
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 15, 1994                   TAG: 9407160004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DETINE L. BOWERS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STEREOTYPES

THE WALT Disney Co. continues to promise the public that its Disney's America theme park will offer something new and exciting, an adventure all wrapped up in a single facility. Disney assures us of its sensitivity to American history. At one point, it offered the idea of allowing consumers to experience slavery. But when there was a public outcry, it became silent on that issue.

Now, the spotlight is on the company's film, ``The Lion King.'' The ``roar'' should not be one of applause, but one of outrage for Disney's symbolic racism - again.

Disney officials decided to make the Serengeti Plain in Africa the setting of "The Lion King,'' and insisted that they wanted people of African descent to be included in the venture. For Disney, participation meant voice-overs by supertalented black actors such as James Earl Jones as King Mufasa, the Lion King and symbol of authority and responsibility; Whoopi Goldberg as Shenzi, an evil hyena; and Robert Guillaume as Rafiki, the baboon, a powerful spiritual agent.

Premiere magazine reported in its July issue that a Disney expedition party sent to the setting of the film included the story supervisor, production designer and director. They reportedly discovered that Africa was not the ``brown and dirty place we know from our childhood watching TV.'' So, some creators of this ``mane event'' supposedly overcame their own narrow views about Africa when they experienced the majestic Serengeti Plain.

But overcoming narrow views of cultures is a lifelong process, not just a temporary reawakening. Overcoming one stereotype of a culture does not mean that you have overcome them all.

Those responsible for creating entertainment through animals by personifying them in Africa should have thought of the stereotypes they would invoke with such an effort. Not only has the American media consumer come to understand Africa as a ``brown and dirty place,'' but also to hold a narrow view of its people.

There was an inherent problem with creating such a film that personifies animals. Most should know that people of African descent have typically been associated with animals, especially apes. After years of creating this film, didn't it occur to Disney that it would be a bad idea to personify a baboon as a black man?

That's just what they do with Rafiki, the baboon who is given vocal life by Robert Guillaume and astounding humanlike characteristics by Disney's animators. Disney's creation of Rafiki is offensive, because it offers a distinct African human persona through the baboon.

Rafiki's face is colorfully painted; one could easily associate it with African face paints or ritual masks. Rafiki has humanlike white hair, like the hair of an African elder. Rafiki possesses mystical powers, like that of real-life African spiritual agents. Rafiki carries a walking stick, as would an African elder. And Rafiki speaks with a distinguishable stereotypical dialect of a black man.

Rafiki is created to be more human than any of the other animals in the kingdom. Disney chose to pander to a historically common practice of associating people of African descent with apes and baboons.

To heap on further insult, one scene imitates an African naming-ritual of lifting a newborn to the heavens. This act is a classic scene in Alex Haley's ``Roots,'' where Kunta Kinte is lifted to the heavens as part of a naming ritual in Mandinka culture. Disney's parallel scene is one where the same act is done to baby cubs with none other than Rafiki, the baboon, carrying out the ritual.

And Disney expects the public to entrust it with a history theme park when it has proved time and time again that it cannot be trusted with multicultural images?

The last time Disney denigrated another culture was in ``Aladdin.'' Disney obviously ignored the outcry from the Middle East cultural audience of that film.

Cultural stereotypes are manifested in many ugly and deceptive ways and, unfortunately, Disney continues to feed consumers poison about non-Western cultures.

No, Disney, including black voices in an animated animal kingdom set in Africa did not help! The search for people of African descent to include in the project demonstrated that the company missed a crucial point in its planning: The very idea of an animated animal kingdom set in Africa with any relationship between African peoples and baboons reinforces commonly held stereotypes of black people as low-order apes.

This is entertainment at the expense of all black people. That Disney included black participation in the crime is an outrage.

Detine L. Bowers is an assistant professor of communication studies at Virginia Tech.

by CNB