JUST CARTOONS AND NOTHING MORE? NIGERIAN PARENTS’ RECEPTION OF THE REPRESENTATIONS OF PERSONS OF COLOUR IN DISNEY 3D ANIMATION FILMS
Abstract
The Walt Disney Company has been responsible for some of the most successful films in recent times, and this has attracted scholarship that has focused on representations of race and the public reception of these films. Anchored on the Reception Theory, this study explored how Nigerian parents receive representations of persons of colour in chosen Disney 3D animation films. The participants for the study were 12 parents (6 males and 6 females aged between 30 and 60 who are also University graduates), residing in Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria. The study adopted focus groups and the study participants were gathered through the snowball technique. The Participants were exposed to Zootopia (2016), Incredibles 2 (2018) and Soul (2020), the latest Disney 3D animation films that arguably present varied representations of persons of colour. The views of the participants suggest that they were able to identify persons of colour in these films. Findings from the study showed that the meanings the participants made of these films were not only multiple but varied. On the one hand, there was a set of audience who took oppositional positions in their sense-making of the films as they were able to spot negative representations of persons of colour and found them problematic, while on the other hand, there were those who associated the 3D animation films with entertainment and thought of them as exciting, innocent, nostalgic and sources of pleasure. This study argues that educated Nigerian parents are sophisticated enough to offer parental guidance in their children’s ‘screen lives’. It concludes that they are critical and have the capacity to discern and discuss Disney messages with their children. Even when Nigerian parents are not able to spot negative representations of persons of colour, their suggestion that negative representations in the Disney films they watched are not glaring, and are therefore not likely to have a negative influence on children, is not to be disregarded.
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