Disney Ideology Analysis

From Cinderella to Mickey Mouse, the Disney culture has always been a part of our lives. A brilliant man named Walt Disney in 1923 started the Disney Company. He brought magic and imagination into our world. I loved Disney and so did my parents and even my grandparents. I would dream about being a Princess who would someday be rescued by my very own Prince Charming. Even now that I am 20, I still love the feeling that The Wonderful World of Disney gives me. I love that children today still believe that their Prince Charming is going to sweep them off of their feet one day. It is hard to really believe that what happens in the Disney Fantasy world will actually happen in real life. We like to believe that anything we “dream” can come true,

Foss, is: “… a mental framework—the language, ‘concepts, categories, imagery of thought, and the systems of representation’ that a group deploys to make sense of and define the world or some aspect of it.”(209) Ideological criticism is aimed to discover and portray the hidden ideologies within rhetorical artifacts. Also, ideological criticism understand that multiple ideologies exist in many cultures and may be used as rhetorical artifacts. Analyses, of these artifacts, allow us to understand the role of communication in building and solidifying an ideology. Through these analyses, we are also able to question whose interests are being promoted. By understanding the different relationships between elements using different ideological criticism, we may attempt to change pre-existing ideologies and form new relationships between

Yet there are times where Disney give their take on several cultural stereotypes when crafting some characters. One of the examples shown in Mickey Mouse Monopoly was the representations of African-Americans in some Disney films. One instance, the four crows on a branch in the classic film Dumbo are one of the more famous cases of unabashed racism. In Dumbo, the group crows are portrayed as poor, uneducated, and act in a very stereotypical manner—not to mention that their color alludes to the obvious fact that they are African American. The crows also have little worries when they burst out into song and dance, even the song itself filled with grammatical errors. Furthermore, the leader of the crow’s name is even Jim Crow[…I mean, come on.] Lastly, the utter absence of African Americans in the film “Tarzan” also raises several concerns as