Media portrayals of racism discussed

Sooooo Sweet Week ended Friday with a program called “White Supremacy”
that highlighted messages the media feeds to children.

The Zeta Phi Beta sorority, Sigma Kappa chapter, hosted the event in
the Bovee University Center Auditorium by showing a movie called
“Mickey Mouse Monopoly” talking about the gender and race
representations in Disney.

Laretta Henderson, English language and literature professor, showed
the movie and headed the discussion, where people were asked to think
about “What are our children learning from Disney?”

“The age of three or four is when people start looking different to
children and they start asking questions,” Henderson said.

The movie highlighted several favorite Disney movies, including
Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Oliver and Company,
The Lion King and others.

Clips from each movie were shown to show how race, gender roles and
the image of men and women are depicted in each.

“I always knew Disney was stereotypical, but there were lots of
things presented in the movie that I would have never thought of,” said
Erica Litzner, Saint Ignace senior.

Tanesha Seals, Detroit senior, said the process in which stereotypes
are formed and how young such views are formed in a child’s mind is
important.

“We are always talking about changing things, but we need to start
with children,” Seals said.

The narrator of the movie, Henry A. Giroux, points out that Mickey
Mouse doesn’t write the movies, but real people do. Those people in the
corporations also are the same people marketing the image that is
framing the minds and paraphernalia that the children play with, often
acting out scenes from the movies.

“Disney is the ultimate form of fantasy, a part of fantasy that is
never questioned,” Giroux said in the video.

Litzner said the movie made some interesting points.

“I thought that the writers of this movie did a good job, somebody
has to care about the message that children are receiving,” Litzner
said. “The kids aren’t going to care, they just watch the movies, pick
up on it, and then it’s too late.”