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Christensen: Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us

March 4, 2019

Christensen: The Author's Argument



In "Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us," by Christensen, the author argues that there are many harmful stereotypes in movies for children, mainly movies by Disney. To provide evidence, he analyzed some movies, like Popeye in "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves." In this clip, there is a very stereotypical depiction of people of Arabic descent, as well as stereotypical views on women. Christensen describes the creator of this cartoon of depicting "...all Arabs with the same face, same turban, same body--and they are all thieves swinging enormous swords. At one point in the cartoon, Popeye clips a dog collar on helpless Olive Oyl and drags her through the desert. Later, the 40 thieves come riding through town stealing everything..." Christensen uses this as evidence to prove the fact that there are very stereotypical views on minorities in this Popeye clip.

The author also uses an assignment for his students to provide evidence to this. He decided to assign his students to take action and analyze some sort of cartoon or media. His main point of this assignment was to focus on the portrayal of one group. Christensen wrote: "Write about how women, men, African Americans, Latinos, Arabs, overweight people or the poor are depicted and give examples from several cartoons or across times." Overall, this forced the students to look into how people of color, or typically unprivileged people are shown in media. The outcome of this assignment was positive, many students wrote this for their local PTA, and even church newsletters. The students went on to write many insightful words as to how these people are presented. Christensen's assignment for his students, and his analysis of Popeye both were proven to provide evidence to his claim that there are very stereotypical ideas in media, from old-Disney era, to today. 


Comments

  1. Lauren ZanfardinoMarch 4, 2019 at 10:58 AM

    I like the assignment he gave to the students, it also helped me see the outside of these great films too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Akkaoui_BlogLogMarch 18, 2019 at 5:06 PM

    I also thought that the Arab stigma that was created was very offensive as an Arabic woman. I like how you looked at Disney today too great job!

    ReplyDelete

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