Way to go, Disney! Thank you for taking a (mostly) harmless fairy tale and infusing it with wickedly insidious stereotypes. Sure, we are all aware that this sort of thing has been taking place in Disney movies since their beginning, but times surely have changed, right?
Wrong! I took my daughter to see Tangled today. This was to be our special "Mommy and Me" activity. However, not five minutes into it I was questioning my choice of movies. The main antagonist in the movie is the only non-Caucasian in the whole film. She appears to be of gypsy stock with black, kinky curls. While our protagonist is a lovely young Miss with long, flowing, straight golden hair. To add insult to injury, the antagonist's name is Mother "Goth"el.
Yes, yes, I know that in the end, the Princess does have short brunette locks with an anachronistically "hip" hairstyle. However, let us not forget that at her most exceptional moment, when she was full of magick, she was sporting golden locks...
So, Disney, I must again Thank You for doing your worst and attempting to convince my ethnically diverse children, mothered by an old school goth, that all things dark must certainly be evil, and further ingraining the idea that all things good, pure, and magickal are blond....
I won't even get into the wretched anti-crone stereotypes that are represented here....
