Negative Racial Stereotypes in Popular Kids Movies

Top: L-R Princess Poppy, Cooper, King Peppy from Trolls.
Bottom: Richard the rapping wildebeest from Sing.

I've been immersed in watching animated films these days along with my toddler. Two of the movies in our daily rotation include Trolls and Sing (both 2016).

Both are very well done. Both went to great lengths to offer something for parents as well as for children. And both, I believe, made efforts to avoid negative racial and cultural stereotypes. Yet, in both movies, some unfortunate mistakes fell through the cracks.

Neither movie features humans as we know them. The cast of Trolls includes fantastical creatures and Sing showcases anthropomorphized animals. Yet in both the characters are obviously drawn from people in the "real world." Some are recognizably New Yorkers or Southerners. Others are Japanese, African-American or representing other ethnic or racial groups. Stereotypes abound--some good and some not so much.

After watching these movies dozens of times, something struck me:

In Sing and Trolls, the most recognizably young African-American male character in each movie has trouble controlling his bowels in public.

In Trolls, Cooper poops out a stack of cupcakes out of sheer terror just moments before he is captured by the Bergen chef (see picture above). In Sing, the wildebeest Richard, who raps and has a full Afro hairstyle, passes so much gas uncontrollably it disqualifies him from the singing competition. He literally propels himself out of the theater with farts.

How in the world did the creators of these movies miss this? They might as well have put those characters in blackface. Not being able to control one's bowels in public may be an excusable medical event, but historically and culturally it has deep connotations of humiliation. It marks a person as more animalistic, bumbling, uncouth, uncultured, unclean (both literally and socially) and just flat out disgusting. It establishes a person as deserving of being laughed at and, by consequence, less deserving of full rights and inclusion in society.

I actually don't judge the movie creators too harshly for this. There are some insidious racial stereotypes that are so buried in the cultural consciousness it can take a lifetime to recognize and eradicate them. Case in point: Both Cooper and Richard are shown to be friendly, caring and compassionate. Richard has an obvious gentle side. They are not "dangerous thugs" but decent characters with big hearts. These are good things. This speaks to how difficult it is to eradicate negative racial stereotypes, because while going out of their way to show these characters in a positive light, some other sneaky negative stereotypes crept in, perhaps unknowingly.

Fighting unconscious implicit bias is often like a frustrating game of whack-a-mole--you fight it in one place and it pops up somewhere else. It is still worth fighting it.

I'm actually more upset with how Sing depicts the Japanese band of singers. Those negative caricatures were more obvious and should have been caught. They are as bad as anything out of a 1950s cartoon. However, in most other ways, Sing does a good job. The African-American family of elephants is depicted good-naturedly in all their love and, yes, even their dysfunctions. Most importantly, they are shown as fully "human" and multi-dimensional--you know, just like real people. The gorillas--who happen to be a band of gangsters--speak with an obvious English accent. I've always assumed this was done to make it abundantly clear that there were not intended to represent African Americans (although it should be noted that you can have an English accent AND be of African descent).

You might say:  "What's the big deal?" Why can't we laugh at ourselves and each other? You might say the politically-correct world is taking all the fun out of life, leading us chasing wild geese in word choices while "real" social problems are left unaddressed.

But answer me this:  Can you for even one second imagine that the white, young princess girl would have difficulty controlling her bowels in public? After all, Princess Poppy was standing right next to Cooper when he defecated out of fear. Why couldn't it have been her character who did that? It's simply inconceivable. It just would not happen. We would never want to see her lowered like that, would we? It would just feel wrong, wouldn't it? Why are all the kings in Trolls very obviously white guys?

The problem is that these word choices and public images come from--and dig very deeply into--our unconsciousness. They impact the way we perceive and treat each other. When we assume that African-American males are not to be taken seriously, that they are not worthy of the same dignity as others, then that has real-world consequences. It impacts their experiences in school, in the hiring process, and in how they are treated by the police and criminal justice system. When a group of people is understood to be second-class citizens, they get second-class treatment. One follows the other. Their lives don't matter. They are just comical, sideshow characters--good for a laugh, perhaps, but not ever for power-sharing and true inclusion in society. Cooper is the funny, somewhat dim witted, buck toothed (yes.) guy on the side, but he's not the king. Richard is not the manager of the bank or the theater. It's not an exaggeration to say these images and word choices translate into dead bodies in the streets, unfair legislation and systemic, multi-generational poverty. That's why this matters. That's why it's not nitpicky but of central importance.

Continuing Thoughts

There is no scientific basis to suggest that African-American males have more trouble controlling their bowels in public than anyone else. So why are they being depicted that way in otherwise fine movies such as Trolls and Sing? If it's just innocent humor, why is the mockery not more evenly spread out?

The strong African-American male is a threat to the white consciousness. He therefore must be lowered, he must be taken down, he must be humbled somehow. Why? What would happen if African-American males were seen as expressing their full power and dignity in all circumstances? Is the white world so fragile that it can't handle that?

I had a friend like that when I was younger. He was so insecure and judgmental that I instinctively knew that the only way I could "fit in" was that I had to act dopey, silly and laughable. I had to constantly employ self-deprecating humor. He just couldn't relate to me eye-to-eye as an equal, so I had to act "lower." As my confidence developed, the relationship strained and eventually ended as he just couldn't hang in there on those terms (thankfully, I've also worked through enough of my personal demons at this point in my life not to do that anyone to secure a friendship).

So how far do we want to take these comparisons? You could argue the very nasty Bergens in Trolls are almost entirely based on white people. You could, in contrast, also ask why the African-American-seeming Cooper is a four-legged animal who hangs out with the two-legged, more hominid--and more seemingly white--trolls? Where do we stop with the comparisons?

As final thought, I recommend folks check out the animated movie Shrek. It attempted to turn many of these common stereotypes on their heads. Did it work? Is it worth doing something like that again and again until stereotypes are overturned for good? Or is that just fighting fire with fire?

The UMC and the Challenge of Unity

The branches and leaves in this tree are not unlike the many
branches and denominations of Christianity.

The recent struggles in the United Methodist Church (UMC) over LGBT inclusion raise perennial questions for me:

What does it mean to be “church”? Is there a certain level of agreement that is necessary? Or is fellowship, work and worship with people of diverse viewpoints part and parcel of the necessary work that needs to be done? 

But even so, aren't there hard limits? Deal breakers?

I come from the Roman Catholic (RCC) tradition. If you expect this 2,000 year old, global behemoth of as many as 1 billion people to perfectly represent your own private, individual viewpoints as of February, 2019, you are in for some pretty quick disappointment. I have not yet met a single person who is perfectly on board with every teaching. Nevertheless, you just can't put your life on hold just because the RCC doesn't change. That doesn't stop conservatives, liberals and everyone in between from complaining, however.

The fact that this body changes very slowly is one of its strengths--and some would argue one of its weaknesses. The RCC can quickly remind you that it’s not all about you. This can be a good thing--and a bad thing. You have a choice as a Catholic: You can give up because the church is not the way you want it to be (i.e. made in your image) or you can roll up your sleeves and get to work right here and right now. Bloom where you're planted. It will never be perfectly as you want it, and perhaps it shouldn't be. It forces you out of your self-contained universe. Even if it were to eventually change to suit you better, there is a lot of life to be lived and a lot of work to be done right now.

I'm reminded of that song lyric: "Don't surround yourself with yourself." Good advice.

Many Catholics sit with it this way: They have small body of relatively like-minded people they associate with—perhaps their school, missionary society, charitable works organization or friends and fellowship group they lean on for mutual support. But they also belong to this wider body of the whole Catholic Church. They keep at the very least their toe dipped into the larger pool while also finding that smaller group of people with whom they see eye-to-eye on most things. You end up with the peace activist sitting next to the military general at Mass on Sundays, and on Mondays they go to work against each other again. 

I'm reminded of James Joyce who said of Catholics: "Here comes everybody." Is that a strength or a weakness? Yes.

When you come to a fork in the road such as what the UMC is experiencing right now over LGBT inclusion, it is easy to justify a divorce. The pain is real. The differences in opinion are real, too. But when I look back over the 500 years of Protestantism, I wonder if all that splitting and re-splitting has gotten them anywhere. Some estimate that there are as many as 50,000 denominations! Perhaps divorce is not always the answer. Were all these breaks necessary as people simply ran out of options to stay together? Or were they the result of people who got lazy and didn’t want to be uncomfortable and learn how to sit with real differences? And where are they going with all this fracturing--is there an end game to it all? Are any of these new denominations any better than the previous ones, or are they just re-living the same ole sins and human tendencies in a new form?

Will it just keep fracturing until every single individual is his or her own "denomination"? I say this quite seriously that it may not be a bad thing to simply play out that logic to its inevitable conclusion in this way. After all, each individual already has his or her own theology regardless of which denomination they belong to. Maybe it will help Christianity arrive at a post-denominational point. We'll still need community but maybe not in the way we've been doing it, and this experiment has to play itself out this way to help us get there.

This is not to judge or begrudge anyone who feels their experiences in a particular church community are simply too painful, or the issues too serious, for them to remain. I can't weigh in on someone else's decision. People have experienced very deep wounds and abuses of all kinds, and I do not intend to make light of those in the least. "Unity" has often been used as a justification for sweeping all sorts of misbehavior and injustices under the rug while blaming the very people who are so hurt they feel forced to break away.

After all, what good is unity if you end up supporting a morality that you simply cannot condone? But on the flip side, community is fundamental to a Christian. Learning how to congregate is part of discipleship. Among may other things, it forces us to come to terms with our triggers and internal challenges, to ultimately see a world bigger than ourselves.

I know all too well the struggle and the tough choices that struggle demands. For long periods in my life, I have toggled on the razor's edge between staying or leaving my church. I debated this with myself on an almost daily basis. I was even convinced for a while that living with that tension must actually be our call rather than resolving it either way. All this to say: I get it. 

Community is unquestionably hard. Finding that gospel ideal of perfect unity in perfect diversity is an ever-elusive challenge. I've only experienced it myself in fleeting moments throughout my life. Some communities lean on the side of denying the individual for the sake of conformity. Others celebrate the individual at the expense of the group.

The fracturing of Protestantism has created smaller denominations with oftentimes like-minded people who could perhaps go further in their particular mission than they ever could if they remained within the larger parent group. Some found a safe haven after leaving a painful situation. But there's a cost that comes with that fracturing--the cost of unity and the cost of not practicing how to sit with real diversity (again, not to minimize the real efforts that people have gone through in order to prevent divisions).

People in the UMC are in pain and some are talking schism. It's painful to talk schism. Not to sound glib, but what's one more split in a long history of splintering?  After all, the UMC exists as a result of schism in the first place. Another way to look at it:  If a split in the UMC seems painful today, perhaps that can remind us how painful previous splits must have been (and perhaps still are) and awake in us a desire to mend those fences from previous splits.

Does it matter that there are others out there who call themselves "Christian" who have nothing to do with your particular group? As we ponder a potentially very painful split in the UMC, perhaps it can help us think about all the splits that have occurred in Christianity and ignite in us a desire to heal those wounds, too.