Disney+ Accidentally Reveals A Whole Lot Of Racism In The Disney Vault

I guess it can't all be good news, right?

Elana

• Published in Disney
• November 19, 2019

After two years of anticipation and mouth breathing, Disney+ launched to unprecedented success. Even minus a few glitches in the first couple of days, the subscriber count in 24 hours far exceeded expectations. Millions of households have been binge watching Disney content, and not just all the Marvel movies, not just the live action remakes or the original animated classics that inspired them, and not just all that 90's and early 00's Disney Channel magic. People have been watching Disney classics that were practically forgotten over time, virtually unseen for decades.

What has such an experience revealed? Apparently, a whole lot of Disney-grade racism. It's no secret that Disney's history is wrought with nearly as much controversy as there is magic, but a full-blown, bona fide, never before seen library of Disney content to the tune of what Disney+ has to offer has shown us some gritty reality we weren't quite expecting, I guess.

The Disney+ streaming catalog includes over 80 years worth of Disney owned content. Movies, TV shows, cartoons, shorts, you name it. Combined with an incredible amount of acquired content from Disney's move towards global domination (said in jest, of course, we embrace our Disney overlords.)

There are some highly debated points from Disney movies that people did not forget, like problematic scenes from Dumbo:

The crows who sing “When I See an Elephant Fly” in Dumbo from 1941 are mimicking Black minstrelsy, and the lead singer of their trio is actually named Jim Crow!

In 2014 after Meryl Streep took "shots" at the racist nature of THE Walt Disney, Abigail Disney took to Facebook to say:

And if you are going to have mixed feelings about a family member (and we all do) take it from me, you really need to be as honest as possible about those feelings, or else you are going to lead yourself into many a blind alley in life!! ... Anti-Semite? Check. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? C'mon he made a film (Jungle Book) about how you should stay 'with your own kind' at the height of the fight over segregation! As if the 'King of the Jungle' number wasn't proof enough!!

Abigail also added:

But damn, he was hella good at making films and his work has made billions of people happy. There's no denying it.

Of course, even the modern team behind today's Disney is indeed aware of the sordid history and anticipated the potential for problematic content. According to mic.com: "Disney appears to have addressed the racism lurking in its archives head-on, integrating historical notes and context into the platform."

In all honesty, Disney's willingness to acknowledge and address their problematic content is impressive and some people find it to be a nice balance between revisiting "classic" Disney content while making sure an emphasis is placed on how good it is we have advanced past some of the blatant racism in media. I mean, we still have stuff to unpack, but we're making progress.

Have you initiated a Disney+ subscription? What content are you binge watching? What do you think about the controversy? Let us know in the comments now!

Elana