Disney+ Blocks Access to 'Racist' Classics Like Dumbo & Peter Pan for Kids Under 7
Streaming networks locks out young children from viewing movies
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Streaming service Disney+ has blocked children under 7 years old from viewing popular classics such as "Dumbo" and "Peter Pan" over allegations the movies contain "racist stereotypes."
The move comes just months after Disney flagged the movies to warn viewers over stereotypical portrayals.
Disney+ has now decided to go full-blown "woke," however, dropping several of the once-loved, now-controversial titles from their children’s menus.
Under the new initiative, kids under 7 will be forbidden from watching "Dumbo," "Peter Pan," "The Aristocats," and "Swiss Family Robinson."
Settings on the app will block the movies from even showing up on the profiles of young viewers.
Disney explained its rationale behind each film’s removal on the kid-focused Stories Matter section of their website.
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They cited “Dumbo’s” (1941) infamous singing crows, which “pay homage to racist minstrel shows, where white performers with blackened faces and tattered clothing imitated and ridiculed enslaved Africans on Southern plantations.”
“The leader of the group in Dumbo is Jim Crow, which shares the name of laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States,” per the site.
"Peter Pan," 1953, includes exaggerated racial stereotypes of Native people, including a song called "What Made the Red Man Red."
"Swiss Family Robinson" reinforced "otherness" by portraying the barbaric pirates who attack the family as a "stereotypical foreign menace," with many of the pirates having "brown" and "yellow" faces.
In "The Aristocats," a Siamese cat named Shun Gon is voiced in bad English by a white actor, plays the piano with chopsticks, and has exaggerated stereotypes like slanted eyes and buck teeth.
The popular streaming service had previously put content warnings on the movies last fall that read: "These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.
"Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together."
In response to a backlash against the company, Walt Disney CEO Bob Chapek has claimed the moves are not politically motivated, however.
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Chapek argues that Disney is not left or right-leaning and that everyone agrees the company has the power “to unite us all.”
But Chapek’s claims come after two-thirds of Americans say the multimedia company has taken political correctness too far.
“The fact is that we have a tremendous opportunity now to bring this country back together and unite people — one thing we can all agree on is the power of Disney to unite us all,” Chapek said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday, according to a report by Variety.
Chapek pushed back against any suggestion of an ideological bias, claiming, “I don’t really see Disney as characterizing itself as right-leaning or left-leaning.”
Chapek said Disney was interested in standing for “values that are universal,” such as “decency” and “integrity,” as well as in making “content that is reflective of the rich diversity of the world that we live in.”
While Chapek believes that Disney can “unite us all,” and that the company’s values are “universal,” the vast majority of Americans say the company is too woke.
