Book chapter
Elisions of Race and Stories of Progress: Planet 51 and The Princess and the Frog
Race, Philosophy, and Film, pp.195-208
Routledge
2013
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/118634
Abstract
Several animated feature films that have recently come out of Hollywood employ linear notions of progress as primary motivators for their stories. These lms tend to present circumstances, events, and desires as simply “human,” “ahistorical,” and “universal,” instead of particularizing them as “white,” “contextual,” and “Western” (or “American”), thereby neglecting to consider who or what must be left behind in the movement of progress. They also advance ideological assumptions concerning what it means to move forward at all. Whereas “progress,” as we shall argue later, is itself a racially fraught notion, within the ideologies supporting animated stories using this idea we also elisions of race. That is, the very notion of race is rendered invisible or folded into these stories so that this notion becomes irrelevant to the stories being told. Thus, the idea of progress advanced by these films effectively neglects matters of race and historical inequalities by proceeding as if these problems never happened or by veiling them in ways that obscure their meaning.
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Details
- Title
- Elisions of Race and Stories of Progress: Planet 51 and The Princess and the Frog
- Creators
- MARY KATHERINE BLOODSWORTH-LUGO (Author) - Washington State University, Languages, Cultures, and Race, School ofCARMEN ROSALLY LUGO-LUGO (Author) - Washington State University, Languages, Cultures, and Race, School of
- Publication Details
- Race, Philosophy, and Film, pp.195-208
- Academic Unit
- Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies, Department of
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Identifiers
- 99900662038001842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Book chapter