This document summarizes research on representations of Latinos in Disney media properties and discusses some key findings. The research examined Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Junior shows to understand how Latino children help Disney's economic goals and how Disney employs strategies to attract Latino audiences. Some strategies identified include portraying Latino children as subscribers, performers, and beneficiaries of corporate philanthropic efforts. The research also found two common portrayals of Latinos - empowered and disempowered characters. Critiques of Disney princess movies like The Princess and the Frog are also summarized, focusing on issues of racial and gender stereotypes.

1. Children as
consumers of
media

2. Starlets, Subscribers and Beneficiaries:
Disney, Latino Children and Television Labor
• The researchers explore the representations or lack
thereof Latinos in Disney shows.
• This study examined Disney as an industry that
produces content to satisfy economic goals while
seemingly appropriately Latino culture to attract those
audiences.
• employed a case study of Disney’s three cable channel
properties including the Disney Channel, Disney XD, and
Disney Junior.

3. Research Questions
• RQ1: In what ways do Latino children help advance
Disney’s economic goals?
• RQ2: What are the specific strategies and practices
employed by Disney to maximize the value of Latino
children?
• Latino Children as Subscribers
• Latino Children as Performers
• Latino Children as Beneficiaries

4. Disney: Latino/a Roles
• There are also two roles that Latinos present: the
empowered Latino child and the disempowered Latino
child.
• Latinas are the most common representation and is
often seen as white or light-skinned, and absence of
racial markers such as accents.
• The disempowered Latino child is invisible in
programming but used as a marketing tool for civil
engagement and corporate giving.

5. The princess & the frog
• While Jasmine, Mulan, and Pocahontas add multiethnic
and multicultural diversity to the Disney heroine lineup,
no African-American princess existed until the fall of
2009, over seventy years after Snow White graced the
big screen as the first Disney feature film animated
princess in 1937.
• As with any mainstream racial constructions of
underrepresented groups, Disney also walks the fine line
between racial/ethnic authenticity and racial stereotype.

6. Problematic concerns
• Tiana’s romantic interest is not African American: he ‘‘is
neither white nor black, but some sort of mysterious
combination of both by virtue of his fabricated, vaguely
European origins’
• Her name
• Interracial couple in 1920s
• Disney’s construction of African-American maleness or
lack thereof
• this animalization of Tiana’s black female body is mired
in dehumanizing and even de-sexing in historical
representations

7. • Not born into royality, ‘‘keeping it real’’, diminishes
Tiana’s royal aura for those rightfully expecting the first
black princess to live in the same world of fantasy and
(im)possibility as do her other sister princesses.
• extra dose of ‘‘attitude’’ and confidence though not
enough to cross that finger-snapping, neck-rolling
stereo- typical manifestation of ‘‘African-American fe-
male attitude

8. critics concerns/comments
• this one features a love triangle
• Tiana is the ONLY princess in Disney lore to have a
prince that is not the same color as her
• The princess and every person of color around her were
broke
• (Prince) portrayed as lazy, rude, and disrespectful to his
woman—an insult to black men and black women
• relationships of the slave and the daughter of slave
masters on southern plantations.
• Dark magic vs white (light) magic

9. Race, hierarchy, and
hyenaphobia in The Lion King
• The main argument is that the movie make the concept
of societal hierarchies seem natural and desirable, in
relation to race.
• Hierarchy is a system in which some members of a
culture have more privilege, economic resources, status,
or other form of power than other members of a culture
• In the Pridelands, the lions are the most powerful
members of society, while all the other animals are
inferior

10. Gender hierarchy
• Power passed from male to male
• Lions have more power than lionesses
• Simba’s mother is put in her place by Scar
• Lionesses seem helpless without male leadership
• Scar is given stereotypical homosexual mannerisms to
accentuate his creepiness
o Scar always limply waves his paw when talking, invading personal
space when talking to intimidate others, often touchy-feely
o Never associated with a lionesses, alone---in contrast to Simba, when
older pursues his love interest Nala

11. Racial hierarchy
• Segregating inferior groups (hyenas)
• Representative of any hated or feared group
• Living in poverty stricken land, barren land, no food
• Caves and skeleton bones equivalent of dilapidated
projects in inner cities
• No indication of promoting multi-cultural or inclusive
society
• No outreach to help the hyenas
• When hyenas are integrated, the Pridelands become
barren.

12. My super sweet 16
• Cultural expectations and norms of genderized roles are
demonstrated in the narratives of the young girls
• I Deserve This
• I want more
• I’m Daddy’s little girl forever