Over the years, Walt Disney Animation Studios has faced criticism and controversy on a range of issues, including ethnic and racial stereotyping, sexism, and allegations that several of its animated films, including The Lion King, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Frozen, plagiarized existing works. The studio has also been accused of limiting and stereotyping LGBT representation in its films, and some of its films have drawn criticism from parents and advocacy groups over mature themes. Separately, Disney and its films have been the subject of controversy surrounding the Academy Awards, including remarks made during the 94th Academy Awards ceremony and accusations that the studio has had outsized influence over the Best Animated Feature category.
Ethnic and racial stereotyping Over the years many scholars, film critics, and parent groups have been critical of Disney for the stereotypical portrayal of non-white characters. Examples cited included the short Mickey's Mellerdrammer where Mickey Mouse dresses in blackface; the stereotypical "Black" Bird in the short Who Killed Cock Robin?; Sunflower the half-zebra/half-African servant centaurette in Fantasia; the film Song of the South, which depicts an idealized version of the lives of former slaves; the depiction of Native American 'Indians' as savages in Peter Pan; the cunning and manipulative Siamese cats Si and Am in Lady and the Tramp; and the jive talking crows in Dumbo (however in the latter instance some critics have defended the crows as being one of the few characters in the film sympathetic to Dumbo's plight since being a marginalized group they understand what it's like to be ostracized themselves).|
Some people have used these stereotypes to accuse Walt Disney of being racist. During a story meeting on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he referred to the scene when the dwarfs pile on top of each other as a "nigger pile" and during casting of Song of the South he used the term pickaninny. However, Disney biographer Neal Gabler argues that "Walt Disney was no racist. He never, either publicly or privately, made disparaging remarks about blacks or asserted white superiority. Like most white Americans of his generation, however, he was racially insensitive." The feature film Song of the South was criticized by contemporary film critics, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and others for its perpetuation of black stereotypes, but Disney became close friends with its star, James Baskett, describing him as "the best actor, I believe, to be discovered in years." Disney later campaigned successfully for Baskett to receive an Honorary Academy Award for his performance, the first black male actor so honored. Baskett died shortly afterward, and his widow wrote Disney a letter of gratitude for his support. Floyd Norman, the studio's first black animator who worked closely with Disney during the 1950s and 1960s, said, "Not once did I observe a hint of the racist behavior Walt Disney was often accused of after his death. His treatment of peopleand by this I mean all peoplecan only be called exemplary."
Since its release in 1992, Disney's Aladdin has been accused of perpetuating racial and ethnic stereotypes of Arabs. In July 1993, Disney announced that it would alter a line in the film's opening song, "Arabian Nights", written by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. In the original film, the song featured the lyrics, "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home." After Arab-American groups complained that the line was derogatory to Middle Easterners, Disney amended the lyrics in later editions of the film to an alternate lyric written by Ashman: "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home." Menken approved the change before its adoption, as did the estate of Ashman, who had died before the film's completion. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee further requested that the word "barbaric" be removed; however, Disney refused this, claiming that the word appeared in all versions of Ashman's text and it referred to the film's desert setting in the altered lyrics. Don Bustany, president of the ADC's Los Angeles chapter, argued that the existing alterations were "nowhere near adequate, considering the racism depicted in Aladdin ... there still remains the very sleazy, burlesque character in the prologue and the scene where a merchant is going to cut off the hand of Princess Jasmine because she took an apple from his stand to give to a hungry child." A March 1995 article published on the ADC's website further criticized Aladdin for depicting the film's protagonists, Aladdin and Jasmine, with light skin and Anglicized features in contrast to dark-skinned merchants and palace guards who were cruel, greedy, and vicious while featuring Arab accents and distorted facial features. Shortly after the film's release, Jack Shaheen, a professor of mass communications at Southern Illinois University, said that "Aladdin is not an entertaining Arabian Nights fantasy as film critics would have us believe, but rather a painful reminder to 3 million Americans of Arab heritage, as well as 300 million Arabs and others, that the abhorrent Arab stereotype is as ubiquitous as Aladdin's lamp."
Sexism In 1938, Walt Disney Productions sent a rejection letter to Mary Ford, stating that "girls are not considered" for creative positions. The letter was rediscovered in 2009 when Ford's grandson uploaded the image on Flickr. The letter received greater attention on January 7, 2014, when, after congratulating Emma Thompson for her Best Actress win at the National Board of Review Awards, Meryl Streep referenced the letter. Referencing Thompson's film, Saving Mr. Banks, Streep responded "It must have killed [Disney] to encounter a woman, an equally disdainful and superior creature, a person dismissive of his own considerable gifts and prodigious output and imagination." In response to Streep's statements, many Disney scholars and artists defended Disney, including Disney Legend Floyd Norman, who said "Much has changed, and changed for the better." Other journalists found the speech ironic, noting that Streep just finished filming the then-upcoming Disney film, Into the Woods.
The Walt Disney Company has also been criticized for the lack of feminist values seen in the older, original Disney Princesses. Snow White in particular is under constant criticism for her lack of feminist ideals. The film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) features a main protagonist who, at the time, fit the domestic and docile expectations of women in the pre-World War II era. Snow White is displayed on screen covered in a long dress, embellished with a white collar, puffy sleeves, red cape, and a red bow constraining her hair; a traditional, modest feminine look that reveals minimal skin. Through her actions portrayed in the movie, she draws on the traditional femininity that was encouraged in 1930s American culture. In the midst of the Great Depression, women were encouraged to return to the home and care for the household, a theme that is widely displayed in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
However, with the second resurgence of Disney movies (known as the Disney Renaissance) beginning in 1989 and ending in 1999, Disney transformed the damsel in distress into a strong woman with a desire for adventure. This new approach ushered in a decade of go-getting, proactive heroines who possessed character traits that coincided with the new era of acceptable roles in a society where women hold the same jobs as men. This is evident in princesses such as Ariel from The Little Mermaid (1989), Belle from Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Jasmine from Aladdin (1992)
Everyman In the early 1950s, Goofys Everyman short films are one of the basic film series that were notoriously regarded as sexist, resulting that women were not allowed to have their faces shown onscreen while keeping male characters as primary focuses. The Walt Disney Company has never discussed about the background of these short films to the public in later years as they were since dismissed prior to the production of Goof Troop in 1992. Several factors caused Disney to change Goofy's appearance as a single parent in subsequent Disney medias with further details undisclosed.
Plagiarism The Lion King
Several of Disney's animated feature films have been accused of plagiarizing existing works. The most notable and controversial example is The Lion King, which critics allege was plagiarized from Osamu Tezuka's Japanese manga ジャングル大帝 Janguru Taitei i.e. Jungle Emperor and its anime adaptation of the same name (in Japan). This TV series was in turn dubbed and retitled Kimba the White Lion for English-speaking audiences by Titan Productions for NBC from 1965 to 1966, and it premiered on Los Angeles' KHJ-TV in September 1966. After Kimba's original run in the United States ended in the autumn of 1967, the series was shown in syndication on TV stations across the U.S. through September 30, 1978.
As a number of media journalists and fans watched The Lion King after its initial release in 1994, they noticed characters and events in the story resembling those of Kimba. Although the two works follow different screenplays, there are strong artistic similarities, and The Lion King contains numerous sequences that closely match up with Kimba. Other similarities are thematically deeper and more pronounced, such as that both feature the theme of the circle of life. Alleged similarities in the characters, beginning with the protagonist lion cubs Kimba and Simba, include the evil lions, the one-eyed Claw and Scar, the sage baboons Dan'l Baboon and Rafiki, the talking birds Pauley Cracker and Zazu, and the pair of hyena sidekicks (it was a trio in the Disney film).
The Lion King co-director Rob Minkoff deflected criticism of similarities in the characters by stating it was "not unusual to have characters like a baboon, a bird or hyenas" in films set in Africa. Both films feature the protagonist looking up at cloudbursts in the shape of his father lion, as pointed out by Frederick L. Schodt. The similarity is alluded to in a scene from The Simpsons episode 'Round Springfield", where a parody of Mufasa (voiced by Harry Shearer) in the clouds tells Lisa Simpson, "You must avenge my death, Kimba ... dah, I mean Simba!". (updated December 6, 2017)
White American actor Matthew Broderick has said that when he was hired as the voice of adult Simba in The Lion King, he presumed the project was related to Kimba the White Lion. "I thought he meant Kimba, who was a white lion in a cartoon when I was a little kid", said Broderick. "So I kept telling everybody I was going to play Kimba. I didn't really know anything about it, but I didn't really care." In addition, a memo written by Roy E. Disney in July 1993 refers to Simba as "Kimba", causing critics to claim that Disney was aware of the similarities.
Upon the release of The Lion King in Japan, several Japanese cartoonists including Machiko Satonaka signed a letter urging the Walt Disney Company acknowledge due credit to Jungle Emperor Leo in the making of The Lion King. As Tim Hornyak wrote in The Japan Times, "The Tezuka–Disney connection extends back decades before the movie. Tezuka met Walt Disney at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and Disney said he hoped to "make something just like" Tezuka's Astro Boy.The Lion King director Roger Allers claimed he remained unfamiliar with Kimba throughout production until his movie was nearly completed; co-director Rob Minkoff also said he was unfamiliar with Kimba.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire