Was She Silent or Was She Silenced?

 

Gender

If there is one trope that Disney loves, it’s a trapped girl who just wants to get out of her room and explore the world. However, male directors have a nasty habit of centering dialogue around male characters even when the main character is woman.

Let’s look at two classic adventurous women from the Disney franchise: Moana from Moana (2016) and Ariel from The Little Mermaid (1989).

Graph 1.1*

	The Little Mermaid	Moana
% Line spoken by Men	70%	40%
Female Speaking Role/Total	7/19	4/10
# Lines by Main Character	55	161
# of Her Lines Sung	15	10
% of Her Lines are 5 Words or <	50%	39%
% of Her Lines are Complaining	23%	5%

                  Here we see a brief glance at the director’s priorities as they structure the script and cast. Over the years between these two films, female empowerment has improved. However, the tendency to assign more male than female characters is perhaps an unconscious move that persists in Disney films.

Another development that I really appreciated was that Moana’s motivation lacked a love interest. Her desire to explore the world was out of loyalty to her family and sense of curiosity. Ariel, on the other hand, was immediately distracted from her curiosity by a man whom she gave up her literal voice for.

Ariel is also defined by her relationships with men throughout the movie. She is a defiant daughter, a caretaker to flounder, Sebastian’s charge and Eric’s girlfriend/wife. Her dad also occupies the violent and overprotective masculine stereotype.

Moana also has some heteronormative gender stereotypes. Moana has that Disney princess quality of caring for animals in a motherly way, and the men in the film are slightly aggressive. It is also disturbing that the funny, wise, kind Gramma mentor is designated the “village crazy lady,” a characterization a male mentor would never be assigned.

After Ariel willingly gives her voice away to meet a random man, her ambiguously Jamaican bodyguard (more on that later) teaches her to use her “body language” to earn a man’s kiss.

 

Race

“Everyone in The Little Mermaid is white, what do you mean race?” Are they? Are they really? Or do some of them purposefully speak in an accent and dialect for seemingly no reason.

                  Sebastian is not the first or last comedic relief animal to speak in AAVE. Disney has a dark history with adding dialectical details to their animated characters for subtle racism. Let’s just be glad that this voice actor is actually an African American man, they’re usually just racist white people.

                  Conversely, Moana was one of the best representations of a non-white culture in the animated Disney universe. Disney hired a team of experts of Pacific Islander culture to research references for the movie. The voice actors are primarily islanders, and they all use their real accents.

Conclusion

                  Overall, Disney has kind of improved in their female empowerment and race representation. Lately they have been risking it with uncreative remakes. There are always going to be critiques from both ends of the spectrum on those, so I would recommend that they just stop.

Watch Me Ruin Your Faith in Straight Men

The final rose goes to…

Recently, my roommate and I wanted to find something mindless to watch in our free time to decompress, and she turned on Temptation Island. On this reality romance show, four couples go to an island (you know so they can justify wearing fewer clothes) and split up by gender. Each group goes to live in a house with several “temptations.” The temptations are hot, single, homewreckers hoping to start dating by being the person they are cheated with. Of course, my understanding of the show’s concept is a little biased. Each week the people in relationships are shown videos of their partner, and what that person has been doing on the island.

Honestly, it was an interesting pull away from petty competition between women because no one is fighting over a single person. It all sort of felt like a satire to visualize how disgusting men can be. For example, here are two screen shots from the show. Guess which one was the men’s villa and which was the women’s:

 

I’ll give you a hint: One of these was in episode 2 (within the first week of leaving their partner), and the other was in episode 8 after the person had already watched their partner fully cheat with someone else.

Congratulations you’re correct! The men’s villa is a on the left and the women’s on the right. To be honest, the producers constantly put the men’s villa in highly sexualized situations— Why?

Dating shows are social experiments made for entertainment. You start with a research question like is love really blind? How does someone choose a partner when they are dating multiple people at a time? Will people in committed relationships cheat on their partners when given the opportunity?

However, the commercial factor of reality TV leads to producers manipulating situations, propagating negative female stereotypes and framing complex human beings as stereotypes (ie: the hero, villain, prude, slut, fun boring).

Cool but false

                  The Cinderella Myth encapsulates the lesson that Cinderella’s fairytale teaches us: women must be beautiful and compete with other women to be successful. Shows like The Bachelor pit women against each other to vie for a man’s affections. Despite many of these contestants being accomplished professionals, the context of the show diminishes their character to shallow and sexual.

                  These cheap female stereotypes damage our view of women’s place in the dating environment. They are a grown-up way of teaching us what we learned from Cinderella. That is a myth. In real life dating works on an individual level and requires more than a woman’s beauty to flourish.

                  Popular misogyny culture also pushes the idea that women compete against each other. There are theories like the “80-20 rule” which states that 80% of women desire 20% of all men. There is a lot wrong with that theory, but it is another myth that breaks down modern feminist advancement and pushes women to over-prioritize their romantic “achievements.”

Shifting Gears in Queer Media

First Kiss

In a reflection of queer media, we might associate its roots with shows like The Corner Bar, Queer as Folk, or Will and Grace. Would you be surprised if I told you that the first gay smooch on American television, was hosted by none other than Dawson’s Creek? It’s a production that I, like many fans, have a love-hate relationship with. Like many 90s dramas, the show made a wild and melodramatic production out of the coming out story of one of their main characters, Jack.

While this was a heartwarming trope in media, its continuance is ready to come to an end. Productions like Glee, The Prom and Love, Simon did a lot of important work humanizing the queer community, but I would argue that we’ve reached a point of acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community that doesn’t require a performative “coming out” tradition anymore.

More Gay Media

Although there are several communities, specifically religious communities, that continue to aggressively reject queer identities, GLAAD research reveals that, as of 2023, there is a supermajority of non-LGBTQ Americans (84%) that agree that LGBTQ individuals deserve equal rights. However, many non-LGBTQ Americans express that they are not familiar with the community’s culture or how to describe LGBTQ individuals. Media can help with that!

GLAAD concluded that “When people are exposed to LGBTQ people and experiences in media, it changes hearts and minds and shifts culture and sentiment.”

According to their research, non-LGBTQ adults are 30% more likely to be comfortable with LGBTQ people in comparison to people who are not exposed to queer media. Media, especially fictional entertainment, has the power to reveal new perspectives to the masses. Visibility of the queer community normalizes their existence (not that it should have to be).

Different Queer Media

            As I introduced, most previous queer stories have been heavily focused on the social requirement of “coming out.” This is an often-emotional process that can pull of the heart strings of people who are not tolerant of queer identities. By revealing how difficult the process is for queer individuals, people began to have more empathy for the community.

However, based on GLAAD’s statistics, I think this plot has been pretty thoroughly explored. While this is still a relevant event in many cultures, it’s time that not every queer story is a coming out story. This process has begun, but I look forward to seeing it increase.

Similar to a male-gaze in media, we can see a straight-gaze (there’s a pun in there if you listen for it). The “straight-gaze” involves majority of straight characters with a few token-gay characters. Queer characters fulfill stereotypes that might not always be negative but are not very accurate.

Trans Characters

            The trans community is in what I would deem their first wave of real media representation. Even now there aren’t really any popularized trans characters. Trans actors are scrutinized for the roles they play and often are a main point of controversy for any parts they do take. For example, actress Hari Nef occupied a very small role in the Barbie (2023) movie, but her presence was a large topic of discussion purely based on her trans identity.

            There are several productions with very minor trans roles and productions made for the trans community that have just not reached the level of prominence that shows like Glee did. I fear that popularity was instrumental for a widespread movement of acceptance for gay individuals.

Media Recommendations

            I would be doing Hari Nef an injustice if I did not recommend her show Transparent. Baby Reindeer and The Umbrella Academy are the only other two that come to my mind, but I cannot say that either of them does the trans community the justice they deserve.

            As far as queer visibility in media, I am again happy to report that more and more shows do not feel the need to dramatize the coming out story of every gay character. However, Sex Education, which I have recommended before, reflects multiple different stages of the coming out process in a way that does not entirely define the characters. It is also so beautifully done and made me cry so hard, I cannot leave it out of this list. The show First Kill (although the production is not as good as it could be) features two lesbian main characters who never feel the need to heavily reflect on their coming out. The Rookie, a recent binge watch of mine, is a reflection of this new era as well. Several of the characters are gay or bisexual, and the show does not use up anytime to ponder on the legitimacy of their sexualities. They simply are.

American Islamophobia during Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Before I begin…

As a non-Muslim and non-Palestinian white American, it is my desire to use my knowledge and platform to advocate for these disenfranchised communities; however, I lack the full perspective of experiencing the discrimination aimed at these groups. I am not and should not lead this conversation or pretend to fully understand the weight of its effects, but I will speak to my beliefs for the purpose of allied support.

Legislative Action

After Gov. Abbot passed an executive order preventing pro-Palestinian support in state universities in Texas, Palestinian students across the state have grappled against the shocking restriction on free speech. The University of North Texas, for one, had to remove a piece from a Palestinian student’s art exhibit on campus that labeled the Israel-Palestine conflict as an “ethnic genocide.”

As someone who has read several articles and accounts from experts on both sides of the conflict, I can inform you that ethnic genocide is not an anti-Semitic perspective, it’s another way of saying what Israeli historians like Benny Morris have been saying “ethnic cleansing” for decades.

Now, it should be noted that not every Palestinian Arab is Muslim and Israeli Muslim do exist; however, according to statistics from the Association of Religion Data Archives, 80.7% of people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2020 were Muslim. It’s fair to say that American Muslims identify with Palestinian citizens the same way Jewish Americans identify with Israel. (When I say Palestine, I mean the vast majority of the population which does not support Hamas).

Until the 2016 Trump administration, several American presidents set a tone of unbiased negotiation, but since the first Trump administration began a federal rhetoric that is pro-Israel, the rest of the country has followed suit.

By restricting pro-Palestinian speech, the United States has deprioritized international relations with Muslim countries.

Although Islamophobia may not be as severe now as it was post 9/11, I do believe that this conflict has increased the intolerance towards Islamic people from those who do not understand the conflict. Al Jazeera believes that Muslims are “Seen as less human” since Islamophobia skyrocketed after the October 7th attack in 2023. Even though hundreds of Muslims have also died during this conflict, empathy tends to extend further to Israelis.

Media Recommendations

Unfortunately, Hollywood is still lacking in positive and accurate representation of Muslim people in media. The only depictions I can recommend having personally seen are Lost which brushes on some Islamophobic narratives through Sayid Jarrah. However, Sayid did have a violent Iraqi military background, but he was a complex character outside of his ethnicity. Additionally, the show Quantico portrays Muslim twin Nimah and Raina Amin, and Raina even wears a hijab and speaks to the importance of her hijab practice throughout the show.