Author

Katie Pantoja

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Primary Advisor

Nathan Gibbs

Secondary Advisor

Zane Goggans

Committee Reader

Kenneth Pybus

Abstract

From Disney’s humble beginnings to what we see now in 2020, has Disney improved its racial representation and diversity in its animated feature films throughout the years?

This analysis first covers two early examples on why Song of the South and Disney’s classic movie Dumbo are considered to have or be racially problematic films/scenes. The analysis will then go into the data portion of this research analysis. The analysis will examine and collect all of Disney’s animated human movies starting from 1950 to June 2020. The data collected will conclude if Disney has statistically improved the amount of nonwhite character lead animated movies produced in the last 70 years and if they have progressed in their racial representation.

To examine Disney’s progression in it’s representation, the analysis will look at two of the latest minority lead films Moana and Coco, to examine if Disney's representation of culture in these films are mindful of who they represent. This research analysis ends with reviewing Disney’s overall progression to 2020 and what can be concluded from this data collection.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.