Poor Disney. The studio tries to do good by finally producing an animated movie featuring a black princess (The Princess and the Frog, out Christmas 2009) and it’s still called out for being racist. Since this past weekend’s debut of the teaser trailer for the film, a return to traditional 2-D animation (can the new computer-assisted techniques still qualify these films as “hand-drawn” or “cel” animation?) after a five-year drought, blogs such as Vulture and Defamer have noted possibly offensive stereotypes in the movie.
Well, what do you want? A return to traditional Disney films or racism-free films? As displayed in the montage featured as today’s clip of the day, most of our beloved Disney classics unfortunately have their share of racist portrayals. And let’s not forget some of the more contemporary Disney films, like Aladdin, which can be seen in this other YouTube clip as also being racist. So, perhaps Disney’s return to tradition is about more than just 2-D animation style. I’m not saying it’s a good thing. I’m just not all that shocked by it.
Ollie Johnston, the last living member of a gang of nine Disney animators whose work set the bar for 2D animation for, well, the seeming entirety of 2D animation history, died this week at the age of 95. Check out the first half of one of Johnston’s lesser-seen works above. Ben and Me, the story of a mouse who sneaks into Benjamin Franklin’s house an helps him invent bifocals and the modern printing press, “entirely robs one of the most revered founding fathers of his agency,” as the YouTube synopsis puts it. Stay tuned for the even more bizarre second chapter. Even as a child, I think I knew there was something really bizarre about the idea of an eccentric inventor who walked around talking to the rodent hidden in his hat, but I totally forgot about the part where the mouse walks off like a jilted lover after Ben electrocutes him––twice.
