splitting hairs to say that a guy who made a bunch of racially insensitive stuff and was also deeply conservative and willing to ally with a bunch of people who were racists wasn't a racist. The fact that the era he lived in was deeply and thoroughly racist doesn't really ameliorate it either.

It wasn't anything unique to Disney. This was socially acceptable at the time, and pretty standard in entertainment. If it makes you feel any better, black people in that era were cool with being presented like this in cartoons.

If it makes you feel any better, black people in that era were cool with being presented like this in cartoons.

I mean... it's still an unambiguously racist thing

Unambiguously? Sure, more of us can see that in 2019. Dumbo was released in 1941. We had a buttload of progress to make, and IMO kind of still do.

Whether or not Disney was capable of recognizing that it was racist, it was still racist

Yes this.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-02-04 13:17 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-02-04 21:49 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-02-06 12:59 (UTC) - Expand

I’ve never seen Dumbo, but I sorta had a similar feeling when I learned Pocahontas was a real person.

i had a similar reaction to when i realised how much YIKES is in the asterix comics. they were my favourite, i had all the movies on vhs too :(

Take comfort in how they never got around to doing anything on the level of Tintin in the Congo.

I mean, yeah, yikes, but it's sixties children's entertainment. Take a dive into any of its contemporaries discussing The Colonies, and it's the same usually well-intended cringe. Not even Astrid Lindgren is innocent.

I feel your pain. I grew up on Franco-Belgian comics. Asterix, Tintin and Lucky Luke were my favourites. A lot the books aren’t nearly as enjoyable as an informed adult. Due to its setting, Lucky Luke has an especially high frequency of yikes.

I don't know if it was because I'm in the UK or childhood ignorance or a combination of both but...I didn't realise the implications of this either at first. Not until I was older.

Same here. I just cringed when I found out. I'm glad to say I've never watched Dumbo all the way through, just clips and trailers, so Disney didn't get my money for it!

It's one of the few films that either my parents didn't buy or wasn't released from the vault at all during my 90s childhood. I've only watched it when it was on TV. And the only part I remember liking is the Pink Elephants sequence. Though that also terrified me!

Same, OP - i had no clue what the crows were supposed to represent when I saw Dumbo for the first time. It's not a favorite of mine, so I haven't seen it in decades, but the last time I *did* see it, when i was old enough to know, it was just...so disappointing and gross.
*sigh*

Edited 2019-02-03 22:07 (UTC)

The racism is pretty awful in hindsight. But it's just another reason for me to be meh about Dumbo - I generally never liked it much.

My eternal hatred for crows being depicted with yellow beaks, however, knows no bounds and makes me go from "meh" to "ugh I hate it" in a heartbeat.

God, same. Little kid me thought they were the coolest! It's really frustrating to grow up and learn a bit more about the context of a thing you enjoyed and realize that it's actually... not good. Why can't we have nice things??

If it's any consolation, racist caricature aside, they were genuinely good characters in a movie with lots of awful bully characters

Same! Probably because I'm not from the US and had absolutely no context (my country has plenty of racism but not those specific tropes). I thought they were cool and liked to sing their song.

This is the first two I've put two and two together and damn. Bloody hell. They were my favourite characters too, OP. :(

Song of the South was my favourite as a very young child. I've heard it's supposed to be racist as hell though so I haven't dared rewatch it as an adult.

Also - Asterix books. :(

I also loved the crows when I was little. I had no idea...

Same, though I grew up in the South and even as a young kid in a post-desegregation era, I definitely understood that the crows were supposed to represent certain people. I didn't realize until later though (like middle school) that caricatures like that were actually rather unkind racist stereotypes. There is definitely a really weird feeling when you learn that something you liked at a kid, or at least were indifferent to, is not exactly a nice thing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only