Stereotypes In The Movie Dumbo
As a kid growing up, I gathered quite the collection of Disney movies on VHS, as well as a good deal of “hand-me-down” movies from my older siblings. When I say hand-me-down, I mean any movie collected before 1994 that were originally bought for my siblings, but kept for me. Among this box of Disney gold was the classic 1940’s film, Dumbo. The movie Dumbo is about a young circus elephant named Jumbo Jr., who was cruelly nicknamed Dumbo by four other elephants. He is ridiculed and picked on for his comically large ears, however those who mocked him are stunned into silence once they see his ears actually give him the ability to fly. By flapping his ears like wings, Dumbo is able to (literally) rise above the hate and show everyone what he is
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Later, we meet “The Crows”, a group of five blackbirds who act in a manner that offensively portrays stereotypes normally assigned to African-Americans. Only the leader of the group, Jim Crow, is named; the other four are merely referred to as “brothers”. These crows act as the long-sought comic relief of the film, giving the viewer a break from the serious prejudices set against Dumbo in the first fifty minutes of the film. Whenever black actors or actresses were portrayed in film, they were always put into supporting roles, usually with the sole purpose to make the main protagonist(s) realize something and help them achieve a goal of sorts. In the case of Dumbo, these crows are here to encourage Dumbo to fly in their own way, which basically just makes fun of him further through a long-winded song and dance number.
The way these crows talk, act, and how they are dressed all coincide with existing stereotypes against African-Americans. Even the name, Jim Crow, is a “hilarious” nod towards both a nickname for blackface and the Jim Crow laws, southern statutes that legalized the segregation between blacks and whites in the 1880s. There is also the issue of Jim Crow being voiced by a white actor, while the rest of the crows were rightly voiced by black actors. It’s as if Disney would rather have some white guy do his best “black impression” than to put an actual black actor in a position of
Later, we meet “The Crows”, a group of five blackbirds who act in a manner that offensively portrays stereotypes normally assigned to African-Americans. Only the leader of the group, Jim Crow, is named; the other four are merely referred to as “brothers”. These crows act as the long-sought comic relief of the film, giving the viewer a break from the serious prejudices set against Dumbo in the first fifty minutes of the film. Whenever black actors or actresses were portrayed in film, they were always put into supporting roles, usually with the sole purpose to make the main protagonist(s) realize something and help them achieve a goal of sorts. In the case of Dumbo, these crows are here to encourage Dumbo to fly in their own way, which basically just makes fun of him further through a long-winded song and dance number.
The way these crows talk, act, and how they are dressed all coincide with existing stereotypes against African-Americans. Even the name, Jim Crow, is a “hilarious” nod towards both a nickname for blackface and the Jim Crow laws, southern statutes that legalized the segregation between blacks and whites in the 1880s. There is also the issue of Jim Crow being voiced by a white actor, while the rest of the crows were rightly voiced by black actors. It’s as if Disney would rather have some white guy do his best “black impression” than to put an actual black actor in a position of