First let me formally introduce myself. My name is Cara and I was born into a Disney loving family. My entire family loves Disney; the vacations we take to Disney World are the only ones where we always get along. I grew up watching all the movies, dressing up like the princesses and idolizing the characters. I hope to pass down my love of Disney to my children just as my mother did for me; however, despite my overwhelming love for all things Disney, sometimes I find myself disappointed. I failed to mention this earlier but I am a multiracial individual, my eyes are green and my skin is (in my opinion) a beautiful olive complexion. When I was younger I always found myself wondering why so few of the characters I idolized so much looked like me, and I know I’m not the only one.
Of all the characters I loved so much, I was hard pressed to find one that looked like me, and thousands of children have this same problem growing up. We saw characters like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Ariel, Peter Pan, Belle, Woody, Buzz, Tarzan, Jane, Tinker Bell, Alice, Rapunzel, Merida, Elsa and Anna, just to name a few, and struggled to relate to these characters because we looked nothing like them. So we went searching for more, and we came up with Jasmine, Aladdin, Mulan, Lilo, Mowgli, Pocahontas and most recently Tiana. These characters are great and all, but looking back at the timing their arrivals seem a little skewed. Take Lilo and Tiana for example, they were featured seven years apart, whereas Merida and Elsa were featured back to back, with only a year between them. This turns out to be a trend among Disney Movies; 1967, 1992, 1996, 1998, 2002, 2009—these are the years that Disney’s Animation Studios featured movies with characters of color as the protagonists. In comparison to 1937–2016, every year between then and now Disney has produced a movie featuring white characters.
These movies are great however, they don’t represent a vast enough variety of ethnicities and races. Sure, some of these movies are set in locations where the native people are white, but some of them are set in areas that could accommodate a variety of ethnicities. Take the 2015 film "Inside Out" for example, the main character Riley and her family are white. It would’ve been easy to make her Hispanic, black, Asian or Native American because there was no distinctive reason for her to be white. Another example is the 2012 film "Wreck It Ralph." There were so many different games featured in this movie, so many opportunities to diversify the film but alas, none of those opportunities were taken. It’s simple enough to solve this problem, yet movie after movie it seems to go unaddressed.
I love Disney, I want to continue loving Disney, but I’m finding it harder and harder to maintain and justify my love. It’s hard when I have family and friends who can’t find characters to relate to because there are none. It’s hard because most of the characters of color featured in your films are portrayed as either social outcasts because of their behavior—Mulan, Lilo and Pocahontas, a stereotypically sassy women of color—Jasmine and Tiana, a lovable liar—Aladdin, an abandoned child—Mowgli. These characters are all loveable; but they’re not enough. We need more. We want more, and if you can’t provide us with more characters of color we will go find them elsewhere. I’m telling you all this as a millennial who has grown up on Disney, and as one of the main consumers you will deal with in the near future. Diversity will the key to your future success.
