Me Not Like-um Movie

Its no mystery that our family is totally into the Disney thing. We went as a family to DisneyWorld last February ('06), and we've already bought our plane tickets and booked our condo, Disney Beach Club, for a return trip to DisneyWorld in December of this year. So when my three year-old spotted the commercial for the new release of Peter Pan, I got it for him.

His Mom, brother, and I, along with the wee lad, plopped ourselves down to watch it. Now, I don't know if working in government, getting older, or the political correctness movement can change a person, but Mom and I were a little surprised by how the movie pandered to stereotypes.

One was subtle: the females were mostly cast as a petty bunch. The mermaids gave Wendy, who was competition for Peter Pan's attention, a good soaking. Tinkerbell tried to "wack" (mafia term) Wendy out of jealousy. But this was subtle, we let this one slide.

But one palpable stereotype you just could not miss: portrayal of natives. When the kids in the movie travelled to Neverland, they were pursued and eventually captured by "indians". These indians were very primitive, spoke in a lot of "ugg's", were ugly, and were just basically characterized as savages. Not to mention they were coloured this ridiculous fire-engine red colour.

One moment that was over the top was the singing of the song "What Makes the Red-man Red". Something to the effect of the first indian chief was kissed by an indian princess, he then blushed, and they've been red ever since. So this musical narration explains how they diverged from the normal "white" to "red". Because white skin is normal, please explain why yours is not white, right?

This movie was clearly rife with stereotypes, but we did seize the opportunity to tell our kids about the way of thinking back in the "old days". During our talk, my 8 year-old completely surprised us with native culture knowledge we never knew, so that was reassuring.

But, I will be fair with Disney. The movie "Pocahontas" depicted natives quite differently, it was the white faced intruders who were the savages. And their upcoming "The Frog Princess" has Disney's first African American female protagonist. So Disney does seem to make an effort in keeping up with the times.

My wife says there's some new Peter Pan ride at Disney, we'll definitely be checking that out. We'll still watch Disney movies, buy their crap, visit their parks. I'm pretty sure the executives at Disney realize that they are being gauged to a different standard than other entertainment companies.

Oh yeah, we thought the movie sucked anyway. It was pretty boring compared to Disney's later efforts. Whew!