Disney Pixar’s Coco: Will Miguel be another caricature?

Sugar Skull Anti-stereotype Smoothie

No stereotypes allowed. Day of the Dead is already pretty awesome but when you throw in some genuine representation, a story with depth, and a mindful production, sweet dang. I mean, if you like stereotypes you should probably steer clear. Day of the Dead isn’t for sale…right? Right?

Disney is the definition for magic and fantasy, its animated films act like thresholds by which one can be transported into extraordinary worlds. In such worlds, dreams are fulfilled, princesses find their noble princes, puppets become real boys, and animals become famous jazz musicians. Mickey and friends promise that each wish will be fulfilled no matter how big or small. All a child needs to be is American, or in the very least, he or she must  embody American ideologies. Despite the allure of wish-fulfillment, magic, and fantasy, the world of Disney isn’t for everyone. Even with the release of 2009’s The Princess and the Frog and the introduction of Elena of Avalor as a Disney princess, a long history of “ethnic” caricatures leaves much to be desired.

As a child, I was enraptured by the magic of Disney and could not help but search for characters who truly reflected me, my family, my friends, and my neighbors. I searched to no avail, none of the characters looked like me, or had families that looked like mine. None represented my experience as a Latina, or my friends’ experiences as Asian Americans or African-Americans. All we had were caricatures, caricatures that improperly reflected the diversity of my world, caricatures that left me feeling shame. I quickly bought into the idea that I was an “other,” and just like King Louie in the Jungle Book (1967), I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be 100% American. Even today I still long for a proper reflection of me and of the people around me. I still long for validation.

On August 14th, 2015 during Disney’s D23 Expo, the new title for the “Untitled Pixar Movie About Dia De Los Muertos” was announced. The film would be called Coco and its main protagonist would be a 12 year old Mexican boy named Miguel.

Coco, in theaters November 22, 2017

Upon hearing this news, I felt a mixture of things. I was first very surprised, then excited, and finally concerned and worried. I was and am still not sure what to make of this new film. Will Coco be what I have been looking for? Or would it be yet another addition to a long list of caricatures?

According to Disney, Coco “is the celebration of a lifetime, where the discovery of a generations-old mystery leads to a most extraordinary and surprising family reunion.” Inspiration for the film came from director Lee Unkrich’s observations of artworks based on Day of the Dead. Such artworks drove him to become invested in the holiday. He conducted research for the film by spending time in Mexico with various Mexican families undergoing Day of the Dead celebrations. Earlier this year, Disney also released a new poster and two trailers for the film, each giving us a look into Coco’s colorful Land of the Dead.

The film looks and sounds promising. I cannot help but be drawn in by Pixar’s beautiful animation and art direction. Yet, I still remain wary. Is the film’s focus on the Day of the Dead a sincere effort to properly represent the holiday and Mexican people? or is it simply a chance to present a colorful, exotic, and “different” culture on a silver screen for audiences to consume? For the latter, this would not be the first time.

We rapidly accept that animated films serve a child’s imagination and sense of fantasy, they establish a sense of adventure and innocence. In other words, animated films are great for children. However, the importance of such films far exceeds simple entertainment. Animated films are essentially teaching machines. They are children’s best teachers. The Disney animated film functions as the apparatus by which “The American Way of life” is transferred, or as Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart describe in their 1971 study How to Read Donald Duck: The Imperialist Ideology in Disney Comics, Disney invites its audience to fantasize about the “other.” What is problematic about Disney products is that they not only embody the “American way of life” but the “American Dream of life.” As Dorfman and Mattlelart suggest, “[i]t is the manner which the U.S. dreams and redeems itself, and then imposes that dream upon others for its own salvation which poses the danger…” The dream forces those in the minority to see themselves the way the U.S. sees them, as lacking power and lacking normalcy (1).

Throughout previous Disney films we can find negative representations of non-dominant cultures and exaggerated class stereotypes. Such is the case for Dumbo (1941), Oliver & Company (1988),  Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994) to name a few. In Dumbo, crows appear to have African-American voices, they are depicted as poor, unintelligent, and naive. There are also images related to slavery as African-American workers are shown doing manual labor while a White-American man is in charge. In Oliver & Company,  Tito the Chihuahua is portrayed as a Hispanic character who fights, chases women, and hot-wires cars. In Aladdin, Arabs are portrayed as dirty, cheap, and thieving. In the Lion King, Hyenas are portrayed as lower class, poor, hungry, stupid (2).

When it comes to Mexicans specifically, they are often portrayed in Disney films as “hot-blooded” and highly emotional (2).

A prominent Disney character that plays off Mexican stereotypes is Panchito Pistoles, who first appeared in the 1940s as part of The Three Caballeros, a gang comprised of Donald Duck “The American,” Jose Carioca “The Brazilian,” and Panchito Pistoles “The Mexican.” Panchito Pistoles or “Panchito Romero Miguel Junipero Francisco Quintero Gonzalez,” wears a sombrero and speaks with a heavy accent.

The gang appeared in the Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944) subsequently. These films are now known as “Good Neighbor” films, as they were produced with the intent to “foster goodwill between U.S. and Latin American audiences” (1). Although they were meant, in part, to dispel negative stereotyping of Latin Americans, they also further promoted inaccurate stereotypes and underscored the unequal relationship between the U.S. and Latin America. As Karen S. Goldman notes in her essay The Three Caballeros: The Representation of Latin America in Disney’s “Good Neighbor Films, the films “code the nations and people of Latin America as exotic, idealized, and sexualized.” While the U.S. is depicted as masculine, Latin America is presented as feminized, needing to be dominated (1).

Disney continues to display caricatured representations of ethnic minorities, although less overtly. In The Incredibles (2004), Frozone is depicted as the one-dimensional, ill-tempered, African-American sidekick of the White Mr. Incredible. In The Princess and the Frog (2009), a Cajun firefly speaks in garbled and broken English.

If Coco’s Miguel becomes yet another caricature, Mexican culture will once again be racialized. An entire group of people will be oversimplified into a colorful and exuberant feast to be consumed and then ignored. As a caricature Miguel will only obscure Mexicans and the Mexican diaspora as the “other.” Miguel will only further supplement their exclusion. As anti-Mexican sentiment continues to grow in light of last year’s election, in light of Donald Trump’s promises to build a dividing wall, in light of Trump’s unfortunate comments about the Mexican diaspora, Miguel needs to represent much more than difference. He needs to instead, bring light to the individual experiences of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

My hope is that Pixar will again return to the forward-thinking production they are known for, that on November 22, we get the chance to meet a Miguel with depth rather than a two-dimensional stereotype.

Miguel and Dante [Credit: Disney Pixar]

References:

1. Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender

2. Images of Gender, Race, Age, and Sexual Orientation in Disney Feature-Length
   Animated Films

Seeking Help for A Mental Health Problem: Easier Said Than Done

Anxiety-A-Go-Go

This dose of anxiety will get you movin’! (Or not) Are you the president of the Worry-Wart club? Do you prefer to count your troubles over counting sheep? Then you’re in the right place! We blend your worries and fears with a hefty shot of panic attacks to make you doubt your dreams! No gluten, no preservatives, 100% Mental Illness.

People who suffer from mental illness are among the most stigmatized groups in society (1).

Stigma reflects a mark of shame or degradation, an attitude that devalues an individual that bears a supposed unfavorable trait.  If a person has such a trait, they become the bearers of a negative social identity that isolates and shames them (2). Stigma, as described by Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman, “reduces the bearer from a whole person to one that is irredeemably tainted” (1).

If people suffering from mental illnesses are deeply stigmatized, what does this mean for the groups of people who are already stigmatized because of their position in society? That is, what does such stigmatization mean for ethnic or racial minorities?

To put things frankly, it means that a minority like me is screwed.

I have what is referred to by mental health experts as Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or as I would define it, being chronically stressed out. My fight or flight response never turns off and so my overall health and productivity are greatly debilitated. Unfortunately, when someone tells me to calm down, I simply cannot. Not because I do not want to, but because my brain is wired such that it cannot inhibit its stress response. When someone tells me to seek help, I also cannot simply do so. Once again, I have prolonged finding help not because I do not want to improve my well-being, but because I have little means to receive adequate help. I cannot afford a year round psychologist, when I do find one that is affordable they are only rarely available as they are overbooked. Even when I find free help, it is only temporary and my needs are not fully addressed. The specific stressors I encounter from being Mexican-American are not fully understood. Not to mention, even walking into a psychiatrist’s office, is a highly stressful event in itself.

I fear walking through those office doors because doing so forces me to admit that I have a problem, one that substantially isolates and discredits me. I am isolated not only by an Anglo-centric society because of my ethnicity, but even from family and peers because of my mental illness. I feel shame when I shouldn’t have to and I am unfortunately not the only one.

Shocking disparities exist for minorities in terms of access to mental health services as well as knowledge about mental illness. Overall, ethnic minorities have less access to mental health services than whites. When ethnic minorities do receive care, the quality of their care is poor. They are also less likely to receive care due to the stigma associated with mental illness. In summary, ethnic minorities bear a greater burden of mental illness and also suffer greater loss in their overall health because of unmet health needs (3).

In 1999, The Surgeon General report on mental health stated that the U.S. mental health system was not well equipped to meet the needs of racial and ethnic minority populations (4).

The report describes that many members of minority groups feel uncomfortable or ill at ease with the quality of the mental health system. They experience the system as a product of white, European culture, shaped by research of European populations (4). Not surprisingly, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans are less likely to obtain treatment for either depression or anxiety than Whites. In fact, Caucasians are 1.7 times as likely to visit a mental health provider and make 2.64 more mental health visits a year as compared to African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Among Asian Americans who use services, severity of the illness is high, suggesting a delay in treatment as well (5).

White Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders and panic disorders than African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans.  White Americans endorsed symptoms of anxiety disorders more than (except for PTSD, in which African Americans had a significantly higher chance of being diagnosed) any of the three minority groups mentioned (5).

However, the higher endorsement of such mental illnesses in the white population in comparison to minority groups does not indicate that minority groups are less likely to suffer from mental illness. In fact, language and cultural differences greatly impact the accuracy of diagnoses. Differences in meaning of worded prompts or biases decrease the validity of screening tools. Differences in prevalence rates also have to do with the level of individualistic or collectivist identification of the people screened. Minority groups tend to hold more collectivist beliefs, where the priority is maintaining harmony within the community rather than maintaining focus on the individual. This is opposed to individualistic cultural attitudes often held by White-Americans, where individual achievement is the most important (6).

Admitting to having a mental illness, at least in my own personal context, would mean failure, a failure to effectively deal with my problems. Admitting to having a mental illness is selfish, placing my needs first before the needs of my family. I will be costing my family money; I will be creating stress for them. To my family, my anxiety is not debilitating me; I am simply not willing to “get over it.” We do not talk about mental illness because mental illness is not real, it is an excuse.

How can I admit to having a mental illness? How can I admit to this weakness?  Even outside the home where I am expected to fail because of my ethnicity, where I am seen as less regardless of what I do, how can I admit to having this flaw?

In other words, culture matters. Culture and social contexts determine and shape mental health, they alter the types of services people use, and they have much to do with an individual’s beliefs about mental health.

Even when public interest in both mental illness and the stigma related to such illnesses has grown, the public still lacks an understanding of how ethnic minorities can be supported and how barriers for treatment can be reduced. Even after almost two decades, the U.S. mental health system has a ways to go before it can substantially help ethnic minorities suffering from mental illness.

The Surgeon General makes a single recommendation for everyone:

Seek help if you have a mental health problem or think you have symptoms of a mental health disorder.

Yet, for an ethnic minority like me, this is easier said than done.

This blog post was originally published on March 21, 2016 for my Asian American studies course. This is being reposted by me, the original author, for Mental Health month.

Introducing, naturally grown intent

Greetings!

The aim of Lorenade Stand is to document my experiences as a Mexican-American woman living in Southern California. I simply aim to express my thoughts and opinions about minute things such as what I think about a new film, video game, article, etcetera, to not so minute things such as mental illness, being labeled as an illegal despite my citizenship status, and battling my own prejudice and notions about the world I live in.

My desire in writing this blog can be defined by the cliche’, “you don’t know what you think until you write about it.” I want to garner an understanding of what makes my experience in this world unique and not-so unique, to garner an understanding of our strong desire to label, to define people as “others,” and to stigmatize what we do in bed, the languages we speak, and what we wear. I find that I am often met with the challenging questions that arise from having an appearance I never chose and I more often find that I just don’t have answers. Throughout my life, I never thought to question, I only thought to accept my experience as a “matter of fact.” I no longer want to take things “as they are” but to learn why I live in a deeply hyphenated state, tugged between two cultures, two realities. I want to know how I can balance my realities while feeling shame for neither of them. I want to establish my identity and figure out how to successfully navigate the oddity that is “adulthood” as an Mexican-American woman.

In short, this blog is about trying to develop my thoughts, my opinions, my so-called “two-cents.”