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.