I know we're suppose to comment on the blog from the person before us, but I really wanted to comment more on something I said in class last week. Last week in class we talked about the OJ Simpson covers for both Time and Newsweek. The photograph that was taken of Simpson, which ran in Time magazine shortly after his arrest in June 1994, was manipulated to look darker than the original mug shot. We talked about how the image was adjusted to make him look “darker” and menacing”. Newsweek ran the same mug shot, but did not digitally alter it to the extreme which Time did.
In class, I mentioned how when I went on vacation this past summer, I went and saw a show called the Hall of Presidents which is located at the Magic Kingdom in Disney World. On You Tube I found a number of different videos with actual footage from the show.
The animatronic version of Barack Obama appeared at Magic Kingdom's newer version of the Hall of Presidents in June 2009. When I would go on vacation to Disney World when I was younger, I always found the show to be extremely boring. This year however, with the newly edition of President Obama being added to the attraction, my family and I were interested to see how Disney would portray him in to the show. By the end of the show, my family and I found ourselves asking the same thing. Why would the animators of Disney make the skin tone of Obama so light?
For whatever the reason may be, it has caused numerous discussions and some controversy on why Disney would do this. Disney has always had a reputation, whether it is accidental or on purpose, for being racist and having inappropriate sexual acts in their movies, songs, and now theme park attractions.
You Tube has several videos showing the entire Hall of Presidents show. This video, however, shows the end of the show where President Obama is mostly featured. Towards the end of this clip, they show a close up on Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd9JZVioBnM
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This is interesting. However, I find it hard to believe that Disney was interding to be racist, even if the designers lightened his skin tone a bit. It's not like they were trying to make him appear as a white person, everyone knows Obama is the first black president...If anything, I think they were using Obama in their advertisment for publicity and with the intentions of hopefully attracting more visitors to the park. It is interesting though how certain design elements, such as color, can be manipulated and it is not surprising that people would think it's because of racism. I'm just not sure I believe that's why the deisngers made him appear lighter, it could have just simply been to make him contrast better with the background...but who knows? This was a very interesting finding.
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