Pars Today

Pars Today- Among the classical Hollywood works, many movies have been made whose content is full of racist concepts.

There are classical works in the American cinema in which concepts of racism are shown. Sometimes, these concepts are so cheap that the public opinion pressure has caused their exhibitors to change their stance.

For instance, HBO network, after protests to screening of the movie "Gone with the Wind", made the work inaccessible to the public and omitted it from its archive. Then, after adding a text as warning, announced that the racist concepts in the beginning of the movie and screening them does not mean to approval of its wrong and outdated concepts. Therefore, here you are going to see a list of the classical American movies which have brazenly propagated racist content.

Disney's racist movies which children shouldn't watch

 In the classical Dumbo animation, made in 1941, there is a group of smoking crows whose leader is Jim Crow. Jim Crow refers to the Jim Crow Laws which had been registered in the years 1876-1965 in the United States for racist segregation. Of course, these crows were duplicated by white actors and the characters trivialized Jim Crow Laws which were very harmful for welfare and freedom in the US.

Peter Pan is another work which was censured several times for the racist concepts it had portrayed against Native Americans. One of the lyrics of this animation titled, "What makes the red man red" directly points to the Native Americans, their clothes and beliefs.

In the animation "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), Siamese cats have been used as caricature characters of Eastern Asia. This film shows Siamese cats with snaggleteeth and slanted eyes while playing music with Asian sound and repeating the sentence, "We Are Asian" with an Asian accent.

The movie "The Jungle Book", demonstrating black people as orangutans, ridicules them. King Louie, in this movie, mocks at the way that many black musicians speak.

The movie "Song of the South" proudly shows a picture of slavery in the South of America in the end of the civil war.

The list of Disney films, which depict racism, do not end with this. Fantasia, The Aristocats, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and many other works of Disney are the ones which have failed to depict races and racist issues correctly.

Anti-Asian Racist Movies

Disney Company is not the only culprit in production of racist movies. The movie "The King and I" has an oriental theme and creates an incorrect and pejorative picture of Asians. This movie not only hurts the perception of people of the Thai culture, but also it makes a backward and barbaric image of the Asian nations.

Such measures were taken in the movie "The Mask of Fu Manchu", too. This movie was castigated even in 1923 by the Chinese government because of showing a savage and violent image of the Chinese.

Usage of Little Girls in Racist Movies

Many movies, with Shirley Temple playing in them, have depicted racist concepts which are mainly about Black Americans. Racist movies like "The Little Colonel" and "The Littlest Rebel" applied Temple as a lovely character, but demonstrated racist themes and pictures of slavery to the viewer. In fact, they used Shirley Temple as a shield for their racist claims. "Annie" (1982) was another classical movie in which a little white girl was used to depict racism in an unadulterated and attractive way.   

       
The classical Western movies, too, harmed the image of the Native Americans in their works. Movies like "The Searchers" and "Stagecoach" were among the movies which, in addition to racism, justified genocide practically. In both movies, there are white cowboys who pass through hard and arduous ways in a bid to take revenge from the native tribes.

Altogether, it doesn't matter which group is targeted in these movies. The final threat in them is to normalize superiority of whites and others' being exotic. No matter if the victim of racism are the Native Americans, Blacks or Asians. It can be said that the only beauty in these movies is that they help us have better information of the past and move forward with improvement of conditions.

RM/MG