People Presentation and Misconceptions

When it comes to animation there's a lot of things that have changed over the years. In earlier animations, be it movies or shorts, there were often a lot of stereotypes evident. Not always good ones, but they weren't really done to be malicious. Examples of this can be seen in many things. But the one that I figure most of you would be able to recognize are found in Disney films. I know that this is something that many of you have likely thought about on your own. But  humor me just the same.

We have two clips here, one from Peter Pan (1953) , and the other from Pocahontas(1995). You're looking at a 42 year gap of time between the two. But the drastic change in the way they portray Native Americans is noteworthy. You also see evident in the clips, that there was a large difference in the way society was in general. In the 1950's Cowboy and Indian westerns were very popular. Often times with the Indians being 'used' as the bad guys. In the 90's we see that there is an understanding that people are people regardless of what they look like.

The thing to see here is that at one time people believed that people were different just because of how they looked or what their culture was. Which, yes things like that do mean that we are different but it doesn't mean that we are whole different beings. But yes, there are many things evident in the animations that show how people saw others. RATHER not necessarily how they saw others, but how they could have people exaggerated in ways that were comical. These aren't faults, but they do show the way that progress has been made.

All in all they're both well done animated films. (And everyone knows that Peter Pan is one of my favorites). But the point is that there are many things that can be seen as very telling of the time that they were made. These are things that we should take into consideration when we are looking at our own histories. The things that we do and like often change over time as our understandings of the world around us changes. This leaves us in an ever changing world, where progress is both made and lost as people learn facts or choose to be ignorant to them