Disney is just all white with me!

I have found that even in today’s more accepting and global society it is very easy to pick out the old traditional styling’s that went into making some of the earliest films.

Disney Channel Television shows such as Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody are two prime examples of Disney’s hottest and most popular pre-teen television shows that are fully laden with racial and social stereotypes, token characters, and both follow a classical Hollywood form that quite resembles motion pictures of a much earlier era.



The series Hannah Montana focuses on a girl who lives a double life as an average teenage school girl named Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cyrus) by day and a famous pop singer named Hannah Montana by night, concealing her real identity from the public, other than her close friends and family.

As if the name Hannah Montana could not sound any whiter (besides being named after a state that is 90.6% White according to the Montana Census and Economic Information Center in 2000), the cast resembles the state’s demographics. Out of six listed main characters in the series only one of them would be considered non-white. Moises Arias, a Columbian-American who plays a sly, smooth talking, wisecracking, very child-like “Latino-Lover” beachfront shop owner ironically named Rico.



Not only does this subtly introduce Latin American stereotyped concepts, it also gives Hannah Montana her only recurring token character.
A show even less subtle at token characters mixed with racial stereotypes and new age equalities is Disney Channel’s “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”. The show centers upon Zack and Cody Martin, twin brothers who live in the Tipton Hotel where their mother, Carey, sings and performs in the hotel lounge. Also residing at the hotel is the hotel owner's daughter, London Tipton, who is impolite and ditzy. Maddie, is the hotel's down-to-earth candy-counter girl. Mr. Moseby, the strict, dutiful and serious manager is often a foil to Zack and Cody's schemes.
Two characters that I would like to concentrate on are Mr. Moseby and London Tipton, the shows token racially defined characters.

Mr. Moseby is described as the somewhat uptight manager of the Tipton Hotel, who speaks with a wide vocabulary and an urbane vernacular, along with speaking a number of different languages besides English (French, Japanese, Swahili, Spanish, etc.). Now, in early film an African American male would not have been portrayed as a successfully employed, educated, and caring person. However, Disney has used classical form to also portray Mr. Moseby as slightly effeminate (closeting homosexual tendancies) as well as allowing him to fill the role of the classical “Coon” character.



Though London is obviously an Asian-American, she is portrayed as a parody of the American socialite Paris Hilton. London is an air headed heiress, and leads a wild girl fabulous life as heiress of the Tipton Estate. She is a spoiled, rich and often insults her peers by comparing how they dress. Her character is very Americentric and naïve. Her character is what I would consider to be an extremely youthfully conservative version of the Victorian defined by the virgin-whore complex. (Benshoff and Griffin, 2008)



The television media industry has come a long way in it's many years producing and developing shows and characters, but when will it be able to leave behind it's formulaic ways and be able to create something completley brand new? Or, is the damage been done so much to say that any way you spin a character there is always going to be something that can be construed as typical or racist of a character?