YaHooka Forums - View Single Post - How 90s movies, particularly Disney animated movies, made the world love itself again

John F. Kerry · 07-06-2009, 09:48 AM

think about the world today ,

its so interconnected and people are so much more empathtic to people in other places then they ever have been in history (even if not perfectly).

worldwide this seems to be the case , with only a few exceptions the world seems to be largely comming to the conclusion that we have a lot to gain from other cultures- even ones that are "primitive" in certain senses....

my own take is that the cultural things we had in the 90s and 80s layed the groundwork for what is today a flourishing world wide culture.

take for one example, disney animated movies.

in the 90s u had pocohantas, mulan, aladdin, etc etc etc... each one of these movies took a foreign culture, and made the "bad aspects" of that culture ROMANTICIZED- so u get indians as noble savages, arabs as good hearted and loving, and japanese as family oreinted and caring about their families - INSTEAD of indians as savages, arabs as terrorists, and japanese as backward people who forced their women to be married to whoever the dad choose.

Disney has a huge part to do with this IMO, but many other companies did similar things along similar lines.

the point is that now my generation is all interested in travellening around the world and eco tourism and all that stuff- I think this comes from the fact (besides drugs of course

) that we grew up learning about the "good" parts of these cultures and thus we have a romanticized impression of what world cultures are.

this bodes well for future global understanding and empathy, what it doesnt bode well for tho is dealing with those few countries that dont seem to care about their own people but nonetheless have a noble culture (china, persia , etc)...

like the question is: maybe disney could make a movie about china that would glorify it - but then would that really be good or NOT? because its kinda glorifying the regime that cracked down in tianenman etc, even tho what it was really trying to do was glorify a 5000 year old culture that has nothing to do with communism and marxism.

anybody have any thoughts on any aspect of this idea?

07-06-2009, 09:48 AM	#1 (permalink)
John F. Kerry Weiner-stache Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 3,733 Thanks: 1,829 Thanked 494 Times in 354 Posts	How 90s movies made the world love itself think about the world today , its so interconnected and people are so much more empathtic to people in other places then they ever have been in history (even if not perfectly). worldwide this seems to be the case , with only a few exceptions the world seems to be largely comming to the conclusion that we have a lot to gain from other cultures- even ones that are "primitive" in certain senses.... my own take is that the cultural things we had in the 90s and 80s layed the groundwork for what is today a flourishing world wide culture. take for one example, disney animated movies. in the 90s u had pocohantas, mulan, aladdin, etc etc etc... each one of these movies took a foreign culture, and made the "bad aspects" of that culture ROMANTICIZED- so u get indians as noble savages, arabs as good hearted and loving, and japanese as family oreinted and caring about their families - INSTEAD of indians as savages, arabs as terrorists, and japanese as backward people who forced their women to be married to whoever the dad choose. Disney has a huge part to do with this IMO, but many other companies did similar things along similar lines. the point is that now my generation is all interested in travellening around the world and eco tourism and all that stuff- I think this comes from the fact (besides drugs of course ) that we grew up learning about the "good" parts of these cultures and thus we have a romanticized impression of what world cultures are. this bodes well for future global understanding and empathy, what it doesnt bode well for tho is dealing with those few countries that dont seem to care about their own people but nonetheless have a noble culture (china, persia , etc)... like the question is: maybe disney could make a movie about china that would glorify it - but then would that really be good or NOT? because its kinda glorifying the regime that cracked down in tianenman etc, even tho what it was really trying to do was glorify a 5000 year old culture that has nothing to do with communism and marxism. anybody have any thoughts on any aspect of this idea? Last edited by John F. Kerry; 07-06-2009 at 11:14 AM.