With looking at American Films and Cultural Appropriation through the lens of mass communication, one must first understand what mass communication is. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, mass communication is: “National press, radio, and television, utilized as mass media method of delivery of messages to general public.” Based off that definition, what I have learned in class, and through our reading in A Different Mirror and in Amusing Ourselves to Death, I would categorize American Film as a whole as mass communication. Cultural appropriation in American film has been around since the beginning of film, sometime it extremely obvious in films but other times its hidden within films that are seemingly innocent like some Disney movies. Thankfully we have companies in our community who help educate and discourage cultural appropriation.
There are many forms of mass communication today including; social media, radio, music, and TV and film. TV and film are two of the largest forms of mass communication today in our country, and in Amusing Ourselves to Death Postman says “…everyone goes to the television for all these things and more, which is why television resonates so powerfully throughout the culture.” (p. 92) A majority of people in this country own a television and watch movies, they use it as a source of simple mindless entertainment, it “…offers viewers a variety of subject matter, requires minimal skills to comprehend, and is largely aimed at emotional gratification” (p. 86) All ages are exposed to film starting now at the time their eyes can focus on a screen, children grow up seeing these hidden subliminal messages buried deep with in the shows and movies that they are being exposed to. Postman ends chapter 6 with saying ”The demarcation between what is show business and what is not becomes harder to see with each passing day.” (p. 96) We are trained from a younger and younger age to become numb to the hidden wrongs that placed within the most innocent looking films.
Like most 90s babies, my childhood consisted of many classic Disney movies on VHS being played on a big clunky television, and I still adore Disney movies to this day, but now that I am watching these movie threw a completely different lens. Those “harmless” Disney movies I watched growing up I know realize that a lot of the older ones are filled with cultural appropriation and even blatant racism! In one of the most iconic classic Disney, “Peter Pan”, there are a group of Indians that are in Neverland and they are portrayed as savages. In A Different Mirror Takaki quotes Richard Johnson talking about “…the Indians in Virginia as “wild and savage people,” living “like herds of dear in a forest.”” And the film defiantly portrays they Indians in the movie like that. Another Disney classic that was full of cultural appropriation was “Aladdin”, most of the movie is trying to “replicate” Middle Eastern culture, but ends up butchering in and filling the movie with extreme stereotypes of that culture. The film even ending up changing a line in the opening title song of the film when it was rereleased on to DVD.
Today there are do many movie that have cultural appropriation in them, that it is hard to tell which movie are save, but there are some places you can still go to and trust. The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), who was our community for our project, is the largest fill festival in the country. SIFF brings movies and culture to us directly from their country of origin, Dustin Kaspar talked about in our previous meeting that they try to find film that are made by people who are from the counties or culture of the film, instead of an outside group trying to culturally appropriate films. SIFF educates people and lets them see the culture in its proper setting.
Now although Disney has had a past of cultural appropriation, recently they has tried to make sure their movies include a proper image of the characters culture. In Disney’s recent hit, Moana, they spent a lot of time in the Polynesian islands creating a board of natives to teach them about the culture and to have a voice in making decisions about the movie to make sure that the culture was properly represented. It seemed like Disney was tryin to make up for cultural appropriation in the past. Then around the time of halloween, a “Maui” costume was releases for children causing much controversy over it arm and chest padding, and its tan tattooed “skin” pants, that Disney pulled it from the shelves and issued an apology.
American Film will remain a form of mass communication for many many years. Now big companies like Disney have had a past that they may not be very proud of but it defiantly looks like they are starting to steer in the correct direction and hopefully organizations like the Seattle International Film Festival will help change the way movies today are created.
References Cited
Mass Communication [Def. 1]. (n.d.). In Black’s Law Dictionary (2nd ed.).
Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of showbusiness. New York, NY: Viking Penguin Inc.
Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America (Revised ed.). New York: Back Bay Books.
American Film 