Stereotyping in Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Known for being one of Disney’s non-musical movies (Ebert), Atlantis is an action-adventure cartoon about a group of explorers uncovering the mythical continent of Atlantis that sunk beneath the sea thousands of years ago and the natives who have lost much of their culture and learning after “The Great Flood”. Milo Thatch, the hero of the movie, a linguist and cartographer, wants to carry on his grandfather Thaddeus’s expedition but cannot get the Board members of the Smithsonian Museum (where he works in the boiler room) to take him seriously. He is later summoned to the mansion of Preston Whitmore, a close friend of his late grandfather, who brings him together with an exploration crew consisting of engineers, geologists, and archaeologists who unlike Milo, are actually after money rather than genuine interest. Like many Disney movies, there are numerous references made throughout the movie that children are unlikely to understand, some to events that were happening during the time-period that the movie is supposed to represent (in this case, the year 1914, the height of the colonial empires and the beginning of World War I), and some that play on certain stereotypes of gender, ethnicity and social standing, and are shown through the characters and their interactions with one another. These stereotypes are not just made apparent through the characters’ dialogue; the way that they are drawn and even the way their movements are animated are part of these references.

The White Characters:

            The first thing that can be noticed is that all the white characters have the leading roles. By leading, I mean that they are the ones with authority and power. Commander Lyle Rourke is the leader of the expedition, and is the picture of masculinity and virility, having a large squared jaw and imposing physique, though he is later exposed as the main villain of the movie, a mercenary after the big money he is sure many nations would pay for the large, somewhat “alive” crystal that seems to be Atlantis’s main source of energy. Although he knows that taking the crystal away from Atlantis will surely kill all the natives, he is indifferent to the genocide he would be committing. Rourke’s second-in-command is Lieutenant Helga Sinclair, who is first surprises Milo in his apartment to inform him of Preston Whitmore’s interest in helping him. She is tall and blond, and no matter what she is wearing, be it the slinky black dress she is first seen in, or her exploration clothes, she is always made to appear sexy and provocative. She is the only female ‘leader’ in the group, but is always under someone’s command, either as Whitmore’s employee or as Rourke’s Lieutenant. Although Milo is the real leader of the expedition, being the only one possessing the knowledge to find Atlantis, he is disregarded and somewhat patronized by the rest of the characters at first, because of his ‘nerdy’ appearance. He wears big round glasses, and is scrawny as compared to the rest of the characters. His movement is somewhat awkward and clumsy although he turns out to be the hero who returns the crystal to its proper place and helps the people of Atlantis regain their lost knowledge, having studied their language for years. This is an instance where the hero does not fit the typical ‘masculine’ definition (Welsh) and is actually more brainy than brawny. These ‘leading’ characters have the least inflections in their accents as the secondary characters all have much more pronounced accents and diverse backgrounds.

The “Foreign” Characters:

The first of these secondary characters that we meet is Gaetan “Mole” Molière, a French geologist with a heavy French accent and curlicue mustache. He in fact looks like a mole (he is drawn as short, fat and dirty) and is the most excited when there is anything to do with dirt of digging. The stereotype of the “dirty French” is subtly introduced when Moliere hisses and backs away from a bar of soap that is brandished at him by another character. Another subtle joke is made when Milo accidentally disturbs the samples of dirt from different countries that Moliere keeps, mixing the dirt samples of England with that of France, which causes Moliere to exclaim, “England must never merge with France!”. The character that brandishes the soap at Moliere is Joshua Sweet, the crew’s physician. He is the movie’s only black character and although he is clearly educated, he still speaks with grammatical errors and a deep voice (“Me? I hate fish; hate the taste, hate the smell, hate all them little bones”) and he first appears wearing only pants and suspenders, revealing him as extremely tall and muscular, not unlike the image of the Africans of the plantations during the period of slavery and segregation in America. Another minority is represented through Audrey Ramirez, the chief mechanic. Though she is young and short, she is very tough and tomboyish, with a Spanish accent and a very blue-collar background. She tells Milo about her father who wanted boys, but instead got her and her sister. Despite this, she and her sister took on very male roles, with Audrey being a mechanic who helps her dad with his shop, and her sister being a boxing champion. She gets excited when she sees the natives of Atlantis have tattoos, which are adopted by many Latin gang members. There is also the character of Vincenzo “Vinnie” Santorini, the demolitions expert, who is an Italian, also with a heavy accent (that is actually quite difficult to understand at times) who speaks with a lot of gesture and movement, as most Italians actually do. At the beginning of the film, Whitmore says that he “busted him out of a Turkish prison”, which seems strange until you consider the tensions between countries that was going on at that time. Jebidiah  “Cookie” Farnsworth is the crew’s chef who is portrayed as a typical redneck. He has an aversion to almost anything he considers outside the “four basic food groups”, which are beans, bacon, whiskey and lard. He has a scruffy beard, crooked teeth, wears a red checkered shirt and speaks with a very southern twang, and although he is the only one of the secondary characters who is American, he is very eccentric and peculiar. Although these characters are somewhat exaggerated, it should be kept in mind that this is a children’s cartoon, and cartoon characters are in fact meant to be exaggerated. It is also interesting to see this much diversity in a Disney cartoon, although the more foreign characters are portrayed as being very quirky, compared to the wealthier white characters such as Whitmore.

An incident worth mentioning, though it is simply one phrase, is one directed at the German government of the time, which was under the leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm, while Germany was part of the escalating tensions between the two main alliances of Europe. As the crystal is a very powerful energy source, Milo exclaims that Rourke is probably off to “sell the crystal to the Kaiser”, who was involved in an arms race against England at the time, and so can be viewed as slur against the Germans.

The Natives:

The natives of Atlantis are represented not unlike the American-Indians of Pocahontas. They seem to be their own ethnic group, all of them having dark skin and white hair, and are a somewhat primitive society whose tools still consist of spears and arrows, though before the flood that sank them beneath the sea they were supposed to have had advanced medicine and technology. Milo is actually the one who teaches them about their own culture and at one point during the movie, when he and the princess of Atlantis are rediscovering machines powered by the crystal, he says that he is “surprised [she] got this far” in a very condescending manner, asserting his sense of superiority. Although the natives of Atlantis speak many different languages, they cannot read their own and the princess looks to these white strangers as the salvation of her people, hoping they will be able to re-discover what the people of Atlantis cannot discover on their own. Although this particular detail is relevant to the plot, it still hints at the superiority of the exploration crew compared to the natives.

Conclusion:

Although the concept of Atlantis and its people is completely fictional, it does seem strange that the natives would be so reliant on the explorers for help. It could be seen that within the movie’s timeframe, the expedition crew are not unlike the European colonizers of the early 1900’s, but it should be kept in mind that Atlantis: The Lost Empire is fairly recent compared to older Disney movies where negative stereotypes are more obvious, such as the crows in Dumbo.

References

Where all the information about Babbel was obtained from.

1) http://www.babbel.com/home/node/1254

2)http://www.babbel.com/a#/flash/navigation/home

3)Deck, E. (Nov. 10, 2009).Web site Review: Babbel.com.

Retrieved from:http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/web-site-review-babbelcom/

4) All images were print-screened from the official website.

Conclusion

This post sums up the advantages and disadvantages of using Babbel

 

What makes Babbel.com such a successful site is that it is very user-friendly; from registration, which is done in just one step, to actually accessing the lessons, it is unlikely to find anything particularly difficult to operate. The courses are arranged in lessons or steps of around 5-30, which are supposed to last 10-15 minutes, but are more appealing than the traditional textbook approach, making use of the multi-media platform the World Wide Web offers by integrating images and audio. The personal vocabulary options allows users to keep track of all the vocabulary they have learned by managing a comprehensive list and keeping track of the users weaknesses, so that at login, the user is given a suggested list of what they most need to improve in. Other features, such as the messaging board, provides users with native speakers of the languages they are trying to learn, though one of the drawbacks is that there is no audio involved, so the user can only practice through writing. Another drawback is the small number of languages offered; although they are taught intensively and are probably more complete than other websites with a wider range of languages. Despite this, Babbel.com is definitely a useful way for virtually anyone with an Internet connection to learn a new language, though it’s more oriented towards beginners and intermediate learners, and is within a fairly afforable price range (about 24 Euros)

How to Use

This post is a brief explanation of how to register for and use the application.

 

 

The first thing to do is register for a free trial simply by entering your email address and password and agreeing to the terms and conditions of the website. You are then prompted to choose a language that you will focus on. You are first offered a free lesson in the beginner’s course of your choice, but there is a monthly fee that guarantees access to all the courses of the chosen learning language, and the price depends on the number of months joined. The monthly prices are reduced the longer a registered user is active. There is a tab at the top of the page once a user has signed in that provides access to the home page, the course list, a list of people, a message board, a chat room, a personal messages/inbox option, and a list of prices.

Background & History

This post focuses on how Babbel started and the people that make it up.

 

The initial idea from the site came from Lorenz Heine, Markus Witte, Toine Diepstrten and Thomas Holl, who are the founders of the Lesson Nine GmbH company, which is located in Berlin. More than thirty foreign language teachers and experts, designers and software developers make us this company, and all the content of the website is developed by a team of foreign language teachers and native speakers of each language. The site has been up-and-running since January 15th, 2008, and has received funding from the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to finance its activities. Since its beginning, the site has registered over 1,000,000 users from more than 200 countries, all of whom contribute to the interactive learning enviroment. 

Introduction to Babbel

This post explains the primary features and functions of Babbel.com

www.Babbel.com is an innovative website for people to learn new languages at their own pace, especially if they do not have the time to take courses in a school or center. The seven languages available so far are English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, German and Swedish. Babbel.com does not necessarily have to be accessed from a computer, as there are applications for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that make it even handier as a language-teaching tool. There are different course options to choose from, such as the yearlong course program, the beginner and refresher courses, themes and situations, grammar, basic and advanced vocabulary, 1,000 useful sentences, tongue twisters, writing exercises, and an option to listen and practice the skills learned with a microphone. The beginners’ course is the free trial, and other options such as internal messages and an open messenger board are always free-of-charge.

Sign up page

Analyzing Magazine Covers

Photographs have a tendency to evoke viewers’ emotions a lot more effectively than words can. Editors of news media like newspapers or magazines are very aware of this, and choose photographs for especially controversial or big stories with attention to every detail, knowing full-well that they can play on the reader’s emotions with visuals about stories or events. Examples of emotion-provoking issues could be human rights or militant or combative issues. Militant issues are an especially touchy issue for most people, which is why stories covering wars or military activity are often accompanied with pictures that have a dark or threatening aura.

The December 4^th, 2010 issue of The Economist contains a fourteen-page story about the threat America sees in China as a possible future world power. China’s main focus has been its economic development and its significance has risen exponentially over the past decades. The photograph of this special report is also the cover of that week’s issue. The photograph is an extreme close-up of a young Chinese male (whose exact age is difficult to determine) looking through what can only be a gun-scope, with the camouflaging colours painted on his face covered by a layer of beaded sweat. If the reader knew nothing about the actual article or current events, it would create the assumption that the Chinese were either training for or already engaged in a war. “The dangers of a rising China” is the headline of this story, so coupling the word “danger” with the image of a soldier is extremely important in creating the impression of an actual threat, given the belligerent nature of the topic. Because this picture is a close-up, we can assume that the person who chose the photo to represent this story wanted an emphasis on the soldier’s single-minded concentration on the gun. The soldier’s face is devoid of expression—it is not fearful or anxious in any way; there is simply the impression that whatever target he is about to open fire on (be it a civilian, opposing soldier, or even it were just a training target) is simply part of an unchangeable routine that he must follow, which would make him more of an automaton than an actual human, and therefore not as worthy of sympathy as he would be if he were scared of what he was doing. The actual context of the location of the photo is not included, so there is no reference to where the soldier actually is or what it is he is aiming at as the background has been omitted. As The Economist is an American magazine, it obviously has a partiality for protecting American security interests, especially America’s position in the hierarchy of world powers. China’s capabilities to challenge that position would create the need for American citizens to be fully on-board with any measures that would safeguard that power against any challengers. That is why there is a need to create the fear of an actual tangible threat. A picture of Chinese leaders in discussion with American leaders and the headline “Talks with China to maintain security” would not create the same fear of imminent danger—it would actually show that there is active and peaceful communication between the two nations, which is actually the case as the article actually mentions that  “things have gone remarkably well between America and China”, which seems slightly inconsistent with the headline and photograph. The photo actually plays more on the recent stereotype of China as a threat to American security than it does to dispel it. The photograph is basically implying that “the China problem” is cause to begin stockpiling weaponry and training soldiers because the notion of a possible war would not be too far-fetched. In making people believe that there is actually a threat, there has to be an enemy with a threatening image and a seemingly aggressive stand, so showing that aspect of China is supposed to keep American citizens ‘vigilant’ against this possible new threat. The fear of external threat after 9/11 is of especial importance to America so ever since then the media has been playing on their fear of another terrorist threat. This is not to say that there is definitely no possible threat whatsoever, but the fact that the actual headline and photo are at odds with the content of the story indicate that the media have incentive to keep the public on their toes.

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