Dopey's Legacy

Short short short summary of the article:

1. Disney unfairly depicts mental illness through the physical illustration of their characters
2. Disney promotes biased and hurtful stereotypes of the mentally disabled.
3. Because of Disney, mentally disabled individuals are going to be treated in an inhumane way.

Rather than going on a rant about how I disagree with this article, I would like to just point out the few problems I have with the argument/the logic of the piece.

1. I don't think that one can legitimately use the depiction of physical traits as a way to support a argument about consistent character portrayal, mainly because it is rare that Disney films aim for their figures to be realistically accurate. Usually the advantage of a memorable and visually aesthetic picture is more important to producers than one that is true to what you see in real life. Therefore, it would make the most sense to take these images with a grain of salt when looking at them critically because it is not only the silly characters that are physical hyperboles, but the entire animated cast. Princesses have nightmarishly small waists and large eyes, the proportion of size from the arms/shoulders to the head of most Princes would make them terrifying in real life. However, the entire point of this construct is that it looks appealing to the audience's eye.

2. The examples that are used in this piece, primarily Gus Gus and Dopey, are both definitely portrayed as less intelligent than their peers but to label them as "mentally disabled" from this trait seems like an exaggeration. One could argue that they are supposed to be illustrated as the younger and/or less mature individuals of their crowd. I know that when I first watched Cinderella, I significantly identified with Gus Gus much more than Cinderella herself. Just like Gus Gus, I had an older brother who often kept me out of trouble and sometimes got me into it as well. I didn't always understand what was going on, but when I did, I was passionate about being a part of whatever the situation was. The greater issue here is the author's definition of mental disability and how wide of a range it covers, as well as the fact that the interpretation of a cartoon character is incredibly subjective to each audience it is shown to.

3. As with every criticism that we deal with regarding Disney, there is the idea that watching Dopey, Gus Gus and Lafou get pushed around by their fellow characters, the audience will be overwhelmed by the urge to do the same to those around them. I don't agree with this specific connection of Disney and their real life counterparts because there are several instances in other genres in which archetypes are portrayed a certain way.