THE DEHUMANIZATION OF BLACK PEOPLE IN DISNEY ANIMATED CINEMA

AN ANALYSIS OF SPIES IN DISGUISE

Abstract

Racism subsists in Western and democratic societies and, eventually, it is veiled in their media products. This investigation analyzes how Disney's animated film Spies in Disguise (2019) perpetuated the dehumanization of the black man's body in the 21st century, in addition to discussing racial representation in the universe of the Cultural Industry and Eurocentric cinema. The study treated its empirical material from the method of film analysis, with data collected through bibliographic and documentary research. In addition, a review of mass culture, power and Structural Racism and Recreational Racism, under the background of the history of the struggles of the American black movement, helps in the construction of this investigation. The results indicate that animation, even if unintentionally, operates processes of dehumanization in the representation of the black character, especially in the repetition of classic stereotypes added to the historical stigma that relates the black with the "animal" and/or "wild" universe. In addition, the character's anthropomorphism becomes a unique tool in the process of dehumanization, by disregarding the fully human black body, an idea based on a slave-owning past, whose perverse postulates are still naturalized in contemporary mentalities and social structure, confirming common privileges of whiteness.

Keywords: Dehumanization; Black representation in Disney; Structural racism; Recreational racism; Eurocentric cinema.